by Emily Bishop
I think. “Nothing.” But I don’t even feel hungry. Adrenaline has rushed through me the whole time, pumping me with overanxious energy. Food seems so overindulgent. “I don’t want anything.”
“Please,” he says. “I’m starting to worry about you. When are you going to stop beating yourself up?”
“Never,” I say. “It was my responsibility. And people got hurt.” I feel this horrible lurch in the pit of my stomach, like I want to throw up, but there’s nothing inside except emptiness. “It’s all my fault, and it always will be.” I flop down on the chair. “I feel… so hopeless.”
“You’re not hopeless.” He takes my face in his hands and looks dead into my eyes. They’re so piercing and strong I have to avert them. “You’re the least hopeless person I know, in fact.”
I laugh insincerely. It feels like I’m choking. “Yeah, right.”
“No, really.”
“I’m a total screw-up.”
“You are not.” His voice is so stern, like he’s telling me off. “Don’t ever say that again.”
“I am though.”
He kneels down in front of me, and even though he’s the one looking up at me, he’s very much the one in control. “All right. Let’s say you’re a total screw-up. What does that make me?”
I pause and look into his eyes. “A man who realizes his priorities have been a little skewed. A man who wants to come out from under his father’s shadow. A man who’s… realizing a lot.”
“Yes,” he says. “Now, my turn. What I see when I look at you.”
Anxiety buzzes through me. I make a joke out of it. “A frizzy-haired girl who pretends to be an Ice Queen on the outside while being nothing more than useless mush on the inside. Who pretends like she knows what she’s doing but doesn’t have a clue.”
“No.” His face floods with concern, then a passion leaps into his eyes. “I see a fearless woman.”
“Well, you’re wrong about that. I have plenty of fears.”
“OK,” he says with a nod. “A woman who has plenty of fears but goes ahead anyway. She doesn’t let them dictate her life. A woman who walks into fire when other people would run the other way. A woman who holds her head high and carries on, no matter what. A woman who’s learning that…” He looks into my eyes like he’s searching for something. “That… trying to be perfect is too stressful.”
My chest, sinks but not in a bad way. Like I’m sinking into the most comfortable bed in the world after the longest journey.
“A woman who looks at herself and sees mistakes and failures,” he continues. “But let me tell you something about what I am.”
“What?”
“A man who looks at her and sees something he’s never seen before. A type of woman who’s so rare she’s the first he’s come across. He doesn’t see the mistakes and failures she does in herself.”
There’s a lump in my throat. “What does he see?”
He takes my left hand and kisses my little finger. “Beauty.” Then my ring finger. “Loveliness.” Then my middle finger. “Strength.” Then my index. “Dignity.” My thumb. “Integrity.”
I want to believe this is some Grayson Fairfax II game, so I can run away and not feel the rip that’s being torn in my heart. I always thought if someone would tell me these things, it would feel like floating on clouds. But this is a strange pleasure-pain that tears at the seams of my being. I can’t say anything. But I can’t pull away either.
He kisses the thumb of my right hand. “Independence.” Then my index finger. “Did I say strength already? Well, I’ll say it again.” Then my middle finger. “Gorgeousness.” Then my ring finger. “Grace.” Then my little finger. “And complete and utter, dripping-with-it, oozing-with-it, sexiness.”
“Gray,” I breathe. I can’t find anything else to think, let alone say.
He puts his strong hands on my knees then runs them up my thighs under my skirt, his dark eyes glued to mine. I shiver, wanting him.
“Isabella,” he whispers. “What do you want?”
I feel my clit pulsing. “You.”
He takes the hem of my skirt and pushes the front of it up around my waist. My sensible blue panties don’t look all that sexy to me.
He runs his finger over my panties, down from my pussy lips and up to my clit. “You’re getting those wet,” he whispers.
Before I can reply, he reaches behind my back, grabs the panties, and pulls them down. I have to shift on the chair a little for them to slide over my buttocks. He takes advantage of my position and shoves my legs up in the air, pushing my ankles toward my head. My panties stretch between my thighs, and my pussy’s exposed to the air, right in front of his face.
