That's Why

Brad Besson caught on that he was the only one speaking. All other conversation in the high-flown witty debate on politics and economics had burbled down to nothing but what he was saying. They were gathered poolside on the terrace behind Frederick Gates's residence in the housing compound of the Baker Institute on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay, just to the south of the mouth of the Severn River at Annapolis, in Maryland.

Brad looked across the oval of open meadow at the rear of the houses on Reagan Circle to the parking apron at his own house, seven similarly designed buildings from Gate's dominating residence. Tom was getting out of his beat-up Nissan pickup there, bare-chested and in drooping, worn jeans. He entered Brad's house through the garage, moving around Brad's Porsche Boxster. Brad wasn't the only one watching Tom move into the house. Tom was one hunk of a sexy young man.

Tom obviously was the sticking point here. Tom was the blemish on the peach. Tom clearly didn't belong here.

To this point, all of the conversations around the pool and barbeque stations had focused on the business of the Baker Institute, a self-contained think tank on conservative public policy, with direct links to the Naval Institute Press up in Annapolis, which published the institute's studies. The institute took studying, writing, speaking, and consulting on public policy on to the point of forming its own closed world in which to pursue its beliefs and pronouncements. The institute included a graduate student center, providing certificates of vetting as conservative pundits, and its own closed living environment. Those connected with the institute worked here and lived here in their own closed, protected bubble. As with any community, there was an inner circle, the one at the Baker Institute, strangely enough, not being based on a hierarchy of conservative pundits but on a small group of institute fellows, led by Frederick Gates, who also wrote political fiction.

Just outside the gates of the Institute grounds, a chapel they all were recorded members of and gave lip service to, was located on one side of the entrance and a museum dedicated to American patriotism was on the other side.

Tom, laid back, hippy, pot smoking—gorgeous—was an alien presence in their world.

Before Tom had been seen driving up to Brad's house, Brad, who was an assistant professor in the institute's graduate studies program and who also wrote political fiction, had maneuvered himself into a heady discussion circle that included Gates, Evan Peterson, Betty Tau, Tucker Coryn, and Maryam Noor, all members of the inner group. Brad, young and ambitious and a recent arrival at the Baker Institute, was dying to be included in this inner circle. He had worked hard to work his way into being comfortably accepted, even informally, in a discussion group like this.

Realizing that the discussion had paused and all of the rest were watching Tom saunter into the garage at Brad's house made Brad realize for the first time what the sticking point had been on his acceptance in this group, despite the lengths he'd gone to to fit in. It was Tom's presence.

As if to bring this home, Betty Lau broke the silence by saying, "Your brother has been with you for several months, Brad. Is he settling in?" Brad understood that this was her way of asking when they were going to be rid of the alien presence of Tom.

Evan Peterson chimed in with, "Doesn't he work in the Baltimore area? That's rather a long commute from here, isn't it?"

Brad's eyes went to Frederick Gates. All of the acceptable behavior at the Baker Institute centered on the views of Frederick Gates, and it had been Gates who had brought Brad here and who Brad had completely subordinated himself to. The institute president was looking at Brad, his demeanor neutral. That wasn't neutral at all, though. He wasn't reigning in Tau or Peterson. They obviously were expressing his view, as well—or at least ones he let be floated.

Gates cut an imposing figure. He was a tall, substantial-figured man, who was able to look collectively elegant, formal, and commanding even in a setting like this backyard barbeque. He wasn't a good-looking man, but his features were strong, robust, and dominating. It would be clear to any stranger, if a stranger were permitted to enter this environment at all, that he was the man in charge.

"He's doing more work around Annapolis now," Brad said. "There's a building boom in the region and a high demand for experienced construction workers."

Betty sniffed, and Brad blushed a bit at not being able to establish more about Tom in this community of high-level brain power than that he was experienced in house construction. But, although he now understood where the lines were being drawn on this and the danger he was in, he wasn't ready to give in yet. He still had some leverage. He turned his focus on Frederick.

"Where are Louise and the children, Fred?" he asked Gates. "I haven't seen them around this afternoon."

