8. Grayson

I’ve never met a more unaware person in my life. Whatever, at least she gave me a bright idea. Lily and I had planned to wait until at least one year after we started working before planning our wedding. It was a done deal as far as we were concerned, but we wanted time to get settled in our careers before getting into the heavy stuff.

But after Lacey’s call, an idea was born to go along with all the other ideas I’ve had. My original plan was to get my foot in the door at the company and start making a name for myself before breaking things off with Lacey in a very dramatic way.

I planned on taking her Dad and mine down with me, but back then, I was only aiming to drag them before the ethics board and end their careers, but that, too, has changed over time.

Once Lily shared the news that she and not her father was the heir to her grandparents’ fortune along with their company, we decided to cut out the middleman and just take them down once she took over, but that wasn’t going to be for another few years at least.

We were both still young and hadn’t had any more experience than the internships as well as my trading on the side which has been going very well. I even got her involved as well, and she seems to have a knack for reading the market, so both our portfolios look pretty healthy.

Right now, I’m staying with my parents while she lives with her Mom because anything else would give us away, but it’s been hell. It’s hell looking at these two people and pretending that I give a damn what they think.

They’re full of ideas about what my future should look like, but I close my ears as soon as they start talking. If they’d had my best interest at heart, they never would’ve encouraged me to stay with Lacey; they’d never have asked me to spend the rest of my life with someone so vile.

I missed her like crazy, even though we saw each other every day this last week on the job. Because we have to pretend not to know each other, we haven’t been able to spend much time together and it was going to take some getting used to.

I got an idea and looked up flights and hotels for the weekend before calling her to tell her to pack for the beach. “Where are we going?”

“Away for the weekend. If I have to go another day without being with you, I’ll go out of my mind.”

“I’ll be ready when you get here.” She never questions me about anything, which I find refreshing. Lacey would’ve asked me a million questions and then demand I change my plans to suit her.

Lily just appreciates everything I do without question and shows her gratitude in many ways. One of those ways was the reason I was already hard while I took my shower and got ready to pick her up from her Mom’s home.

* * *

“Where are you taking me?”We were in my car holding hands as I sped towards the airport.

“It’s a surprise.” I raised her fingers to my lips before putting them back down again. She didn’t push, something else I appreciated, because I like surprising her.

For someone who had grown up with everything at her fingertips, she gets so excited over every little overture that it’s hard not to want to keep doing it every chance I get. I guess being surprised is her love language while spoiling her is mine.

The plane ride to Bermuda took a little more than four hours, and it was fully dark by the time we landed because I’d made the plans last minute. And had I waited until the next day, we would’ve missed a whole day of our weekend.

“Where are we? Are you going to tell me now?” She looked around the terminal, “I know we’re in the Caribbean, but which island?” I hurried her out of the building to the car that was waiting before she could read any of the signs that spelled out where we were.

“Look out the window and try to guess.” She was as excited as a toddler as she sat with her nose pressed to the window. It only took her a few minutes for her to figure it out.

“Bermuda.” I guess the overload of pink houses gave it away.

Its one of the only places she hasn’t been and wanted to visit. I thought about saving it for our honeymoon but there was nothing stopping us from doing a trial run, just in case it wasn’t what she expected.

The smile on her face when she turned to me is only one of the reasons I love her as much as I do. It lit up her eyes, enhancing that beauty that left me spellbound and took my breath away.

We couldn’t wait to get to the beach house I’d rented for the weekend and run down to the private beach for a night swim in the warm North Atlantic Ocean.

We laughed and played like children in the water under the stars, the air redolent with the scent of flowers and the salty air of the sea. I like seeing her like this, relaxed and carefree. She’s like a chameleon.

At the office, she’s all businesswoman. At college, she put her all into her studies even though she knew all along that she was going to inherit everything. I like her drive and the fact that she doesn’t take situations or people for granted, but I especially love it when we’re together like this, just the two of us, away from the rest of the world.

We laid on the beach after our swim and let the air dry us, not saying anything but enjoying the silence and just being together. These are the things I pay attention to since she’s technically my first girlfriend, and when I think about it, I don’t really have anything to compare.

I found early on that if I pay attention to her wants and needs, it actually makes me happy. I get pleasure from her joy, which is what I’m always looking for. She doesn’t dwell on her past or the things she suffered in her father’s house, but I’m very mindful of those things, and though I don’t bring it up to her, my revenge plot has changed over time more to avenge her than myself.

