Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love (23 page)

“But Gina, I hadn’t even thought about that.
 
And don’t say that I slept with her.
 
I didn’t sleep with her.
 
I’ve never slept with her, at least not in the
made love to her
way that phrase implies.
 
We shared a bed.”

“But why?”

“Because we were at some conference or summit, I can’t even remember which, and we had been working late into the night.
 
I asked her to help me work on my speech, which she did.”

“Oh, so she was your speechwriter, too?”

“No, but I trusted her political instincts and wanted her to make sure I was hitting the right tone.
 
It’s not unusual.
 
And I ended up lying across the bed to take a nap.
 
Before I could fall asleep, she came in the room all excited because she had come up with the right hook for the speech, and she laid across the bed explaining it to me.
 
We talked about it and argued about it and we fell asleep.
 
Period.
 
The end.
 
That’s the long and short of it, Gina.”

Gina was staring at him, studying him, her eyes narrowed into that look of sincerity that he knew meant she was in deep contemplation.
 

“It was long before you and I even began dating,” he said.
 
“Liz was on my staff at that time.
 
She was my right hand person.
 
Nothing sexual happened.”

What Dutch didn’t realize was that Gina had already worked that part out.
 
She knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t banging Liz Sinclair, at least not while he was married to her.
 
And what he did with her before their marriage wasn’t something that she had a right to hold against him.
 
But she was picking up on a consistent theme.

“Why are you so protective of her?” she asked him.

This question stumped Dutch.
 
He looked at her.
 
“What do you mean?
 
She’s dead.
 
I wasn’t going to let those vultures masquerading as journalists sully up her name.”

“Her name was already sullied, Dutch, give me a break.
 
And I’m not talking about after her death.
 
But long before.
 
You’ve always been so protective of her.
 
And I want to know why?”

Gina was looking from Dutch’s right eye to his left, as if somewhere between the two eyeballs was the truth.
 
When Dutch wouldn’t answer, she answered for him.

“You loved her,” she said.

Dutch didn’t immediately respond.
 
But then he exhaled.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“I was very fond of Liz.
 
Don’t ask me why my heart always went out to that woman, but it did.
 
I saw something in her, Gina.
 
I loved her.”

Gina stared at him, and she stared for the longest time.
 
And then she nodded.
 
“Good,” she said.
 
“At least somebody did.”

Dutch looked at his wife, stunned.
 
It was essentially the same thing Liz had said to him the night she died.
 
That he was the only one who ever cared about her.
 

Gina moved closer to him, kissed him on the lips.
 
“Never hold anything back from me, Dutch,” she said.
 
“It’s not what they say that bothers me.
 
It’s what you don’t say.”

Dutch’s heart soared.
 
“I promise you, Gina, I’ll never hold anything back.”

“I can trust you?” she asked him, kissing him again.

Dutch wrapped both arms around her, his heart pounding, his mind so relieved he wanted to cry.
 
“Yes,” he said, “you can trust me with your life.”

She kissed him again.

“And after that Asian-Pacific summit,” he said, “we’re going to take another vacation.”

Gina smiled.
 
“Another one?
 
We just got back from the Virgin Islands.
 
Our critics are going to declare all we do is go on vacation.”

“And we’re going to say what a terrible thing to say, as we enjoy our vacation.”

Gina laughed.
 
Dutch began kissing her, nibbling on her ear.
 
“You are so not right,” she joked as he kissed her.
 
Then she realized this was the time.
 
This was the first chance she’d had to tell him about Marcus.
 

“Speaking of vacations,” she began, “you remember when I told you that Robert came to see me after we got back from his estate in the Virgin Islands?”

“I remember,” he said as he kissed. “He wants you to keynote his foundation dinner in Montreal.”

“Right.
 
But guess what?
 
That dinner’s the same weekend as the summit.”

Dutch didn’t even skip a beat by her pronouncement.
 
He just kept kissing on her.
 
“Is it?” was all he could manage to say.

“Yes, it is,” she replied.
 
“Which isn’t a big deal at all because I’ll just go there first and then meet you in Japan.
 
While I’m there, however, I’m also going to meet with Governor Feingold.
 
Robert said the good governor just might be open to granting Marcus a pardon.
 
Isn’t that great news?”

Dutch heard it but he didn’t fully digest it.
 
He was too caught up in loving her to fully digest anything but the sensual feel of her lips on his.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“Great news.”
 
And his kissing intensified even more and effectively ended any talk of summits and keynote speeches, and even the possibility of Marcus being pardoned.
 
Because, as always, he could never just kiss Gina.
 
He had to fuck her too.
 
Always.
 
