by Madison Faye
“Marshall?”
Her jaw drops before suddenly, panic blazes across her face.
“Oh God, is everything—!”
“Kendall is fine, Celine,” I growl, my eyes locked on her husband.
“She’s great, actually.”
Tony makes a move like he’s going to dart past me, but I grab him and shove him down into the couch. His eyes say it all—he knows exactly why I’m here.
“Marshall!” Celine gawks at me like I’m insane. “What in the hell are you—”
“There are some things you need to hear,” I say quietly as I turn towards her.
“Don’t listen to him!” Tony bleats out, jumping to his feet. “Honey! Don’t listen to this lying sack of—”
“SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP!” I roar, whirling on Tony with fury in my voice.
He stutters, swallowing thickly.
“Sit,” I hiss, pointing to sofa.
Tony sits meekly.
“Good boy.”
I turn back to Celine, taking a calming breath.
“Celine, your late husband’s money is gone.”
Her brow furrows as she shakes her head. “What?”
“Josh’s money. It’s gone. Tony lost it.”
She smiles awkwardly. “Oh, no… no, that’s not true, Marshall. Tony’s just been restructuring our financial—”
“It’s gone, Celine. Poof. Vanished. Bad investments and shitty management by Tony.”
She blinks, and I can see she wants to say something, but slowly, I see it dawn on her. And deep down, I think what I’ve just told her is something she’s maybe known on subconscious level and buried away. But slowly, it’s coming to the surface.
“Gone?” She says quietly.
"Gone.”
A shadow crosses her face, and she whirls on Tony.
“Is he telling the truth?!”
Tony swallows.
“Answer her,” I hiss.
Pathetically, Tony nods.
Celine screams, whirling and shoving her fingers into her hair as she starts to pace the room. “Oh God, what… what have you done?!”
“Celine, there’s more.”
And then, I tell her everything. Well, almost everything.
I don’t mention The Society, or that I’m a member. Of course, I don’t. I frame it that people I know who know people made it known to me about what was going on with the auction and all of that. But she’s not concerned about the details. It’s when I tell her that her husband was instrumental in emotionally fucking with her daughter enough to get her to offer her virginity for sale on a fucking website that she loses all composure.
Now, I’m a big guy. I was in the Navy for years. But even I struggle to get her away from Tony before she kills him with her bare hands, spitting rage and curses at him.
When I finally get her away from him, the reality of what I’ve just told her about Kendall finally hits her.
“Jesus Christ, did she—” her face falls. “Oh God! Did some asshole—”
“She’s fine, Celine. I stopped it.”
…I mean, it’s a half truth. Kind of.
Celine collapses into me with a sob. “Thank you, Marshall,” she breathes into me.
“Celine, you can do what you want. And no matter what you do, Kendall is going to be taken care of. She’ll want for nothing, and I’m taking care of her college in light of, well, all of this.”
Her brow crumples before she throws her arms around me, hugging me tight.
“Thank you,” she whispers emotionally.
My face hardens as I take a deep breath. It’s time for the rest of what I have to say.
“Marshall, that’s just so generous of—”
“There’s something more.”
Deep breath.
I hold her gaze, standing tall, my shoulders squared.
“Celine, I’m in love with your daughter.”
Predictably, the room goes pin-drop silent, and Celine just stares at me.
“It’s not what you think,” I say quietly.
Celine blinks at me, swallowing, her face paling.
“You’re in love with her?” She balks, her nose wrinkling.
“I am.”
“Jesus, Marshall, you’re twice her age!” She whirls, shaking her head side to side and wringing her hands before she whirls on me.
“I trusted you! I sent her to stay at your house because I thought she’d be safe there!”
“And she is, Celine.”
“Not from you she’s not!”
“Celine—”
“This is my daughter we’re talking about, Marshall!” She screams, jabbing a finger at me. “She is eighteen years old! And you swoop in to just—”
“I’m in love with her!” I roar, loudly and the room goes silent again as I take a breath.
“Celine, I’m in love with her. It is not what you think. This isn’t midlife crisis bullshit. It’s not a creep thing. Her age and mine isn’t even a factor in this. I love her because of who she is inside. Her mind, the way she looks at the world. Fuck, the way she makes me look at the world.”
I shake my head, holding Celine’s eyes.
“I love her for who she is, and the incredible person I know she’s going to become. And I won’t apologize for that. Not even to you.”
Behind me, Tony snorts from the couch.
“Hypocrite.”
“What did you say?” I snarl, whirling.
He snorts again.
“Mr. fucking white knight high-and-mighty over here one second, until it comes out you’re banging the girl next door—”
My fist crashes into his nose, sending him sprawling across the sofa as he screams and clutches at his bleeding face.
“Shut up,” I hiss, glaring at him before I turn back to Celine, my face mellowing out.
“I will never hurt her, or hold her back, or deny her living her life. She is going to college. I’m paying for it. She is not beholden to me because of that, and she damn well knows it.”
Celine turns away, pushing her hands through her hair for a minute before she glances back at me.
“Thank you for telling me,” she says quietly.
“Of course.”
“Well, you could have not, and just kept it from me.”
