by Tia Siren
Ray’s parents lived just ten minutes away, in a house which was somehow bigger than his own home was. Danielle had learned that Ray usually had a few friends who lived with him off and on, an entourage of sorts, but he had made it clear to them that he was a married man now, and he and his new wife would need the whole home to themselves. The young woman wondered if it was possible that they would ever need that many rooms for themselves, and found herself wondering the same thing as she stepped into Ray’s parent’s home. She was sure they must rent out fifty or so rooms, that it made no sense for them to live there alone, but she knew that they did. Although, as she stepped inside after her new husband did, she was greeted by a maid, and she had a moment to wonder if the help lived in the house. She realized she didn’t know anything about how the wealthiest people in America lived, and she had a million questions.
Ray and Danielle made their way into a massive living room and sat on a couch. The maid had told Ray that his father was wrapping up a business call, and his mother was out at a tennis lesson. The fact that Ray’s father had his maid greet his own son made Danielle feel bad for Ray. It was as if he was treating him like some sort of employee instead of a son, but if Ray felt bad he was careful not to show it on his face. He smiled when Danielle caught his eye, and he reached over and took her hand.
“Nervous?” he asked, and Danielle nodded. There was no point in lying.
It took ten minutes before Ray’s dad arrived. He was shorter than his son and had a bit of a gut. His hair was gray but thick, and he wore trendy glasses with a small frame.
“Who is this?” he said after shaking his son's hand. Danielle thought of her mother since her father had died before she was born. They always hugged, whether Danielle was gone for months at school, or half an hour down at the grocery store. Ray and his father didn’t have that sort of relationship; that much would have been clear to anyone.
“This is Danielle,” Ray said, and his father shook her hand. If he disliked black people, he didn’t show it in his face, and his smile was warm as he shook her hand. And then Ray went on. “My wife.”
Ray’s father pulled his hand away from Danielle’s and spun on his son.
“This is my father, David Ferris,” Ray went on, as though he hadn’t anticipated David’s reaction.
“Your wife?” David asked. “Are you out of your mind?”
“You seemed to want that for me,” Ray asked, laying it on thick. They were near Hollywood after all, so his acting was more than appropriate.
“May I speak to you in the other room please?”
“Which one dad?” Ray said with a grin, raising his hands. They had plenty to pick from. David didn’t find his son’s antics funny, and he turned and stalked out of the living room. “I’ll be right back honey,” Ray said to Danielle, before following his father out.
Danielle stood awkwardly near the couch. She wasn’t sure where Ray and his father had gone, but she could hear them though their words were muffled and not clear. Still she heard David say the words black, kidding me, and use your brain, with a lot of other angry words in between. Ray was either silent or speaking in a normal tone because she couldn’t make out any of his words.
After ten minutes, Ray returned and smiled. “Okay, that’s done. Dinner is cancelled, I’m afraid. We can go out tonight if you want.”
Danielle nodded and then waited until they were in Ray’s car and heading down the long driveway before she asked what she wanted to.
“What did he say?”
“He told me you were after my money. Well, his money I guess.”
“He’s not concerned that I’m black?”
Ray laughed. “He brought it up, but surprisingly he wasn’t as racist as I thought he would be about it.”
Danielle laughed. She couldn’t help herself. Somehow the absolute absurdity of her situation presented itself, suddenly, like a tiger springing onto an unsuspecting deer from the forest brush.
“What’s so funny?” Ray asked as he pulled onto the road.
“Everything,” Danielle said. And then the rich man began to laugh too.
That evening they went to a restaurant so expensive that they didn’t even bother putting the prices on the menus. If you had to ask how much anything there cost, you couldn’t afford it. Over dinner, Ray was very open, and Danielle took advantage of it. He discussed his childhood, growing up in that lifestyle, with the wealth, but a busy father who had little time for him. He discussed his future, and how he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, and how he didn’t feel great about living off of his father’s wealth, but that the shame of doing so wasn’t enough to make him stop.
“So isn’t he going to cut you off?” Danielle asked as she sipped a wine that was older than anything she owned, a true classic vintage with an intense but pleasurable taste.
“No. He told me I had to get married, I had to start living a life that wasn’t just partying, and that’s what I’m doing. I told him I loved you. I’ll be upset in six months when it all falls apart, and maybe he’ll turn into a human being and feel bad for me, and I can get a few more years off of him.”
Danielle was surprised to hear her husband speak so bluntly. He seemed very self-aware, and he seemed sad inside, but he hid it behind his lavish lifestyle.
“So you have to want to do something,” Danielle pressed.
Ray sighed. “I have one thing,” he said.
“What?”
“I want to write.”
“Write? Poetry? Movies?”
“A novel. But my dad… I don’t know… he just throws money at creative people. He doesn’t respect them, he doesn’t think I have that in me. Writers are just people he forces to write a script the way he thinks it will sell. I have this idea… it’s a book, a real novel with complex… well, everything. But it’s stupid.”
Danielle reached across the table and placed her hand on top of Ray’s. “It’s not stupid,” she said with a smile.