“Mmm,” he says, watching with enchanted eyes. He leans forward and kisses my clit. He looks up to see me shiver, and even though his mouth’s on my cunt, I can see the smile in his eyes.
“Now, tell me, Isabella,” he says. “What do you like best? Do you want me to lick your clit? Or bite those gorgeous lips of yours? Or take your clit hood in my mouth and suck until you come?”
“Oh, fuck, Gray,” I moan.
“That’s not an answer,” he says in a commanding tone. “Tell me what you want.”
I know what I want. Shivers went up my spine when he said it. “The last one.”
He looks up at me, a glimmer in his eye. “I’ve forgotten which that one was. Tell me again.”
Oh god. My nipples are on fire. My pussy’s pulsing. “Take my clit in your mouth,” I say, trembling.
“And…?”
Ohhh. “Suck until I come.”
“Good,” he says slowly. He’s so in control.
I feel the firm wetness of his tongue on my clit. He flicks his tongue up, and I feel such extreme heat and wetness in my cunt. He does it so slowly. So, so slowly. I desperately want him to suck on my clit and the hood. To take it all in his mouth and suck and nibble and suck. I moan. He laughs softly.
“All right. I’m teasing you,” he says. “I’ve forgotten what you want. Tell me again.”
“Suck my clit, Gray,” I say. “Please.”
He pulls back and watches me. He’s fully clothed. My skirt’s up around my waist. My trembling pussy’s open, my legs spread so far they’re stretching my panties around my ankles.
“You really want it, don’t you?”
I nod, and a little whimper escapes my lips.
With one swift motion, he dives into my pussy. He takes my clit in his mouth. The stubble of his beard feels so manly against my bare cunt. And then he does what I’ve been desperately wishing for. He sucks on my clit. The hot sweet rush in my pussy brings a moan to my lips and my back arches in ecstasy. “Oh, Gray!”
He lets it go, then pulls it back, then lets it go, then pulls it back. Oh god, this is so amazing. I’ve never felt anything like this. The heat and the overwhelming, pulsating pleasure in my clit.
Then, with my clit still in his mouth, he maneuvers my leg and pulls my panties down around my ankle and off that leg, so they’re hanging off my other thigh. All the while he’s sucking, then nibbling, sucking, then nibbling, on my clit, sending waves of pleasure soaring through my body, over and over again. I sense one of the hottest, hardest orgasms of my life is going to come and steal me away. He’s going to take me to realms I’ve never gone before. I can feel it in the tips of my hard nipples. In the depths of my cunt.
Then he takes his mouth off my pussy. “Come, darling,” he says. “Come down here.” He takes me by my hands and helps me up off the chair. “Lie down.” He’s gentle with me as he maneuvers me down onto the carpeted floor. Then he goes around to my right side, facing down toward my pussy. He pulls back my thighs until my cunt faces the ceiling and spreads my legs wide. I feel so exposed. So vulnerable. But so, so good. “Ready, sweetheart?” he says.
I have no idea what he’s going to do, but my whole body cries out, Yes! Yes! Yes! “Yes, Gray.”
“Tell me you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.�
��
“You might have to scream.”
I think of the neighbors. “I won’t scream.”
He gives a soft, little laugh. “All right.”
Then, without warning, he pushes his face into my cunt and grabs my clit with his teeth. Then he sucks, like before, but with a vengeance. He plunges two fingers into my pussy and pumps them in and out, in and out, as he sucks on my clit hood. Oh, fuck!
Before I know it, Gray’s prophecy has come true. The heat, the gorgeous, beautiful, tantalizing heat, is too much for me to bear. It mounts and mounts and mounts in glorious pleasure until I can’t keep any semblance of control. I have to let go. I have no choice.
I come.
Waves and waves of heat and pleasure. I scream. I scream out in ecstasy. “Gray! Gray! Gray!”
His mouth stays firmly on my clit, sucking and biting. His fingers pump in and out of my cunt just the same. I feel myself flooding over his fingers, and my clit pulses and trembles in his mouth.
“Gray!” I scream, forgetting who I am and where I am and that neighbors exist at all. “Yes! Yes, yes, yeaaaaaas!”
