Regency Romance: The Rake's Fake Marriage (Historical Arranged Marriage Romance) (19th Century Victorian Romance) (45 page)

“That’s not fair, I only have the dress and panties on,” Danielle laughed.

“Hey, those sandals count too. That’s two more things.”

“Alright then.”

“I’ll go first,” Ray said. “Do you have any siblings?”

Danielle shook her head. “Nope.”

“Okay, you ask.”

“Ever had your heart broken?”

“Yes. Have you ever had a threesome?”

Danielle laughed. “No.” She looked to Ray. “Who broke your heart?”

He grinned after a moment, and then took his tie off. The game wore on, and after an hour she was naked, sitting on the couch. She hadn’t answered a question about her father, nor one about a friend of hers who had died, and then she was barefoot. Ray asked another question about her
dad,
and she lost the dress. He was in nothing but his underwear, a bulge evident at his crotch when he asked her his last question. “Does it annoy you that you want me to fuck you again?”

Danielle had smiled seductively at the
man
and slid out of her panties. He took her on the couch.

5

Within a couple of days of her sudden and
abrupt
wedding, Danielle had pulled out of school for at least a
semester
and had quit her weekend job. She had packed up her meager collection of belongings from her dorm and then shoved
the couple
of boxes into his tiny black sports car and rode with him to California.

It was awkward being around Ray, and he seemed to feel it too. The whole thing was insane, and Danielle wasn’t quite sure she had even registered it yet. It was some abstract thing that was happening, marrying a man, moving in with him, all for a million dollars, and all to make his father angry.

That part still made her mad, and she wasn’t looking forward to meeting Ray’s father. If he would have a problem with his son marrying a black woman, he wasn’t the kind of man she wanted to know.

It was a drive that took almost four hours, and Ray and Danielle didn’t speak much. When they reached Ray’s
neighborhood,
she had fun gawking at all of the mansions, but nothing could prepare her for her new husband’s home.

He had to stop in front of a gate just off of a quiet street with a lot of privacy hedges and fences. He leaned out through the window and typed in a code on a small pad that sat on
an iron
pole next to the driveway. When he
was done,
there was a mechanical
squeal,
and the gate swung inward, and he drove through.

The gate closed behind them, and the driveway turned to the right. The house
was hidden
from view by a grove of sorts made up of palm trees, but when they turned again it was revealed, and Danielle felt her mouth fall open in shock. She would be living there for six months, and it was the most amazing house she had ever seen.

The home was huge, three
stories
and as long as the white house,
or, at least,
it seemed that way to Danielle. It was a cream color, with darker columns in the front and a short but
wide
set of stairs which led to the double front doors. Ray pulled the car in front of the home and grinned over
to
her.

“Welcome home,” he said.

He carried her boxes in, piling them atop one another in his arms, and then he gave her a tour.

There were more rooms than she could keep track of, but she was particularly taken by the backyard, a large chunk of which was given over to an infinity pool, where one side seemed as though it was missing, and a small waterfall fell over that, pooling ten feet down the side of the hill on which the house sat.

“I’ve got to go swimming,” she said, and Ray laughed.

“By all means,” he said, and she hurried to change into her swimsuit.

The first day
was spent
in the pool, and they even had dinner out there, Ray grilling steaks by the pool while she watched him from the water.

Danielle had conflicting thoughts on the man. The sex had been
wonderful
, both times, and he was friendly and seemed
to really be
into her. On the other hand, he had paid her a million dollars to marry him for half a year, so he could make his apparently racist dad angry. She didn’t know how to describe that in any other way than gross.

The next day was one that Danielle was dreading. Ray was going to take her over to his parents home and drop the bombshell news of their marriage to them. She had promised she would never speak to anyone about his proposition, and she intended to keep that
promise
.

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.”