by J J Arias
“Retirement?” she squealed. “Jesus, at your age I was not planning for retirement.”
Mila smirked. “I’ve had a financial planner since before I was old enough to drink. I can’t stress enough the importance of diversification.”
Governor Fernandez cocked her head to the side as she raised her eyebrows and nodded. The international sign for wow, I’m impressed.
“On top of all that, it gave me some superhuman core strength,” she joked.
“Superhuman, huh?” The color in the governor’s tanned cheeks rose as she asked.
Mila knew in her bones that she was flirting, or wanted to flirt. She slapped her tensed abdomen. “Yoga helped too,” she admitted.
She chuckled deep in her throat. “And that’s what they paid you thousands of dollars for?” Her arched eyebrow presented a challenge Mila didn’t want to let slide.
“No,” she admitted, giving her a soft shove that sent her tumbling backward until she landed in a seated position on the chest press machine in the middle of the room. “Siri, play Glory Box,” she called over her shoulder before the stunned woman could so much as close her mouth. “This is what they paid me for,” she replied in a husky whisper as the music played over her portable speaker.
With unwavering eye contact, Mila slinked toward the governor and pressed her shoulders back against the padded, red vinyl. Much to her surprise, the woman didn’t drop her gaze or resist the advance. The dark brown eyes held her like a tractor beam.
Moving with the slow, bluesy beats of the music, Mila worked her way down her boss’ body. Heat radiated off her at meltdown levels and penetrated Mila’s being.
Floating her hands just above the governor’s thighs without making contact, Mila dropped to a crouching position before moving back up at a glacial pace, slowly swinging her hips to the rhythm.
Mila licked her lips and left them parted as she reached up to the metal bars overhead. She gripped one at a time, stretching her torso to show off her physique. Locked in unyielding eye contact, Mila pulled her body up in a single graceful motion. Governor Fernandez stared hungrily as she lowered herself just above the woman’s lap.
Her muscles ached as her lower back tensed, but she didn’t dare drop her thighs. She wanted to tease the woman, be just within a breath of her touch without actual contact. In that position, floating in what would’ve been a reverse cowgirl if they were naked, she writhed to the languid beat.
When she’d decided the governor had already had enough, she picked herself up and did a slow twirl to dismount gracefully. With her back to Governor Fernandez, she ran her hands over her own thighs and backside as she danced just inches from her parted thighs.
Mila had done this enough times to know that her boss would have given anything to reach out and touch her. She could feel the desire pulsating off her like a heavy bass line. Spinning back around to the beat, Mila continued running her open palms over her chest. The governor’s starved eyes followed her hands, followed as they traveled lower, pressing against her abdomen and then her inner thighs.
Fuck, she thought, realizing that she really did want to press her body against the sexy woman watching her. There was an ache at her core that she wanted more than anything to relieve. That she wanted the woman in front of her to relieve.
Mila inhaled her perfume. Her warmth. The only thing she could take without crossing the line into physical touch. It wasn’t enough, but she closed her eyes and reveled in it.
As the song neared its end, Mila leaned in close to Governor Fernandez’s parted lips. She exhaled softly against them before darting her eyes between dark eyes and soft mouth. Mila couldn’t help but moisten her own lips.
“That’s what they pay me for.” Her whisper was barely audible against the shell of the woman’s ear.
When the song ended, Mila’s body was an electric buzz of unexpended energy. She decided to play a strong hand, and without sparing the stunned woman another glance, took her things and left.
* * *
Mila felt more than a little strange walking out of the governor’s mansion in skintight black leather pants, a black bra, and a very expensive play on a white tank top. Even her hair in finger-combed curls felt dangerous. She waited until she was in the car to pull on her razor thin high heels and apply some blood red lipstick.
She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to waltz into the mansion after-hours and decided to sleep in her own condo. No one had told the fellows they couldn’t come and go as they pleased, but it wasn’t like they had keys and Mila didn’t want to experience the awkwardness of asking for permission.
“God, I’ve missed you!” Amanda cried excitedly as soon as she crawled into her car. “It’s like you’re in the freaking witness protection program,” she said, running her claw-like acrylic nails through her newly dyed and feathered bubblegum pink hair.
“Ditto,” she replied, leaving a dark kiss on her high cheekbone.
Amanda had been her closest friend for years, and in the preceding months they’d gone from seeing each other every day to sporadic meetings. They’d video chatted often, but it just wasn’t the same. Mila was glad to see her best friend and decompress. Maybe she’d have some insight into what was happening with the governor. There was no one else in the world she’d dare trust with her suspicions.
“Aww, you say that to all the girls,” she joked before shifting her Mini Cooper into gear and screeching her tires over cobblestone.
Friends Mila hadn’t seen since she’d gone into captivity were waiting with good drinks and good music. She made her way to the studio’s open kitchen, giving hugs and exchanging pleasantries along the way.
“Are you still into French 75s?” a friend who’d situated himself behind a makeshift bar on the poured concrete counter asked over the loud music. The bright smile plastered on his face reflected his eagerness to play bartender.
