DUTCH AND GINA: AFTER THE FALL (18 page)

my tail.”

“ That’s the reality, pal. He’s just trying to protect you.” Christian said this as he served a mean volley.

“I don’t need protec on,” Jade replied as she picked up the ball and made her own frene c serve. “I mean, think about it, Chris an. Who’s going to want to harm me? They don’t even know me. He won’t even let me give an interview or go to those ceremonies with the First Lady or even attend that State Dinner tonight.”

“He doesn’t want his children exposed like that.

He’s the same way with Little Walt.”

Jade smiled. “Oh, right. Li le Walt is just dying to go to the Mall too.”

Christian laughed. “You know what I mean! He said he wants to wait un ll the poli call dust clears, un ll the fact that he has this brand new daughter is no longer front page news, then he’ll let you do your thing.”

“That doesn’t make sense to me.”

Christian disagreed. “Keep living in this town, you’ll see just how much sense it really makes. The media here can be brutal, girl. They’ll show you no mercy.

You should see how they treat the First Lady sometimes. The lies they tell on her.”

“I know but . . . some mes I think he . . .” She just stood there, the ball in her hand, poised to serve, but her mind was on something else.

Chris an stared at her. To say that he was smi en would be an understatement. He was, in fact, having the me of his life since Jade hit the scene. Even though he knew, to his consterna on, that she was already spoken for.

“Some mes you think he what?” Chris an asked her.

“Some mes I wonder if he’s ashamed of me,” Jade said.

Chris an immediately hurried to her side. “Don’t say that.”

“But that’s how I feel, Chris. I mean, why won’t he introduce me to the people? Why is he hiding me here?”

“He’s not ashamed of you, Jade, so you can just forget even thinking that way. He’s not like that.” Jade smiled weakly. “You aren’t exactly an objective witness,” she told him.

“I’m just telling the truth. The president loves you--”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jade spat out. “ That man barely knows me, how can he love me? People who’ve known me all of my life, like my mother, like Henry, can barely stand the sight of me, yet he’s going to love me?”

When her last words spat out she stood there in horror. She never meant to be so blunt, or to reveal so much, to anyone. Christian just stared at her.

“What do you mean your mother and this Henry person can’t stand you?”

She quickly smiled, or at least gave it her best effort. “I’m just kidding, Christopher,” she said, hi ng him playfully on the arm. “Stop taking me so seriously.”

He rubbed his arm, but con nued to stare at her.

“It’s Chris an,” he said, although he knew she only called him the wrong name to change the subject. And he couldn’t stop staring at her.

“Are we going to play or what?” Jade said. His stare was unnerving her.

“What did you mean by that, Jade?” he asked her.

“Why would your own mother, and your own boyfriend, hate you?”

“I didn’t say they hated me.”

“Why can’t they stand you then? Why would you say something like that?”

“Because it’s true!” Jade shot out, deciding to just

“Because it’s true!” Jade shot out, deciding to just go with it. She sat the ball and paddle on the table and began to pace the room. Chris an, his blue eyes blazing, followed her every move. How can that be true, he wanted to ask her, how can her own mother dislike her? But he was too afraid to do so.

She stood at the window, her arms folded, her back to her new friend. “I’m not good enough, you see. Not by a long shot. I mean, here I am with this brilliant father who’s the President of the United States, and a brilliant mother, and I can barely read.” Chris an frowned. “Barely read? What are you talking about?”

“I mean I’m not brilliant like them. My IQ is exactly 100, which is exactly average. Yet Mom s ll made me apply for admission to Harvard and all of those other Ivy League schools and she was actually disappointed when they laughed my applica on all the way to the rejec on pile. I barely made it through UNC, and I mean barely. Can you imagine somebody like me trying to make it through Harvard and Yale?”

“I wouldn’t have been able to make it through those schools either,” Chris an said, “and I barely got through my state school too. But I don’t see how that makes me an idiot.”

“ To my mother I’m an idiot. To Henry I’m an idiot.

