THE PRESIDENT'S GIRLFRIEND (9 page)

     Gina frowned, crossed off another congressman’s name.  “Well I guess I’d better be careful not to mess around with him, then.  Right?” she said. 

     LaLa stared at her.  “Right,” she said, with little conviction, too.              

+++

It seemed like she’d caught this show before.  There they were, her and Christian, sitting in the president’ private residence at the White House, waiting for what was now nearly two hours, for him to arrive. 

     “Where is he?” she finally asked Christian, who was seated patiently, as if he was accustomed, in his role as one of the president’s personal aides, to waiting.  “Is he even here at the White House?”

     “Yes, he’s here.  It’s just that things come up.”

     Of course Gina understood that.  But dang.  It was coming up on midnight.  That man had to be exhausted.  “Has he eaten?” she found herself asking before she had a chance to think about it.  If she would have thought first, she would have never gotten this personal with the man’s aide.

     “Probably not,” Christian said, his concern showing.  “That’s one of the things that worry me about him.  Sometimes he’ll go all day without eating much.  Sometimes it gets so bad I have to tell Mr. Brennan about it and he has to get on his case.”

     “Max Brennan, the president’s chief of staff?”

     “And best friend, yes, ma’am.  He’s the only one who can be blunt with the president.”

     “You can’t?”

     “Oh, gosh no!  He’ll fire me in a heartbeat I even think about coming at him like that.”

     “You mean to tell me he’ll fire you for telling him the truth?”

     Christian thought about this.  “Not for that, exactly.  But for disrespecting the office of the presidency.  That’s real important to him.  He doesn’t care whether people respect him as Dutch Harber, but he cares an awful lot if they disrespect him as President Dutch Harber.  It’s all about the office, the representation of the people.”

     Gina’s heart dropped.  “Did he feel I disrespected the office when I, to use your phrase, told him off at the awards ceremony?”

     Christian didn’t want to go there, and especially not with one of the president’s females.  But this one was turning out to be kind of different.  She didn’t seem as eager to share her body with the president the way all of the others had, and she’d stand up to him without giving it a second thought.  “I don’t know if he thought you were disrespectful,” he finally said, “but I know it bothered him.”

     She already knew that much.  “And you don’t think he’s eaten?” she asked Christian.

     “I know he hadn’t all the times I’d been with him today, and that was up until a couple hours ago, when I went to pick you up.”

     Gina stood up, causing Christian to stand.  “What is it?” he asked her.

     “Is there a kitchen around here?”

     “A kitchen?”

     “Yes.  Where they cook food?”

     Christian smiled.  “But the president has a chef, ma’am.”

     “I know that, Christian.  Work with me, little brother.  I thought I’d see what’s in the kitchen and whip him up something quick.”

     Christian looked mortified.  “I don’t think that’s allowed, ma’am.”

     “I’m not going to poison him!  You can watch me the whole time.  But you said yourself he probably hadn’t eaten all day.  That’s not good.”

     “No, it’s not,” Christian found himself agreeing with her. 

     “So take me to the kitchen and let’s see what we can whip up for him.”

     Christian was reluctant, more like terrified if you asked Gina, but he escorted her into a small, private kitchen within the residence and watched as she pulled together some kind of pasta/vegetable dish that had him yearning to taste it.  She was, in fact, allowing Christian to taste a spoonful when they both looked up and saw the president standing there.

     “Sir?” Christian said, mortified.  “We were just--”

     “We thought you’d be hungry,” Gina interrupted.  “So
viola
,” she said, “we whipped up a dish.”

     Dutch stood at the doorjamb, his body leaned against it to avoid falling on his face in exhaustion.  He could tell that both Christian and Gina were waiting with baited breath.  He smiled.  “Sounds great,” he said, pushing from the door and moving into the kitchen.  “I’m famished.”

     Christian breathe again, and Dutch told him he was excused for the night.

     “Hey,” Dutch said after Christian left, and he began moving toward Gina.

     “Hey yourself,” she replied and closed her eyes in anticipation when he leaned over and kissed her on the lips.  Then he looked at the food in front of her.  “Um,”  he said, “it smells good.”

     “Have a seat and try some,” she said.

     He removed his suit coat, flapped it over the kitchen chair, and took a seat at the small table.  Gina found it almost gratifying, this image of the president with his coat over his chair, preparing to eat her food.  She only hoped he liked it.  Her food always tasted bland to her.  But others, like Frank, one of her business associates, for instance, swore by it.  She could give those Top Chef contestants a run for their money, he always said.

     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.