Mila raised an eyebrow as if tempting him to guess. With a wink, he slung a tea towel over his shoulder and cracked his knuckles before grabbing a drink shaker and setting to work on crafting something delicious as they chatted. When he was finished, she took her champagne cocktail and mingled for a while before joining Amanda on the rooftop patio.
The music was more mellow on the roof, and significantly quieter. The late-autumn evening was cool and breezy as she plopped down on a plastic lawn chair and sipped her third drink. They were deceptively sweet, but she enjoyed the mild buzz.
“Well,” Amanda started expectantly, popping open a new bottle of sparkling wine. “Are you going to tell me what the hell has you so busy that I can’t even see you? Do you plan on coming home soon?”
Mila licked her lips before offering a lopsided smile.
“You staying there doesn’t have anything to do with that paparazzo dude, does it?” she asked with a knowing grin. “What do you have up your sleeve?”
Mila scanned the rooftop for attentive ears, but there were only handful of people around. The last smokers of her generation huddled in a corner, and a couple having a hushed argument in whisper screams were in a different corner. None of them were paying attention to them.
“This is going to sound kind of crazy,” she started, shifting in her seat so she could fully face her friend and lean in close.
“Oh no.” She winced. “Am I going to hate this?”
Mila chewed the inside of her mouth. “I think Governor Fernandez might kind of have the hots for me,” she mouthed in a barely audible volume.
“What?” she leaned in as she asked. Mila rolled her eyes and repeated herself, whispering directly into her ear canal. She snapped back to look Mila in the face. “You’re out of your damn mind,” she said loudly, garnering a glance from half the smokers.
“Shh,” she shushed, holding out her hands as if that could keep Amanda’s jaw from dropping.
Amanda’s face morphed from disbelief to amusement. “You think everyone is in love you,” she decided once the group had gone back to their own conversat
ion.
“This time I think it’s true. I can’t really explain it,” she said, addressing the question her friend would ask next. “It’s just this feeling I get. When she looks at me,” she paused as her mind flashed to the governor’s dark eyes like hot hands all over her body. “I can just feel it.”
“She’s a married woman,” Amanda stated the obvious before taking a swig directly from the magnum bottle. “And, like, old enough to be your mother.” Her tone made it plain that the age bothered her more than the marriage.
Mila rolled her eyes as she relaxed back into the chair and crossed her legs. “She couldn’t be my mother. She’s maybe nine years older than me.”
Amanda narrowed her eyes and used her claws to fish her phone out of her bra. “Wikipedia says she turned forty-five in June,” she informed her as she glanced at Mila expectantly. In her silence, she continued. “Did you knock your head and forget you turned twenty-six in August? Because we threw you a pretty bad ass party and it was only a few months ago. So, yeah, that makes a nineteen year difference, not nine.”
Under fire from such sarcasm, Mila opted for finishing her drink before responding. “Well, whatever. She looks good for her age and I’m very mature,” she muttered as she reached for Amanda’s bottle after emptying her glass.
“Are you serious about this?” Amanda asked, clearly unsure if Mila was just drunk, joking, or both. “Are you into her?”
Mila shrugged and took another swig from the bottle before passing it back. “She’s smart, hot, and kind of has this ice queen thing I’m not not into,” she admitted with a slight slur in her words.
Amanda shook her head. “You’ve lost your damn mind,” she repeated with conviction. “So let’s say she wasn’t old enough to be your mother, even though she is, she has a husband. How do you get around that?”
Being confronted with that obstacle caused Mila to pause for a moment. “I don’t get the sense they’re all that together. I’ve never seen him at the mansion. I’m not sure he even lives there,” she said, coming to the conclusion as she spoke.
“Marriage of convenience, you think?” Amanda asked. Mila nodded. After a few minutes of silence and sips of champagne, Amanda spoke again. “Putting her entire husband aside for a moment, what about the fact that she’s not into women?”
“We don’t know that,” she snapped defensively.
“Uh, well, the available facts, mainly that she is married to a man, strongly suggest that she is not into women.”
Mila narrowed her eyes. “She could be bisexual. Or she could’ve chosen to marry a man for the right look as a politician,” she said using air quotes. “She leans conservative. It’s not like she’s going to wave a pride flag of any variety. Especially not when she started. It was still technically illegal in some states to even have sex with someone of the same gender then, you know?”
Amanda appeared to consider the information but shook her head again. “I just don’t want you to get hurt, and it seems like a real stretch. Like, okay, even if she weren’t married and she was interested in women, and you didn’t have a huge age difference between you,” she rattled off all the facts before listing more obvious issues, “she’s the freaking governor and you’re on her staff. How could she risk the optics of that? Not to mention your former career.”
With all the obstacles laid out in front of her, Mila’s broad shoulders slumped. “I’m being stupid, aren’t I?”
“Not stupid, babe,” Amanda said as she reached out and squeezed her hand. “You just really have a knack for finding the most unavailable people to be interested in.”
