Marion White directed a pinched look of anger at Heron. “That was quite vulgar, young
man. And I dislike vulgarity.”
“And I dislike any board member of my family’s company to use their seat to further the
positions of their family members.”
There were a few low gasps from the other members. Marion’s face was now turning
puce with outrage. “Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”
“Need I remind you that this corporation belongs to my family and began by my great,
great grandfather. Plus, my brother and I have advanced degrees from Harvard with straight A
records. I have worked for over ten years providing legal service to my company and my brother
here started out as junior executive as all the other employees have begun with an MBA degree.
Except, with Tanner, since he is family, he has the privilege of a junior board membership,
because my father and I are grooming him to ultimately take over the helm someday. As you
know, like my father, and all of our employees, I work very hard for the company. And my
brother is proving himself to be able to more than carry his weight, as well. And, I might add,
Mrs. White, I have met your daughter-in-law.”
There was a brief embarrassed silence. Everyone knew that Representative Regina
Redding’s intellect was not the most stellar and her education level was barely out of high
school. Heron also did not add, but everyone in the room was quite aware of it as well, was that
Regina had once made a play for Heron but ended up settling for Marion’s son, whose only
recommendation was his family’s fortune, which he was quite satisfied going through with a
prodigiously expensive habit of an idle playboy.
“That’s enough, Heron,” Roy said firmly when he saw Marion gearing up for a counter
attack. “I propose that we leave this decision for a later meeting.”
There was a general relieved concurrence throughout the room.
“Then, meeting adjourned,” Roy said.
He watched Marion storm out of the room. He said as Heron gathered his papers, “Was
that really necessary, Heron?”
“The last thing we need in this company is some addle-brained woman who only ran for
political office because she was bored.”
“Some might accuse you of being sexist.”
There were three female board members for the corporation, Marion being one of the
three. One of the other female members stopped by the two men.
“Sex has nothing to do with it, Roy,” she scoffed. This was Shirley Jenson who had a
long career as a criminal attorney and who had married into banking wealth. “Heron’s perfectly
right. Regina is as dumb as a doornail, and she’s going to find pretty quickly that she’s in over
head in Washington.” She walked on and left the room.
Roy said to Heron, “I had planned to have Marion over for dinner so that I could point
out more tactfully the ill-advisedness of bringing her daughter-in-law on board. Now, I’m afraid,
I have my work cut out, thanks to you.”
“That was the most entertaining meeting I’ve attended since I started working here,”
Tanner said rather jovially.
Roy gave his youngest son a withering look, then turned back to Heron. “It isn’t like you,
Heron, to be so belligerent out in the open. In fact, I think I can safely say, that you don’t seem
like yourself in these past several weeks. What has gotten into you, lately? You were always a
coldly controlled bastard but, at least, you were always civil in polite setting. And you’ve been
avoiding us, lately, too. Why?”
“I don’t have time for this, Father,” Heron said in a hard voice. “I’m due back in court,”
and left the room.
A few days later, Heron ran into Tanner and Roberta when he stepped out of the elevator
of the parking garage of the high rise that was the corporate building. His brother and sister-inlaw had their arms around each other and were laughing. He saw the love and happiness that was
shining out of their eyes. They were like two young lovers, finding their own little world perfect
and right.
“Hello, Heron. Are you coming or going?” Tanner asked. “We just came back from
lunch. If you had come by my office earlier, we would have invited you.”
“I was just leaving,” Heron said stiffly.
“Come by the house for dinner, tonight, Heron,” Roberta said. “You haven’t been by in a
long time.”
A shutter lowered over Heron’s eyes. “Thank you, but I have a prior engagement.
Another time, then?”
Roberta was not offended by his brusqueness as she used to be when she was engaged to
him. But her eyes were curious as she watched his frozen face. “Sure. Another time.”
He was about to walk away when she said, “Shall I tell Riley that you said hello?”
Heron stopped, looking at first stunned then confused for a moment. “What?”
“Shall I tell my sister that you said hello?”
Heron’s face, which already looked heavy and tired, became ashen. “Yes, if you wish. If
you’ll excuse me.”
Roberta said, as she and her husband watched Heron walk away, “Is it me or is your
brother’s temperament worsening?”
