THE PRESIDENT'S GIRLFRIEND Page 6

  After preparing a plate for Dutch and one for herself, she sat down at the table, also, Dutch quickly standing slightly until she was seated. Then they bowed their heads, Dutch said a small prayer, and then they began eating. It still didn’t taste great to Gina, just okay, and she kept her eyes on the president. After a few bites, he looked at her.

  “Well?” she said.

  He smiled. Then started laughing. His laugh was so heartfelt that it became contagious, and Gina started laughing, too.

  “What?” she wanted to know. “Is it that good?”

  “No,” he said between laughs, “it’s awful. Simply awful.” But he couldn’t stop laughing. Gina couldn’t either.

  “Then why are you laughing?”

  “Because,” Dutch said, attempting to regain his composure, “you have balls, lady.” Gina continued laughing, but she didn’t get what he found so funny. “I have balls because my food is awful?”

  “You had the nerve, the nerve, to cook for the leader of the free world – and you can’t cook!” Dutch’s laughter went into high gear again. Gina knew she should have been offended, but she wasn’t. He was being too honest, and enjoying his honesty, for her to even think about offense. She laughed, too.

  As the laughter began to die down, Dutch exhaled. He’d had his laugh for the month. Then he looked at Gina. His affection for her was immeasurable. And that sudden feeling, that he really liked this lady, caused his once whimsical face to turn dead serious. “Come here,” he said to her.

  At first Gina was concerned by the change in his demeanor and tone, but she hesitated only briefly, tossed her napkin on the table, and went around to his chair. “Yes?” she said.

  He pulled her down onto his lap. Her heart began to pound. “I want to thank you properly,” he said.

  “Thank me for cooking you a perfectly bad meal?”

  Dutch looked at her long, dark neck, her full, titillating lips, her sincere, sexy eyes, and he wanted her here and now. “I want to thank you for thinking of me,” he said.

  His words touched Gina. She smiled. “What a sweet thing to say.”

  “I want to do more than say it, Gina.” He ran his hand through her soft braids. “Will you let me?”

  Her breasts heaved at his touch, something he noticed, too, and just seeing her reaction caused him to react, and not wait for her response. He kissed her. He thought it would be chaste. In his mind he just wanted to feel her lips again. But he couldn’t keep it simple, he couldn’t keep it chaste. He burrowed into her, kissing her hard and deep and long. When he realized she was willing, and her breasts were becoming hard against his chest, he wrapped her tightly into his arms and kissed her in a fit of passion that left him stunned by his own excitability. He wondered what was wrong with him. He was kissing her as if he was sex starved, as if he hadn’t had any in so long that he wanted to kiss her mouth dry.

  She could feel his need, and it was mighty, and all she could think to do was to go with it. And she went with it, gladly, wrapping herself into him and experiencing the kind of kissing only he had ever given her. He knew what he was doing, and she loved that he did.

  He moved from her lips to her neck, and then her chest, and when he unbuttoned the top buttons on her blouse in a frenzy of passion, and began sucking her breasts in the kind of deep, well schooled suctions, she wanted to jump out of her skin from the intensity of his affection.

  He leaned her head back, so that her chest would rise up to him, and he sucked and kissed and moved from breast to breast as if his appetite was as ferocious, as grand as the office he held. This was the leader, and his control, in Gina’s estimation, was one more suck away from exploding.

  “Oh, Gina!” he said as he lifted her into his arms and carried her out of the kitchen. This was not how Gina had it planned. She had every intention of talking to him and not, under any circumstances, falling prey to his unbridled lust. But it was her lust that she had fallen prey to. Because she wanted him almost as much as he wanted her. This man was amazing, she thought. She’d never felt such a strong, intense need deep within her like this before.

  And when he carried her into this huge bedroom, and laid her on the massive bed as if she were the most precious commodity in the world to him, she wanted to cry. She’d had men in her life before, and some were incredible lovers, but she’d only experienced this level of emotion the one time before, when she was with Dutch.

  He pulled off both her blouse and her bra, not by loosening them, but by pulling them over her head. Then he lifted her slightly and removed her pants and panties. When he had her naked he stared at her. “Oh my,” he said, looking at her bronzed body. And threw off his clothes so fast that Gina thought she could get whiplash watching him. But he was playing for keeps tonight. He dropped those expensive, tailored clothes from his body as if they were scullery rags.

  He bent down on his knees at the side of the bed and began kissing her on her stomach, and then turning her over and kissing her buttocks, both cheeks, with a passion that was driving Gina mad with lust. And when he turned her back over, opened her legs, and began licking her and tasting her, she closed her eyes in sheer joy.