I’m not sure when it happened or how, but I have this burning need to hurt the people who hurt her. It just so happens that most of them were already my enemies. I hadn’t paid too much attention to Janice before, but knowing what I do now, I’m almost certain she, too, played a part in what was done to me.

She seems to think the world owes her and her daughter something, and so they go through life stomping on people. It pisses me off that she was one of their victims, and even though I wasn’t there at the time and was too young anyway, I still want revenge for her.

Taking the business is one thing, sure, but that’s not enough. I’m going to….

“What are you thinking about? Are you plotting something?”

“What makes you say that?” I turned my head to look at her next to me on the blanket we’d thrown on the sand.

“You always get this vein in the middle of your forehead popping out when you’re up to something.” She trailed her finger down my face to my nose.

“Oh really?” Just that one innocent touch was enough to have me turning to her.

I nipped her finger between my teeth, and she drew in her breath. It’s always like this: the passion between us. It doesn’t take much to light the spark, and tonight was no different.

I forgot what I’d been thinking about as I moved over closer to her so I could feel the warmth of her skin against the cool breeze coming off the ocean. There’s nothing more beautiful than Lily in the moonlight, the way the stars make her eyes shine, the warm hues of her skin, and her wild Grecian curls.

It all fits in a place in my heart like a photograph that I carry with me at all times. “Why do you look so serious all of a sudden?”

“I love you.” I’d said it before, of course, but each time, it feels like I mean it more. I feel it more.

“I love you too.” And those words from her always make me smile. A smile that starts in my heart. I lowered my head slowly, inhaling her scent and the light in her eyes before our lips met in a breath of a kiss.

We teased each other’s lips with our tongues until she won the battle and sucked my tongue into her mouth. I’ve studied kissing too, so I know what she likes. Like the trail of my fingertips up her left side until I reach the perfect mound of her tit.

I chose the left side because that’s the side she’s most sensitive on. I let my fingers sneak toward her nipple before grazing it ever so gently with my nails. She hissed and purred into my mouth, and I stole her tongue while plucking her nipple softly.

Her body shivered from a combination of my touch and the cool evening breeze. I covered her with my body, blocking out the wind as we deepened our kiss, and her hands roved the broadness of my back.

She opened her legs wide, begging me without words to enter her, but I wasn’t ready yet. I wanted to hear her screams with the backdrop of the ocean’s waves. I pulled our lips apart and kissed and nibbled my way down to her chin before stopping off at her mouth for another tongue twister before escaping her greedy mouth to make my way down to her chest.

I went after the right nipple first, which made her writhe and moan beneath me. Then as I made my way to the other one, I let my hand trail down her middle to her already wet and dewy cunt. She spread those legs even wider as I dipped my finger inside her to get it wet so that I didn’t irritate her clit.

I bit her nipple the way she likes while fingering her and teasing her clit with my thumb. Two fingers later, and she was cumming in my hand, against my palm as I made love to her nipples, and just as she was starting to cum I eased off and made my way down between her thighs. “Play with your nipples while I eat you out.”

Her hands went immediately to her tits to do my bidding. Something else I’d learned about her. She likes to be directed in bed. I stiffened my tongue and teased her slit until she grabbed my hair and tried pulling me into her snatch.

I teased that little nub into hardness before dipping my tongue into her again. This time I grabbed her ass in my hand and pulled her harder onto my tongue, fucking it in and out of her while massaging her ass cheeks between my hands.

I was massaging her ass because I know she’s sensitive there. I had to fix my cock because it was getting unruly, its way of telling me to get a move on, but I was in no rush. Tonight had to be extra special for more reasons than one.

She came loud and hard, just as I wanted. Her screams rang out in the night and blended with the crashing of the waves behind us. I let her cum down from that orgasm before attacking her senses again, this time easing a finger into her tight ass while eating her out with my tongue.

And when she came again, I pushed her legs to their widest, slid up between them, and fucked my eleven-inch cock into her until I bottomed out. She bucked and screamed when I pulled back enough to find her sweet spot and rub my cockhead against it time and again.

I could feel her juices and my precum running down my cock to my balls; I could hear the wet sound of her pussy each time my cock stroked in and out again. And her cries, I could hear them most of all. Sweet music to my ears.

* * *

Lily had wornmy promise ring every day since the day I put it there. The idea I got after Lacey’s call, well, one of them anyway, was to give her the replacement now instead of waiting.