“You’re the best wife I’ve ever had,” Ray joked, and they both laughed.
6
Two months passed, and Danielle was further exposed to a world she could barely comprehend. Ray had a personal chef who he could call up and have over at a moments notice, and once a week a crew of women came through and cleaned the massive house. He had more cars than she had pairs of shoes, which had been her one weakness throughout her life, even if being a broke college student meant she didn’t buy as many as she wanted.
They did nothing, and it was exactly what Danielle had needed, after years of intense study at school. She lounged in the pool, she lounged in the massive home theater watching movies with Ray, and she lounged in bed late at night after they had sex. They never made love, not those first two months. It was always fucking, and they did it often. Danielle was glad she was on birth control because it meant the rich young white man could take her whenever he wanted. And he wanted to a lot.
She would be brushing her teeth in the morning, and he would step out of the shower with a raging hard on, and without a word he was behind her, pressing his cock against her ass cheeks, clad in just her panties. She would turn to kiss him, but he would force her down to her knees, and with frothy toothpaste at the corner of her mouth she would blow him, until he came, spraying thick strands of cum across her face. Then with his semen drying across her nose and chin she would perch her ass on the edge of the sink, and he knelt down, repaying the oral favor.
Or she would be in the pool, and then he was there, sliding inside of her in the cool water. Or he was bending her over the foot of the bed, or she was riding him in the back of one of his cars, or a million other positions.
Through all of this, Danielle began to fall for the man. He was caring. Sweet. Hurt. She saw how growing up with his father had affected Ray. It afforded him an amazing lifestyle, but he was missing something, some affection he had needed his whole life. Over two months Ray and Danielle only saw his father once, but his mother came a few times, visiting at Ray’s
house each time.
One night they lay in bed, talking as a fat silver moon rose above the mansion, sitting like a bright bulb in the middle of the black sky, with a million pinpricks of light surrounding it. They both had been sleeping nude, and they were lying next to one another under a thin silk sheet. Danielle reached over and ran her fingertip along Ray’s abs. He looked to her and smiled in the darkness.
“I love you,” he said suddenly, and it took Danielle by surprise.
“I love you too,” she said, without thought. They kissed. Up to that point their kisses had been full of passion, hot and heavy, but there under the sheet, in the moonlight, it was different. Slow. Sweet. Full of passion that was tempered by love.
Their tongues danced together. Her hand slid up and down his abdomen, her fingertips brushing his skin. He rolled onto his side and took her into his arms. Her bare breasts pressed against his chest, her nipples hardening against his skin. She felt his cock grown hard and press against her hip. They rolled over together, and he was pressing against her as they kissed. He ran a hand through her black hair, which she kept straight. She sent a hand down his back, to his ass, where she squeezed and dug her nail playfully into his behind. He grinned against her mouth and reached down, sliding a finger along her slit between her legs, wanting to get her ready, but she already was, her warm juices coating his finger. He slid inside her.
For the first time, they made love. It was sweet and sensual and slow. For an hour they rocked slowly together, his cock sliding in and out of her, his lips on her breasts, her neck. Her nails trailed lazily down his back, her legs wrapped around his hips. Another hour passed, and every time he seemed as though he was going to come he slowed down, or stopped completely, his cock hard and throbbing in her tight pussy. The urge to climax would pass, and he would start thrusting at a glacial pace again.
Meanwhile, Danielle was in ecstasy. She came in the first half hour, moaning in a husky voice as the walls of her pussy clamped onto his dick, and the orgasm tore through her core. And then he was going again, and within twenty minutes she had come again.
By the time he came, over two hours since they started, she had experienced five orgasms. It was the most amazing love making she had ever been a part of. When Ray released he groaned and grunted, moving his lips to her collarbone and biting there as his cock jumped inside of her and hot cum spurted from the tip to fill her snatch.
He kissed her as he lay there panting. They rolled over, but Danielle kept her leg over his body, and his cock remained inside her. They fell asleep like that.
7
Two more months passed, and Danielle had never experienced such happiness. She and Ray still fucked often. He would tell her to suck his cock while he lie in bed, and the would hold her head and choke her with his massive member, so tears streamed down her face and she couldn’t breathe until he blew his wad, the sticky mass sliding right down her throat. He would furiously pump her on the couch in the living room, or bent over one of the stools in the kitchen.
But they also made love. Tender kisses, light touches. They were in love, Danielle had no doubt about it.
Then the young black woman missed her period. She had always been pretty regular, and going three days past when she expected filled her with dread. She had been taking her birth control, hadn’t missed a pill.
When Ray was out one morning, she took one of his cars and bought a test at a nearby upscale grocery store. In one of her temporary home’s bathrooms, she peed on the little white plastic stick, and sat on the toilet, waiting for it to register. It did, and she cried. She was pregnant.
She knew what Ray would say. There were only two months until their marriage was supposed to be over. But he had said he loved her, and she knew she loved him. Would he want to get divorced? He would think she had stopped taking her birth control pills. He would think she wanted to get pregnant, so he was stuck with her. What was a million dollars when this could be her life? Or at the very least, when he still divorced her, he would have to pay child support. She knew that’s what Ray would think, or, at least, that’s what his father would tell him to think, and then it would be in his head.