I shake my head. “No, I couldn’t have. Keeping it from you would have meant I was ashamed of what Kendall and I are. It would be proof that this is some tawdry affair I need to keep a secret. It’s not, Celine. I want it out in the open. I want to scream it to the world that I love your daughter.”
A small smile crosses her face, and her shoulders loosen.
“I’m not saying I’m okay with all of this right now immediately.”
“And I wouldn’t expect you to be.”
Celine eyes me carefully. “I love my daughter, Marshall.”
“And I will never hurt her. Ever.”
She blows air out through her lips and looks down.
“I’m going to need some time, you know. To process this.”
“Of course,” I say gently. I walk towards her, and when I take her hands in mine, she gives me a small smile.
“I love her, and I’m going to keep on loving her, and stoking that fire inside of her that makes her glow, and ask questions, and seek answers.”
Celine squeezes my hand, smiling wryly at me.
“Thank you, Marshall. For telling me.”
I nod, smiling back. “Can I give you a ride home or somewhere besides here?” I nod my chin at Tony, who’s still holding his nose and sniveling. “Away from him?”
Celine glares at her husband, her lips tight.
“Yes, actually. You can.” She turns and smiles thinly at me. “Can you drop me off in Miami?”
I chuckle. “Sure. Any particular reason?”
“Damn right,” she mutters, still glaring at Tony. “My attorney is on vacation there right now, and I think she and I need to have a nice long talk.”
I wait while she thr
ows her things in a suitcase, only making a move once when Tony tries to get up from the couch to stop her.
“You,” I growl, pointing a finger in his face as I lean down and glare deep into his eyes.
“Don’t think for a second that I’m done with you.”
* * *
My heart starts racing the moment we start to descend towards the private airport in southern Connecticut. By the time we hit the ground, I’m buzzing—needing her. And when I step through the gate into the main terminal lounge and hear the shriek of her voice and the sound of flip-flops against the floor, I can’t even pretend to stop the laugh and the grin as I turn and scoop her into my arms as she crashes into me.
Her lips sear to mine, her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck as I spin her. I kiss her hard and deep, with everything I have, just swallowing her small little moans as I drown in her kiss.
“Miss me?” she purrs, pulling away.
“Kendall, I was only gone for twelve hours.”
She beams at me. “So that’s a ‘oh my God, I missed you so much, Kendall,’ isn’t it?”
I grin.
“That’s a ‘holy fuck did I miss you and want you right here just like this every waking moment since I left you,’ fiancée.”
Kendall bites her lip, blushing as her eyes spark into mine.
“Oh, now that’s good.”
She beams, pecking me on the lips again before pulling back.
“Talked to my mom about an hour ago.”
“Oh yeah?”
Kendall nods. “She was having a mojito in some club in Miami with her attorney and her attorney’s husband, who’s a divorce lawyer.” She grins, giggling. “Tony is so fucked.”
I laugh, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and leaning down to kiss her slow and deep, dipping her low, before we turn and waltz for the doors.
I don’t care who sees. I don’t care about the wrinkled noses and the judgmental looks.
Fuck ‘em.
Because for the first time in my life, I’ve truly got it all. Success. Happiness. Wealth. A daughter who makes me so proud, and now?
We step out of the terminal, but before we get to the Bentley, with the driver holding the door for us, I turn, and I pull Kendall into my arms. I kiss her again—slow, deep, passionately, until she’s panting against me so hard, I can practically feel her pulse rate.
And now, I’ve also got the love of my life.
“C’mon, beautiful,” I purr into her lips. “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
Kendall
The breeze off the bay sweeps through my hair, tousling it in the wind as I yank the zipper of my windbreaker up.
Told you, Amy.
I grin to myself, remembering my friend trying to convince me about all the bikinis I’d be needing living in California. Except, I was right. Sure, I might need a swimsuit or two, but I swear, it’s sixty-five degrees, windy, and slightly overcast like two-thirds of the time out here in Palo Alto, just south of San Francisco. Which is actually fine, because truth be told, I love this kind of weather.
Luckily, so does Marshall, because it’s supposed to be like this all week, and he’s arriving tomorrow for a week-long visit.
My grin widens, my body tingling and my heart beating a little faster as I think about it, and how much I can’t wait to throw my arms around him and kiss him until I can’t breathe.
The distance thing does suck, but it’s not that bad. I mean, we rarely go longer than ten days without either him flying to me or flying me out to see him back on the east coast. Not everyone has that luxury. Chantelle, for instance—a girl in my calculus class I’ve made friends with—is long distance with her boyfriend, who’s studying art in Paris for the year. And they won’t see each other for months.
I make a face as I duck out of the wind. Yeah, no way could I do that. I’d go freaking crazy if I had to go longer than two weeks without Marshall’s hands on me or the taste of his lips.
I dash across the University green towards my condo, the wind whipping through my hair again. Through the clouds, a sliver of sunlight shines down, and when it catches on my ring finger, I blink at the refracted light across my face.
