"Sex scandal rocks the Farmers' Party and Deputy Prime Minister Kelvin Waters resigns amid further rumors of sexual dalliances with Press Secretary Serena Plim. Insiders say--"
"Whatever the hell they want to say! I don't give a flying fuck!" Serena killed the radio with an emphatic flick of her wrist.
Sexual dalliances! It wasn't true, dammit!
She wanted to scream out loud that Kelvin was a friend and nothing more.
That wasn't strictly true, but it wasn't as bad as the blood-sucking press were making out. While she loved Kelvin, like no one she'd ever loved before, there was absolutely no sex involved. Her love was platonic.
Completely, totally, honestly platonic!
A sob slipped from her throat at the pitiful way that sounded. What the hell was wrong with her?
Was it wrong to loyally devote ten years of your life to a hunk of a man and not fuck his brains out at least once a day? Maybe not wrong, but incredibly stupid. Especially when she didn't fuck anyone else either.
But stupid was one thing she was not. She was a political and media guru, according to her supporters, though where they were now she didn't know. She'd taken Kelvin from complete anonymity to the brink of pulling off a brilliant political coup. Then Priscilla, his conniving wife, had spouted all over the press that Kelvin and Serena were--she could hardly believe the press release--spending all their free time together, to the "grave detriment of our marriage."
Grave detriment? What sort of phrase was that? Bloody brilliant, that's what it was. It was the line Serena had written for Kelvin's first televised campaign speech, the speech the pundits said had gotten him elected. "My fellow Australians, the reprehensible actions of the current government pose a grave detriment to our..." Blah, blah, blah. The conniving bitch had even put it in bold, for God's sake. Bitch!
The "wronged" Mrs. Waters had played into the hands of the press, the opposition, even those conniving sods in Kelvin's own party. His political cachet had evaporated completely. He had no choice but to fall on his sword. In this age of fundamentalist politics he was a sudden and complete liability.
Poor Kelvin. Politics had become his life. This would destroy him. Her eyes stung with the tears she'd been barely holding back for the last four hours. When he'd resigned at the press conference she'd completely lost it.
Her mind had numbed, becoming a lump of stone. Had she been able to think clearly she would have rallied him to fight another day. Not let him crumble. She couldn't believe he hadn't fought back. He meekly denied an affair and resigned "for the good of the country."
His surrender had left her with nothing. She was out of a job and out of his life.
That's when she'd had a brain explosion. That was the only way she could explain what she'd done. She'd rushed to their government car and drove west from Canberra as fast as she could. She certainly couldn't face the press. How could she honestly deny the love she had for him, even if they hadn't so much as kissed?
Well, not with tongues anyway. A chaste kiss on her birthday ... he always remembered her birthday.
Another sob convulsed her body.
The sudden need to sleep, to find somewhere dark and safe, became overwhelming. Serena found a motel on the outskirts of a small town and paid cash for a room. She sat in the dark for an hour, her mind completely blank. She realized she'd fallen asleep when a knock on the door woke her. It was Kelvin.
"Serena..." He took her into his arms and looked deeply into her eyes. "I've told Priscilla. It's all over."
Then he kissed her. The urgency of his kiss, the kiss she'd so longed for, took her completely by surprise. The strong bands of his arms crushed her to his chest. His lips devoured hers and they stumbled backward onto the bed.
In a frenzy, they undressed each other, showing no regard for buttons or zips until they were naked and locked in a deep embrace.
After a minute Kelvin released his grip and, with such sweet tenderness, held her face between his hands. He caressed her cheeks and then traced the backs of his fingers lightly along the sensitive flesh of her neck. With deliberate and agonizing slowness he moved his fingers down to her straining breasts. She gasped in anticipation as he circled the sensitive skin surrounding her nipples before stroking the erect nubs. A spear of electricity lanced from her breasts to her brain and to her superheated pussy.
Every place he touched burned with an intense heat she thought would engulf her in flame. She didn't care. She had him at last. He hadn't deserted her. He'd come to claim her as his own.
Serena cried out when his fingers found the moist lips of her pussy. Her body tensed, preparing itself for him. She could feel the hot shaft of his cock against her thigh.
"Fuck me now," she said.
