Chapter 2

John 'Mac' McGreer walked into his office and took off his expensive, tailored suit coat. He wasn't wild about expensive clothes, but he knew they were necessary in his job. He was the campaign manager for Derek Kohn, and next to Derek himself, probably the best in the state. He was tough and hard-boiled, one of old timers who learned his politics in the streets and alleys. He learned it because he had to, because he wasn't the biggest kid on the block, and something inside him just wouldn't let him knuckle under to the bullies.

It was a makeshift office, like most road campaign offices, put together next to the bedroom in a suite at the local

Holiday Inn. He took off his tie too, and unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a mass of thick curly hair like a wool blanket on his chest. It had been a long day, but the best part was still to come. He sat down in the cheap swivel chair and lit up a thick, dark Conestoga. He was from the old school.

Soon Linda would come in, and they would have sex. Probably. He grinned around the fat cigar poking out of his mouth, and tapped the layer of ash off the burning tip. There was always just a chance she wouldn't do it. That was what made it fun. He'd been married off and on in his checkerboard life, but he wasn't very good at close relationships. He preferred dealing with people he didn't care much for, and who didn't care much for him. So much more was possible that way. Yes, there was just the chance she would refuse, and he'd have to put his hungry cock to bed without any supper tonight.

But. most people did what he wanted them to do. Not because they liked him, and not because he was suave and persuasive like Derek. But because they respected him. They soon learned that for his gruff, often insulting ways, if he told them to do something, it usually turned out to be the right thing to do. Being right was his only weapon, because he wasn't very nice and he wasn't very pretty.

The door opened on his reverie, and Linda Faulkner came in with a big stack of papers, which she set on the desk. "Hi Mac, she said tiredly. "Think we convinced them?"

Mac didn't move, leaned back in the chair, his big shoes on the edge of the desk. "Sixty-three percent of that crowd tonight will vote for us," he said confidently.

Linda was a holdover from Derek's earlier days. Her bright red hair was cut about shoulder length, and dressed in her conservative dress and wearing dark-rimmed glasses, she looked like the perfect, efficient secretary, bustling around impersonally. But Mac had seen her differently, and knew that under those clothes was a woman with a lot of charm, who could move her delicious body in waves and undulations that would pop a champagne cork.

He uncrossed his ankles to keep her in view as she bent over to file something in the bottom drawer, the thick material drawn tight over her shapely ass. If he couldn't get his hands on that tonight, he decided, he wasn't worth dog piss on a fire hydrant.

"Let the workers do that tomorrow," he said gruffly. "Come and sit down."

She smiled to herself with her back turned, then came and sat down across the desk from him with an innocent air, as though she expected him to discuss more campaign business. But she knew better than that. She had a sense for what men wanted, and could be very accommodating when she had a mind to be.

"What d'ya know about Anthony Fischer?" he asked.

"Anthony Fischer the Third," she corrected him. "A rich man, who took his inherited money and used it to get a lot more. He has interests in a lot of banks, industry, airlines, resorts, that sort of thing." She could see right down between Mac's propped-up legs to his crotch, where an occasional twitch of the material told her that the subject of Anthony Fischer was not the main thing on his mind.

"And he gives a lot of money to political causes. He can make a campaign by contributing to it, or break it by contributing to the opposition." Mac had seen her eyes drop to his crotch, and linger there with a certain degree of interest. They both knew where the conversation was heading, now it was just a game of when and how. He loved it!

"And he's a horny old bastard."

Mac flinched internally, thinking for a moment she was talking about him, but then remembered. "Is he."

"I went to his house once-one of his penthouse flats in

Los Angeles, really. It wasn't exactly turning a trick," she batted her long, eyelashes at him provocatively. "I just thought it might be worth my while to get to know him."

"What happened?"

"He didn't like me," she sighed. "I knew too much. He wants to teach his women." She sat for a moment remembering how he would stop her every time she made a move. The pert redhead chuckled and shook her head, unconsciously, or seemingly so, bringing her hand up the neckline of her dress and letting it slide slowly down across her breasts back to her lap.

Mac gave her that moment, relishing the pause, then asked the obvious question. "How much do you know?"

"Oh!" she cooed in mock disappointment. "Haven't you and Derek talked about me?"

Mac was surprised. Either she didn't know Derek as well as she claimed, or else she was teasing him. "Derek never talks about it. At least not to me." They weren't really friends, though, just associates. "So, what do you know?"

