by Linn Young
Riley slowly walked back to him. “But, you don’t want to be.”
“No. No. I never wanted you. I never wanted to want you the way I did. The way I still do. I wanted no part of you.”
Riley lifted her chin up at him, the hurt darkening her light gray hazel eyes. “Why? What is it about me that makes you repulsed at the idea that you might feel anything for me?”
Heron looked at her for a moment, then closed the distance between them, his eyes on her face. When he reached her, he put his hands on her waist and slowly lifted her to seat her on one of the bar stools. He spread her legs and moved between them, keeping his hands on her waist. “You cause a violence inside me. I felt it from the very moment I turned and looked into your strange hazel eyes. And then your sister introduced us. I couldn’t help but dislike you. You make me feel things that no other woman has ever made me feel. My brother said that you’ve got a clamp on my balls. And he’s right. Yes, those dainty little hands of yours with their long delicate fingers have a vice-grip on me. That has never happened to me before. But I want to be with you even when we’re not in bed. I want to see you when we wake up in the morning, and fall asleep next to you at night. I want to be able to see you across the breakfast table, drinking our coffees, and sharing the newspaper. And I want you there in when people in my life are in danger…” Heron stopped, touched his forehead to hers, his eyes closed in pain, his body shuddering. “God, when I heard about my mother, all I could think of was calling you. I wanted to see so badly, to talk to you. And, then, when Mother was cleared from the lab, I needed you even more.”
Riley pulled her head back to look up at him. “But, you don’t want to want me. If you’re with me, you’ll eventually come to resent me for having this what you call a hold over you. If I bring a man into my life, I want it because he wants to be with me, not because he feels he has no other choice. You left me. Twice,” Riley added with pained anger. “And you expect me to run back to you every time you get your courage back up to be with me, is that it? Well, not this time, Heron.”
Heron looked at Riley, a look of despair on his face that she thought she would never see.
“I love you so much, Riley,” he said hoarsely. “I never thought I could love someone as much as I love you. Or that it could hurt so much. Tanner said that the only way to make it stop hurting is by letting myself love you.”
She turned away for a moment, then said, “And if I take you back, will you walk away the way you did the first time?”
Heron laughed bitterly. “Walk away? To what? I’ve nothing to walk away to. There’s just you, Riley. There’s nothing else, nobody else. I have no other choice. It’s either marry you or be miserable without you?”
“Marry me?” Riley said with shock. “You’re talking about marriage?”
Heron gave a caustic laugh. “What else would I be talking about. If I keep you in my life, I have to marry you. I’ll be damned if let you on a loose chain while you’re with me. You think I’m going to take a chance that another man could come along and snatch you up? No. I’m going to bind you up so tight to me that there’s no escape.”
She cocked her head. “And you know that goes same for you.”
“I wouldn’t wish on any man this particular freedom from a woman like you. I’ve had a taste of that freedom, remember? And look what it has driven me to.”
“To what?”
“Don’t you know? It’s made me crawl back to you. Don’t you see that’s what I’m doing, right now? I’ve crawled back to you, and now I’m begging for you. You know how humiliating that is for a man like me?”
“Because you never had to beg any woman in your life, is that it? And you don’t like it.”
“What is there to like? Once a woman drives a man to beg, it won’t be the first time.”
Heron pushed up Riley’s skirt to her waist, tore her panties which were lacy and bright pink and dropped them on the floor, leaving a bright pink pool. He took her thighs and pulled them up so her flesh was open to him. He inserted a long finger between her already swollen vulva, earning a quick shudder and a gasp from Riley. She lifted a leg and hooked it higher over his waist. Languorously, Heron moved his finger inside her flesh in a slow circular motion. She clenched her teeth and closed her eyes as she rotated her hips wantonly.
This is what she had missed so much from her days with Heron. This strong, sexual attraction between them made her realize how much she belonged to him, how much she loved him and would always love him. It made her so sluttish when she was with him. But it also made her feel oddly strong in a very womanly way, even touched with some maternal feelings, maybe even sisterly. It made her feel like a tramp, a love slave, and yet triumphant, powerful.
