"You're awfully good to me," he'd observed, a heavenly morsel of perfectly sweetened dark chocolate melting on his tongue. She didn't fall for any bitter cheap brand, obviously.
"I know you won't let yourself eat these days," she'd teased, "so it's just a bite."
He'd turned over and pressed closer, physically sated, her soft skin warming him from neck to toes, and fallen asleep to gentle kisses rained into his hair.
He sat across from her in a private room at the Manarai. His scheduled dinner companion, the Senator from Ryloth, had been rushed to hospital with a heart attack scare—why it hadn't happened sooner to someone Taa's size, Sidious didn't know—which was about the only thing short of death that would bring any Coruscanti to miss a reservation at the Manarai. So, Sidious had thought to ask her. Only the fact that it was a private room, with no more than three other tables, had convinced her, so worried was she about damaging her standing with her other clients.
Sereine Lumisol, Lumisol and Associates, sat picking at her first course, a lovely baked frondlike plant that spread its delicate leaves in an artistic design on the plate amid a pretty pattern painted in some kind of yellow sauce. "I don't know what this is, but it's delicious!"
"Melting, isn't it?" said Sidious. He dropped his voice to a whisper and added, "Rather like you last night."
His mistress shifted her eyes around at the other three tables and whispered, "Shh." Then, "I owe you one." Firelight backlit her from the crackling fireplace at their end of the room, and the candles on the table completed the picture. She glowed in a velvet dress the color of the fall trees outside the picture window, long red curls half up in an artful bun at the back of her head, the rest falling down her back.
He gave her a smile and a quick headshake, and she whispered, "You know I'd do anything for you."
A dart of annoyance pierced him at that. "No, you won't."
She blinked and her eyes shifted toward Coruscant's pinkening sunset. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I have my limits."
"So do I," Sidious whispered back in a teasing tone. "A conversation for a different location."
Sereine nodded and sampled more of the delicately baked leaf dish and closed her eyes for a moment, savoring, while he savored the shiny red curls, the shapely rust-orange-and-red picture she made, her just-right cleavage in the velvet. And yet …
Restlessness pricked at him. It was inevitable that they would come to this place in their sexual relationship, where their differences would start to override the novelty. Sereine liked it rough, yes, but not as rough as he took a yen to from time to time. She wouldn't be pressed and, as she guided him past some sensitive moments in his political career, he couldn't afford to alienate her. That perhaps galled him the most; that and the way she kept pushing to take charge in their intimate moments in a way he could not allow.
He'd had to defer to her enough in his public life as it was, and while the results had been impressive, his need for control would cede her no more ground.
If they hadn't agreed to an open relationship, this would have been where younger Palpatine would have seriously considered taking his leave. Unfortunately, she had made him enough of a household name now that older Palpatine would have a much tougher time doing exactly that. A Senator whose Emancipation Act speeches had garnered him medals from the Naboo King, Galactic Amnesty, a smattering of lesser humanitarian organizations throughout the Republic, and missed the Galactic Peace Prize by a hair, had exactly enough name recognition to leap to the Chancellor's box in due time, but far too much to have a private life.
He knew Sereine was in love with him; or thought she was, at any rate. He finished his appetizer, wondering suddenly what he had gotten himself into and if this latter, unwanted effect of his sudden career success, just three years into his service here, was also her design.
As if in answer, Sereine looked up from her plate. "I found Revé sick in the fresher again when I was in the office yesterday. Is she—"
"Pregnant again? Yes," Palpatine finished for her. He stopped as their waiter took their finished plates and brought the requisite palate-cleanser, topping off their wine before leaving their table.
Revé was the chief of staff Palpatine had inherited when he was appointed to succeed Vidar Kim as Chommel Sectorial Senator. "Baby Number Five, as I think you know."
"Is she resigning?" asked Sereine, leaning forward. "I don't know how she does it."
Palpatine shifted in his chair. "Yes, she is. She hasn't handed me the letter yet, but she has told me she and her husband want to relocate the brood to Naboo."
And now for it. This was where his political consultant/campaign manager would put that charming nose into what he considered to be a matter far outside her purview: who he chose to run his office.
Sereine tasted her sorbet. "Who are you thinking?"
Anger gripped Palpatine as he prepared for an argument. Sereine did not like Pestage; why? Who knew? "Pestage," he said.
His advisor's dark eyes fluttered to her plate. Trying to make the upcoming argument more palatable, no doubt. Sheev glanced into the deepening sunset, thinking of all the other toadys who would have been glad to accompany him to this reservation.
She said, "Trober Baley. You would be much better off with him. At this point in your career, at least."
He snapped his gaze back to hers in a way that made her flinch. "So, this is about my career."
She leaned forward, never so earnest as when she imparted professional expertise. "Yes, it is. Here you are, a name three years into your tenure here, so early in your career. People know you, they're going to take an interest in what you do next. And I have some news for you on that front, by the way."
His face must have betrayed the spark of his curiosity, because she continued, "But let me finish. Sheev, Pestage as chief of staff is just a bad idea. At least, it is for right now."
He scowled as their waiter arrived to take the sorbets and present the next course; a braised eel that undulated gracefully across an oblong blue plate among spearlike vegetables arranged to look like sea plants.