Mila smiled but it was sadder than she intended. A therapist long ago had told her she liked challenges because it gave her something to work towards. She understood goals and plans better than risky emotions. Plus, there was something safe in wanting the unattainable. While she was sure that at the very least there was an attraction between them, she couldn’t deny that the woman often didn’t even want to be in the same room with her.
Amanda sprang to her feet and held out her hand. “Come on,” she demanded. “You look too good to sit up here all sad. Let’s go dance! Maybe we’ll find some people’s hot friends to make out with,” she joked.
Mila couldn’t help but chuckle. There was no ailment Amanda couldn’t cure with stranger-kissing.
* * *
“We got three more congressmen for the bill,” Josephine announced as she walked into the library in the governor’s mansion. “Well, one of them is a congresswoman,” she corrected.
“What?” George replied as if she’d been a thousand miles away while staring at her laptop.
“Why are you so jumpy?” Josephine asked with a quirked eyebrow.
“I’m not jumpy,” she snapped. Josephine’s side glance reflected the fact that she wasn’t convinced.
A knock on the door broke their passive staring contest. “Come in,” they said in unison.
“I’ve got those papers you asked for,” Mila said as she poked her head in the door.
George nodded and ignored the surprised expression on Josephine’s face. She wished Mila hadn’t come in while Jo was there, but she couldn’t deny that she’d been wanting to see her again since that morning. She suppressed the alarm rising in the part of her brain in charge of self-preservation.
Mila sauntered in, sparing the seated George a glance with her painfully blue eyes, as she set down a stack of papers that could’ve been delivered by email.
The temperature in the room skyrocketed, but George resisted the urge to reach for her water and return the moisture to her mouth. She tried to tear her eyes from the woman’s soft skin and graceful movements, but all she could think about was her dancing.
After Mila had left the gym, George sat there for a long time. So long, that the lights designed to stay on while activity was detected had shut off. In the dark, she’d remained in the same position. Stunned. Entranced. Painfully turned on in a way she didn’t know was possible.
Now, with the woman’s perfume invading her senses and her presence igniting the flames of that long-dormant desire, George couldn’t find the will to turn her away. Even if it drew Jo’s suspicions. She hadn’t done anything wrong. They hadn’t so much as touched, she reminded herself. There was nothing inappropriate between them.
George swallowed hard and forced herself to take better than shallow breathes. Try as she might, she couldn’t look away from Mila until she’d left again. All in all, the exchange had taken no more than a few seconds, but time was glacial in her presence.
“What was that about?” Jo asked as she plopped down in the only seat not piled high with books and papers.
“What was what?” she countered innocently.
“Well, for one, it certainly doesn’t look like you loathe her existence anymore,” she said, examining her with an inquisitive tone.
George averted her eyes and pretended to be very busy reading her computer screen. Jo didn’t have to know it was a blank homepage with the state seal on it.
“Her presence used to bother you quite a bit just a few months ago,” she added, refusing to let it go.
“We get used to everything in life, don’t we? Bunions, boils, contagious rashes,” she said with a shrug. It wasn’t her best work, but she was hoping her casual demeanor would throw Jo off the scent.
Josephine crossed her arms over her chest. She wasn’t buying it.
George closed her laptop and sat back in her chair. “I’ll admit it, okay? The girl is smart and useful. Once the bill is done, I want to put her on something important. Leave the tedium to the others.”
“And that’s all? You’re looking at her like that because you want to put her on something of consequence?” she asked incredulously.
It wasn’t all, of course, but it was all she was willing to deal with right now. Plus, it was true.
Josephine leaned forward in her seat. “Georgie, how long have we known each other?”
George rolled her e
yes. She hated dramatic questions for effect. Jo knew damn well how long they’d been friends. “I guess we’re inching close to thirty years pretty soon,” she said with a tired sigh.
“And how many times have I told you what I’m about to say? You deserve to be happy,” she said, leaving a pause after each word to drive home the point.
“Don’t start this, Jo. I know what you’re thinking and you’re wrong,” she lied to herself and her best friend at once.
“Oh no, don’t do that with me. I can read those googly eyes you make at her, and I can see how proud you look when she stands up and talks in front of the entire office without a moment’s hesitation. I was there when she gave that presentation to the members of Congress that sponsored the bill. The pride was about to burst out of your thickheaded seams.”
“And what’s so unusual about being proud of my team? They work hard and I always acknowledge and reward that,” she countered with unparalleled confidence.
“George Washington Fernandez, are you really going to spin something to me?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest before laughing so loudly the glass on the coffee table shook.
George narrowed her eyes. She hated her full name and Jo knew it.
“You mean to tell me that it is of no consequence that you allow her to waltz up into your most sacred space?” She gestured around the library as if George didn’t know what room they were sitting in. “When you don’t even let the staff clean it? Not just that, but now you work out together every morning, take the dogs on walks, work together until dawn—” She cut herself off dramatically. “Should I go on? Should I also point out that you don’t even like Nathan and me to go with you when you train the dogs?”