As he pleasured her with his finger, he undid his pants, took out his penis and plunged it in Riley. It took him three strokes to be completely inside her. Once he was, he sighed deeply, shuddered once, and then his body seem to settle down as if he had finally come home.
Content as well to remain physically connected with Heron without consummating it just yet, Riley lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist.
Riley studied Heron for a long moment, seeing the weary tension and hunger in his eyes. “If I decide to stay with you, are you going to resent me for the rest of our lives, because I finally brought down the mighty Heron Wait?”
“It’s not easy to give up a fortress. But my mother says it’s time that I did. I have to turn to you to be my fortress. That’s not easy, either, to let someone else do some of the protecting, the decision making, to be stronger sometimes, to know when I won’t be, to look to for emotional strength instead of finding it always inside me.” At the thought of being vulnerable to a woman, especially to a woman like Riley, Heron shuddered with wonder and some hint of foreboding, setting off tremors of pleasure through Riley’s insides.
She squirmed a little in her impalement, and gave a small gasp. When that caused some heat, she did it again, and was on the verge of using the seduction of her body to get him to drive harder into her, Heron tightened his grip on her hips and held her still. He wasn’t ready just yet to fuck this woman to whom he had crawled back to. He still felt raw and shaken inside from the months of misery of being away from Riley. All he could withstand emotionally at the moment was the immense relief of being able to hold her in his arms again.
Although she understood Heron’s need to hold off on their fucking and that it was just enough right now for him to experience the unrelenting, unthreatening, and very sweet intimate physical union, she couldn’t help but direct a small pout of her lips at him.
She began to thread her fingers through his hair. “You know, when we are married, we’ll be like any other married couples. We’ll mostly be quite boring, having our daily routine, face each other everyday of our lives, having to do the typical negotiations of household expenses, privileges, leaving socks around or leaving the toilet seat up, and haggling over the taxes every April. Is that what you want? With me?”
Heron stared at her in wonderment. He never thought he could actually look forward to arguing with a woman over dirty socks lying around the floor. He gave a rueful smile. “Everyday, common marital bliss. I never thought it was for me.”
Riley wriggled her buttocks a little, tightening her legs around his waist. Heron hissed a breath as he felt her silken glove pulse around him, making his hands flex tightly on her waist.
Her fingers began to undo the buttons of his shirt. “And now?”
Heron helped her undress him by taking off his overcoat. “And, now, it’s what I want most in the world. With you.” He drew his head back a little so that he could look down at her. “How about you? Do you think you could stand spending the rest of your life with an arrogant, autocratic, supercilious bastard like me?”
Riley was shaking her head slowly, her eyes wondrous as they ran over his face. “I fell in love with you from the first moment I saw and I knew that you were all wrong for my sister. I never
felt that way for any man. Ever. I didn’t think it was possible. I thought it was all made up in books and movies. And then you were free, and you walked in here, that night, and, suddenly, I had to have you. I needed you inside me so badly. I continued to see you against my better judgment. You see, I knew that you weren’t planning on us going any further than a few nights in bed. So was I. But, each time I saw you, I was more deeply in love with you. And I couldn’t do anything about it. I knew I couldn’t. And, then, you let me go…” She stopped because her breath got caught in her throat, the pain of remembering his cold, unyielding voice on the phone as he told her that he no longer wanted to see her piercing her heart as powerfully as it had then.
Heron gathered her close to comfort, kissed her tenderly on her temple, rocking against her, creating both consolation and erotic heat.
“You told me you never wanted to see me ever again,” she whispered at the pain.
“That’s not what I said.”
Riley looked at him with hurtful, accusing eyes, even as they grew slumberous with growing heat. “But you ended it, without ever telling me why.”