"Louise has taken the children to Harrisburg for the weekend," Gates said. Louise's father was a Pennsylvania congressman. Frederick and Louise made sure he saw his grandchildren regularly and that he would remember he had them generously covered in his will. And Frederick made sure that Louise was happy with married life and was willing to share in family expenses from her trust fund. On the surface, at least, they were the perfect family. Brad knew that there was more to it—and to his question—than was to be seen on the surface. He had played the card on purpose, and Gates understood and accepted the play.

"I'll miss them, but it gives us time to go over that feature you are putting together for the

Wall Street Journal

, Brad. Perhaps you could stay back after the others have gone this afternoon and we can work on that."

"Of course, Fred. Whatever you want." Brad answered. The "whatever you want" was spoken with purpose as well. He cast a level and expectant look at Frederick, who delivered, as wanted.

"We of course welcome having your brother here, Brad. It can be quite an advantage having someone who could help with building malfunctions close to hand."

Evan Peterson, who was about to express another concern about the presence of Tom, got the message and clamped his mouth shut, although he looked a little confused, which served to confirm in Brad's mind that Frederick had said something entirely different than that about Tom in a conversation with Evan.

Frederick turned to Betty and deflected her maneuver on her competition for advancement at the Baker Institute against Brad by saying, "I expected the evaluation of Kenneth Peltz's progress on my desk on Friday, Betty. When can I expect to see that?" He already knew that she had done nothing on that yet. Frederick had an excellent network of informants among the institute support staff.

"It's done," Betty said. "I don't know why it wasn't sent over to you. I'll make sure it's on your desk when you arrive for work on Monday."

That would take care of Betty. She'd be busy all day Sunday putting that evaluation together.

Frederick turned to Evan Peterson, but he'd already separated from the group and moved to another one. He and Betty had obviously coordinated an attack on Brad's position with Frederick, neither liking how much in favor the "new man" had become with the institute president since he'd arrived, and the arrival of that redneck interloper brother of Brad had given them an opening. But in the face of Brad's successful parry, Evan was adept at realizing what had worked and he too had papers late in arriving on Frederick's desk. He was smart enough to withdraw from the fray for now.

That left Frederick and Brad, who nodded, knowingly, to each other and each peeled away to join separate discussion groups.

* * * *

Brad stood by the staircase as Frederick glad-handed the last of the guests away. It was after 7:00 p.m. and the party had been for lunchtime, so it could be racked up to be a success. By 7:00, though, everyone was more than tired of trying to jockey for position on their Saturday in the isolated and insular community. They had all run out of brilliant and witty political observations and of equally brilliant and witty put downs of what their colleagues had to say in attempts to upstage them.

"Glad that's over," Frederick said, turning and moving to Brad. The strain of presiding over the soap opera showed on him. When he got to Brad, he put an arm around the younger, smaller, sultry, dark-haired twenty-six-year-old, and Brad turned his face up to his mentor's. They moved into a deep kiss. Frederick ran his hand down Brad's chest and cupped the young man's package. Frederick sighed and Brad groaned.

"I thought they'd never leave," Brad whispered.

"I, as well."

"Were you serious that Louise and the children are safely tucked away in Harrisburg for the weekend."

"Yes, they are. Shall we go upstairs? We have the house to ourselves."

Brad waited dutifully in the upper hall, while Frederick went around the second story and closed the doors to the master bedroom and to his children's room until only the door into the guest room remained open. He had already firmly locked all doors on the first floor with access from the outside. The guest room was on the east side of the house and thus the light was dim. The windows were open and an early evening breeze ruffled the curtains. For the following three-quarters-of-an hour, the initial sounds were of the curtains moving and the low panting of the two men slowly developed into heavy breathing, mutual praise and encouragement, and the cries of orgiastic release.

They initially stood in the center of the room, kissing and slowly slipping the clothes of each other off their bodies and moving their hands over each other's curves, crevices, and stiff cocks. Brad's body was lithe, lightly muscled, almost perfection. Frederick was taller, thicker, having thickened out and moved toward obesity, without having reached that yet. He had been in better shape when he'd been a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Baltimore and Brad Besson had arrived there as a graduate student intern. Brad had been a handsome man at any age; Frederick had grown into looking distinguished but had bypassed any hope of beauty.