The story behind the ring is one for the books. Since the night of our graduation I was killing myself trying to figure out how I was going to ask her family for her hand in marriage. As it turns out, they were thinking along the same lines because her grandfather was actually the one who cornered me one day after Sunday dinner to ask me when I was going to make an honest woman out of his granddaughter.

I was both shocked and pleasantly surprised because I was under the impression that I had a long way to go to impress them. He slapped me on the shoulder when he saw the shocked look on my face. “I’ll marry her today if she’d have me.”

“That won’t be possible, boy. Between my wife, my daughter, and my sister, those women would have your ass if you robbed them of the wedding day of their only granddaughter, daughter, and niece.”

“You’ve got a point. She probably wouldn’t even have me anyway.”

“You’re wrong about that. Come with me.” I followed him from the study to another wing of the mansion to a room that seemed to be made up of vaults.

He opened one of them and slid a drawer out. “Here, you’ll propose with this.”

“Whoa!” The diamond had to be the size of a robin’s egg. I almost asked him if it was real. The tear-shaped diamond shone in the room like the midday sun.

“Yes, this is one of the best pieces from our family collection. My great-grandfather was Persian, and our family had been among the nobles there for generations, so they were quite wealthy. When my family relocated her and Europe, they brought all that wealth with them and as if the Persian way, everything goes to the firstborn son.”

“My sister got her share of course, but most of the family wealth came to me. My wife and I only had one son, more’s the pity. He might have been a disappointment, but my granddaughter more than makes up for it.”

“As her husband, one day, all this will be yours and hers. I can trust you with this, can’t I, son?”

“Of course.”

“I thought so. My wife is a great judge of character, and she swears you remind her of a young, robust me. Personally, I think she likes your vengeful side. The Greeks, the Italians, eh! Their history is steeped in it.”

“Aren’t you Persian? The land of Xerxes?”

“You know my people.”

“Yes, outside of finance and business, world history is my favorite topic. I love their philosophies.”

“Like Machiavelli.”

“Kind of, yes.”

I knew that he was referring to the part of the plan that had been shared with him. That he was hinting that I was a bit Machiavellian, so I waited to hear what else he was going to say. After all, no matter the rift or the cause, this was their son and his family, their other granddaughter.

“Don’t look like that; I won’t scold you. I understand your need for vengeance; they emasculated you or tried to. This isn’t the first time my son has disappointed me with his actions. When he left his wife and daughter, I thought I couldn’t get any more disappointed in him, but what he did to you is a new low. He used the company my ancestors gave their lives to build to threaten a young man with that person he raised.”

“Do you know why we have nothing to do with the mother and child? Do you see your Lily’s mother? She was the woman we watched exchange vows with our son. The one we gave our blessings to. She was carrying our grandchild when he committed that filthy act against her, against her and a child of my blood. I will never forgive.”

“Family is everything. Do you understand what I am telling you, son? When you take vows, you must uphold them, or what was done to you would pale in comparison to what would become of you. Men break vows too easily these days; they mean next to nothing anymore. Do not live your life like that, son. Do not ever lose that thing that I can see in you.”

“What’s that?”

“A pure heart.” He almost brought me to tears with his words.

I’d taken the ring home, afraid that something would go wrong or I’d lose it. I couldn’t believe that he’d just given it to me like that. I could run away and live off the sale of this thing for the next fifty years.

I put it away safely until I could rent a safety deposit box at the bank to keep it there, but then I was afraid to let it out of my sight. It wasn’t time for that yet. At least, I told myself that since we were working off of a timetable. But it looks like we’d have to rearrange some things.

I felt around in the little welcome basket with the champagne on ice along with a cheese platter and found the box I had hidden there. I was still buried inside her, still feeling the slight twinges from her pink walls, when I reached for her hand to remove the promise ring.

“What’re you doing?”

“Shh!” I slid the engagement ring onto her finger, and it beamed in the moonlight.

“Wait a minute. Is this great-great-nana’s ring?”

“I think so; your grandfather gave it to me. What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?”

“Are you crazy? Do you know what this means?”

“No, but you’re starting to freak me out.”

“This is like the biggest blessing. Oh my goodness, this is beyond…. This means they’ve accepted you and approved.”

“Why are you so excited? Didn’t you always know they liked me?”

“Yes, I knew they liked you; now I know they love you.”