URIEL

The first time she sucks his cock, they're in a changing room of a Valise boutique in Georgetown and she's wearing a diaphanous ball gown, white as snow and wrinkled enough by design that his protests are squashed promptly as soon as she grabs a handful of him through his pants and orders him to sit down on the little ledge where her bag and clothes are piled on.

"If someone comes..."

"Oh, someone WILL come all right," she whispers above his head and then her tongue erases any intelligent thought beyond making sure his comm's closed.

He's never not in control. There's a big, red warning sign flashing somewhere in his cortex. This was not part of the plan.

"You closed the damn store... so relax!" she says when she comes back up for air from swallowing his cock. "Live a little, Agent Taylor!"

Neither says anything after that, busy as they are making sure they're as quiet as humanly possible. He's not going to grow old, that much he knows, so he might as well take her advice. His fingers roll yellow tendrils of her soft hair and push her where she's more than willing to go. She's already dancing behind his closed eyelids, her white Vera Wang making the White House press corps swoon as he'll tower over her, ever watchful. The next time he'll kiss her in a hidden corner of her changing room, she'll taste of champagne and him.

The first time she noticed him standing like a vigilant salt pillar outside of her father's bedroom, she was rummaging through the White House kitchen for the secret strategic ice cream stash, wearing cotton boyshorts and an oversized Harvard t-shirt. She tried not to glance at him at all in the same way he wasn't checking out her rotund bottom as she quietly walked by, even though she'd heard the maids giggle in Spanish about how the new agent was a hot piece of ass. She had filed it under "Miscellaneous" and moved out of the big white house to go to med school the very same week. She's just as curvy and peach-colored, though perhaps less fresh faced and much more prone to being distracted by tall, handsome men in suits.

"So which one of us fucked up?"

"M'am...?"

His expression of earnest confusion exasperates her ever so slightly as he's standing in the middle of her tiny apartment.

"My life's not interesting enough to have done anything out of the ordinary, so it must be you who's been bad enough to be stuck with this shitty assignment. What did you do to piss off Barnes? Isn't babysitting me at Georgetown beneath a presidential detail hotshot?"

"The Secret Service takes life threats against the First Daughter very seriously, m'am."

She snorts with genuine amusement and gestures around the book and clothes-strewn room.

"So... what? You're going to sleep on the couch?"

"No, m'am. I will occupy the same next door apartment your old detail used to be in... As soon as my shift ends. Beyond that, I'm going to be wherever you are."

She shrugs, the meaning of "increased security" finally seeping in and spelling the end of her former agents' discreet presence in her life.

"Well, I hope you'll find Intermediate Congenital Cardiothoracic Diseases fascinating because that's where we're headed next."

Forty minutes into the lecture on congenital birth defects, he's passed a note all the way back in the last row he's occupying. "Nice baseball hat. I bet nobody can tell you're 40."

Agent Taylor's rap on her door is unmistakable in its purposefulness and its lack of actual asking for permission.

"Are you out of coffee? Flour? Tofu?"

She juts her chin upwards at him, her nose peeking from behind the flimsy chain on the unimpressive looking door.

"Routine PM inspection. I need to see the view from your window."

"Are you gonna break down the door if I don't let you in?"

"With the full might of the Treasury Department."

"I'm... with someone," she says, wholly unamused.

"Jignesh Patel, your lab partner and your only close friend at Georgetown or in the whole of DC for that matter. His father owns a small drug store in Jaipur, India, his mom raises his two younger sisters, the eldest of which collects unusual rocks. You fedex her one every time you go camping. He wants to become a pediatrician, likes KFC, hip hop and is gayer than a treefull of monkeys. May I come in now?"

Her shoulders shrug in resolute surrender as she opens the door and lets him find his way through the dark hallway.

"I hope you brought cash for pizza. Jiggy's trying to be obnoxious. He brought me a Mandy Moore DVD in which she falls madly in love with her Secret Service detail who just happens to look like the lost member of a boyband. You ever been in a boyband?"

"Do the Navy SEALS count?"

One tall, bespectacled young man jumps off the couch as soon as he sees them, a stream of blabber erupting spontaneously:

"Oh... Hi! You... you look taller without the... baseball hat. I mean... " his hand hangs in the air, hopeful and awkward "I'm Jignesh. Please don't break every bone in my hand!"

"I apologize for the interruption, Miss Ashton. I'd like to talk to you in private. It'll just be a minute."

"Am I a national security threat?"

"No, sir. But while we're here, I'm going to have to ask you to temporarily hand over the spare key Miss Ashton gave you if you have it on you. The less of those floating around, the better."

"Absolutely. I'm ready to do my best to protect Ellie."

"Thank you, sir. Are there any other spare keys aside from Mr. Pattel's?"

"Not that I know of, but keep calling him Sir and Mr. Pattel and he's gonna spray his shorts."

He heads for the kitchen window to survey the street below and Ellie hops on the small granite counter which doesn't get much use for its original purpose anyway.

"There's been a new set of letters... He's getting bolder and more hateful. He sent a picture of the outside of your building to show us how close he can get to you."

"And to mock the world's most formidable security force," she says, biting into a juicy pear.

"Your father insisted that you should not find out about any of this and that the increased security measures be kept as discreet as possible."

"So you're basically disobeying a direct order from your Commander in Chief?"

"Do you know how to shoot a gun?"

"No. That's why I've got you. Don't change the subject. You're actually telling me the President of the United States told you to keep me in the dark about this and you're refusing to?"

"Yes, that's what I'm telling you. I don't think keeping it a secret from you is going to help you take the very clear threats to your life any more seriously than you take them right now."

TBC