Heron cupped her cheek with his hand. “I had to. I saw no other way. I felt myself getting closer and closer to going over that cliff. And, then, I did anyway. I’ve never been a coward in my life. But I was then, because what I felt for you was so much bigger than me. I didn’t even have an idea how to begin handling it.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“My brother. He said that there was no handling what I felt for you.” He put his arms around her and began to gather her close, locking her to him, his entire length tightly ensconced inside her. “He told me that a man could only do one thing when love for a woman side winds him. He said all he could do is love. Not to fight it, or to deny, or ran away from. I was doing all those things. It was a nightmare, running away from it, from me, away from you. He said all I can do is just love.”
A bemused look came to Riley’s small face. Her body began to relax as the hurt and pain began to fade from her. “Just love. Is that the answer? As simple as that?”
“For the rest of our lives.”
“Hmmmm. Imagine that. A lifetime of simple.”
Still impaled deeply inside Riley, Heron picked her up in his arms and walked her up the stairs to her private quarters. Locked in the small, stuffy, and rather shabby room, the two fell into each other’s arms, their coupling wild and hungry from being apart for so long. It took three carnal couplings for them to take the sharp edge off their desire. Finally, nearly an hour and half later, Riley was laying on her stomach on the narrow bed, her head facing away from the wall, her face flushed from being taken so often, her lashes fluttering open and then closing heavily over drowsy, passion glazed eyes. Heron laid his long, heavy body over her backside, his stillswollen penis deeply inside her, slowly, in long savoring strokes pumping inside her gently, lazily.
While Heron was celebrating his love for Riley in a never-ending erotic carnage, downstairs, Joe Monterey and his night crew were arriving. One of the waitresses spotted the torn pink panties on the floor under the bar.
She picked them up and held them up. “Either we have patrons who are starting the night early or our cleaning crew is slipping.”
Joe frowned. The door to the bar wasn’t locked but that wasn’t unusual, because Riley did her paperwork either in her office or out at the bar. But he did not see her around and she wasn’t in her office. Had some strangers, or worse, transients walked into the bar and decided to have a fuck, and had not cared to clean up after themselves?
The waitress examined the panties. “Well, whoever it was must have had a good time. It’s expensive too. French lace and silk, I think.”
Joe’s face froze for a moment and he took a closer look at the pink material. Then he spotted the overcoat. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew that the pink panties belonged to Riley. He picked up the overcoat and examined it. He could tell that it was quite expensive, the tailoring handmade, the material a fine soft wool, probably made in London or Italy. There were very few men Joe knew who could afford such an expensive garment. He raised his eyes up the stairs, and then smiled.
He grabbed the panties out of the waitress’s hand who was now whirling it around her finger and gathered up the overcoat. “I’ll take that. Come one, let’s get set up. We’ve less than an hour before we open for dinner.”
Joe put the panties and the overcoat in Riley’s office and then began to take inventory of the bar.
One month later, there was a sign outside the door of Riley’s bar that read, “Closed for tonight: Private Party in progress.” Inside, the families of Calderon and Wait were sitting on both sides of one long table. Jack Knowles, Heron’s friend was had also been invited. To keep him company, Riley had invited the buxom blonde, Wendy.
All had come together to celebrate the nuptials of Heron and Riley.
Joe was at the bar mixing the drinks. Four waitresses and waiters were on hand with the serving of first the appetizers of fras grois and truffles, deviled quail eggs, caviar and melba toasts, and shrimp cocktail There was red clam chowder as a starter. The dinner was served on a couple of large seafood platters that were filled to overflowing with whole cooked crab and lobster, muscles, clams, steamed oysters, langoustines, and shrimp. All around the table were bowls of butter, white wine, and lemon sauce for dipping. This was served with fresh French bread and champagne and white wine. The side dishes were Caesar salad, herbed rice pilaf, and sautéed vegetables.
All four parents wore similar expressions as they presided over the celebration. They were expressions of what all parents felt when they saw all their children settled into arrangements that they felt would provide them lifetime security and personal happiness. Roy and Alana Wait were more than satisfied that all their children were settling into marriages that were more for the purposes of mutual love and regard than for reasons of money and social alliances. Lawrence and Caroline had always wished their daughters to marry for love, but, tonight, they experienced the extra contentment of seeing both their daughters being settled so well for their future.
