Chapter 11 #2
‘I enjoy my job, Gregory. Being a lawyer is part of me and it’s part of the person you fell in love with. I want her to stick around for you.’
‘I had a feeling you’d say that,’ he says with a mischievous grin.
‘Why are you looking like that?’ I pout, playfully raising one brow.
‘I have two questions to ask you.’
My heart flutters in my chest. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, we make a good team, you and me. And I don’t give your firm legal work, not really; I give you legal work.’
My heart rate returns to normal and I internally curse. Of course he wasn’t going to ask you that.
‘Are you listening?’
‘Mm, yes, of course. We make a good team. Like Jekyll and Hyde.’
His lips curve. ‘Something like that. So, I was thinking, why don’t you move in-house? Come and work for me at GJR as my head legal advisor?’
‘Work for you?’
‘Ja.’ He laughs nervously, his eyes searching for an answer.
I step back and nibble my bottom lip, turning slowly on the spot, the hem of my dress floating up from my thighs. ‘That could be trouble.’
He looks to the sea across my shoulder and it’s his turn to bite his bottom lip as his hands move to his trouser pockets, uncommonly vulnerable. ‘Ja.’
‘It would mean you’d have to start listening to me.’
‘I can do that.’ He looks up from his feet and releases his lip from his teeth.
‘And I’d need benefits. Good benefits. Financial and…’
‘And?’
I blush, running my tongue across my lip. ‘And good physical benefits.’
His nerves are replaced with his exquisite half-smile. ‘That can be arranged.’
I waft a hand flippantly through the air. ‘Oh, what the hell, Neil hates me anyway.’
‘So you’ll do it?’
I pause for a second, then laugh. ‘Yes. I’ll do it.’
‘She’ll do it!’ He picks me up under my arms and turns me in a fast full circle then sets me back down in front of him.
‘Gregory, you don’t owe me anything, please remember that.’
‘God, you’re amazing.’ He takes a deep breath in then kisses me. My body instantly yields, instinctively curving into his. I wrap my fingers around his neck and pull him towards me.
‘Wait, wait.’ He removes my hands and places them by my sides. ‘My second question.’
Panting, bereft and confused, I shrug. ‘What was the second question?’
His chest visibly expands beneath his shirt, then he exhales, a long, tense breath out, and reaches his big palm to my cheek. ‘It amazes me every day that you know everything about me. You know my worst. And you’re still here.’
I feel my eyes widen. My lungs slowly emptying.
‘You’re the most beautiful, brave and true woman I’ve ever met. More than that, you’re the best person I know.’
My stomach starts doing summersaults.
‘You were wrong when you told me I couldn’t see what was standing right in front of me.
I’ve always known. I knew from the second I first laid eyes on you in my boardroom.
’ He sighs on his exhale. ‘But I was afraid. Afraid of what I could feel, what that would mean, and afraid to believe that you could love me back.’
He lowers his hand from my cheek but his big, brown gems wrap around my soul, making my heart rate soar.
‘All my life, I’ve searched for a reason why I’m still here.
A purpose. After everything I’ve put you through, by some miracle, you’re still standing in front of me, utterly spellbinding.
I know, in this moment, that you are the reason I exist, Scarlett. ’
Tears cast a haze across my eyes that I will to disperse so I can see him clearly.
‘You are my reason. My angel. My light. My everything. I’d like you to let me show you that for the rest of our lives and after.’
A silent tear trails my cheek. ‘That’s quite a speech.’
‘I mean every word.’
He takes a step back then drops to one knee, taking my left hand in his. My other hand moves to my heart in a bid to stop it exploding from my chest when I see the glaze over his eyes.
‘Scarlett Heath, please do me the greatest honour. Please say you’ll be mine forever.’
I wish I could speak but words, breath, running blood, a beating heart, all have escaped me and I stare helplessly at this perfect man.
He reaches into his trouser pocket and presents me with a ludicrously lavish ring. A large, clear princess cut diamond rests in the middle of two entwined rows of diamonds, one white, one black.
Finally, an almost inaudible whisper escapes me. His eyes widen, his brows rise. ‘Yes,’ I say louder. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’
He pushes the extravagant ring onto my finger and pulls me into his arms as he stands, twirling us round in the sand until my head is physically and metaphorically spinning. When he sets me down, he finally kisses me, his fiancée.
‘I really hope they’re happy tears,’ he says.
‘I love you to Pluto and back, Gregory Ryans.’
‘Isn’t it to the moon and back?’
‘You’re really going to comment on me muddling a saying?’
