Gina, however, was so shocked by his vulnerability that she, at first, stumbled over her words. “Er, I, of course we aren’t ashamed of you, Dutch, what are you saying? Why would your son, or any of us be ashamed of you?”
But that bewildered look in his eyes made her acutely aware that there was more to his story than she had suspected; something that had him ashamed of himself. And it wasn’t something neither he nor she wanted to discuss in front of anybody else.
Dutch took a seat in one of the Nursery chairs and held his son, his eyes mostly closed as he held him, while Jade, like the kid she sometimes came across as to Gina, sat next to her father with her head on his shoulders. Christian sat on the other side of Dutch and it seemed to Gina, watching them cling to Dutch, that he was surrounded by love. That made her feel good. And she stepped out, to discuss the president’s welcome home dinner with the White House chef.
By the time she returned, Dutch was putting a now sleeping Little Walt to bed and Jade was standing beside him at the crib, talking to him about her mother.
“She called last night,” Jade was saying, not realizing that Gina had reentered the Nursery.
“Did she?” Dutch said, paying more attention to carefully laying down his sleeping son than the import of what she was saying.
“Yes, sir. She’s coming to visit in the Fall. She wants to see you when she comes. She says she needs to talk to you.”
“What about?” Dutch asked.
“I don’t know. You know how eccentric Ma is. She’s not going to tell me. Will you see her?”
Dutch glanced at his daughter. “Do you want me to see her?”
“Yes, sir. Very much.”
“Then I shall,” Gina heard Dutch say and Jade smiled.
“Great. It won’t be until around September, you know how Ma is about leaving that bookstore for two minutes. But she’ll be here.”
Christian was the first to see Gina as she began moving toward the crib.
“Little Man sleep?” Gina asked as she moved toward the crib.
“That he is,” Dutch said, staring at their son.
Jade looked a little taken aback when she heard Gina had returned. She wasn’t sure if Gina had heard the conversation or not, but then concluded that she didn’t care. Instead of moving back and allowing Gina to stand beside Dutch, Jade, instead, placed her hand around her father’s waist and laid her head on his shoulders in a show of possessiveness that made Christian cringe. He understood that Jade loved her father above any other human being alive, maybe even above her own mother and certainly above Christian himself, but Gina was Dutch’s wife. She was crazy if she thought she was going to in any way supplant Gina’s place in Dutch’s heart. Christian hoped Jade realized that.
Gina stood beside Jade as they watched Walt. She saw the way Jade placed her arm around Dutch when she saw her. But that was okay by Gina. She wasn’t fighting any woman for Dutch’s affection, especially not his own daughter.
“Daddy,” Jade said, “why don’t we go into the theater room and watch a movie, and just forget about all of this scandalous nonsense.”
“Not right now,” Dutch said and then he held out his hand to Gina. “Ready?” he asked her.
Gina took Dutch’s hand. “Yes,” she replied.
“We’ll be back,” Gina said to Christian.
“Yes, ma’am,” Christian replied. “We won’t let Little Walt out of our sight.”
Gina smiled as she and Dutch walked out.
Christian walked up to the crib and stood alongside his wife. “What do you have against the First Lady?” he asked her.
Jade frowned. “I don’t have anything against the First Lady.”
“Yes, you do,” Christian assured her. “I see it now. You really have some animosity toward her. And I can’t figure out why. She’s been nothing but kind to you. To both of us.”
“That’s why what you’re saying makes no sense.”
“So why are you so thrilled, then, to have your father hook up with your mother again?”
Jade looked at him sidelong. “Hook up? What are you saying? My mother wants to speak with my father, and of course I’m happy that he’s agreed to do so. But I don’t see how that has anything to do with Gina.”
“So she’s invited to this get-together also?”
“No, she’s not invited,” Jade said as if it was obvious. “This get together, as you call it, is between my mother and my father. She has nothing to do with it.”
“That mother of yours didn’t even come to our wedding.”
Jade hesitated. “What?”
“Your mother. She didn’t even come to our wedding.”
“She couldn’t get away from the bookstore. I told you that.”
But Christian wasn’t buying it. “Sounded then and it sounds now like a lame excuse.”
“If you knew my mother, you would understand she meant no harm. She never does. She’s just the way she is. I mean, how many people you know would give up a lucrative medical practice to open a bookstore?”
Christian smiled. “You have a point there,” he said.
Jade laughed. “So don’t even try it about that wedding of ours. The point is, we’re married. Right?”
Christian looked at her. This was the Jade he loved. Smart, practical, fun. “Right,” he said, and kissed her just above Little Walt’s beaming head.
He stretched out naked in bed, flat on his back, as her tongue touched the sensitive tip of his engorged penis. He closed his eyes and moaned as she licked it there, in just the right spot, with just the right gentle slurps. And as she moved down, licking and sucking and now biting him in mock bites, he felt a sensation that could only be described as calming. She knew how to calm him. She knew how to relax him. She knew how to take him away from the world of care into her world, her place of refuge, where something as simple as her tongue, as her mouth, could make him feel so alive.