They’re the cream of the crop intellectually, and I’m at the bo om of the pile. And they remind me of that fact practically every day of my life. It’s all relative, Chris.” Chris an shook his head. “Okay, I’ve met your mother and maybe she can be a li le overbearing. But why would you choose to date a man who thinks you’re an idiot?”

“I didn’t choose him,” Jade said. “He chose me.

With Mom’s blessing. He’s a surgeon, you see.”

“Yeah, I heard. But I still don’t understand--”

“Are we going to talk all night about him?” Christian frowned. “But you’re the one who brought it up.”

“Let’s go somewhere,” Jade said, slight despera on in her voice.

“What?”

“Take me somewhere.”

“You mean without the secret service?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t take you out of the White House!”

“Why not? I’m a grown woman. I’m not a prisoner. I can leave here if I want to.”

“But . . . the president hasn’t given you permission--

”

“I told you I’m grown. Chris, please,” she said, a plea in her voice. “Just take me somewhere, to your apartment even. Just let me see it, that’s all. We’ll be back before that State Dinner is anywhere near over with. The president will never know we went anywhere without armed guards.”

“But we can’t just walk out of the door.”

“Why not? I know you keep an extra set of clothes here at the White House because I’ve seen you change before.”

“So? Every aide does.”

“So I’ll put on your clothes and a baseball cap and you’ll leave like you normally leave the White House every night. I’ll leave with you like I’m your assistant or something. And we’ll just slip on out, go to your place, hang out a li le and then come right back. The president nor MY bodyguards will ever know. It’ll be fun,” she said with a smile.

“You don’t like it here?”

“I love it here, Chris, that’s not what I mean. I just like to be free, to go and come as I please, to . . . She couldn’t explain it, not to an innocent like Chris an.

couldn’t explain it, not to an innocent like Chris an.

What would he know about suffoca on? What would he know about caged birds and confinement and fear?

She looked at him and the look in those big green eyes of hers, eyes that looked so much like the president’s sincere eyes, did it for Christian.

“ The president is going to kill me,” he said, but for Jade’s sake, for her mental health it seemed to him, he agreed to do it anyway.

“Oh, Chris,” she said as she gave him a sisterly hug, a grand smile now on her pretty face.

Chris an didn’t exhale un ll they were out of his SUV

and in his apartment and she was looking around.

“I told you it wasn’t much,” he said.

“It’s lovely,” Jade said, “what are you talking about?

At least you have your own place. I’m twenty-three and still live at home with my mother.”

“And now you live at home with your daddy,” Chris an said with a smile and Jade laughed too. “But really, why didn’t you move out of your mother’s home and get your own apartment? You were working, making your own money.”

“I know, but Henry and Mom were against it. He said I’d muck it up and would invite stalkers and nonsense like that and mother agreed with him.” Her mother and that Henry guy sounded like awful people, Christian thought.

“What’s in here?” Jade asked as she moved toward the closed door on the backside of his small living room.

“No, Jade, you don’t want to go in there,” Chris an said quickly, but he was too late. She went in there. In his bedroom. His small but extremely messy bedroom.

He entered too, and stood beside her. “I told you so.”

Jade smiled. “Christian doesn’t make his bed.”

“I get home so late at night and leave so early, there’s hardly time.”

“Excuses, excuses.” She began walking around.

“ There’s such a nice feeling in this room,” she said. “I like it.”

“Stop playing.”

“I’m serious,” she said and then threw herself on his fluffy double bed, laughing.

“Jade,” he said, “what are you doing?”

“And you’re so neat in your appearance,” she said.

“I expected your place to be ght. But this place is a hog pen,” she said with a grin.

Chris an smiled too. He couldn’t help but feel happy around Jade.

Then her laughter slowly died, and she looked at him. He was the kind of guy she always found attractive. Not because of his outer beauty, but because of his inner gorgeousness. His heart. His compassion. His decency. Although, she also thought, looking down toward his midsec on, he seemed to tote quite a package outwardly too.

And she suddenly wanted to kiss him. Just a kiss.

To see how it felt.

“Come here, Chris,” she said to him, her smile now gone.