Through most of the evening, Alana and Caroline had their heads together with Alana often writing down on a notepad. It seems that Alana had taken it into her head to commandeer Heron and Riley’s wedding. She felt that since this was the last wedding that she would go through in her lifetime, she wanted to make sure that it was beautiful and perfect.
“It won’t be nearly as big as the one for Heron and Roberta. That one was over one thousand guests. I don’t really think we know that many people.”
Caroline had sighed with relief and had asked Alana how many guests there would be, thinking that it would be only a few hundred with friends and families from both sides.
“Oh, I would say no more than nine hundred and fifty or so,” Alana had said. And then she added, alarming Caroline even more, “There’s a good number from overseas, such as Lord and lady Randolph Cummings. They’re cousins of the queen, you know. Then there’s the French Ambassador, but he’s already in Washington, so we won’t need to fly him over. And I think we should extend invitations to the prime minister of Sweden and Belgium, but I’ll have to discuss that with Roy. He knows them very well, especially Sweden. You know, he almost became Heron’s godfather. Oh, by the way, I’ve been able to rebook the Grace Cathedral for next summer. That is just around the corner, two months, really. I wish Heron wasn’t so impatient with the wedding. It’s not as if he’s going to lose Riley, is he? Well, considering his last engagement, I guess who can blame him. But to put a proper wedding together, you need at least a year.”
She retained Hildegaard as the wedding planner, but instead of the planner riding roughshod over the bride, it was Alana who drove the planner to distraction with constant demands, changing everything that Hildegaard had decided on, and sending the planner all over the city on errands.
Alana studied her notes. “Now, I thought it might
be a wonderful idea to have the receptionist in the restaurant atop the Waldorf Hotel. What do you think of that, Caroline? And the guests can book rooms if they want to stay the night.”
Caroline looked a little dubious. “Lawrence and I were there one time. It was a very beautiful room, but it was awfully expensive.”
Alana looked at her for a moment. “Caroline, dear, I know I’m being quite crass and overbearing when I say this, but when it comes to the Waits, money is the last thing you and your husband need to worry about. Now, I’ve already booked the two top suite floors for both of our families, and then the two next floors for our closest friends and families. How does that sound?”
Caroline gave a stunned but wan smile. “I guess it sounds just fine. It’s going to be a fabulous wedding.” She knew that any wedding with Heron Wait had to be elaborate. He was the eldest of the Wait family who was general counsel to the family’s international business, a bright star in the family jewels with his education, skills, and drive. As the eldest and as the last child to marry, this held certain social obligations, for him and for the family. There would be many who would expect to be invited. Caroline was well aware of this, and knew there was nothing she and Lawrence could do to avoid a big showy wedding.
And, this time, Riley as the impending bride, seemed to be able to hold up much better than Roberta the process of putting together an elaborate wedding. However, she was perfectly content to leave all the planning to her future mother-in-law, happy to be only responsible for choosing her own dress and to appear at the alter at the date and time that Alana set.
Caroline had been privately relieved when she had not had to go through Roberta and Heron’s wedding. But, now with Heron marrying Riley, she knew there was very little chance that the second engagement would fall through. She looked down at the middle of the table where the engaged couple was sitting. Caroline thought she had never seen two people more in love as they, or so aware of one another and unaware of the world around them. Heron had his arm across the back of Riley’s chair, and she was leaning her back against him so that she was half sitting on his lap. As she steadily ate through the chocolate mousse cake, she held a lively discussion with her sister and Beth Anne on politics. Heron was listening to his brother and his brother-in-low discuss sports. But as much as the two were engaged in their separate discussions, they were continually drawn to one another, their heads turning in intervals to look at the other, their eyes locking for a long moment before turning back to the conversation. Sometimes they would fail to observe courtesy, and Heron would pull Riley closer about to wrap her in his arms and begin to make love to her, when a loud cough would break through their spell and remind them that they were not alone.