"I could tell you, but that wouldn't be much fun." Linda realized at once that she had laid a trap for herself. She hadn't really decided whether she was going to have sex with Mac or not, but suddenly it looked as though she might not have the chance to make that choice. She avoided looking at him, but out of the corner of her eye, she could see his thick legs pointed at her, and thought she saw a bulge where they met.

"Show me then," Mac said. There was no question in his mind about that bulge, and he didn't have to see it to know it was there, he could feel it pressing his cock against his testicles, which were churning in activity.

"Look, Mac," Linda said, lowering her bright green eyes to the floor. "I didn't mean to lead you on. You know, maybe someday we can get it together, but it's been a long day."

"Come around here." Mac said in the same tone he would use to ask for a report, or tell her to take a letter.

Before she knew what she was doing, the dutiful secretary got up and walked around the desk to his side. He lowered one leg from the desk and nudged her directly in front of him, then replaced the leg, so that she was trapped between his two legs and the desk, facing the growing expansion in his pants, his knees touching the outside of her nervous thighs, pressing the light, full skirt of her dress into the flesh underneath.

"Sit up on the table there," Mac said, his voice, though still one of authority, was trembling a little now with the excitement, not only of the thought of sex with this beautiful redhead who had been swishing her skirts around him for weeks, but also with the excitement of seeing how far he could make her go just by telling her.

Linda lifted herself up onto the smooth surface, her skirt bunched under her ass, and creeping up on her pale, smooth legs just above the knees. "Really, Mac," she said. "Why don't we make a date for it, sometime after the election, when we'll both have more time. We can go out for some drinks, and then back to your place or mine, and do it right."

They were doing it right now as far as Mac was concerned. "No," he answered simply. "Now."

He put one pudgy hand on her knee, covered with slick, transparent nylon. He was surprised. The contrast of his rough, hairy hand on her smooth leg excited him, and the lack of resistance as he slowly slid his gnarled, working-man's finger up under the hem of her dress. He could feel his genitals working, stoking up for the job they knew was coming.

Linda reflexively jerked her legs together, but relaxed them again at the pleasurable feel of a man's hand working its way up her thigh. She decided she wasn't as tired as she had made out, and it was about time she took a while out of her schedule to have some fun. And fun to her meant only one thing. How much did she know? She knew enough to realize that Mac would be disappointed if she just gave in and agreed.

"OK," she said. "You can feel me up if you want, and then we'll call it a night."

Mac didn't say anything. He was leaning forward now, his large head hovering over her knees, and his hand had reached the moist, warm softness of her cunt. He pushed against it, and felt the tissue yield before his fingers.

"I'll even jerk you off, if you want," Linda was saying. The touch of his fingers electrified her, sending waves of warning pleasure up her spine. She wasn't sure how long she could keep up the pretense of not liking it, even to please Mac.

She was wearing panty hose, and panties under that, so Mac was massaging her vaginal lips and the mound over it, through two layers of cloth. "You sure wear a lot of clothes," he complained.

"The people out there," she motioned with her head, and then leaned back and propped herself on her arms. "They don't want to know I have any sex. They want me all covered and invisible, just somebody to fetch and carry for them. I even have to wear a bra." She wiggled her shoulders seductively so that her ample breasts bobbed back and forth in their constraints of bra and dress.

As she had intended, Mac paused for a moment and looked up at her sloping belly with the large, high breasts rising like full, round outcroppings on the side of a mountain. But her movement had also rubbed her warm cunt against his probing fingers and thumb, and the sudden stimulation made her gasp. Mac could feel her labia start to swell, and he returned his attention to the dark intimacy between her now-spread legs.

He reached up and slipped a rough, hairy finger under the elastic waistbands, both of them at once, and began to pull them down over the smooth, tender skin of her belly, until he could feel the first strands of her pubic hair. He was aware of his own pubic hair now, getting a little damp with sweat from the activity right next to them, as his cock was gearing up.

Without saying anything, Linda closed her legs, now that Mac's hand wasn't between them, and lifted her hips off the varnished desk. As though they had it all worked out beforehand, Mac jerked the garments down to her knees, brushing against the damp forest of her hair, and just barely touching the top of her soft, delicious mound.

"All the way off Mac," she requested. "I don't want to be bothered with them later."

