THE PRESIDENT 2 Page 2

  “I thought you were still at the press conference,” she said as she watched his tired green eyes scan the length of her wet, naked body. He had worked so late into the night last night that he didn’t even come to their bed, but opted, as he often did when he finished extremely late, to sleep in the connecting room. His running explanation, which infuriated her and she often told him so, was that he didn’t want to wake her.

  But she inwardly believed there was more to it than that. She believed that the demands of the job weighed so heavily on him that some nights he just couldn’t face her. On those nights he didn’t even sleep, but tossed and turned and worried himself sick until daybreak. And he didn’t want her, or anybody else, to see him in such a debilitating state.

  “It just wrapped up,” he said.

  “How did it go?”

  He sighed, which she knew meant not good, pushed his muscular body off of the doorjamb as if he had to will himself to move, and walked toward the towel rack. She came toward him as he sat on the vanity chair. He wrapped her in the thick towel and began drying her off. “Almost every question was about the hostages and when will the mighty U.S. government, better known to the press as the inept Harber Administration, bring those wonderful kids safely home.”

  “Wonderful my ass,” Gina said and Dutch laughed. “But for real, Dutch, who would go into a war zone, Afghanistan no less, when they know those people hate us and are trying to kill us? I mean, who does that? Rich idiots, that’s who! And then their rich parents and the media want to blame you when you had nothing to do with it.”

  “I know, sweetheart,” Dutch said, sitting her dried, naked rump on his lap as he began to wipe dry her inner thighs and womanhood. “But this is what I signed up for.”

  “That’s true too,” Gina had to admit, relaxing to the feel of his bare hand as it moved beneath the towel and began massaging her between her legs, flicking her clit. “But I still don’t like it.” Although she very much liked what he was doing to her. She leaned her face back, and he kissed her on the lips in a long, dragged-out, sensual assault that left her nearly breathless.

  When she came back up for air, she asked the dreaded question: “What other topic came up during the press conference?”

  Dutch was planting small kisses on her long, dark, sexy neck now. “One guess,” he said as he kissed her.

  “Ah, let me see,” she said, enjoying his kisses. “Me?”

  “Bingo,” Dutch replied as he pressed her body even harder against his chest, his massaging fingers entering her now. He loved the way she was always so concerned about him, and hated that there was always so much to be concerned about. Sometimes, like now, as he removed the towel entirely and unzipped his pants, his massive rod already stiff and ready as it jutted out against her inner thigh, he wished he’d lost his reelection bid.

  “I’ve got a meeting with the Republican caucus,” he said, his voice becoming strained, “but I had to see you first.”

  “You had to see me first?” Gina asked with a grin. “Sure seeing me was all you had to do?”

  Dutch smiled. “That too,” he said as he lifted her bare feet onto his knees, his long rob now resting against her clit.

  And then he opened her legs as wide as she could bear, and slowly slid in.

  His breath caught the way it always did whenever he first penetrated her, as his penis made its way into a shaft so narrow, so tight, so wet and ready for his entrance that it took all he had not to ram it through.

  He leaned back and closed his eyes, as he slid in and then out of her, as he gyrated in her, as his every movement reminded him of how much he loved this woman. For the longest time he slid in and out, forgetting that accusatory press corps and the rest of the world with it. And just enjoying Gina. Just enjoying his wife. He wrapped his arms around her naked body as he fucked her, as he refused to entertain anything else, except her.

  Gina closed her eyes too as he gyrated her, as his thickness penetrated her womanhood and gave her that sweet, quivering feeling she always felt whenever he touched her that way. And as he slid so slowly, so expertly in and out of her, pleased that it won’t be quick because they had never had quick sex in all of the times they’d been with each other, tears began to stain her lids. She loved him so much that it scared her sometimes. She’d never felt so strongly about another human being the way she felt about Dutch. He had supplanted all others in her life. He was now her father, her mother, her lover, her best friend. And a husband who couldn’t be more attentive, even though the entire world demanded his attention too.

  And she didn’t know how to handle it. She tried to relax and just enjoy him, tried to divorce her mind from all of the craziness around them and let his penis do the thinking for her. But she couldn’t entirely pull it off.

  Even when he lifted her and carried her into their bedroom; even after he laid her on the bed, dropped his pants, and began fucking her as if he’d never had sex like this before, she kept thinking about the craziness of their life in a fishbowl.

  And she kept thinking about shoes.