Frederick had had the privilege of coaxing Brad's legs open and fucking him while the two were at Johns Hopkins for over two years before Frederick brought Brad here to the Baker Institute.

Neither of them had ever said a thing about how Frederick could reconcile his hardline conservative views with not only adultery but also gay sex. On Brad's part, all he was interested in was advancement in his field and Frederick was his ticket to that. Of course he didn't say anything like that to Frederick. He gave nothing to Frederick but complete submission and the impression that he'd do anything to have Frederick's cock, which was nothing to write home about, inside him.

Although Frederick did not realize it and was too arrogant to entertain the concept, it had been Brad who had seduced him that first time.

Brad's ambition put him on his knees in front of Frederick in the guest room of the Baker Institute president's home when they were both naked and that put his mouth on Frederick's cock. And it was ambition more than want or attraction to Frederick that put Brad on his back on the foot of the guest bed, his legs spread and raised and Frederick crouched between them as the sounds in the room became that of heavier breathing, Frederick's occasionally muttered "Oh, baby, oh baby," and Brad's answering of "Yes, yes, yes, like that" at ever increasing decibel levels as Frederick moved an almost adequate cock inside the younger man's channel. "Oh, shit! Ram it deep!" Brad called out, and believing he'd brought Brad to panting passion, he did his best at that.

To enhance Frederick's pleasure so that he could bring a handsome young man to a satisfactory climax, Brad cried out his "Oh, shit, you're going to make me come," while vigorously stroking his own cock, and Frederick managed a weak ejaculation a bit later.

Twenty minutes after that, going for the rare seconds, as meetings were usually furtive and fast, taking advantage of the overnight absence of Frederick's family and the satiation of contact with each other of the other inmates of the Baker Institute community, Frederick and Brad were stretched out beside each other on the guest bed. Frederick was doing what he best loved doing with Brad, reliving what he had thought had been his masterful seduction of the young man the first time. He was kissing Brad in the hollow of his neck and on his ear and whispering how fine the young man's body was. Simultaneously, Frederick, assuming Brad wasn't fully aware he was doing so, had the fingers of one of his hands were caressing the young man's naked body. The hand went to Brad's closed thighs and he slowly coaxed them open to where, pressing the heel of his hand under Brad's balls, his index finger was able to reach, rim, and then penetrate Brad's ass. Brad was moaning and giving him little gasps of experiencing heavenly violation he could not resist.

Brad was breathing heavily for him and panting hard. "Yes, yes," he murmured. In this, the finger finding and massaging the prostate, Frederick found the root of Brad's passion. Moaning deeply, Brad closed his thighs tight, grasping Frederick's wrist to hold the man's hand in place, and rocked against the finger penetrating him and stroking his prostate. His other hand went to his cock and stroked it. He turned his face to ceiling, his jaw going slack, and murmurs of pleasure escaped his lips as every fiber of his being concentrated on the stroking finger. Now two trembling fingers as Frederick realized that he was going to bring the young man off—that Brad was going to come for him. And then Brad did, shooting his load, and, with a sigh, relaxing back onto the bed. "Fuck me now," he whispered. "Put it in me."

Realizing that Brad was as mellow and yielding now as he had been for months, Frederick whispered those memorable words of seduction he'd used the first time, "Your body is so fine. I must have you. I must fuck you again."

"Yes, yes, fuck me," Brad responded and rolled over onto his side, allowing Frederick to pull Brad's ass into his pelvis and for his cock to slide inside and start to move. Frederick never tired of reliving this first taking and how masterful he'd been—of Brad's inability to defend himself from Frederick's masterful expertise—or at least as Frederick had remembered it.

As Frederick fucked him this second time in the day, Brad counted the ceiling tiles in the room while murmuring, "Yes, Daddy, fuck me. Fuck me just like that." It wasn't "just like that" though. It had been better with the finger.

