Abbey was sitting in bed in her silky pajama's reading bedtime stories to the twins when Jed entered their bedroom. Right away she could see from his face that things had not gone well. She watched him turn from the cozy scene and lean back out the doorway.

"Izzy," he called out down the hall, his voice cool and demanding. "Please come and get the kids from Mrs. Bartlet."

"Yes sir," Izzy entered the bedroom and approached the bed.

Ordinarily Abbey would not have let him get away with such high handedness, but this was no ordinary day. She kissed each sleepy babe on the head as she passed first one, then the other, over to the nanny. Jed followed suit when Izzy passed him in the doorway. With the nanny gone he turned back toward her. Abbey's pulse began to race as he settled his glittering blue eyes on her. She had seen that look before, it was possessive and dangerous and filled with intent. His face was still flushed with anger, his bronze hair mussed and falling over his forehead. She watched him take his tie off and fling it across the room and felt a shiver of apprehension and yes, God help her, desire. Only very rarely would she ever use the term dangerous to describe her husband. But, as he slowly approached the bed ripping the buttons off his shirt to get it off, his fiery eyes never leaving hers she had a delicious thrill of anticipation, of knowing that she was about to be ravished by a dangerous, sexy, out of control man.

"Jed?"

He heard the slight tremble in his usually confident wife's voice but didn't stop his approach. She looked tiny sitting in the big bed in her baggy silk pj's with her glasses still on and her hair falling in soft loose waves to her shoulders. As his eyes burned into her all he could think about was that she was HIS, his wife, his woman. It scared him to death to think about how he had felt earlier in the day when he had first seen that picture. How absolutely annihilated he had felt at the thought of losing her. Yet, here she was still in his bed and the need to purge himself of those feelings was overwhelming him. He wanted her, oh God how he wanted her.

"Jed, please."

He knew that she wanted to know what had happened but he wasn't going to get into the details of that now. "He loves you," he ground out as he discarded his shirt.

"He doesn't LOVE me" Abbey scoffed. She watched him unbuckle his belt her fingers itching to help him and run over the stiffening, hard bulge that she had done nothing physically to create.

"Well, at the very least he wants to fuck you." Jed kicked his fallen pants against the wall and crawled up on the bed beside her.

He said tha…aaahhh" her last word became a moan as Jed's hand cupped over her breast and he began to tease her nipple over the silk with his thumb.

"No more talking Abbey" he groaned. He tossed her glasses toward the nightstand and he grasped the back of her head so he could slant his mouth over hers. His tongue slid into her at the same moment he slipped his hand inside her pajama bottoms to cup her between the legs. His fingers delved into the springy curls there and he was surprised to find her already wet and ready to accept him. Abbey wasn't, she'd been wet for him from the moment he'd come at her with blazing passionate eyes and a bulge in his pants that made her throb and tingle before a single touch had been given. She tried to reach for him wanting to stroke him the way that he was stroking her.

"Not tonight, Abbey" he growled as he pinned her wrist up over her head. Tonight was all about showing her that she was his and his alone. Abbey knew that and reveled in it. She could definitely get into caveman Jed real easy at times.

To that end she felt his hands at the front of her pajama top and with one hard yank he tore it open baring her breasts to him.

"God, you're gorgeous." The reverent words were spoken against the soft skin of her breast as he pressed his lips there. Abbey squirmed as he began to suck hard, nip at the flesh beside her nipple, and then suck hard again, hard enough to leave a mark. She knew that was his intention. He was branding her with his mouth. As good as it felt her nipple was aching for a swipe of his tongue, for the pull of his mouth, yet he was ignoring the aching peak at the moment. Abbey tried to grasp his head to pull his mouth to where she wanted it but Jed only strengthened his hold on her wrist. She began to whimper with her need.

"Tell me, Abbey. Tell me what you want from me." He knew exactly what she wanted but tonight he needed to hear it.