  Her life had always been a rollercoaster ride. Whenever she was up, whenever she could kick her feet in the air and enjoy life in its fullest, something would happen to knock those feet back down. That awful hostage crisis after just a month into his second term had one shoe already knocked off, one foot already slammed down. And had her fighting with all she had to hold onto the other shoe.

  She held onto her husband as he fucked her, as their sex-starved bodies turned a slow motion beat into highly-charged, high-arching thrusts. The thrusts seemed to heighten as he lay on top of her and wrapped her so tightly in his arms that there was no daylight between them. And he couldn’t stop thrusting into her. It was more than a physical release for him. It was more than sex. It was a chance to leave it all inside of her, every bit of himself, as he grunted and thrust, thrust and grunted, until she understood that need.

  And although she understood it more than he would ever realize, and was pleased once again by the perfect way Dutch knew how to do her, she couldn’t stop thinking about those shoes. And about when, not if, but when the other one would decide to drop too.

  But for now she did as Dutch had done and forgot all else, and just enjoyed the poking in and out, the thickness, the wetness, the hardness, the sheer magnificence of that rod.

  TWO

  Thirty miles off of the southern coast of Cape Cod, the helicopter circled and then landed along the outer edge of the Harber family compound on Nantucket Island. Jim Yerks, longtime family attorney, jumped from the craft and made the long trek across the lawn that led to the colonnade on the back side of the mansion.

  Once inside the mansion, Nathan Riles, a sixty-seven year old black man who had been in the employ of the Harber family for nearly forty years, escorted him through the main hall, down a long, winding corridor, and then, after a cursory knock, into the morning room.

  Standing at the lunette window was Victoria Harber, heiress to a tobacco fortune and the mother of the President of the United States. She was flustered, and anxious, and as soon as Nathan Riles deposited Jim Yerks and left, dying to hear the news.

  “Was it her?” she asked with no pretense of disinterest.

  Jim nodded. “It’s her.”

  “But are you certain, Jim?”

  “There is no question about it, Victoria. None. It’s her.”

  Victoria put her hand to her chest, her hard blue eyes staring with a twisted hopefulness that turned Jim’s stomach. “What did she say? Did she agree to our terms?”

  Jim walked over to her before he answered her questions. “She agreed to come forward, yes,” he said, his long association with Victoria Harber more a reflection of his admiration of her deceased husband, than any affection he held for her. “But not for five-hundred thousand. As you rightly predicted, she wants more. She wants a million dollars.”

  Victoria snorted. “I knew that was all she was ever about. She never loved my son. Just wanted
what he had. When I threatened to expose her, and showed her those sex tapes, she knew it was over. She knew he’d never want anything more to do with her once he viewed those tapes. But I still didn’t expect her to agree this quickly.”

  “She’s broke,” Jim said. “She thought she was married to this wonderful, wealthy, French businessman when his so-called business wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.”

  “Oh, come now, Jimmy. You actually believe she loved that Frenchman?”

  “I believe it, yes.”

  “Surely only because she thought he was rich.”

  “He was rich,” Jim assured her. “Until the roof caved in. Until the authorities in Saint-Tropez caught up with his Ponzi scheme of a business. But by then she was deeply in love with the man.”

  “Now he’s in prison and she’s broke. Now she’s ready to deal.”

  “She’s ready,” Jim said, “and you’re ready. But is that son of yours ready?”

  Victoria folded her arms, a gleam in her eyes. “If you only knew how much my son loved her, you’d understand my confidence. Yes, he’ll be ready. He’ll dump that black whore as quickly as it takes for him to fall into his real woman’s arms. I assure you of that.” She smiled. “He’ll be ready. Don’t you worry. He’ll be ready most of all.”

  Jim, however, still couldn’t wrap his brain around the motive. “But what I don’t understand is why,” he said.

  “Why she accepted our terms?”

  “Why you’re offering them to begin with. Why you’re willing to give a woman you obviously despise all of that money. We’re talking a million dollars, Vicky. Even for you that’s real money. Why would you be willing to give up that kind of cash?”

  “I’ll give up even more if I had to,” Victoria stated with conviction.

  “And what do you want from her in return?”

  Jim immediately noticed that this question caused Victoria’s hard blue eyes to sparkle. “Simply put,” she said, “I want her to end my son’s marriage. I want that farce of a marriage over before a child is produced. Because I’ll accept a lot of things. I have accepted a lot from that son of mine. But I will not have that in my family. Not as an heir to my son’s fortune. Not as any grandchild of mine. Do you understand me now? I’ll not have that. I’ll not have it!”

  Jim stared at the mother of the President of the United States; stared at this liberal icon known the world over for all of her good work on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised. But if there was ever a more hateful woman, a more spiteful, dangerous woman, Jim Yerks had yet to meet her.