And when she moved back up the length of his rod and took it in her mouth in full, as deep down as she could bear it, his legs began to shuffle around as the feelings of ecstasy rumbled throughout his body. His breathing became laborious as he felt her breasts rubbing against his thighs, her mouth moving up and down in a simulation of intercourse that made him open his mouth in a guttural groan.
“Oh, G, I can’t, I can’t,” he began saying when the simulation was becoming reality. He grabbed her by the waist, pulled her up the length of him, and slid into her with an urgency that bordered on panic.
He began fucking her, in steadily increasing gyrations that became a rhythm in and of itself. And as his mouth found her breasts, and he sucked as he fucked her, Gina, too, felt the sensations intensify to the kind of heights only Dutch could take her to. She was supposed to be pleasuring him. She was supposed to be giving him what she felt he needed after that trauma he had to endure in San Francisco. But he was taking over, and he wasn’t being coy about it, either. He was banging the shit out of her. His body was so full of a need to release inside of her that he was rushing the moment. And she welcomed the rush.
He turned her over and lay on top of her, as his mouth found her mouth and they kissed and made love the way they were accustomed: long and hard. His penis kept sliding deeper and deeper with every push in. The walls of her vagina kept constricting tighter every time he slid against them. And he slid in and almost out, over and over, and it felt so invigorating to them both that the slushing sound of saturation, mixed with their moans and groans, filled their bedroom with a music as vibrant as a symphony orchestra. And they were in sync. Man and wife. Their arms wrapped tightly around the naked body of the other as if they would collapse, they would simply fall to pieces if they were to even consider letting go.
For nearly forty minutes Dutch thrust into Gina. Sweat began to pour from him as if he had been drenched in rain, but he couldn’t stop thrusting. Gina was breathing heavily too, as the feelings never ebbed but continued to accelerate every time his penis scraped against her walls and plo
wed, at just the right angle, into her g-spot.
She never dreamed a man could take her on this kind of high every time he fucked her, but that was exactly what Dutch Harber was able to do. He elevated her every time he entered her. He made her feel more womanly, more feminine, more his every time he thrust his hips against her and willed that thick rod of masculinity into making his mark deep inside of her. Because he was searing her with his mark. He was branding her. With every thrust, with every pound, with every loving slid in and almost out, in and almost out, he was making it crystal clear that she was his, and his alone.
And just when they thought it couldn’t possibly get any more intense, it did. He released inside of her with such a burst of sensations that she and he both clung onto each other as their bodies celebrated the full push in, and then the exhausted push out.
They collapsed. Their bodies so relaxed now, so spent, that all Dutch could do was to roll onto his back, and pull his wife against him.
Later, after they had laid there silently for nearly ten minutes, Gina, who was still in his arms, looked up at him. And smiled.
“You were magnificent,” she said.
Dutch smiled. Pulled her closer. “Thank-you,” he said.
“Compliment well deserved.”
“Not for that. Not for your compliment. But for your understanding. For getting me in this bed instead of in that Oval Office to face all of that what happened bullshit I’ve got to face.”
Gina stared at him, her big, brown eyes narrowing in that sincere look of hers. “What did happen, Dutch?” she asked him.
Dutch exhaled. “What have you heard?”
“That Liz came to your fundraiser drunk and that Allison was trying to get rid of her, but you wouldn’t let her. I heard that you insisted they take her up to your hotel room.”
“That’s correct.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why? Because she was drunk. Because she used to be a very close friend of mine. Because I couldn’t. . . Because I knew the person she could be.”
“So she went up to your hotel room and presumably was there when you arrived later that night.”
“Yes.”
Gina braced herself. “And you sobered her up and sent her on her way?”
Dutch paused. “No,” he said. “She was already sober by the time I got there, and we talked.”
“About what?”
“Her and the decisions she’s made. She just wanted to talk.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Dutch? What happened in that room? How did she end up in your bed?”
There was a long pause that nearly undid Gina. “We talked and while we were talking she began to get emotional. She broke down in tears. I held her while she cried.” A hesitation. “And then she went to the bathroom to freshen up. At least that was what I think she planned to do. So I freshened up my drink while I waited. I was exhausted, and ready to get to bed, but I figured she would be on her way in a few minutes anyway. So I waited. That was when I heard more crying. I headed for the bathroom to make sure she was okay. But she wasn’t in the bathroom. She was lying across my bed, sobbing. I went to her. She kept insisting her life was over, that she did it wrong and she just kept going on about how messed up her life was. So I . . .”
Gina’s heart was pounding. “So you what?” she asked him.
Silence.
“What, Dutch?” she asked again.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So I comforted her, Gina,” he said.
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Gina stared at him. This was Dutch. This was the man who had just fucked her brains out. No way did comfort mean what it normally meant. No way.
“So you comforted her?” She repeated what he had just said. She was still in his arms. Still wet from his penetration. “What does that mean exactly?” she asked him.
“I held her.”
“You held her while she cried in your bed?”
Dutch exhaled. “Yes,” he said. “She was in pain, and I held her.”
“Even though she had tried to come onto you when we were in Brussels and you knew how she could be?”