Kelvin opened her thighs wider and slid between them. He propped himself on his elbows and held his cock poised at the entrance of her pussy. "Serena..." Her heart was racing in anticipation. "Serena," he repeated.
Behind the glint of lust and love in his eyes she fancied she saw something. A deep sadness which mirrored hers at all the time they'd wasted. He opened his mouth as if to say something more but she silenced him with a fingertip to those luscious lips.
"We've waited so long," she said. "Now is our time."
Kelvin nodded. A slight shift of his hips and his cock was pushing her pussy lips open. A wave of heat flushed through Serena's body. Her heart skipped a beat and her head swam. She pulled his head down and kissed him furiously, parting his lips with hers and thrusting her tongue deep into his mouth.
As she hoped it would, Serena's onslaught seemed to quell any hesitation in Kelvin's mind. He returned her kiss with equal energy and at the same time thrust into her with one glorious push that fed the length of his thick shaft to her hungry pussy.
Serena grunted wantonly each time he pushed into her. She shifted her hips to accommodate his vigorous fucking, wrapping her legs about his hips, pulling him into her, driving him on.
Her body was on fire. A fine sheen of sweat coated her tingling flesh as she surrendered herself to their mutual lust. The fullness in her pussy was spreading into her belly and upward to her breasts.
She gasped for breath as he drove relentlessly into her. Her mind seemed to be poised on the edge of an explosion as the energy of her pent-up lust expanded like a balloon inside her and suddenly blossomed into orgasm.
Serena cried out as her pussy clenched around the steel shaft of his cock.
Kelvin howled as he came, his body shuddering with each forceful pulse of his cock. She clung to him, holding him tightly as if trying to meld their bodies by sheer force.
He lifted his head and gazed down at her. For the first time since he'd entered politics, he looked as if he was at peace with himself. Then his serene expression disappeared, replaced by a scowl of intense concentration.
"What is it?"
Without explanation he got up and opened the door, stepping out onto the landing. Seemingly unconcerned with being naked, he sniffed the air again like he had a cold. "Damn!"
"What is it?" she repeated.
He turned back to her, his face a mask of despair. "I can't do this to you." He looked deep into her eyes. "Sleep," he commanded. Her mind clouded and she felt as if she were sinking into a bale of wool, its warm embrace comforting and safe. "I'm sorry," she thought she heard him say before the blackness overtook her.
When Serena awoke, she was alone.
For a long moment she lay quite still, trying to make sense of what had happened. It took a force of will to convince herself that she and Kelvin had actually made love. She could feel his presence inside her, so it hadn't been an illusion or a dream, though the memory certainly had a dreamlike quality.
But he'd left her. In all their time together, through all the quiet desperation of being near him but feeling so alone, she'd never felt as abandoned as she did at that moment. "You idiot," she scowled.
She wished it had been a dream and nothing else. A fantasy like she'd had so many times before. A dream was something she could easily live with, but to love her and then abandon her? How could he? Yet, it had felt so right. She shivered at the memory. "It was a dream," she said out loud, and because she'd had so many similar dreams she almost convinced herself she was right.
I have to get on. The urge to get moving was as powerful as the one yesterday which had commanded she find the motel. She showered quickly and dressed in the clothes she'd strewn on the floor. She dropped her purse and as she picked it up, she noticed something shiny on the floor beneath the bed.
It was a gold cufflink, one of Kelvin's. The dam burst as what she'd tried to suppress as a dream was made tangible. She dropped to the bed and wept. He had been here. He'd made love to her. He'd howled like a wild beast as he came and pumped his seed into her.
Frowning, Serena opened her purse and dropped the cufflink in. Ten minutes later she was back on the road heading west. It was a dream, she repeated to herself over and over. She could live with a dream, but not a memory of one hour of passion. That would be too cruel.
Blinking away the stinging tears, she tried to concentrate on the road as she sped along the highway amid alternating rolling pastures and thick bush land. Kelvin had started his political career in country like this. And she'd been there with him. She'd taken him from a naïve political hopeful to the second most powerful position in the country, and then to the brink of greatness.