Palpatine waited for the waiter to clear off before he leaned forward and complained. "Sereine, you don't like Sate Pestage. You really don't. And I don't see why, considering he consented to lie to me for you during that infernal campaign." Which had probably saved it, loath though he was to admit it.
She sat back. "Sheev … I know he's useful to you, and I do know partially for what. And I don't want to ask about the rest." She delivered this last sotto voce. "And that's exactly his problem! The miasma around Mr. Pestage?" She sliced into her eel and took a bite. "Oh, this is delicious, Sheev, thank you. Hard, cold, and mean. And he's going to hire hard, cold, and mean, and he's going to train hard, cold, and mean."
She chewed, swallowed, and went on. "So anyone who walks into the Naboo Delegation, or has occasion to comm or call—what are they going to perceive, ever so subtly? Hard, cold, and mean."
"I trust Pestage implicitly," he said. "That comes first."
They ate in silence for a few moments while she furrowed her brow in thought. "How long has he been with you?"
"Longer than you have. Since I arrived here."
She closed her eyes, savoring the eel. At last she said, naming an assistant who had worked under Revé for some time, "Toré Petty said he was your main companion out on the town in those days. Him and Kinman Doriana."
Loose lips. Petty would be the first person he suggested Pestage to let go. This topic was ruining his eel. Sheev nodded once.
Her voice dropped low. "What sort of venues? Hard, cold, and mean?"
He endeavored to keep his face perfectly still.
She nodded once and said, "Good to know."
Now he was angry. He felt his face flush and it fueled his anger that he couldn't stop it. He watched the indigo sky extinguish the sunset and ate in silence.
His peripheral vision caught her posture change across the table; less rigid, caving compassionately toward him. What 'relationship' lasts more than three years when you aren't going to marry the woman, anyway? He had his career in hand well enough, had understood well what she had to teach him. Certainly Broi Tappan, or one of the PA's at KWE could do as well, with much less trouble.
"Sheev," she said in that gentle voice that sometimes made him want to tear out handfuls of that glorious red hair. "Sheev, my Sheev."
He declined to look at her, and she continued, "If I want hard, cold, and mean, I get that every time I walk into the Gran Protectorate Delegation to review a speech. We don't want to split the vote for hard, cold, and mean, Sheev. You're supposed to be the perfect midpoint between the softies like Valorum, Mothma, and the Bails, and hard, cold, and mean."
The truth of that drew his gaze toward her again. "It isn't even Teem that's that bad. He's personable enough, you know he is." Sereine tapped the table lightly to emphasize her words. "It's his chief of staff. I swear to you, whatever drifts off him coats everybody who works there and it transmits itself to everyone who walks in."
Palpatine sighed.
"Trober Baley," Sereine said. "Now there's the mood you want. Efficient, businesslike, gets things done—he's going to transmit to constituents that they're in good hands when they call, and that's what you're going to need in two years."
Reelection. Palpatine swallowed with a pain in his throat.
"Yet he's not intimidating," said Sereine. "He'll laugh with the staff like anyone else, he just knows when to put that professional mask on, and he knows how to run a tight ship. He's not going to go around scaring people."
Palpatine sat, the eel dead in his mouth. Oh, for the day he didn't have to worry about this anymore.
Sereine glanced around at the patrons at the other three tables, ensuring all backs were turned before she reached out to caress his hand with hers. "It doesn't need to be forever, enSheev," she coaxed in a bedroom whisper, using the Naboo for my Sheev. "It just needs to be for right now."
At last, he turned his hand over and clasped her fingers. She was right, he knew that.
And, she was allowing him to hold her hand in public. There was a novelty.
And, Sate Pestage knew about this dinner. He had been expecting the promotion. Not that Sheev had said it, but … This would kick the Pestage-Lumisol hostilities into high gear, for certain. Not at all in keeping with his desire for a unified office, all his own personnel, under the direction of Pestage, who could hold his cover better than anyone else.
Lord Sidious suppressed the growl in his throat while his mistress lovingly stroked his fingers, clasped them, let his hand go.
She scooted her chair closer. "I've been saving this for you, Zoragarria." She leaned over her plate, using the Naboo for magnificent. "Your appearance on the Tonight Show, after the Emancipation Act speeches? They want you back. I've been working on this for a couple of weeks, because you didn't want the first offer they approached me with, trust me—but the production team is offering you a middle slot, three more times this year, to discuss a political topic in the news and make it relevant to the viewing audience. With an option to renew for two more years."
She sat back and crossed her arms over her breasts, amplifying that cleavage of hers, and beamed a self-satisfied smile at him. "Well?"
She expected him to be delighted, and he very well should be. The Coruscanti Tonight Show was beamed to every corner of the Republic, it reached literally trillions. And, as she liked to tell him, Senator and Supreme Chancellor were popular elections, emphasis on popular.
Do well, and it would literally hand him his seat at reelection time, not to mention put him well ahead of anyone else for Chancellor when the time came, if he could hang onto the gig long enough. Do poorly, and it could ruin him.
But he was sitting across from the one being who could prep him to perfection. She had not only rescued his last election from the brink of death, she had made him shine. The Emancipation Act speeches had been half his … but they had been half hers, too. And the Tonight Show appearance that had garnered him this bid? Her prep.
He put his elbow next to his plate and his head in his hand. "Oh, kriff, the prep for this."
He looked up to find her smiling. "You know you love prepping with me."