Getting Ahead in Washington

"Welcome back. Gary from GetAhead Cash on line 2. I promised him ten minutes this morning first thing."

Claire, pausing mid-stride toward her desk, turned back to the door. She shot death-ray eyes at B.

B raised one eyebrow back.

"Congresswoman. We're two months out from primary season. Right now you take calls from all the Garys of this world. Especially all the Garys from District 1. Actually it sounds like he's got something good for you."

Claire squinted, front teeth touching down to her bottom lip to form a "Ffffff" sound, quickly becoming a deflated tire. She looked back at B, who remained unmoved. Deep inhale followed quickly by Claire's broadest Wheeties Box smile. "Got it B. keep the door open and interrupt in 6. You're the best."

--

For the hundredth time in as many weeks, Claire rued the fact that work here was so different from her decade and a half building Olympic Sportwear.

She threw her shoulders back. Power posture. Smile. She punched line 2.

"Gary! Claire here! So great to hear from you!"

But it wasn't. Not really.

--

"Listen, Isabel, GetAhead Cash is organizing a small luncheon next Friday afternoon just for my oldest friends in District 1, and a few new faces too, to keep it lively."

Waiting for the next donor to pick up her line, Claire leaned back deeply in her chair, letting her eyes wander over to the right and her wall of photos.

Her gaze scanned the infamous Time-Life photo from nine months after Spain, shot with the recently inaugurated Bill Clinton. Claire's entire 4x400 Barcelona team, dressed in short-shorts, vinyl American flag jackets, and of course the gold medals they been told to bring back for the shoot. The photographer must have known the leggy US champions would bring out the lasciviousness of the President on film.

Clinton hadn't disappointed. Everything that happened to him later seemed so obvious when she looked at that photo, with his arms and fingers and shoulders seemingly touching each relay team member at the same time.

"Angus, you know this session is going to be the toughest fight we've seen yet," she schmoozed into the phone.

Then the photo from five years after Barcelona, Claire's proud smile next to her first run of factory-produced Olympic Sportswear. Manufactured here in the US of A! The golden girl, the risk-taking entrepreneur, spurring the rebirth of East Hartford, CT. That picture next to the framed New York Times Magazine Business Leader Profile. And that one next to the Connecticut Life Magazine Cover Girl, "Entrepreneur of the Year!"

15 years later after Barcelona, a successful business revitalizing her city, and her run for the open seat in District 1 wasn't even much of a contest.

"Alan. It's Claire," she was warming up to her donor calls, finally. "Listen, you're going to want to tune in C-Span after lunch."

Alan began to urge toughness on these predatory lenders.

And then a second conversation with Gary in the same day, again before lunch. What did she do to deserve this?

"Claire, Congresswoman, you can't jerk me around like this." He was always at his most weasely when he used her title.

"Gary, my constituents expect me to hold firm and protect them from predatory lenders. I'm sorry, but fairly or unfairly, that's the way many people see your business.

"Claire, you know you're the second-ranking minority member of the Banking and Financial Services. You've got a shot at Chair some day if Boynton ever has that heart attack he deserves, or he gets caught off the coast of St. Thomas with one of his underage Panamanian models that Ninkovich supplies him with. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Claire, I've told these guys in my industry group not to pay attention to what you say in front of the committee, that its just for the cameras, but it's really starting to piss them off.

Piss them off? Jerking him around? Where does he get off?

Claire stretched her feet out further under the desk, and leaned her head back to face the ceiling, closing her eyes. Had Gary always been such a complete cock? She already knew the answer to her unstated rhetorical question. Pretty much, yes.

--

She remembered the struggle, five years after Olympic Sportswear's launch. A chance to build the company to the scale needed. To graduate from a startup "Made in the USA" niche to a nationally-marketed brand. If not Nike exactly, or even Under Armor, at least something distributed and known everywhere. But where to get the capital for an entire build-out to scale?

At that point, she was 32, scrappy as always. Desperate to succeed, but staying cool on the outside. Be twice as good, work three times as hard. Get the prize. That's when she's first met Gary. Even then he was cocky, full of himself, talking too much. He promised too much, asked for too much. No sense for other people's needs. A narcissist, really.

His bridge loan company lent build-out capital. Expensive money. But who else was going to finance her dream?

Six months of banks saying no. Factory in-fill development architecture plans on hold. The zoning approval clock ticking. The mayor of East Hartford promising support, tax credit, infrastructure improvements. But never delivering. Nothing. Where was the funding going to come from?

And then finally, after months of nothing, that fucking self-absorbed prick Gary got it done for her. He put together the loan syndicate.

The night they closed the deal she invited him out to dinner. She insisted on paying. Well, her company paid of course, so that meant they could go ahead and bust the budget, at least for one night. Oysters. A couple bottles of of Veuve Clicquot Brut. The flourless chocolate cake. Might as well bust the training regimen for a night while she was at it. One night to celebrate couldn't hurt.

Gold medalist Claire McIntire, darling of the '92 Games, building her dream manufacturing plant right here in her own hometown in the US of A. She didn't even mind that Gary talked about his stupid finance deals throughout the dinner and even dessert. Let him talk. Claire buzzed with her dreams coming true. Again! Track Star. Entrepreneur. Sky's the limit. Twice as good. Three times as hard. Get the prize.

She was still on her manic high when he pulled his 7-series BMW into her driveway to drop her off. A sudden idea compelled her actions before she even had time to reconsider. She unbuckled her seatbelt, head buzzing from the Veuve Clicquot. Instead of opening her passenger door, she leaned all the way across and over the gear-shift, reaching to the front Gary's pants. Her fingers slipped his zipper down and reached inside before he had time to react. She moved so quickly and without warning that he was still soft, her face inches from his lap.