With his thick, tanned fingers contrasting with the smooth silkiness of the nylon stockings, and his rough fingernails snagging once and tearing them, he peeled them off, the thin gauze coming off to reveal an expanse of pale white, smooth and finely curved skin underneath.

When he had dropped the wad off the end of her toes, he looked up to find Linda sitting up again, her skirt back down almost to her knees, looking at him slyly and smiling.

"So, now we start over," she announced.

Mac's rising cock jerked suddenly with lust as he looked at the dress hem and the legs running up under it, knowing that this time when he ran his hand up there, the only thing at the top would be her waiting pussy, already warmed up, already moist and starting to fill with hot blood, and willing.

Once again his rough hand snaked up under her dress, this time the roughness of his palms scraping against skin, her lovely white smooth skin with ripples of excitement passing through it. She kept her legs pressed together, so that all he could feel was the moist fur of her pubic hair and the skin of her soft belly under it. That belly was starting to heave a bit now, and he could hear Linda taking short, fast breaths. He knew she was reacting to his kneading and rubbing of her awakening genital area.

He slipped his thick fingers down into the crevasse between her legs, but she kept them clamped together, the muscles firm on both sides of his eager hand. He could feel the softness of her cunt, warm and wet, but all he could do was feel it, because her legs were still together, he couldn't push his fingers into that inviting swell that he had brought to its heat and wetness with his caresses.

She laughed coyly. "Dig for it, Mac," she said breathlessly. She was tantalized too with the nearness of his hand to the burning center of her quickening desire. "If you want it, dig for it. You know where it is."

"All right, baby," he growled good-humoredly. "I know where it's supposed to be, and we'll just see if it's there." He turned his hand sideways and balled it into a fist, his knobby knuckles jabbing into the soft flesh of the insides of her thighs. Then he pushed down with all his might, forcing her legs apart until he could cup his hand over her whole crotch and feel the furnace-like lust radiating from the slick, swollen lips. He separated his middle finger from the fist and thrust it up between the smooth, hot lips to the first knuckle.

"Ahhh," she sighed with delight, and flung her legs wide apart, throwing her skirt back and up to reveal the dark cloud of hair covering her exposed crotch, each single hair shiny with moisture. And under the hair, Mac could see the dark red barrels of her blood-filled cunt lips, and the glistening slit between them, where his gnarled, thick finger was inserted.

Linda was panting rhythmically now, in time to his strokes against the inner lips of her hot, wet cunt, teasing her sensitive skin with his rough fingers, and releasing a flood of juice from deep inside her with every stroke.

Her whole body was starting to quiver, and her arms were getting too weak to hold her up, so she lowered herself flat onto the smooth, hard surface of the desk top, and involuntarily began rubbing her shaking hands over the mounds of her breasts under her dress. She could feel the blood rushing through her large breasts, and she could feel the nipples harden and rise against the harsh stiffness of her bra, but there was no way she could get to them, since her dress buttoned up the back. She had to be content with squeezing them through the material, rolling them in circular motions, and pinching the sensitive nipples to try to relieve their discomfort.

Mac was getting hot, and with his free hand, unbuttoned his shirt to the waist while his other hand was still buried in the throbbing, depths of her cunt. Then he couldn't stand it any longer, and lowered his face to her glowing crotch, and spread her smooth, engorged lips to receive his tongue.

At the touch of his mouth on her clamoring, lust-fired tissue, Linda caught her breath. His mouth opened and closed on her convulsing opening, and his tongue curled down into her, down toward the focus of her desire, but stopped, maddeningly before it reached the deep places she wanted touched.

He could feel the soft tickle of her pubic hair on his sucking cheeks as he pinched the slippery tissue with his lips and tried to catch it and hold it. He rammed his nose up into the belfry of her soaking cleavage and probed with it until he found the hard prick of her erected clitoris, and scraped it against the roughness of his skin. He sucked the delicious juices out of her flooding cunt until his lips and cheeks were as slippery as the dark, intimate folds they were pressing against and forcing to disgorge their sweet nectar. He could feel it running down to his chin and dripping off, and he knew it was running down her crack too, down to her anus, where it must have itched and tickled the tiny pink pucker between the two billows of quivering buttocks.

She moaned with pleasure, and clutched at her fiery breasts locked away from her touch, and then began rocking her hips against the passionate licking and sucking of Mac's mouth, pushing her hungry, succulent womanhood harder against his tongue and stimulating lips. Every sweep of her pelvis brought her sharp, searing clitoris into sensual contact with his nose, causing an explosion of wild lust that sped through her entire body, causing her legs to jerk upward and her hands to flutter helplessly.