"I need your mouth…please…suck my nipples Jed." It was all the urging he needed. His mouth moved to her nipples giving them silky caresses with his tongue then nipping sharply, spurred on by the soft cries that came from the back of her throat. He suckled each nipple to a hard peak then rolled Abbey onto her side. His lips moved down her spine causing her to shiver and press her now overly sensitive hardened nipples into the pillow. She felt absolutely drugged with passion and need. As he reached the base of her spine he found what he was looking for and began to lave her tattoo as he yanked her pajama bottoms and bikini panties down over her hips. She felt his tongue swirling on her bare hip and tears stung her eyes when she realized what he was doing. She had just figured out that he was tracing his initials, JDB, with the tip of his tongue, when his fingers moved back between her legs sliding into the slickness there. Abbey moaned and thrust her hips into his hand.

"That feels good, doesn't it?"

"Mmmmm……."

"You like this, don't you?" He slid his finger inside her.

"God…yeeesss" she arched her back and ran her fingers through her hair.

"You want more?"

"Ohhh…yes" She waited for another finger to slide into her and cried out with disappointment when instead he removed his hand from her altogether.

"I'm not done yet, " he promised as he rolled her back over and slid a throw pillow under hips. Abbey's fingers clenched in the sheets knowing exactly what was coming next as he spread her legs wide. She felt Jed's breath hot against the apex of her thighs and began to squirm; the anticipation was killing her. At the first stroke of his tongue her hips shot off the pillow and she inhaled sharply.

"Oh…oh gawwwddd…" she gave a deep long moan of pleasure as Jed began to slide his tongue over her.

"You like this better?" He added his fingers to what his mouth was doing and Abbey was nearly insane with need.

"Yes…oh God Jed…yes…please…" She wanted more, needed more. She was almost there but every time he felt her begin to tighten in climax he stopped her short of that peak until she was begging him to let her finish. He needed her this way. He needed her crazy with her need for him.

"Don't Jed…Please…Let me…"

"Tell me what you want, Abbey," he demanded. "Tell me."

Even in her heightened state of arousal Abbey knew what he wanted to hear. What he needed to hear.

"You Jed…Oh God, baby, I want you…Only you."

With those words Jed finally allowed her the release she had been begging for. He felt her inner thighs tighten around his head, felt her pulsing contractions against his tongue and before those aftershocks had even slowed down and before Abbey had even caught her breath he drove himself into her hard, so hard he nearly pushed her off the edge of the bed. Her sharp cry of surprise stilled him for the moment and he lay on top of her deeply embedded inside her soft warmth, all barely restrained male strength.

"Take it easy, Jed" she panted. " I don't want to end up on the floor."

"Then hang on, sweetheart." He lifted a satiny thigh up over his hip and she crossed her ankles to anchor herself to him. He felt her soft feminine walls squeezing him gently with the aftermath of her orgasm and he groaned at the sensation. He pushed her hair back from her face. HIS, the thought came as he gazed down into green eyes gone soft with satiated desire and the need to possess her, all of her, took over again. He withdrew almost completely causing Abbey to grasp at his hips to pull his thick warmth back inside of her. Jed pinned her wrists on each side of her body and slammed himself back into her. Abbey cried out as his hard penetration hit that spot deep inside that caused her sated need to rise quickly again to a nearly feverish pitch.

"Right…there, Jed" she groaned. Her frustration grew with every withdrawal and moans of pleasure escaped her with every penetration. She fought Jed's strong hands wanting to be able to pull his buttocks into her but he was having none of that. Tonight he was the one in control.

Finally released from the agonizing restraint he had forced on his body, Jed began to drive himself into Abbey. There was an incredible urgent need in him that Abbey responded to in kind. No matter how hard his thrusts, her hips rose to take him deeper. She lifted her legs higher up his back and Jed grabbed her rear pulling her up against him so he could thrust even further inside her as if somehow he could actually become a part of her. He battered into her then like a man possessed, like a man out to possess, the cries of his name only driving him into more of a frenzy. He continued to hit that spot way up inside her with every plunge home.

"OhGodohGodohGod" her head thrashed from side to side.

"Who, Abbey?" Jed growled and nipped her earlobe.

"Oh Jed," she continued. "Oh God, Jed. JedJedJedJeeeeeeeddddd…She arched her back her hands clenching tightly in the sheets since they couldn't dig into his back and she exploded into a million pieces.