Chris an, at first, hesitated. Going anywhere near a bed with Jade lying on it could be disastrous.

Especially the way she looked lying there. But it was because of how she looked, and how his loins were suddenly throbbing, that made his hesita on very brief. He went to her. Sat on the edge of his bed.

“What is it now?” he said.

She stared at him, her sizeable breasts heaving up and down, her own loins throbbing.

“You have the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen,” she said.

“You have the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen,” she said.

Henry had blue eyes too, but his were small and most una rac ve to her. Chris an’s, however, were enchanting. “I love your eyes.”

Christian smiled. “Yours ain’t bad either,” he said.

Only she didn’t return his smile. Their proximity made it too serious now. And Chris an’s smile le too. He leaned down, hovered over her mouth at first, and then kissed her.

It was a chaste kiss, what she would have expected from a boy like Chris, but when he pulled away she knew it wasn’t enough. She pulled him back.

That seemed to be all the encouragement he needed.

His kiss became long and passionate, desperate even. Chris an had always been a one-woman man and it had been nearly a year since his last steady girlfriend. His job kept him jumping and happy, but it couldn’t replace this. The feel of a woman’s lips on his. The smell of her sweet perfume. The an cipa on of her womanhood collapsing around his rod.

He laid down and moved her on top of him as they kissed, as their lips seemed unable to part. Jade was blown away. This wasn’t what she was accustomed to. Henry was her one and only experience and he was always so rough on her lips, always bearing down on them so hard and bi ng them so passionately that she o en ended up with a trickle of blood when he finished.

But Chris an was so easy with it, as they just lay there kissing, the sucking sounds in his quiet apartment making her feel as if she was floating on air.

Neither one of them could say when their control broke, but it absolutely did. They were removing clothes fran cally. Jade was accustomed to this activity. She never recalled a me when she had sex with Henry without him literally tearing her clothes off, even when all he had to do was take them off. And when she saw Chris an’s rod, and realized it was so much larger than Henry’s, maybe twice as large, she was amazed. How, she wondered, was all of that going to fit?

But she had to wonder longer. Because Chris an didn’t just ram it in the way she was accustomed to having sex. He first began kissing her again, mainly her breasts, which gave her an unimaginable pleasure.

Yet her pleasure point became almost otherworldly when he moved down her body, and took her in his mouth.

Jade braced herself when he took her. This was always the most painful part of the process for her.

She would, in fact, o en scream in pain when Henry would do her orally. The more she screamed, the more aggressive he would become. She then learned to s fle her screams, to avoid any escala on of his aggressiveness, but then he’d get angry at her for not screaming, for, as he put it, not having her head in their lovemaking, and he would cause her to draw blood.

But Chris an was nothing like that. He merely licked her and wiggled her clit and to Jade’s shock, she actually enjoyed it. She even began to get wet and aroused the more he wiggled her. She could hardly believe it. In theory she knew it could be this way, she’d read too many novels not to know that. But in prac ce it had been so opposite for her that she never dreamed it could be this way for her.

And when Chris an moved up, put on a condom, and slid his rod into her vagina, she just knew it was going to be wondrously different there too. And it was. He didn’t ram it in, but eased it in, and then out, and then back in again. And it was so thick that she actually felt the en re experience. He actually kept touching her the en re experience. He actually kept touching her where she could be aroused too.

And she was totally aroused, as he kept moving within her, in and nearly out, in and nearly out, until, for the first me in her en re life, she actually experienced what she realized was an orgasm.

“
Oh, oh, oh
,” she started screaming as he kept thrashing her, and it became so fran c for both of them that the condom broke. They both felt it when it happened but they couldn’t stop now. Not now. Now as Chris an spilled into her and she spilled all over him and their climax became a long, drawn out symphony of emo ons that le them both so high that they were straining every muscle in their bodies to feebly try and contain the joy.

A erwards, Chris an went to the bathroom, cleaned himself up, and then returned with a clean, wet cloth.

Jade was s ll lying there, naked and sated, staring at him. And that innocence in her eyes, and that bewildered look, did him in. The president, he knew, was going to kill him.