Suddenly, she wrapped her long, white, shaking legs around his head, and curled up so that her smooth, heaving belly was pressed against his bobbing head. She reached under his arms from the back and pulled him even harder into the private opening, contracting around him in time to his licking, probing tongue against her pulsing, white-hot vagina.

He could hardly breathe, but when he sucked in air, it was filled with the sweet aroma of a hot woman with her juices flowing under his surging incitement. That added to the stimulation already exciting his genitals, and his growing cock grew even faster, shoving against the tight cloth of his shorts, searching for a way out to where it could perform the way it was meant to, to escape from its own thick moisture and plunged into the delectable moisture of some hot, waiting cunt which would relieve its aching desire.

But there was more to come. Linda, with her arms still around him from over his curved back, reached down and began caressing his now-twitching thighs, and tried to reach up to his crotch and liberate the prisoner inside. But her arms weren't long enough to reach at that angle.

So she straightened up again, her sweat-covered, slick belly unfolding under her bunched up dress. Then, as much as she hated to lessen the pressure of her scalding, churning crotch, she began to slide backward, her ass sliding on its layer of sweat and cunt juices that had run down her crack, across her anus, and down her contracting, smooth globes of ass to the shiny top of the desk.

Mac felt her scoot away, and drove his face back into her hot pulsing cunt almost angrily. But she backed away again, this time with a little twist, as she moved first one hip and then the other, the soft mounds of her buttock rotating in the slimy juice on the hard polished wood.

"Hold still, you teasing bitch," he growled. "Don't ever disturb me when I'm eating, especially something as tasty as this hot dish of pussy."

"Come on, big boy," she said invitingly, with gasping breath. "Come on. Come on." She left a wide smear of wetness on the desk as she continued to slide up, and Mac followed her, keeping his face buried in her undulating furnace.

Finally he had to get up from his chair and lean over the edge of the desk to reach her. That was what she wanted. Then she doubled up again and with knowing hands, reached under him to unbuckle his belt, unbutton his pants and unzip him, all in the twinkle of a lust-lit eye. Her hands were sweating from the blood her excited passion was pumping through her enlarged veins, but they felt cool to Mac when she slipped them under the waistband of his shorts and took the hard, thick rod in her hand.

Mac felt shudders of heat and cold bouncing around his lust-tense body as the little secretary slid her hand up and down the long shaft as though milking his sperm out of him, and rubbed her thumb over the head, now slick with the juice that had seeped out. She spread and fingered the lipless mouth at the end waiting to spew out its white-hot honey.

"What are you doing hiding in there?" she teased, squeezing as hard as she could against the unyielding hardness of his cock, then reaching down and gently cradling his balls, holding back the confining cloth of his shorts so the hairy sacs could swing like two bulging pendulums, almost like the balls they use to knock buildings down. "Why don't you come and see me?" Linda said between gasps. "I've got a nice place for you, all warm and cozy."

Mac was beginning to think it was a good idea, before he shot his load of white sperm in his shorts. He began working his licking tongue up out of the molten depths of Linda's cunt, across the tingling pyramid of her clitoris, and into the tangle of her hair, now all matted and sopping from the sweat and cum juice and saliva they had spread around when she was moving.

As he moved up, she held his shorts, so that he wormed his way out of them, and at last his frantic, throbbing cock was out in the cooling air. With her legs, she pushed down the backs of his shorts and pants, so that his white, hairy ass was exposed too, sticking up into the air as he bent over the squirming secretary.

When Mac's ugly face came to Linda's dress, bunched around the middle of her convulsing belly, he nosed under it, and began pushing it up with him as he crept. She was tugging on his eager cock now, trying to hurry its leisurely approach to her lapping, burning cunt. He could feel his shoulders and face sweating, the blood rushing through all his veins so fast that he thought he could feel the friction every time his racing heart spewed out its contents into the stretched, pulsing vessels, and gulped down another load.