Chapter 23
Grayson
DAY 17
Isabella and I stayed tangled in an embrace in her bed the whole night. Waking up was like entering another world. Except I didn’t know which one was real—the glorious, heady pleasure of last night, or the cold, crisp brightness of morning. Maybe both.
Whenever I’m in England, I hate it there. But when I’m abroad, I feel a real connection to home. Isabella’s asleep next to me. I grab my phone and flip to the English news, something I never do at home but always when I’m somewhere else. Nothing much of note on the news site. All the usual. Terrorists killing people in Mali. A horrendous accident on the M25. A young woman arrested in Dubai for kissing a man in public. Tragic as the news always is, but nothing I haven’t heard before.
But before I go on to look at the sports news, I freeze in shock. There’s a picture of me. From a club. I’m a thumbnail to click over to an article. I read the title below it in absolute horror. The Bad-Boy Duke’s Billion Pound Inheritance Love Triangle. What the actual fuck?
I click it, my heart pounding.
When I see what pops up, it takes all my strength not to sling my phone across the room and smash it on the far wall. It’s a picture of Lilly and me, with my arm around her, captioned Lillia Smythe-Darcy and the future duke, in happier times. In happier times, my backside. I contain my fury long enough to read the piece of crap:
Lillia Smythe-Darcy, a young aristocrat socialite, tells all about Grayson Fairfax II, his sleazy antics, and how she plans to tame the loveable rogue.
Ugh!
Lillia says, “Gray has always been a bad boy, and I’ve always been attracted to a bad boy with an edge, ever since my days at Stowe.”
She’d have to mention her prestigious boarding school, of course.
“He was always drinking, flirting with women, and causing chaos wherever he went with his cousin Eddie. But when he fell in love with me, and I him, that all changed. All of a sudden, he wanted to bond, to settle down, to think of having a family. It was very sweet.”
Sweet? Sweet?!
“But, despite his wealth and title, my family didn’t want me to marry him.”
What a load of shit! They were all chomping at the bit for a slice of the Fairfax pie. I was the one who pulled out of the engagement, when I finally got enough sense to see she was a bloodsucking leech, a money-grabbing parasite, a status-crazed socialite and nothing more.
“I very much regret listening to their advice. I thought I was fine at first, but now, seeing him with an American woman who has no title, no class, and no scruples is killing me on the inside.”
Fuck! I get up and storm out of the apartment. I don’t care if I’m just in my boxers. I need to release my fury, and I don’t want to wake Isabella.
“I won’t name names, but I can show you pictures.”
Then there’s a photo of Isabella at the club, sitting at the bar looking out of her depth. She’s slouched over, and her expression makes her look like she’s drowning. It’s the worst picture I’ve ever seen of her.
“She’s totally clueless,” Lillia continues. “She’s timid and unable to cope. How will she ever tame Grayson so that he’ll spend the inheritance properly and become the real family man his father always wanted him to be?”
I want to smash my phone on the ground and stomp on it again and again until it, and what I am reading, are nothing but a pile of glass shards and plastic.
“Besides, I looked up her father’s department store business she’s inherited. Not only is it in so much debt it’s due to fold into the ground any moment now, but there was an electrical explosion just recently. She can’t cope with a simple million-dollar business. How could she cope with a billion pounds and a wild-child bad boy? I think she’s just after his money. He needs someone who will really love him for who he is.”
I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe this. Please tell me this is a nightmare and I’m about to wake up. Please.
I don’t even read the rest. I don’t trust myself. I could destroy this whole apartment. This whole apartment building. This whole city. I could transform into the Hulk and tear everyone and everything limb from limb. If I had a bomb that could wipe out the whole earth, I would detonate it right now. Fury pounds through every part of me. I have to go run. I want to run and run and run and run, to stop myself from killing someone.
But where can I run to?
Where can I go to escape reality?
I fall against the hallway wall and slide down it. All the strength of my rage seeps away. I’m a shell. An empty, hollow shell.