Claire looked up at Gary just one time to flash her winning smile. An asshole, for sure, but not bad-looking from this angle. No double-chin. Good features. She wasn't going to spend any more time focused on his face though. She turned back down, to what grew in her hand.

Claire opened her lips and took him, still just semi-erect, into her mouth. Her mouth full, her tongue flattened against the underside of his cockhead for a slippery frictional lick up the lengthening shaft. "Oh" is all he managed to sigh.

Silent for the first fucking time tonight. Good. She'd surprised him. He was finally out of words. She almost smiled in victory but instead decided to suck powerfully, cheeks pulled inwards.

She sensed Gary's left hand behind her head on the steering wheel lever, and heard a thump as the wheel base shifted upwards and away. More space for what she was doing in this tight area of the driver's seat. Then he moaned again as he found the side lever to ease his body back, more fully exposing himself to her.

But just as Claire found her rhythm with her mouth and hand, the mood in the car changed. She felt the hair on the back of her scalp pulled painfully tight. Did he want her to stop? She began to lift her head up to ask, but no, that's not what he was doing. His fist now gripped her hair tightly behind her head, and her mouth and face were pushed back down. Hard. She felt her head lifted once again and then before his cock-head left her lips she was shoved down again. His tip hit the back of her throat. Rough.

"Wait, what...this was my idea, but now..." her mind first raced and then drifted blankly as he thrust upward. He was face-fucking her now and this wasn't...

No, she thought, half panicked. This isn't right. This was her idea. She started this, for him. Her rules. She's twice as good.

No, But not now. Now. He fucked. Her face. Not nicely. No. Not. At. All. Faster and faster.

Between her lips and against the back of her throat. Three times as hard.

She'd opened just the front of his boxers but now her nose and eyes were shoved down against his waistband. Her forehead hit his buckle now as he fucked her face hard. Uff. His pubes tickling and scratching her cheek. Her head pulled up. A quick breathe through her nose, ahhh, and then that tight grip behind her neck in complete control of her head, pushed her down again, unmph.

She felt his free hand now against the side of her face, his fingers hooked under the chin. Gripping so tightly his wedding band pressed into her jawbone. Please she vaguely thought, not the windpipe, dizziness dulling the ache in the back of her throat. But no words come out, because his cock never left her mouth.

And then she knew his prize was coming right now. More pain as he pulled her hair, the grip on her head tightened as he thrust, holding her whole face down on his cock. Her control lost over to the sudden, instant flood, her mouth stuffed. Her throat full of him. Jaw held open. Trying not to gag, vision now black.

With the loosened grip on her hair, she gasped for breath, desperately lifting her head back. Ahhh. Her chest expanded. Good. Air. Then quickly Claire closed her mouth to keep his cum from spilling out of from between her lips, onto his trousers. Don't make a mess now, Claire.

"Here, you lost some," he whispered, bringing his left hand away from her cheek, smeared with his cum and her saliva. His two sticky fingers, without permission, shoved into her mouth, all the way up to the wedding band. Her elbow on his thigh, she propped her body up while her other hand gripped his wrist. Don't let him move his fingers in her mouth, she thought. Her eyes closed and she breathed again through her nose. Brought her heart-rate down. Tongue explored the full length of his thick fingers.

Thought began to return.

Clearing. Clarity.

Claire.

She pushed away back onto her own seat, smoothed her dress down for no reason, reached between her legs to grab her bag, and wrenched the passenger door open. She unfolded herself to a standing position outside, then turned back.

"I won't forget what you did." She slammed the door. What an asshole.

Shit, Claire. Get a grip. So awkward.

She trot fast up to her front porch, key in the door, without so much as a look back.

In the morning, head back on her pillow, she woke. Unconsciously at first, and then deliberately, she felt with her tongue the inside of her mouth. Her tongue explored the inside top lip. Then the inside bottom lip. Not cut, but sore. Deep grooves in the inner part of her top and bottom lips where she had covered her teeth. He is such a pompous ass.

That will never happen again. She was furious with herself. With him. Shamed at what she did. Shamed at what she didn't do.

She rolled onto her stomach. She reached down between her legs, and rubbed that shame and fury, angrily.

His controlling grip behind her neck. Yanking her head up painfully. Rudely shoving her face down. Those two cum-and-saliva-covered fingers inserted, right up to the wedding band. Shame and fury and pleasure flooded out from her brain to her fingers to her cunt and she rubbed out a most glorious fucking feeling, hips grinding, ass clenched, cumming harder than she'd ever cum before.

For the next fifteen years, between building her business, then fundraising, campaigning, committee work, the DC grind, she has zero time for a life outside of work.

That night in the car is her go-to replay scene if she ever needs to get herself off hard and fast. Her most secret shameful moment is that release she needs. Claire dated other men sporadically, but never got close enough to them to share in this, her most awful fantasy. None of them ever got to her the way Gary did that night.

--

Claire returned from her reverie. Back to her oversized desk. And the list. Every day working the list of donors. The goddamned fundraising drive never stopped. Two months until the primary season really gets underway. Got to fill the war chest to discourage anyone from even thinking about it.

The worst was trying to raise money from the same goddamned industry that deserved to be shut down and regulated into nothingness.

But as B kept reminding her, do what you have to do. She wanted to wrestle the industry into compliance, but they always held this fundraising leverage over her. Running for reelection every two years? This is no way to maintain even a semblance of control. Just when she thought she had independence and agency, the industry would remind her exactly where in the pecking order she stood. Exactly what she could and couldn't do. Exactly who held her head down.

"Claire, it's Gary again, on line three. Shall I tell him you're out?"