Linda would coo at him once or twice, then have to stop and catch her breath, moaning with pleasure and frustration at the overwhelming passion he had released from her prim, proper body. It had been too long since a man had appreciated its smooth, white skin arranged in seductive curves, and the inviting undulations she could make when someone gave her a reason. It had been too long since she had been touched where she wanted to be touched, and how she wanted to be touched, down deep in the secret passage to her inner being, that would wither up and get stale without frequent handling and proper use. It had been too long since she had felt the throbbing, hot stick of a man's cock stretching her vagina walls, grating against then to pull out the juices and the sensation, the pure animal feeling of ecstasy.

She pulled harder on his waving, bobbing cock, running her fingers up and down over the scalding ridges of blood vessels that traced their impatient way down toward the bulbous tip, smooth and slippery and almost glowing with the heat it was putting out.

Mac slipped his rugged, calloused hands under her smooth, tender buttocks all covered with slick, warm juice from her flooding cunt. He took each tight, quivering haunch in one hand, with his fingers sticking down between them against her little pink star of an anus. He pulled upward, forcing her flowing, melting cunt against his stomach, and so as he moved upward, the full, flush lips rubbed against his hairy stomach, leaving a trail of wetness like a puppy does after he licks your arm or face. The edges of his open shirt rubbing their dry woven texture against her inner thighs, making tender white flesh shudder and jerk each time he moved, each time she pulled him closer by his long, hot handle.

"Like tits, mister?" she gasped with a wide grin. "There's a couple big luscious ones under there if you can find them, all hot and soft, with nipples so hard and sharp you'd better watch your eyes."

With a mighty, lust-inspired lunge he forced his way up, pushing the obstructing dress in front of him, until his nose touched the bottom edge of her stiff bra.

"God damn!" he burst out with his slavering lips. "You're tied up tighter than a pig going to the butchers."

"Come on, big boy, get your ugly nose under there and pry the fucking thing off. You've still got a ways to go," she reminded him with an extra violent jerk on his penis. "Unless you want to call it off."

He burrowed, he drilled with his misshapen nose, until he got it under the lip of the bra, and it clamped across his widened nostrils like the bony, toothless mouth of a fish. Then, pushing on the flush carpet with his toes, he strained to lift it up, the hard ridge cutting into his skin until tears came to his eyes.

But finally it began to yield, the whole bra coming off like the shell of a tortoise and leaving the soft, delicious meat exposed to a voracious tongue. He worked his way up the sweet mound of her breast, and just as his mouth found and closed over the pebble-hard kernel of her nipple, the end of his throbbing, burning cock first touched the slick, pulsing, blood-inflated lips of her yearning cunt.

He thought he could feel her stiffen at the tantalizing contact. He wasn't sure, because his own body jerked at the realization of how close to his goal he was.

"Keep coming, keep coming," Linda whispered hoarsely between gasps. "It's all downhill from here."

"I'm not coming yet," he growled back at her. "But you'll know when I am. I'm going to fill you up with my hot cum, until it squirts out this big tit of yours, and then I'm going to suck it up again and swallow it down, and before you know it, I'll be shooting back into your cunt a second time."

"Sounds just fine to me," she panted, and tried to laugh, but when he inched up again, forcing his rigid cock a little ways into the depths where her juices churned like a boiler overheating, she gasped and couldn't get the laugh out.

Inch by inch he worked his way along her throbbing passage, stretching the tender walls apart with the blunt, hot head of his cock, and keeping them stretched with the blood-stiff thickness of its shaft.

Every time he plunged a bit farther, she gasped until she thought her lungs would burst, and let the air out in increasingly loud and shrill moans, until the moans were more like shrieks of uncontrollable lust escaping through her mouth because her fiery cunt was corked tight.

Finally he reached the end, and could feel the hard stone of her cervix. Then quickly, he withdrew his long cock so that it was just barely nestled in her sucking opening. She squealed at the sudden intense sensation of his thick cock moving so fast against her vaginal walls, but that was nothing compared to the sensation of it driving back home a second later. She gurgled, helplessly impaled on his bursting cock as his strokes accelerated to the speed of chugging steam engine.

Again and again he thrust the length of her yielding cunt, crashing against the back each time he levered the great lust-hot limb far up into Linda's expanded belly. He heard her emit sharp, shrill cries of sensation beyond pleasure and pain, and heard grunts of thrilling exertion coming from his own lungs up through his lips which were fastened still on her hard, pointed nipple.

"Faster, faster!" Linda cried in her lust-induced delirium. "I'm going to come. I'm going to ... " She still had her hands on his hard, knotted buttocks, her fingers clawing at the thick skin to pull him in, harder, faster, deeper than her stretched belly could take.