Once Heron reached his car in the parking garage, for the longest time, he simply sat
behind his steering wheel, staring at nothing in front of him, his face frozen, completely
immobile in his seat. It was only when his cell phone rang that he was shaken out of his stupor
ten minutes later.
CHAPTER 13
Another week passed with Heron spending his days and night working, and when he
wasn’t working or avoiding calls from his family, steadily going through a bottle of scotch,
either in his office or at his penthouse.
That’s what he was doing one Wednesday night, past midnight, standing in front of the
window in his penthouse, staring down at the city, holding a glass half-filled with scotch in one
hand and the bottle in the other.
He knew his family thought that he was spending his time brooding. But he didn’t call it
brooding. He didn’t know what to call it. He knew he was in some kind of a mood, but he didn’t
want to call it brooding. Because he had nothing to brood about, especially about his last affair.
And if he was brooding, then he had every right to do so, didn’t he? After all, it had only
been several months ago since the fiasco with his engagement with Roberta, who was now his
sister-in-law, because his own brother had stolen her from right beneath his bloody nose. That
was enough to drive any man to drink and want to shun all members of his family, because they
all seemed to be perfectly willing to accept the sudden change without any appreciation of his
humiliation and anger at being betrayed.
And then he had to go half-cocked and have a tawdry affair with Roberta’s sister, a most
inappropriate woman to see for any purpose other than inside a bedroom He didn’t care that the
rest of his family thought her completely charming and captivating. She flaunted her sexuality in
front of his face, taunting him in public with it, deliberately making him lose his control,
thumbing her nose at societal mores and convention. And he let her. That was the worst of it,
when he never let any woman drive him to forget who he was and where he was. But all that was
over with Riley. He had made sure that he had put a quick end to that once he realized that
seeing such a woman had little advantage to his life in the long run.
After all that has happened, what sane man wouldn’t be a little off the weather for a time?
But he couldn’t be brooding forever. And Heron didn’t plan to. He told himself that he
might just need to start considering marriage again. He might have to start looking up some of
the women whom he knew were still single and might meet his criteria for a wife. Or, he could
start responding to some of the social events that he was constantly being invited to, and get a
feel for what was available on the market.
But as sound and logical as that plan was, it held very little appeal to Heron. Disgusted
with the whole situation and, even more, with himself, he turned away from the window, stepped
down into the sunken living room, and threw himself on the settee, still holding the glass and the
bottle. Stretching his long legs out in front of him and leaning his head back on the couch, he
closed his eyes, and let the drink and exhaustion pour through his mental barrier and spread
throughout his body.
Sitting in his living room like this, past midnight, coming home from work, it reminded
him of the last time he had sat here. Riley had been with him then, sitting next to him. He
realized he had not relaxed in his living room since then.
As sleep began to close over his mind, Heron remembered that he and Riley had been
tired, as well, from work that night, and all they could do was sit in the living room, sipping their
drinks. They had little energy to have sex, and so ended up that night just talking, telling one
another about their day at work. It had been one of the very few undemanding times he had spent
with Riley, where they discovered that when sex was not involved, that they could be quite
companionable in each other’s company. Content to stay in the living room, they did not bother
to dredge up the energy to go upstairs. Riley had scooted closer to Heron. He put his arm around
her as she snuggled against him, and both fell asleep.
Then he remembered a few hours later, they awoke and had sex on the settee. He
remembered pounding into Riley’s tight flesh, remembered the feeling of her legs wrapped
tightly around his waist, her body writhing beneath him as she sobbed her pleasure. After they
had reached their climaxes, both had collapsed against one another on the couch, his long, heavy
body pressing her much smaller, much lighter one into the soft cushions of the couch, immersed
in the joy and pleasure of letting their bodies cool and settle together from the sexual storm.