  And then he stood up. When she opened her eyes, he was staring down at her. His penis was so large and so thick that Gina literally wiped her lips in anticipation of his entry. He just stood there, and began rubbing it, expanding it, as he watched her reaction. Even after he reached in the side table drawer, grabbed a condom and put it on, he still couldn’t stop staring at her body, at her face.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said to her, and he said it in such a way that Gina thought she would scream.

  “You aren’t bad yourself,” she found herself saying, attempting levity, but there was nothing playful in her voice, or his. They were two very serious people. And when he pulled her further onto the bed and he got on top of her, and entered her, she did scream. He was so thick and so long and so juicy that she thought he would explode her.

  Dutch thought so, too, as he entered her, as his thick manhood so filled her small passageway that he could feel the mouth of her vagina close onto him like a suction rim. He moved in and out of her, over and over, filling her with so much of himself that tears were appearing in his eyes. He’d never had it so sweet to the feel, so tenderly yet explosively, that he didn’t know if he could survive this. And when he came, when his manhood had reached its fill, his entire body shook with the force of a cat-5 hurricane. How could he ever give this up? How could he ever walk away from a lover like her?

  Gina was in trouble, too, because her climate was equally as explosive. She tried to contain her joy, she tried to behave like a sister with some sense, but as soon as he drove into her deepest pocket and spilled into her with a throbbing release that shook her to her core, she lifted her body so high to accept the spill that she felt as if she was floating on air.

  When they both finally crashed down, and Dutch finally moved off of her, they both lay there, on their backs, staring at the ceiling in the kind of hush disbelief that people experience after an amazing, but traumatic event.

  SIX

  They just lay there, not knowing what to say, what to do, how to react to something this incredible, when Dutch finally reached out his arm, and pulled her against him. She lay her head on his chest, still reeling.

  He looked down at her. He knew there was something special about her when he first saw her a decade ago in Miami. But he never dreamed she could be even more special. This woman had rocked his world again. This was not the way it was supposed to go. He was Wham Bam Harber. And this was supposed to be thank-you, ma’am time. But how could he walk away from this?

  When she looked up at him, as if she could read his mind, and he saw the sweetness, the decency in her eyes, it took all he had not to pull her on top of him and enter her again. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she replied. “You?”

  “I will be.” Then he smiled. “You packed quite a wallop, lady.” />
  Gina laughed. She was pleased to know that he felt the earth move too.

  “You’re like a drug, you know that?” Dutch continued. “Ten years ago, when we hooked up, I hadn’t been with a woman in a long time. Had been so busy, you know? But then I had you.” He pulled her closer. “And I spent the rest of the last ten years trying to get that high I had with you that night in Miami. I didn’t realize that was what I was searching for when I was with all of those women, but now I see it was exactly what I was searching for. And I never got that kind of high again, until tonight, when you allowed me to touch your sweet, tender body and you made me feel so . . . so fortunate.”

  Dutch had to stop talking. He was actually getting emotional. Gina was stunned too, by how deeply that so-called one night stand affected him.

  And then they lapsed, once more, into a companionable silence. Until Gina looked up at him again. “You looked exhausted when you first came home tonight.” She made it sound as if he had come to their home, and she was mortified by the implication.

  Dutch caught the implication, and it alarmed him on many levels, but he’d sat across negotiation tables with world leaders before. He was an adept at hiding his alarm. “Yes, I was exhausted,” he said. “We had one crisis after another one today.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  He smiled. “No.” Then he looked at her. “But enough about me--”

  “What enough? We haven’t even discussed you, except that you looked drained and had to be in crisis mode all day.”

  “Okay, what do you wish to know?”

  “What do I call you?”

  “Mr. President,” he said.

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Dutch laughed. “My friends call me Dutch,” he said. “You had better call me nothing less.”

  Gina smiled. “Dutch it is. Except in public, right?”

  “Correct. It’s a question of the office of the presidency. You have to respect the office.”

  “Understood.”

  “Now enough about me,” Dutch said again. “Tell me about you. I understand cable news is continually running those comments you made earlier today.”

  Gina shook her head. “I know. I truly hate that they’re turning it into some political football. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Of course you didn’t!” Dutch said as if it was a fact. “But since it bothers you so much now, are you willing to apologize to me?”

  This offended Gina. She looked up, to see if Dutch was serious. “Apologize?” she said. “For what? I stand by every word I said.”

  Dutch stared at her. Then nodded. He had pegged her right. “Good,” he said. “I would have been very disappointed in you if you hadn’t.”

  “I feel very strongly about what I said. Those funding cuts to programs like mine have been devastating.”

  “Block by Block Raiders. As soon as I saw that name on the list of award recipients I thought it an odd one.”