‘I guess not. Get here.’
I leap up into his arms and wrap my legs tightly around his waist, holding the face of and gazing down at the man I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. ‘The ring is beautiful. Are they black diamonds?’
‘Yes. They represent your dark streak.’ He smirks with a wicked glint in his eye, then whispers, ‘Aurora.’
* * *
Two hours later, we’ve waved Sandy and Jackson off to Barbados for another Gregory treat and I can finally have what I’ve wanted since the beach: Gregory Ryans, my fiancé, all to myself.
He opens the door to the large, minimalist penthouse suite: cream walls and carpet, oak furniture, white sofas and soft furnishings.
I open the French doors to both balconies off the lounge, causing the white chiffon curtains to blow gently into the room.
Gregory calls for more champagne. He’s had the hotel stock Pol Rodger 2002 and requests a bottle with two glasses and ice.
‘Set it up in the lounge,’ he says, before hanging up the phone and finding me.
He attacks my mouth, his hand pulling my hair roughly at my neck.
He bends me back, my pelvis pushing into his already angry length.
He’s been waiting for this, too. My chest rises, pushing my breasts against him, the pressure making me moan into him.
He groans deep in his throat and grinds his hips against me, his teeth finding my neck.
‘You’ve agreed to be mine.’ His words are a hoarse whisper in my ear. ‘Completely.’
‘Yes,’ I say, breathless.
He slides his hand down my back, groping my arse over my dress. His fingers work under the silk and brush the satin thong between my cheeks. He picks up my thigh, bending my leg over his hip. ‘You. Are. Mine.’
I open my eyes to find two hooded, black irises fixed on me. ‘Yours.’
‘Tonight, I’m going to take you every way.’
He claims my lip in his teeth, tugging possessively.
He lifts my other leg to his hips, then carries me to the master bedroom, past the four-post teak bed, into the large en suite.
He lowers me to the vanity unit around the white porcelain sink then moves both hands to my hair, pulling me to his mouth.
He grinds hard against me. Then leaves me squirming with need as he flicks on the walk-in shower.
God, he’s hot.
He stalks towards me, unbuttoning his white shirt and releasing the tails from his trousers. I lick my lips, hungry to feel his toned, virile body on me, over me, in me.
‘I’ve had to watch you all day, looking like that, thinking about what I wanted to do to you, not knowing if you’d say yes.’
‘That must have been tough for you,’ I tease, as he lets his shirt fall down his arms to the floor.
‘You have no idea.’ He pushes my legs apart and roughly lifts my arse to the edge of the unit, grinding against my cleft.
‘I think I’ve missed dark Gregory.’
‘Oh, he’s still in here, baby. And he wants to fuck you. He wants to own you all night.’
I push up from the unit, rolling myself against his crotch. ‘I’d like that.’
My head darts to the door when I hear a noise. He grasps my chin in his hand and turns my head back to him. ‘It’s room service.’
Straightening, I push a hand between us, rubbing his erection over his trousers. Leaning forward, I bite his pec and revel in the rumbling growl from his chest. ‘She wants it rough,’ he says, tugging my hair, lifting my face to look at him.
‘She does.’
‘Game on, Miss Heath.’
He draws down the zip at the side of my dress and pulls it over my head as steam begins to fill the room.
As fast as the dress hits the white floor tiles, my nipple is in his mouth.
The noise he makes as he pulls it through his teeth makes the pain and the swirl of his tongue that follows an even sweeter sensation.
My back arches towards him as he performs the same trick on my other breast.
Lifting me with one hand, he yanks my thong down my thighs then follows with his tongue the line of the satin to my ankles. He takes off my shoes then rises, pulling me to him again. His lips meet my neck, then my collarbone, as his hands work my breasts.
‘Take off my trousers.’
I unbuckle then unbutton him and push down his boxers and trousers, freeing him.
He rolls his hard dick against my swollen sex. ‘This is what you do to me.’
He lifts me and takes us into the thick steam, setting me down under the shower’s hot spray.
I move a leg between his and rub against him as his tongue attacks mine, turning, licking, tasting.
Then he moves to my breast, biting the nipple, sucking the most sensitive skin, drawing blood to the surface.
Wild, carnal possession that has me writhing against him.
Bending, he hooks my legs over his shoulders and I yelp as he unexpectedly hoists me up, my back pressed against the white tiles above him, his hands and shoulders holding my thighs up and open, his face at my desperate entrance.
I fist my hands in his hair as his tongue strikes a line up my centre and massages my clit.
‘Jesus! Gregory!’