And the way he was kissing her, and rubbing down her body, made her lose her focus on anything else too and just enjoy with unbridled joy what she just knew he was about to do.
  
She knew, before that trip took place, that they would have a more extended conversation on what it all meant.
 
But not here.
 
And certainly not now.
  

She loved the way he kept kissing her.
 
He kissed her lower lip and moved in a circular motion up to her tongue.
 
Their mouths moved in unison with their tongues, kissing long and hard and passionately.
 
And he didn’t stop there.
 
He moved down, along her chin and neck, and then back up to her mouth.
 
He couldn’t get enough of her mouth, as he took his tongue and played with her tongue in an expert symphony of sensual pleasure.
 
And then her tongue played with his tongue just as expertly, as she gave as good as she got.

Just as she loved the way he kissed, he loved her kissing style too.
 
He loved the way her lips gave him a sensation that swept through his body like an electrical current, and that always made him have to have more of her.
 
Always.

And as he continued to get more, he was lifting up her gown.
 
As their tongues played together, he was massaging her butt.
 
As she placed her hands on the sides of his face and took control of his mouth, he was sliding his penis between her legs.
 
As he rubbed that penis against the outer reaches of her vagina, moisturizing her for his highly anticipated entry, his lips were on her breasts, on her nipples, kissing and sucking her.
 
They were breathlessly making out like two teenagers at a prom, and the feelings became so intense that they knew it couldn’t go on much longer.

And it didn’t.
 

“Now, Dutch,” Gina demanded and then took his penis and slid it into the vagina he was teasing around.
 

Dutch’s heart soared when she took control that way.
 
Because every time she took that kind of control, they both knew this wasn’t going to be their slow, methodical fuck.
 
This was going to be a pounding.
 
She wanted it and he wanted to give it.
 

As soon as his penis entered her vagina, and her vagina constricted against his stiff erection, the thrashing began.

He moved her onto her back, got on top of her, and began a rhythm that started in an intermediate pace that only accelerated from there.

Gina could feel the sensation deep within her vaginal walls as he began an increasingly fast-paced pounding that left her holding onto his entire body for dear life.
 
But they were enjoying the ride.
 

Earlier today, when she refused his hand and fled from his sight, he thought he was going to die where he stood.
 
He knew it was the simple things, the errors of omission, which often brought down the best marriages.
 
And his fear was that his relationship with Liz Sinclair, a relationship that was actually among the most pure he’d ever had with a female friend, would be his undoing.
 
And to go from that fear, to this night of passionate love, was making him so heady, so emotional, that he began to worry that his heightened sense of love might actually harm Gina.

He had to slow his pace.
 
His pounding was getting too frenetic.
 
The sensations were becoming too intense.
 
But every time he thought to slow his roll, to ease up on her, she was bucking for more.

“Don’t stop!” she was crying.
 
“Why are you stopping?”

And Dutch would increase again.
 
Because he should have known better.
 
Gina could stand toe to toe with him in any arena.
 
Including the bedroom.
 
The idea that he had to go easy on her was ludicrous.
 
Gina was no weakling.
 
She was no inexperienced wallflower.
 
She was all woman.
 
The way she was screaming his name, enjoying every second of the thrashing he was putting on her, made him realize just how ludicrous going easy on her really was.
 
She was enjoying the ride just as intensely as he was.
 

They both were committed to their love.
 
They both were riding high on their love.
 
From the deafening sounds of his pounding, to the meshing sounds of their saturation, she was riding with the same sensual delight that he was riding with.
 

Dutch was overcome with that ride, with knowing how incredibly she rose to every occasion for him.
 
But that was his Gina.
 
There was no way he could ever put a price on what it meant to have the woman of his dreams underneath him right here and right now, a woman who loved him despite all of his faults; who catered to his every whim despite all of her own needs.
 
He found her lips again as he fucked her.
 
Tears appeared in his eyes as he fucked her.
 
Because to have this kind of ferocious love with this kind of partner, a woman who was a full-throttled, all-in, forget any damn daintiness in the bedroom partner like his beloved Gina, was priceless to him.

Crader and LaLa sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial hand in hand.
 
They had been walking around the National Mall and had decided to take a quick break.
 
It was a beautiful night in Washington where the movers and shakers, and the young love birds alike, were out in force.
 
Even though it was pushing eleven p.m.
 

Crader looked at LaLa as she sat there and people watched.
 
Her face was turned in such an angle that she looked as if there was an aura around her.
 
He knew it wasn’t.
 
He knew she was just LaLa.
 
But something was changing within him toward her.
 
Something so strong that he often wondered if it could be sustainable.
 
And when she turned and looked at him, because it was obvious he was staring, he smiled.