Mac continued to slam his throbbing, engorged cock deep into her writhing, cleaving cunt with long hard lunges, feeling the searing sperm in his clanging balls reach boiling point, as though it would turn to steam and blast a hole in him from the pressure. He grunted hoarsely and increased the tempo of his savage strokes, driving hard and deep until his cock delved into untouched recesses far inside the secretary's lubricated bore.

Her breasts heaved and shuddered, one under his hand and the other still in his sucking, nipping mouth. Nothing mattered to her now but the exhilarating waves of pleasure emitted from her aching cunt each time the tough campaign manager drove the bulb at the head of his burning cock down into the unseen depths, and each time he returned the stroke, cocking his hips for another shot. All the teasing games were over now, nothing left but the final ecstasy, the fulfillment of her wild, awakened desire. "Oh fuck!" she cried out involuntarily. "Oh! Oh! It's coming! It's coming! Harder! Now! Now!"

With an inarticulate cry, Linda's body stiffened and began flailing uncontrollably, wet, searing juices gushing out of her throbbing cunt around Mac's gigantic driving tool, covering both their pubic hair with the sticky, aromatic nectar.

The pounding backroom politician nearly spun into unconsciousness as she pressed her wild climax against his burning, dripping pelvis, her body jerking in spasms into his hard, tight muscles. He responded by pulling her cheek-spread ass harder against his rapidly oscillating hips, and rammed his flaring cock all the way in until his loins slapped the flat skin of her upturned ass.

Linda thought her insides would burst out of her as she felt the tip of the buried cock grow, unbelievably, even larger until she thought the elastic skin would stretch too far and rip into shreds. Then suddenly, he shot his thick white sperm deep into her expanded vagina where it mixed with the hot swirling currents of her own climax. She lost track of the number of times he erupted inside her in powerful, white hot spurts scalding her deep, tender skin which sucked and clasped at the vibrating penis as though to get every ounce out of it.

It filled up her expandable cunt, and still more and more sperm lunged out into her like a second, liquid penis, spilling out around him, and down between the clenching globes of her buttocks and onto his pulling, clutching hands. Blinding, dizzying flashes of light filled her glazed, unfocussed eyes, and she couldn't breathe fast enough or deep enough to keep her speeding sensations provided with oxygen.

Her long, white legs unclasped from behind his back and jerked uncontrollable in the air above him, then spread, wide, wider to make more room, to let his flowing sperm sink farther down inside her. His driving cock still throbbed and spurted as he thrust with his muscular hips, still forcing his hot sperm into her, even though it was spurting back out all around his immense diameter with every jerk and jab he made.

At last the force of the raging flood subsided, and the two of them slowed their wild gyrations, and finally lay together without moving. But every time Mac's heart beat, his shrinking cock would rub its head on Linda's collapsing, tightening vagina walls, and would sent sparks of excruciating pleasure up his spine.

Linda lay completely limp and exhausted, her fine white body glistening from the forehead to the toes with various forms of secreted liquid. Even as her rapture-exploded mind was orienting itself again, she silently vowed that it wouldn't be as long until her next fuck as it had been since her last.

"So, how much do I know?" she asked playfully as Mac's cock, now a soft bud again, slipped out of her silky cavity, and he levered himself back onto his feet.

"More than enough to get you in a lot of trouble," he grudgingly admitted.

"Well, I've learned something new tonight, too."

"Yeah?" he perked up. "What's that?"

She smiled appreciatively at him. "I've learned where to come when I need a fast fill-up."

Even while he was getting his clothes in order, Mac's mind had returned to problems of the campaign. "Lot of people asking about the candidate's wife," he muttered. "They miss the old Derek Kohn, with a woman beside him." He chuckled humorlessly. "Some people are even saying he's turned queer, and there ain't nearly enough of them voting for make up for all the hot ladies we'll lose if people start believing it."

Linda shook her head doubtfully. "Derek's said he won't force her to come with him if she doesn't want to."

He slammed his hard, tanned fist on the corner of the desk. "That damn kid's got a blind spot when it comes to her. He can't force people to vote for him either, unless they want to, and he makes them want to. He could do the same with her."

"You can ask him," the secretary said, in a tone that showed she knew it would be useless.

"No, if he won't do it himself, I'll have to." A grimace, or perhaps a mischievous grin, spread over his face. "I got no choice. We can't afford to be without her."