  ***

  The limousine stopped in front of the DC Center for Social Justice in the heart of the hood and the press pool assigned to follow the First Lady were waiting in force when they drove up. Gina, dressed in an African-styled professional pantsuit, was seated in the backseat with Christian Bale, her husband’s former personal aide. Christian had developed such a fond attachment to Gina that he had asked Dutch directly if he could become her personal aide. The president, who thought of the young, devoted, blue eyed, blond-haired Christian as a son, agreed. There was no-one else, he had said at the time, that he would trust more with his wife.

  Also in the limo was Gina’s assistant and best friend, Loretta “LaLa” King, a short, smart, outspoken woman on the verge of plumpness who used to be her business partner when they ran the Block by Block Raiders back in Newark. LaLa was Gina’s girl, the one friend she knew she could always count on.

  They all waited patiently for the secret service to give the all-clear so that they could step out.

  “The vultures are circling,” LaLa said as she glanced out of the dark tinted windows and saw the line of reporters waiting for them.

  “I’m so over those reporters that it’s not even funny,” Gina replied, twirling around a bracelet. From her braids to her big earrings and beaded necklace, she was all Afrocentric today. A style LaLa loved. Her biggest fear, when Gina became First Lady, was that she would morph into some politically-correct, mainstream maven and would lose her own identity. A fear, LaLa was fast learning, that was completely unfounded. Gina was as much the same person today as she was when she said I Do.

  “They can be appalling, can’t they?” Christian said, his big smile lighting up his cherubim face. “I mean, they’re doing their jobs and all, but good grief. They don’t let up.”

  “I know,” Gina admitted. “Now they’re actually trying to blame Dutch for those students getting kidnapped.”

  “Ain’t it crazy?” LaLa said, refusing to change an iota herself since becoming an assistant to the First Lady. “If those college students weren’t rich and from Harvard, but was a bunch of Joe Blows from the hood, I’d bet they wouldn’t be so obsessed with bringing them back home.”

  “I pray for their safe return, don’t get me wrong,” Gina pointed out, that sincere look her husband loved blanketing her face. “But to blame Dutch for those kids going over there in the first place? That’s what I can’t get over.”

  LaLa looked at her. “How is the President anyway?” she asked. “I saw him on TV this morning at that press conference, looking very gorgeous I might add. But they were brutal, girl.”

  “I figured as much. I don’t even watch anymore. But he’s doing okay.” Then inwardly she smiled, remembering how Dutch took her to their bed after that press conference and made love to her so long and so hard that she still could feel the poke of that thick rod of his.

  “How long have you known the president?” Christian asked her.

  Gina smiled. “Why would you ask that, Chris?”

  “Because y’all are so close. It seems like y’all had to have known each other longer than just last year.”

  “Oh. We met before then. Ten years before then.”

  “You knew each other for that long?”

  “We had a one, we met briefly once, and then nothing for ten years, and then I was at the White House to get an award for Block by Block Raiders, and we hooked up again.”

  “Oh,” Christian said. “And now you’re in the fishbowl with him.”

  “More like a circus if you ask me,” Gina said.

  “The president has always been good with the press,” Christian said. “He’s used to the circus.”

  The door of the limo opened. “But I’m not,” Gina said as she began to step out, “and I don’t want to ever get used to anything this crazy.”

  As soon as her face was seen, photographers like paparazzi snapped their pictures and the press hurled their questions fast and furious. One reporter’s voice, Nora Tatem from Slake magazine, was able to break through the chatter. “Mrs. Harber, why are you here?” she yelled.

  Gina found her question so odd that she actually had to stop to answer. This, she viewed, was an opportunity to educate. She was wrong. “Why am I here at the Center for Social Justice?” Gina asked. “I’m here because this is a wonderful organization that helps the poor find competent legal representation.”

  “But is this an appropriate place for a First Lady to come?”

  “Come on, G,” LaLa whispered, gently taking her friend and boss by the arm.

  “Why wouldn’t it be appropriate?” Gina wanted to know, moving her arm from LaLa’s grasp, her bright brown eyes riveted on the reporter.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” the reporter said.

  “No, it’s not obvious. Perhaps you can enlighten me.”

  “It’s in the ghetto, ma’am,” Nora Tatem pointed out and some of the reporters grinned.

  “Yes, it is,” Gina said, failing to see the humor. “But what’s inappropriate about it? Because it isn’t where the rich and well-connected are, I’m not supposed to come here?”