  “I know. But I kept seeing so many young people in the poorest neighborhoods end up in jail or dead or in such a bleak circumstance that I knew I had to do something. So we help to relocate young gang members who want to start over, or a prostitute who wants a better life, or a drug addict who needs rehab. But first we get their legal house in order because many, if not most of them have major legal issues. And it’s not easy. Sometimes we have beg them to accept our help.”

  Dutch looked at her hair and how soft it was, at her flawless skin and how smooth to the touch he now knew it was. At her long, dark neck. “How does your husband feel about your line of work?”

  Gina was amazed. She looked at him. “I’m not married,” she said, appalled. “How could you think I’d do something like this and be married?”

  Dutch smiled at her wonderful morality. “It was just a question.”

  “But don’t you think it’s the kind of question we should have discussed before this, this roll in the hay?”

  Roll in the hay, Dutch thought. He’d been on a hay roll or two in his day, and this was no roll in the hay. “My assumption was that you were a single lady, but you never know.”

  “You mean you haven’t investigated me?”

  “All of the award recipients were investigated before they were offered the award, to make sure no wanted felons were showing up at the White House. That was enough for me.”

  “But to answer your question, no, I don’t have a husband. And I wouldn’t have one who would have a problem with what I do for a living. I’m in the helping profession. That’s who I am. I help.”

  And, to Gina’s surprise, he wanted to know all about who she was. And for nearly an hour she told him. About being an only child. About her parents, both school teachers, dying in an automobile accident. About her passion for the poor. “So I got this idea to marry my law degree with my passion for others, and that’s how BBR was founded.”

  “From an idea to a presidential award,” Dutch said. “Not bad. Although you turned it down.”

  Gina felt a little sheepish. She hated that she couldn’t have been more magnanimous with him earlier, the way the other award recipients were. But this was business. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I couldn’t in good conscience allow you to give us an award with one hand, and cut off our funding, our life support, with the other.”

  “Ah,” he said, somewhat sheepish himself. “Thus your disappointment in me.”

  He said this and looked intensely at her. If he thought she would back down, he was mistaken.

  “Yes,” she said. “Thus my disappointment.”

  Dutch pulled her closer against him and kissed her on the forehead. Her honesty, her integrity was refreshing to him. After so many years in politics, he had grown almost jaded by the lack of decency around him. But Gina was different. His only problem, he felt, holding her, was that he wasn’t quite sure if her differentness would be an asset at this time in his life, or a liability.

  +++

  “Miss Lansing,” the soft voice of Christian Bale could be heard as Gina slowly began to open her eyes.

  When she saw who was standing over her, she frowned. “Christian?” she said. “What are you . . .” Then she realized where she was. “Oh.” She sat up on her elbows.

  Christian was surprised to see that the president had put her on one of his dress shirts. In times past, with the president’s other overnight female guests that Christian had to make this early morning visit to, they were usually still naked.

  “It’s time to go, ma’am,” he said to Gina.

  Gina didn’t understand. She quickly looked over, fully expecting Dutch to be asleep on the other side of the bed, but he wasn’t there. She looked at Christian. “Where’s . . ?”

  “He’s in bed,” Christian said.

  Gina frowned. “In bed? What do you mean he’s in bed? Isn’t this his bed?”

  Christian hated to admit it. “No, ma’am,” he said.

  Gina still wasn’t understanding. “But . . . I mean. . .” Then she frowned again, as fear began to grip her. “What time is it?” she asked.

  “It’s seven minutes to five, ma’am.”

  “Five in the morning? Why are you waking me up at five in the morning?”

  “Because,” Christian said slowly, “you have to leave before the press starts arriving.” He hated this part of his job, and especially with somebody like Gina Lansing. She was gutsy and had heart and the president didn’t deserve her.

  “So, what you’re saying to me is that I can’t be seen leaving the White House?”

  There was a long pause. “That’s correct,” Christian admitted. Then he added, as if that would help anything at all: “It’s protocol, ma’am.”

  “Protocol? You mean this is how the president does all of the females who sleep with him, is that the protocol you’re talking about?”

  Again, Christian hated to admit it. “Yes,” he said, to Gina’s shock.

  She lay there numb. This couldn’t be happening. Not after that powerful connection they made
last night. How could he let this happen, and happen to her? She wasn’t one of his booty calls, he couldn’t possibly think of her that way after the kind of love making they experienced. She wasn’t one of his booty calls!

  Or was she?

  “Can I see him before I leave?” she asked Christian, her eyes wide with anguish.

  “No, ma’am,” Christian said succinctly and without hesitation, so there would be no misunderstanding.