It was with deep pleasure that Frederick managed some semblance of a second coming.

Frederick saw Brad off at the top of the stairs, Frederick in a robe, ready to go off to the shower and then sit and smoke a celebratory cigar and drink a snifter of brandy while reliving the shudder Brad had produced when he come that one time. Ever mindful of the watching housing compound, Brad inspected himself in the hall mirror, dressed, a portfolio of papers the two supposedly had spent the last hour working on in the crook of his arm as he prepared to leave and walk around the circle to his house. No doubt his colleagues would come to their windows, to the edge of their curtains, to watch him progress toward his house, all knowing he had spent an hour with "the man," further solidifying their relationship, but none having an inkling of just how close that relationship was or exactly how they had solidified it.

"Your brother . . ." Frederick said. "I don't know why . . ."

"Tom, yes," Brad said. Then he said, "I wish we could meet more often than this, you and I." He didn't, of course, unless it moved his career faster than it was doing. "You do me so well, you know. I think you get better and better."

"Yes, well," Frederick said, clearly pleased and forgetting his original line of thought, which, of course, was Brad's intent that he do. "Now that it's summer and the children are older, I think they will be going to Harrisburg with Louise more often."

"We'll need to have more projects we must work on together. The seminar at Harvard next month. You'll need to take someone with you and whoever you take will need to coordinate a good bit before then."

"Yes, that's a thought," Frederick said.

Brad knew that both Betty Tau and Evan Peterson were vying for that trip as well. It suddenly seemed like this afternoon had been a good investment.

"Yes, that's something to think about," Frederick said, as Brad slipped out of the door before the man could again bring up the presence of the construction worker, Tom, in the pristine and high-brow Baker Institute community.

* * * *

"Was that another 'claws out' pool party you all were having up at the top egg head's house when I got home?"

Tom was sprawled on the sofa in front of the TV in just low-rise cut-off jeans, swigging a beer and watching a baseball game in the near dark. The light coming in through the windows was waning, but he hadn't bothered to turn on any interior lights yet. In contrast to Brad, Tom was thin and angular. He was hard-bodied, his muscles well-defined, his body deeply tanned from working outside in construction. His hair was a dirty blond, long and held back in a ponytail. Streaks of sun-bleached strands ran through it. He was good looking, but he looked like he'd led a hard life, like he spent time on a Harley, buzzing around the country with a gang. He looked like he'd break you in two if you crossed him.

He had piercings, which would shock the Baker Institute community if they got close enough to him to see them—a diamond stud earring, a bar through one of his nipples, and another one where very few got to see. And he had a few tattoos, including a barbed-wire band around his right bicep, a blue starburst surrounding and highlighting his "inny" navel, and, most prominent of all, angel wings spanning his shoulder blades.

In all, Tom was a stark contrast with Brad's sensual, but clean-cut, dark look, and the angel wings in no way represented his overall look. If Brad's neighbors in the tight-knit "live where you work" Baker Institute community hadn't known he was a guest at Brad's house and they saw the man walking down any street in the compound, they would have been reaching for their cell phones to call 911.

"Yes, it was another 'I can top' that review and challenge of the pecking order session, combined with a scrutiny of who is in top mental shape and who isn't," Brad answered.

"And you came out ahead on both counts, didn't you?" Tom said. It was said as if it was a given. "You're in even better graces now than before you went?"

"I like to hope so," Brad answered. "I think I landed the trip with Gates to Harvard next month."

"That's good," was the answer. But then Tom yelled at a pitcher on the TV who had walked someone—obviously someone on the team Tom wasn't cheering for. He didn't pursue the question of what Brad had to do to gain favor with Gates.

"Do you need me to fix you some dinner?" Brad asked. "I had enough at the pool party."

"Naw, I got something when I got home."

"Did you have to go all the way to Baltimore for work?"

"Further. They're opening a new section in Colombia."

"So, you're tired?"

"Naw, I caught a nap before the game. It looked like the pool party broke up a long time before you came home."

"Gates had me stay late."

Tom cursed at another walk on the TV set. He didn't ask Brad what had caused him to stay late.