Once Isabella reads this, she’ll never come back to England. That article was on a hugely popular newspaper’s website. I don’t know if they’ve run it in print, too. That photo of her. Dreadful. The thing about her father’s business. Ten times worse. I could wring Lilly’s neck.
A new thought strikes me—she’ll have to retract it.
I find Lilly’s number in my phone book. It’s been years since I’ve phoned it, and yet she always pops up in the most inconvenient places in my life. She’s like a rat in the house, which you thought you killed until it peeks its head out of a hole and scurries through your kitchen, shitting everywhere. Where is the rat poison? Where is the damn rat poison?
She picks up, surprisingly. “Hello, Grayson, how wonderful to hear from you.”
“What the fuck have you done?”
“What?” Her voice is laced with fake innocence. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play games with me. The story.”
“What story?” I can imagine her eyes all round and faux-innocent.
“Snow White and the Seven Fucking Dwarves, Lilly, what do you think? You know exactly what I mean. The story about you and me and Isabella.”
She laughs. “Oh, that one. You should have said. Well, I thought I was doing a public service.”
I could send my fist through a wall. “The only person you serve is yourself, Lilly, as we all know.”
“I’m hurt.” She turns her voice all whiny.
“Retract the story.”
“I can’t,” she says. “They paid me already.”
“Paid you?” My voice explodes out of me. I have to pace up and down the corridor to keep any kind of control over myself.
“It’s not so bad,” Lilly says gently. “I didn’t mention Isabella’s name.”
“Thank you for being so discreet,” I say.
“Don’t be like that, babe.”
Isabella will never come back to England. I know it. I imagine as soon as someone gets a glimpse of us at the airport, paparazzi will swarm us. I’ll be the “irresponsible bad boy,” and she’ll be the “incompetent, pathetic American.” I can play the irresponsible bad boy to the hilt—I’m so used to doing so, even though I didn’t know it was an act back then. But incompete
nt? Pathetic? Those are words to strike right into Isabella’s soul. She’s always striven to be independent, and she’s always been a go-getter. Now the whole of the UK will think she’s some pathetic little wallflower. She’ll never set foot there. I’ve failed in protecting her honor. If only I’d been firmer with Lilly. But I was firm. I don’t hit women.
“Baby, come home,” Lilly whines. “I miss you so. You know you miss me, too.”
“Home?” Nothing I can think about back there equals home. Being wrapped up in Lilly’s arms in the drafty old mansion sounds like some horrific, torturous form of double imprisonment. “You must be out of your mind.”
She begins to cry. I have no idea if it’s real or fake. She’s such a good faker. “But, Gray, I love you.”
“No, you don’t. You never did.” I hang up and wander off to the end of the corridor. As horrible as the place is, it does have a good view of Seattle. The only city that has felt close to being home. But now even this place feels infected. Contaminated by the bad luck that spreads through my life like a deadly disease. Lilly calls again. I punch the reject button. But as I look out over the city, I know I’m the one who’s been rejected, by life itself. Why on earth did I try to be positive? Why on earth did I think I could be anything other than a loveable rogue? Why on earth did I think Isabella would go for someone like irresponsible, party-animal me?
This has all been a mistake. I’ve been kidding myself. I guess I should thank Lilly, really, in some sort of twisted way. It’s not her fault. It’s just life, putting me in my place. I’m a failure. I have no money in the bank. I have no achievements to speak of. I hate my own dead father, even though he’s giving me a billion pounds. Or, not giving them to me, as the case may be. I miss my dead mother, even though she’s been gone for years. I have nothing going for me. Nothing.
I creep back into the apartment. My chest feels full of darkness, like if I speak, black shadows will come twisting and twirling out of my mouth like demonic smoke. Like if I cough, I’ll spit up tar. I don’t even bother with showering. I go into the bedroom, and thankfully Isabella’s still asleep, snoring gently. I pull on the clothes I was wearing the day before. I really don’t care. Her wallet’s in the living room. I take some money out. It’s her business money, from her line of credit. But what does it matter anyway? She’s going to despise me as soon as she finds out about this. I’ve failed to protect her honor. What will an extra $100 matter? Just add it to the tab of absolute hatred for me. The tab of the disaster of my life.