Jed groaned deeply as her muscles squeezed him tightly inside of her but he kept his hips rocking in the rhythm that they had created. Abbey felt a droplet of water on her chest and opened her eyes to watch Jed still moving above her. Sweat beaded his forehead and his chest and was dripping onto her. His hair fell over his brow, which was furrowed as if he were in deep concentration. His electric blue eyes had gone smoky gray with his passion and Abbey thought, as she always did, at what an absolutely fine looking man she had. Released from his restraining hands, her fingers worked their way over his chest hair stroking and teasing his nipples. They ran over his quivering arms and caressed the bunching muscles of his back. His quickening breath told Abbey he was almost there and she drew her hands down to his buttocks to help him with his final grunting thrusts. With a harsh groan of her name he plunged deeply inside her one last time and, embedded as deep as he could go, he came. Abbey felt his buttocks clench tightly under her hands and the hot, pulsing surge of liquid that seemed to go one and on as if he were emptying himself completely into her. Possession went both ways she thought to herself with a sly smile as she stroked the damp hair at the base of Jed's neck.

Jed lay heavy on her trying to regain his breath and his strength. He knew this was one of Abbey's favorite parts of lovemaking, the way that he would lay on her chest still inside her totally spent and breathing heavy until he went limp and slipped out of her. Tonight, however, his heart was too heavy for cuddling. He lifted himself off her already able to see the small discolored love bruises on the swell of her pale breast. He ran his thumb softly over one then withdrew from her to fling his legs over the side of the bed sitting there pensively for a moment. He stayed in that position, aching for a cigarette until he felt Abbey stir and reach for him.

Abbey watched him rise and pad naked to the bathroom. She swallowed past the lump in her throat her heart heavy with the pain her husband was in. She thought of the saying "You look like you just lost your best friend." Now she knew why people said that. The deep sadness that Jed was carrying inside him over the things Leo had revealed to him seemed to permeate his very being. Jed had such faith in people, such trust, and when he loved somebody he would be there for that person with everything that he had. She'd heard him called naïve before, idealistic, but she certainly would never want him any other way. She'd feared that when they came to Washington he might lose some of that and become jaded. It hadn't happened. Jed wasn't a fool, he was politically savvy, intellectually heads and tails above his opponents, and had a strength of character that brought a true morality to his position. But, underneath it all, he was still that idealistic young college student that she had fallen in love with. The former theology student who had believed that every person could make a difference and that you needed to trust people to do the right things. He was not an unforgiving man. People made mistakes, HE made mistakes, but some mistakes were bigger than others were and it hurt her to think that she was in any way a part of his loss of faith in Leo.

She heard water running in the bathroom then watched Jed re-enter the bedroom wearing a pair of boxers and a gray Notre Dame T-shirt. He approached the bed much differently from the way he had when he had first entered the room and handed her a damp cloth to cleanse herself.

"Ever the gentleman" she smiled at him trying to lighten his mood. His only response was to touch her cheek with a half smile then sit heavily back on the bed.

Abbey took care of matters then got up on her knees to wrap her arms around his neck from behind.

"Care to tell me what that was all about" she asked as she nuzzled the spot where his neck met his shoulder. "Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining, you were amazing."

"I don't feel so amazing." He rested his elbows on his knees and cupped his jaw in his hands to stare glumly at the wall. " I used you to make myself feel better. I needed you to build up my ego. I wanted you to beg me so I could feel powerful and that I was the only one for you."

"Hey, if that's what you want to do to build your ego feel free to use me anytime."

"Abbey," he gave a half-hearted chuckle knowing that she was trying to raise his spirits.

Abbey came around in front of him and sat herself down on his lap so that she could cup his face in her palms. "You ARE the only one for me, Jed," she said staring deeply into his sad eyes, "You're my guy." She tweaked his chin.

Jed smiled at her through the tears that now stung his eyes. "You're not going to break into a rendition of "My Guy", are you?"

"I'm not THAT sappy," she grinned. She lifted his hand to kiss the back of it and noticed his raw, bruised knuckles. She turned anxious eyes toward him. "Jed, tell me that you didn't."

"I did," he sighed. "I gave Leo a black eye and then I punched the wall on my way back here."

"Dammit, Jed," the words were said sadly not angrily and she pressed her lips to his sore knuckles in a healing kiss. "You could have broken your hand."