When she'd first seen him at a town meeting he'd been a stumbling, blue-eyed cattle farmer arguing for water conservation, but she'd sensed his potential even then. Kelvin had made the sitting member stammer and he'd earned a standing ovation from the crowd. They'd been seduced by his calm melodious voice, his solid logic and his genuine sex appeal. Serena's chest tingled as it had that first moment.
I've wasted ten years of my life. The hollowness in her belly chilled with the realization that her devotion and loyalty had all been for nothing. Her love had been for nothing. Anger bubbled inside her. Kelvin's denial to the press that they'd ever had a relationship was one thing, but the idea of pernicious bitch Priscilla getting what she wanted was another.
Serena took a deep calming breath. She couldn't blame Priscilla too much. If she'd been Kelvin's wife and thought she was losing him, she'd do whatever she could to keep him. But would she destroy him in the process?
Certainly not! What sort of love was that?
Not the love Kelvin had for his bitch of a wife, that's for sure. The fact was that even though Kelvin loved Serena, he couldn't, wouldn't, leave his wife. He was loyal to the end. And he'd paid the price.
Kelvin and Serena had tortured each other with their unrequited love for ten years. Serena had understood that and had accepted it.
Now that was love.
And a lot of good it did her.
Kelvin threatened to haunt her. I have to get over him. This is a wake up call. I'm not too old to find someone new. Maybe I should fuck the first good looking cowboy I find. Just fuck him and move on. Men are infamous for that.
She recalled her first love. He'd stayed with her for a whole weekend. Her second boyfriend hadn't had much more loyalty or fidelity either. He dumped her after a month. Then there was the professor at college. He lasted a semester before getting a teaching position in the US and leaving her with nothing but a farewell written hastily in the fly-leaf of his latest book.
Then she'd met Kelvin.
He was such a gentleman. Maybe that was why she loved him. He'd never made a pass at her. The times they had come in close physical proximity, so close to kissing, he'd pulled back.
She respected him for that.
She choked back a laugh when she thought of the crusty old politicians and the wily journalists who'd chatted her up at the member's bar, trying to get some dirt on Kelvin. Hell! She could've fucked her way through Canberra if she'd taken them all up on it.
Men.
Only Kelvin redeemed them in her eyes. But she had to forget him once and for all. No more fantasies. Last night would be her last.
So, what to do?
"I've got three choices," she said to the road stretching out before her. "One, be celibate, but I've had enough of that. Two, become a sexual predator, which will be a lot of fun, or three, find a loyal, trustworthy man without a load of baggage." Right. Where was she going to find a nice thirty-something hunk with no baggage?
"So. Number two it is." She laughed, thinking of her favorite romance novel. "I'll be the lusty rake preying on the helpless opposite sex. I'll be the modern day female Mr. Wickham!"
What an idea. She sighed deeply. It would be easier said than done to be a twenty-first century Mae West. I'll have to lose a bit of weight to be a femme fatale. Serena took another long, deep breath. The headache that had been developing since Priscilla's bombshell was asserting itself once again, creating a dull, persistent thrumming inside her brain.
Serena rubbed her aching eyes. Looking back up she swerved to avoid a suicidal sheep that had jumped into her path. Adrenaline flowed hotly through her veins and she took the skidding car careering down a dusty side road. The car bounced wildly over the dry corrugated trac, and it took all her skill to keep it under control. Her foot, however, didn't leave the accelerator and she didn't slow down one jot.
She made no attempt to stop or turn back either. It didn't matter to her where this track actually led. She needed somewhere to hide and give herself time to think.
For another twenty minutes the dry and dusty Australian bush swept past. Behind the curtain of tall eucalypt trees were vast pastures, filled with cattle, sheep and kangaroos. The heartland of the country in which she hoped to find the peace and quiet she so desperately needed.
What was that?
Something black and fast was running between the trees parallel with the road. Was it a kangaroo? No, it was definitely running. A dingo? No, it was too big and anyway, it was black--dingoes were red, weren't they?
It was carrying something in its mouth. Was that a sheep? The sheep?
She braked. The car skidded to a stop. A cloud of dust swirled around her car. The thing rushing through the brush disappeared.
Now I'm seeing things. I'm going crazy. She lowered her head and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. I need to find another motel, get a room and bury my head in a pillow for a week.
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