Apache Dawn, - [little bear else holmelund minarik txt] 📗

what she did had felt so good—but he had at least tried to get her to stop. He could still tell himself he had put up a valiant defense, but she was just…

His breath came faster as he leaned forward onto his polished desk and remembered that distant morning. He could still picture it like it had happened just hours ago. The way she’d smiled at him with those half-closed brilliant blue eyes. He remembered those full, pouting lips as she’d slowly, seductively crawled to him across their rumpled bed. The gentle sway of her bare, snow-white breasts as she crawled to him had taken his breath away. The smell of her flowery perfume wafting on the air currents from the bed to his nose mixed with the tangy smell of their lovemaking the night before, nearly driving him wild with renewed lust.

He shuddered, eyes closed. She had been perfect. Perfect in every way. The perfect, pliable, willing sex slave, and she’d loved every second of it and begged for more. She was there whenever he needed her: for release, just for fun, or to relieve the boredom of office. Once—he grinned at the memory—he had just wanted to look at her naked body by firelight while he drank himself into oblivion.

She had—and he was sure the mysterious Reginald had been involved—somehow found a way to get a job in his very house, on his personal staff. Right under the nose of his wife and the Secret Service who were always underfoot. And no one was the wiser.

Jayne Renolds. Her name was seared in his soul. His greatest passion, his greatest disgrace.

The Vice President’s fingers slowly inched toward the phone to call her into his office. Something stopped him. A blurry thought, a warning from deep inside the increasingly small part of his mind that was still revolted by her touch.

She was the one who'd started this whole mess that now threatened to swallow his family and his career, his legacy, and even the country in an atrocious scandal. She’d somehow managed, through her shadowy “employer,” to overcome a 27-point deficit at the polls, several costly gaffes by both himself and his running mate at the last minute, and still get them into the White House. He was sure something underhanded had taken place for everything to have worked out the way it did, but there was never even a whiff of it from the media. The Democrats’ victory had been declared a model for future underdogs. ‘Never believe the polls’ became the mantra of the President-elect.

True to his word, Vice President Barron had voted in favor of Jayne’s employer’s wishes on a few minor issues when certain funding bills were deadlocked in the Senate. He had laughed his way to the podium on those votes.

At the time, he’d thought that Jayne had attempted to blackmail him over some useless appropriation bills for farm subsidies. The opposition in the House had been stiff—both Democrats and Republicans had balked at signing off on the bills because of some claims of illegal funneling of money to black-ops programs involved with the NSA, CIA, or some other alphabet-soup agency. Harold Barron could not have cared less. The bills were harmless as far as he knew, and voting the way Jayne told him kept her between his sheets and his secret safe. It was a win-win situation.

And his sweet Jayne had kept her word the last few years; she’d never told a soul of his dalliance with her, never threatened again, and was always ready to wrap her legs around him and purr like a kitten.

Now he smiled, thinking of her swaying hips as she’d walked away from him earlier that morning, adjusting her blouse with a sly smile after his hand went free-range roaming. He'd been on a routine arms-reduction call with his counterpart in Russia, mostly listening to scientists read numbers over the line.

He suddenly frowned. She’d put him in contact with “Reginald,” the voice on the odd phone calls he’d been receiving over the past few years. His head felt thick, like he was in a dense fog. He tried to remember. At first, the calls had been rather innocuous. The well-mannered young man on the other end had explained that he represented Jayne’s employers, and he was merely checking up on their “investment.” Over time, it became obvious that her employers really wanted him helping them from within the Oval Office someday. They wanted a pet president.

Reginald had called every few months, checking up on the newly elected Vice President, asking after his needs or wants, ensuring that Jayne had been keeping him well satisfied, always asking after his wife and children. It had been very cloak-and-dagger in the beginning, but then after the two farm bills had been passed—thanks to the tie-breaking vote by the President of the Senate, namely, Harold Barron—the phone calls had became more of an annoyance. Reginald had been satisfied and had not asked for any other favors. He’d just wanted to talk, it seemed, about nothing and then again, everything. Endless, time-consuming, random conversations that Harold had felt compelled somehow to sit through. Of course, Jayne’s persuasion hadn’t hurt…

Apparently, as far as the debt owed for getting elected was concerned, Harold was free and clear. He got to “keep” Jayne as a perk of office. And what a perk she was. Harold sighed contentedly. The woman was insatiable.