After a few minutes, Riley had stirred beneath his and shifted onto her stomach. Keeping her
head pressed on the couch seat, she had brought her knees up to waist and, with a soft
whimpering sound, had lifted her hind quarters up at Heron, offering and demanding at the same
time her loins to him. Heron stared at her exposed flesh for a moment, as if to ponder at this
blatant display of sexual wantonness from woman. He knew that Riley loved being taken in the
doggie style, loved when a man held her by the waist as he pounded into her from behind. It
made her feel subjected sexually to a man, feeling helpless and at the mercy of a man’s superior
strength, which was incongruous for a strong-willed woman like Riley. And it aroused her when
the man fingered her flesh before he took her, as if to test her, readying her for his possession,
making sure to let her be aware that he was marking what was his. Sometime, when the man
inserted a finger inside her channel, she’d pump her hips back and forth on the finger, her eyes
closed, gasping at the languid pleasure, anticipating the much more demanding and much more
savage insertion of his penis. Heron, only too willing to comply with her demanding request, had
stretched his body over her back, bent his head and lightly pressed his mouth against her ear. He
had laughed softly into her whorls, making her shiver, and he could feel that shiver reverberate
down her spine. His tongue flicked ate her earlobe, then sharply bit into it as he plunged his dick
back into her depths. Riley moaned, her hips wriggling against his invasion. He slipped one hand
under her to fondle her breast. The other hand roamed over her body, stroking over her bent leg
and smoothing over her thigh and then squeezing her buttock as he gently rooted into her. Heron
remembered that their fucking in that position had been slow, because they were not driven by
unrelenting need, which oddly made the pleasure even more intense for both of them. Their slow
movements allowed them to be aware of every friction that was caused by the rubbing of their
two bodies, especially the slow drag and pull of his enormous penis against the stretched walls of
her tight pussy. Feeling the heat in her loins tighten every time Heron pulled on her uterine walls,
and the pleasure was built up inside Riley to the point where it was becoming relentless again.
Every time he moved inside her, she began to make small whimpering sounds. Soon, her loins
became tortured again, to the point that her body was demanding some assuagement. Before,
when she had lifted her pussy up to him, she had been an instigator, demanding her rightful
pleasure from him, playfully taunting him with her body. Now, she was a victim of the erotic
need, reduced to begging her lover for her satisfaction that only he could give her, trying to
lessen, even avoid the growing pleasure by wriggling her buttocks when before she was
twitching them at Heron with taunting invitation. She tried to hitch her buttocks up even higher
so that she could force him deeper inside her, needing him to fuck her harder in order to bring
her loins to her peak. But Heron refused to comply with her feminine demand and continued to
move slowly and shallowly inside her, setting off little twinges of tension and heat in her loins.
Soon, Riley was driven to beg, her groans turning into pleading sobs mixed with cries of pleasure
and frustration every time he moved less than an inch inside her. She tried rise on all fours so
that she could lift up her pussy more fully to him, but his heavy body kept her pressed down into
the couch, trapping her in the torment.
Desperate, Riley lifted her head and pressed it against Heron’s shoulder, her hips
grinding helplessly into the couch. Although her body preferred to escape the sensual torment,
she knew that the only way she was able to get any relief from it was to have Heron drive her to
her peak. “Heron, oh, please, fuck me! Fuck me, now!”
Heron’s only answer was to dig his tongue in the whorls of her ear as he continued to
move over her, throwing her into wild shudders. He continued his gentle teasing, until the
pleasure in his own loins became hard and demanding. Only when his body was suffused with
tortuous heat and ready to burst, did Heron hold Riley’s hips with bruising hands as he began to
pound long and hard into her. He only stroked her deeply two times when Riley’s orgasm broke
over her. She gave a high wailing cry, then clenched her teeth as she felt her loins tighten
painfully one last time, her eyes closed, her hips wriggling in his iron grip in a frantic effort to
escape the inevitable, then she wailed again as her peak crested. Heron pounded even harder into
her, now desperate for his own peak, and kept pounding even as Riley’s body was shuddering in
the throes of her orgasm. He lunged his penis in and out of her pussy even as he felt the rush of
her cum fluid spilling out of her. And because he continued to fuck her even during her orgasm,
Riley’s buttocks hitched up as her loins tightened again, and she gave a cry of dread, and her
fingers began to claw at the couch cushion as she prepared to endure another bout of sexual
storm. A few minutes later, with a soft wail, she was humping her buttocks as she came again,
and more of her orgasmic fluid flooded out of her. And Heron continued to fuck her long and
hard even as he felt her cum bathing thickly and warmly his raging penis. And because her lover
did not stop his plunging, Riley was helpless to prevent her body from responding to his
savagery so soon after her second orgasm.