"I couldn't help it, Abbey. He admitted that he's loved you since we were in college and that he's STILL in love with you. He admitted that he still wants you the way that he did the night he kissed you and groped you. He told me Jordan broke up with him because he moaned YOUR name when he was trying to make love to her."

Abbey stared at him for a long moment, totally stunned. Suddenly feeling overwhelmingly exposed she got to her feet and slipped on her robe to cover her nude form. It felt so strange. Leo wanted to make love to her? Yes, he had made that pass at her. Yes, he had told her that he had wanted her for a long time, yes he had begged her to let him make love to her, but she had always assumed that it was the drink talking. She assumed that he had told her those things to try to get her to go to bed with him. The thought that it had all been true was incredibly unsettling. Even worse was finding out that he still felt that way after all these years. That he was thinking of her when he was having sex with another woman.

"Abbey," she felt Jed's hand on her shoulder.

"Give me a minute to digest this." She stood silently for a few more long moments then whirled on him. "He's always been like a brother to me, Jed. He's been in the next room when you've made love to me, he's come in when I was NAKED in bed with you, Christ he even saw me nursing Elizabeth when he stayed with us in London. None of that embarrassed me because I didn't know he thought of me THAT way. I thought he saw me as a sister." Her sense of betrayal was rising as three decades of memories flooded her causing her face to blush with embarrassment. "He wasn't seeing you as a sister the night that he tried to drag your dress up over your hips."

"Stop throwing that in my face, Jed. I'm going to tell you for the last time. He was drunk; I didn't take any of it really seriously. I mean I did take it seriously. It royally pissed me off, but that stuff about wanting me forever? I figured it was just one of his lines to get me to go to bed with him."

"I can't help it, it just bugs the hell out of me that you kept this secret to protect him."

"I didn't do it to protect HIM," Abbey's eyes went wide with incredulity. " I kept that secret to protect YOU."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. He was your best friend, a brother to you and he was putting you through hell.You were trying so hard to help him, we both were. Don't you think that I know what it would have done to you to find out just how low he had sunk?"

"You're my WIFE, he was just my friend."

"I know that and if he hadn't been drunk I'd have told you in a heartbeat. I think I still might have if he hadn't come to see me the next day. He begged me not to tell you. He knew what it would do to you, he knew it would end your friendship and as much as he tried to say that it wasn't so, he needed you. You stuck by him when everyone else walked away. I made him promise me that he would never do it again and that he would go into rehab. He promised. I thought it was a good deal, Jed. He would get better, you would have your old friend Leo back, and you would be none the wiser to what amounted to one nights bad judgement."

"I think it was a little more than just bad judgement but I'll let that go for now. I do need to know one thing though and I want you to be totally honest with me. It's imperative that you tell me the truth even if you think it will hurt me."

"OK"

"Has he ever made another pass at you, ever propositioned you since that night?"

"No, never. I swear to you, Jed, I am just as shocked as you to find out that he still has feelings for me. He's never acted on them. Somehow you have to get passed this, Hon, you have to work with him."

"I don't know if I can."

"What?" Her eyes widened with disbelief.

"I don't know if I can work with him anymore knowing what I now know."

"Jed, you don't mean that. Right now you're angry and you're hurt and you have every right to be but don't go making any rash decisions until you've had a chance to calm down and think everything through."

"I have thought things through. I've thought about how I don't think that I will ever be able to look at him in the same way. I don't know if I could ever trust him again or if I would even want to try." He turned his solemn blue eyes her way. "Get passed this? I just don't know how I can." He turned back toward the bed his shoulders slumped and defeated and Abbey hugged herself hard around her slender waist. This was all happening too fast for her to take in. One picture, one picture was all that it had taken to question a spouse's devotion and to perhaps end not only a friendship but also a man's career, his whole reason for being at the moment. She didn't want to think what would happen to Leo if Jed fired him. She watched her husband climb into bed and pull the covers up high over his shoulders as if to comfort himself and her eyes narrowed angrily. Who had done this to her husband, to her family? Who had given that picture to Danny and why had they done it? They were questions Abbey was determined to have answered.

TBC...