That had all changed this past year, though. He frowned again, his mind coming up for air in a fog of images and memories of Jayne. He found it increasingly hard to concentrate on anything else anymore. Reginald constantly floated ideas to him. Numerous “what-if” scenarios were presented to him during their phone conversations, many of which seemed strange at the time, only to be forgotten. Weeks later, when he was doing something completely unrelated, those ideas would flash through his mind unbidden, like shooting stars. It was as if Reginald had planted them in his mind and sat back to wait for the seeds of thought to germinate.

Lately, he’d been thinking more and more about those innocent little conversations he'd been having with Reginald. What if, indeed…

Something in his core told him to be careful, that he was treading a dangerous line. He just couldn’t put his finger on what was so dangerous.

Then, finally, the full-court press. Jayne had seduced him every single chance she could get him alone during the past month. He’d been so physically drained lately that he could hardly think straight. That was when Reginald’s ideas finally started to make sense. That was when Harold started to get scared.

And now, he realized, he was in checkmate. To renounce Jayne and sever his ties to Reginald would be…unthinkable. Leaving aside the fact that she would expose all their dirty laundry to the press, ruin his career and family, she would take her sweet, sweet body away from him forever.

He could lose power, he could almost bring himself to believe he could lose his family, for he felt confident they would forgive him in time. But he could not, would not, deprive himself of the joy Jayne brought to his physical being.

But to agree to Reginald’s plan, to follow through…would…would be…what? Treason was too light a word. He would replace Benedict Arnold as the most infamous American turncoat. The people would see him hang, or they would tear apart D.C. looking for him.

Although, a little voice nagged within him, if it worked…and if things happened as Reginald predicted…then I would only be a temporary traitor. When the people realized what his swift, courageous actions meant, how he'd almost single-handedly saved the country from ruin…He would be hailed as the next George Washington. The people would clamor for him to lead them to a brighter, more prosperous future, he was sure of it. The allure that ambitious future held was almost palpable.

And wasn’t he grooming himself to be president anyway? That’s what the party bosses had been pumping in his ear the past four years. Just help the President get re-elected and play it safe in the second term, they said. We’ll make you the next president, they said. Trust us, they said.

He got up and walked over to the side table, under a portrait of a frowning John C. Breckenridge, youngest man ever to be elected to the Vice Presidency. A dour-looking 36 year old, if ever there was one. Harold poured a scotch on the rocks and sipped the single-malt slowly, while he considered the sour-faced 19th-century politician.

President Barron. He rather liked the sound of that. Yes indeed, he liked the sound of that a great deal. Feeling a familiar warmth in the pit of his stomach, he smiled and walked over to the phone on his desk, typed in a certain code and sat on the edge of the desk to wait. He sipped his drink and thought of the future and what promise it held. There would be a lot of suffering at first, but in the end, the future would be…glorious. He’d made his decision. He toasted the portrait of frowning Breckenridge.

“Alea jacta est, brother,” he said, glass held high.

As he finished his drink, the door to his office opened and Jayne Renolds flowed into the room like a force of nature. “I got your call, sir,” she announced formally with a wry smile. She turned and locked the door behind her, casting a coy glance over her shoulder. His eyes drank in her body. Her eyes locked on his as she removed her glasses and unfastened the bun on the back of her head, letting the sunshine she held back there tumble down to her shoulders and beyond.

“You look like you’ve come to a decision, Mr. Vice President.”

Harold grinned at her sultry voice. “Why yes, yes I have.” He cleared his throat and tried to strike a regal pose on the corner of his desk. He adjusted his tie rakishly. He was young, athletic, in the best shape of his life. He puffed his chest out. “Does that please you?”

“Very much so,” she purred as she unbuttoned her tight blouse and revealed her own majestic chest to him. She paused to let him admire and then took two graceful, hip-swaying, heart-racing steps closer. He could smell her familiar perfume and felt that intoxicated feeling thunder over him again. Being around her was such a rush. He couldn’t explain it and didn’t care at the moment why he always felt this way around her. She let herself be swooped up in his arms with a tiny squeal and