Okay, it’s not ostentatious, but it’s a big ring. Big enough that it turns heads. Big enough that even the most aggressive frat assholes who refuse to take “no” or “I have a boyfriend” or even “I have a fiancé who’s twice your size” can take a hint when they see it. It’s a ring that says I’m spoken for, and man do I love it.
It’s been almost a year since everything that happened with Marshall and I coming together like we did. Some things have changed a lot, some things have stayed exactly the same, and it’s all for the best. Tony ended up going to prison for tax fraud, credit card fraud, money laundering, larceny, and honestly about twenty other financial crimes.
Good fucking riddance.
My mom, obviously, divorced his ass as soon as she possible could once Marshall told her what had happened. And she’s doing okay. The financial hit was pretty big. I mean Tony seriously cleaned everything out. Her retirement, her emergency fund, my college savings, the trust my dad had set up for me as a baby. All of it. Luckily, Marshall and his team of lawyers were able to step in and start doing damage control on the rest of her assets before they could be seized due to Tony’s fuck-ups. She got to keep her house along with some other property my dad had bought years ago. Marshall helped her liquidate a lot of it, including the house, which gave her a pretty nice chunk of cash.
“I need to downsize anyways,” she’d said, smiling even though I know selling the house wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do. But she ended up with a great little condo in the city right by Central Park, and she’s currently loving living in the city again. She’s dating, too—Vincent. He’s a masseuse and part-time model, and very French, and he’s about twenty years younger than her.
And you know what? Good for her. She deserves it.
Marshall’s hedge fund took the money my mom made from selling our huge house in Greenwich and some of the other assets and rolled it into his market plays. And soon enough, mom was making really nice quarterly returns.
Amy’s living it up in Chicago. She’s kicking butt at her classes, she got really into swimming, and apparently, she’s seeing someone, though she’s been all sorts of secretive about him. Whatever it is though, she’s happy, and we also get to see each other probably once a month. Yes, there was a grace period of awkwardness with me being with Marshall, especially for the rest of last summer once everything was out in the open. For a week or two there, I was even still sleeping in my own room until she finally cornered me and demanded I “stop being a weirdo” about it and just sleep where we both knew I was going to sleep. Marshall and I did tone down the PDA in front of her though, which I think was fair.
Besides all of that? Well, it’s just school, getting excited for the next time I get to see the man I love, and planning for our wedding, which is slated for a year from now. After that, it’ll be two more years, and then I’m done with school and with him full-time, forever. I brought up the idea of skipping the whole college thing once or twice. I mean, let’s be fair—Marshall is literally a billionaire. It’s not like I need a degree. But he insisted, which honestly, I love about him. He insisted that an education was important, no matter what I ended up doing, and that he “damn well wasn’t going to be the guy to stop me from reaching my full potential.”
I’ve mentioned once or twice how much I love him, right?
And then there’s the million-dollar question everyone always loves to ask, especially with our age difference: kids. Are we having them, do we want them, how many, don’t we realize that Marshall would be sixty when he or she graduates high school?
Blah. Blah. Blah.
Trust me, I’ve heard it from about a hundred people in various ways, and all I do is smile and say, “we’ll see.” But the honest truth?
…Of course we’re having kids. Just,
not now. That’s another Marshall-mandated waiting period. If it were my choice entirely, I’d ask him to knock me up yesterday. I mean, I’ve never been baby crazy or anything, or even really thought about children until I was much older, but there’s something about him that just brings out this animalistic need to procreate. It’s like being with a man like him has my ovaries on overdrive, constantly. Like there’s this evolutionary switch inside me that he turns on that just screams “breed me” whenever he’s got me in his arms.
…Biology is weird, man.
But, again, we’re waiting. At least until I graduate. But the day after? Well, I won’t be held accountable for pinning him down and riding his big, beautiful cock over and over until I’m damn sure it’s taken inside.
The wind hits me again as I round the corner to my building and run up the three steps to the entryway. Paul, the door guy, smiles at me, letting me in and hitting the elevator button for me. Yes, I know most college freshman don’t exactly live in luxury doorman-building condos. And it’s not even a Marshall thing where he insisted I live here. He was actually totally on board with my living in the campus dorms, but I didn’t last long. My room was fine, my roommates were neutrally fine, and it’s not like it was terrible or anything.
Except whenever Marshall came to visit, you’d have thought I was hosting a gang bang live sex show in my room by the judgy, snide, bitchy way basically every other girl in the dorm looked at me. After the third time, we went out that very afternoon and found my condo
…Yeah, enjoy your coed bathrooms, shitty showers, and people stealing your shit out of the dryers, dorm bitches.
The elevator dings open, and I hoist my bag onto my shoulder as I reach for my keys. I’ve got a little work to do, and then I seriously need to clean my place before Marshall visits tomorrow. The door swings open and I step in, locking it behind me. My bag drops to the ground, and I shrug off my windbreaker and hang it up before I plod through the condo towards the living room. It’s been a long day, and all I want to do is veg out in front of Netflix or something.
Well, all I really want to do is ride my fiancé’s gorgeous cock until I scream, but sadly, I think it’s going to be Netflix and solo-chill until tomorrow night. Maybe I can convince Marshall to have some sexy video chat time with me.