Dutch swallowed hard. “Even with that, yes.”
Gina turned away from him, on her back. “And?” she asked.
“And I comforted her. Her pain was genuine. Could she be an ass when she wanted to be, yes, she could. So could I before you made a man out of me.”
Gina knew he meant it as a joke, but she didn’t smile. She couldn’t.
Dutch turned serious again. “I held her. I know it was inappropriate, but she wasn’t beyond redemption, Gina. I’ll never believe that.” He then looked at his wife. “Go on, let me have it. I can take it.”
“I don’t like the fact that my husband had some crying woman in his bed, especially a woman like Liz, no I don’t. Let’s just keep it real.” She frowned, just thinking about it. “You didn’t make love to her,” she said as if it were a fact.
“Of course I didn’t make love to her,” Dutch said, pulling her back into his arms. He kissed her forehead. “I would never do anything like that to you.”
“I know,” Gina said, moving closer against him. He began massaging her bare butt.
“But?” he asked. He could just feel the tenseness now in her body.
“But it’s hard to hear, that’s what, Dutch,” she said. “Imagine if I were to tell you I allowed a man up to my hotel room and I comforted him in my bed. How would you feel?”
Dutch was stricken. “I would trust that you wouldn’t allow anything to happen.”
“Right. I trust the same about you. But how would you feel?”
Dutch hesitated. “I wouldn’t like it.”
“And I don’t like it. I hate it! A part of me wants to punch you in the nose.” Dutch smiled. “But I understand it. She came to you. You couldn’t turn her away.”
Dutch smiled. His heart swelled with love. “I should not have done it. I should not have even allowed her in my hotel room. But I saw something in her that night that unnerved me, Gina. It wasn’t just that she was drunk. She was broken. She was disappointed in herself, which was the worst kind of disappointment. She was at the end of her rope.”
“But if she left the way you thought, how did she end up dead in your hotel room?”
Another revelation to be made, Dutch thought. He exhaled. “I fell asleep,” he said.
“You fell asleep? With her in your arms?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
As soon as he admitted it, Gina moved to get out of his arms, to not have to juxtapose her in his arms with Liz Sinclair in his arms. But Dutch pulled her back.
“Gina, don’t,” he pleaded.
“I just need,” she started, but he was too strong. He wouldn’t let her go.
“Stay with me. Please. Don’t leave me.”
“I’m not leaving you, Dutch. I just need. . .” Then she exhaled. She didn’t know what she needed. Besides, she reasoned, it was done now.
They lay there, as he had her completely in his arms, her back now to his front.
“When I woke up,” he continued, “she was gone. At least I assumed she was. I didn’t see her, didn’t hear her. So I removed my clothes, and got under the covers and went to sleep. The next thing I know there’s knocking on the door. It was Crader and a couple of detectives. They said there was some disturbance in the room, that they had gotten a distress call from Liz. And that her voice was slurred. I told them Liz wasn’t even in my room. She wasn’t in my bed anymore, I didn’t see any sign that she was still around, so I assumed she had left. She had shed her tears and left. That was what she had planned to do when she initially went to freshen up. But they search the room, anyway, and found her dead in the bathroom, which didn’t help my credibility.”
This shocked Gina. “Could it have been an accident, Dutch? She could have taken some pills or something and passed out, hitting her head against the sink or something?”
Dutch nodded. “That’s what I belie
ve the autopsy report will reveal, yes. An empty glass was in the bathroom, I remember Crader saying he saw that. She mixed liquor with pills and she could have started passing out. When she fell, she might have hit her head. But she wasn’t completely unconscious. Maybe she called out to me, but I was sleeping the sleep of the very exhausted and probably would not have heard a hyena scream. They said she used her cell phone to dial 911, and that was how they were able to track where she was. They said her speech was slurred and that she cried for somebody to help her, but then the phone went dead. She could have lost consciousness then.”
“Did they find pills in the bathroom or an empty bottle?”
“I don’t know. It was immediately declared a crime scene and the Secret Service just as immediately removed me from the room.”
“They didn’t allow you to see her?”
“I saw her,” he said, then sighed. The memory still pained him. “But I wasn’t looking at whether there were pill bottles or anything else. I was just looking at her. At how tragic it all was. At how tragic she was.”
“They say you look peaceful when you die. Did you finally see her peace?”
Dutch shook his head. “No. There was nothing peaceful about it. She looked as anguished in death as she looked that night we talked. There was nothing peaceful about it.”
“But if it was suicide, why are they going around saying she died from some blunt force trauma to her head?”
“Because that was her most obvious injury. She was bleeding from the head, I remember seeing the blood. They won’t know anything for certain until after the autopsy results.”
“It has to be an accident. Or even suicide. But it can’t be murder, not with the Secret Service right outside your door.”
“I agree.”
“But it could be weeks before they’re able to release autopsy results.”
“They’ve made it their top priority, of course, but it’ll still take time.”
Gina leaned against him. “Poor Liz,” she said. “And your instinct to help her, because you saw something different about her that night, was apparently right. She was an accident waiting to happen.”
Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love Page 10