She knew she couldn’t put off telling him. When he returned home, just before lunch, she broke the news to him. She had sat him down in the living room, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth he had stood up.
“You said you couldn’t get pregnant,” Ray said, his eyes wide.
“I didn’t say that I said I was on birth control.”
“So you lied?”
“No!”
“So you quit taking the pills?”
“No!” Danielle said. She felt hot salty tears stinging her eyes.
“Don’t you start crying!” Ray said forcefully. He sounded angrier than she had seen him.
“Ray, I love you.”
“You love my money,” the man said, confirming Danielle’s worst fears.
“No!” the black girl argued. It was all she could say.
“You want my money! You think this is the way to get it? I thought you loved me! I loved you!”
“I do!”
“You love this life! This money! My money!” Ray argued.
“It’s not your money!” Danielle said before she could stop herself. “It’s daddy’s money, and I don’t give a shit about any of it!”
“Fuck you,” Ray said coldly, and then he turned and left the room. Danielle ran after him. She begged him not to go, but he wouldn’t listen. He walked out of the massive front door, and she stood there, watching as he climbed into one of his sports cars, and then he was gone. Danielle fell to the ground in a heap, and cried.
When she could, the young woman called a cab and packed up some clothes. Ray had bought her many things over the four months, mostly clothes and shoes, and she was careful not to take any of it. By the time she had a small bag the cab was outside of the gate at the end of the long driveway, and she walked down to meet it.
She had the million dollars in her bank. She hadn’t touched it yet, she hadn’t needed to. Now she did, using it to pay for the cab and a hotel room. She didn’t want to go back to Las Vegas. She needed Ray to know that she loved him. Days passed. They turned to weeks, and then a month. She tried to call him, tried to text him, but he would never speak with her.
She went to an upscale stationery store and bought a beautiful leather bound writing journal, and a set of silver pens. She had the woman at the counter wrap them for her, and then she went to Ray’s home. He wasn’t there, so she went to his parent’s house. His sports car was parked outside. Someone let her past the gate, and she parked next to it, driving a rental car. She sat for a moment behind the wheel, writing a check for the money he had paid her to marry him, or, at least, most of it. She didn’t have the money to pay back the hotel or rental car.
Danielle climbed out of the car and went to the front door, knocking softly. Ray opened it.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want to talk.”
“Our lawyer will talk when the baby comes,” he said and went to shut the door. She held her hand out.
“I don’t want money from you,” she said.
“I don’t believe that for a second,” another voice said, and then Danielle saw David, Ray's father, come to the door.
“Dad, I can handle this. She’s not the first woman to come after my money.”
“Here’s a check for what you paid me to marry you,” Danielle said, and by the look on David’s face, she knew that news was a surprise to him.
“What’s she talking about?” David asked, and when it looked as though Ray wasn’t going to fill his father in, Danielle did so.
“He wanted to make you mad, so he married me in Vegas after paying me a million dollars. He didn’t think you’d want him marrying a black girl.”
David said nothing. Usually, people didn’t want to talk about their racism. Ray remained silent as Daniel held the check out to him.
“I don’t
want it,” she said. “I want you. I fell in love with you.”
Ray opened his mouth to speak, but then he shut it.
“Get this gold digger out of here,” David said from over his son’s shoulder. “Or I can get security to do so.”
“Give me a minute,” Ray said, and he stepped out and reached back, shutting the door behind him.
“I’m sorry,” Danielle said. “I didn’t want to get pregnant; I didn’t trick you. I don’t want your money.”
“The pill doesn’t mess up. You can’t get pregnant on it.”
“You can, it’s just rare,” Danielle said. “Trust me, you can.”
She felt tears in her eyes once more, and she felt like an idiot. One slipped over her bottom eyelid and slipped down her mocha cheek, but Ray reached out and wiped it away.
“I bought you this,” Danielle said, holding the gift out to him. He opened it and smiled when he looked to her his own eyes were misty. “You can’t give up on your dream,” she said. “You have to write that novel.”
Ray nodded. He couldn’t speak.
“I want to tell you about my father,” Danielle said. Ray looked to her. She had never opened up about her dad. She went on. “He died before I was born. That’s why I don’t talk about him. I don’t know him. He was with the wrong people. He was killed, shot by a guy he had some sort of beef with. It sounds dumb. Exactly what your father must think about black people, but that’s who my dad was. A thug who was killed. That’s all I know him as. I didn’t get to learn about the man my mother fell in love with. I don’t want my own child to do that. You aren’t dead, but I don’t want this baby to grow up without knowing their father. It has nothing to do with money; I want him or her to know you. You. An amazing man, with love, and passion, and a writer. I want this baby to know you. A writer. A father. Someone who does amazing things with his life. That’s what I want for the baby, and for you. It has nothing to do with me or the money. We could live in a one-bedroom apartment.”
Ray laughed. “We might have to. My dad is going to have a fit when I tell him.”