THE PRESIDENT 2 (3 page)

She leaned her head back and allowed the fierce stream of water to medicate her tense, black body, her hair freshly braided in small, neat rows dropped along her back.
 
Although she loved Dutch dearly, she hated Washington and everything it stood for.
 
They twisted and turned every statement, joked about every movement, loved to criticize her as if they were still sore that he didn’t marry some beauty queen from Nantucket, but an African queen from Newark.
 
And all of it, the gamesmanship, the got-cha questions, the ridiculousness, was beginning to rattle her.

She stepped out of the stall, not at all certain if she was ready to face another day in the hot seat, when she realized she wasn’t alone.
 
Her husband was standing there, his hands in his pockets, his tired, gorgeous body leaned against the doorjamb of the bathroom’s wide entrance.
 
She stared at him, and he stared at her, both worried sick about the other, about the stress the outside world constantly put on their brand new marriage, but both trying to get through it.
 

“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.”