Epilogue

Three Months Later

Crissy

I laid there next to Grant’s naked body as we swayed in the breeze. The hammock we were lying on was lined with a beautifully soft material, and my head was listening to the beating of his heart. His hands were tracing mindless patterns on my back, and I sighed with contentment as my leg slowly crept between his.

“Could I ask you something?”

“Anything,” he said.

“There’s this new project the junior executives were talking about,” I said. “Another proposed company acquisition. I double- and triple-checked the numbers just to make sure we weren’t getting the company into more hot water, and I’d like to take the lead on it.”

“Well, talk to me about it. What’s so appealing about the acquisition?”

“It’s a new energy start-up out of Silicon Valley. They’ve got all the knowledge but very few of the resources. Solar and wind energy, to be specific. I know J&M focuses on oil and coal, but if we could branch out a bit, maybe get a foothold in the clean energy business, we could usher J&M into the future.”

“Sounds like the mindset of someone who’s looking out for this company,” he said. “Are you talking about buying them out?”

“Yes,” she said. “Right now, a fair estimate would be around three million, given their lack of resources and the fact that we wouldn’t have to do anymore research. We’d own everything—the licenses and the patents—and I could network and create new relationships with the distributors they were looking at. It would look really good for J&M’s ethical responsibilities outlook. That’s big with people today, what a company subscribes to in terms of ethics.”

“Don’t I know it,” he said. “What do the stats look like with regard to profit?”

“Fairly straightforward with a two percent growth over the first four quarters. Then, once we crank out the sales and get people on board with things like do-it-yourself kits and installing them in homes and on farms across the country, we could see as much as a five percent uptick in profits from what they’re already doing.”

“Which is?”

“Eight hundred thousand a quarter,” I said.

“That’s not too much profit,” he said.

“It would be an investment in the future, for sure. I wanted to run it by you, see if you’d let me take the lead.”

“Let me counter before we talk more. I propose a merger.”

“A merger?” I asked.

“Yep. If we fuse the two of them together, the profits could be greater. The love people have for both coal and natural energy sources could be found by combining the two companies. It’s an odd fusion, but one that was meant to be from the start. Don’t you think?”

“If we merged, you’d have to give up your name,” I said.

“One of us would have to give up a name, yes,” he said, smiling. “It would probably be them, though, since I’m the more dominant party.”

“I guess a merger like that would make sense,” I said. “I don’t really have enough specifics in order to run profit calculations in my head, but—”

“I would rank profits somewhere in the ballpark of fifty million a year,” he said.

“With the merger of a—”

Suddenly, it clicked in my head. The vague talk about the merger. Him not giving up his last name. The random calculation of fifty million dollars.

His yearly salary was easily fifty million.

“Grant?” I asked as I sat up.

He was asking me to move in with him. Three months after everything went down with my father, and he was asking me to move in. I couldn’t honestly say I hadn’t thought about it, but the idea of actually doing it brought a smile to my face. Waking up next to him every morning and falling asleep next to him every night would be a dream come true. I’d wake up warm, loved, in the company of a man who couldn’t devour enough of me. We could take vacations together, and we’d no longer have to sneak around. Moving in was a public declaration of how we felt about one another.

I’d no longer have to fend off my sister when she started asking questions or tolerate Mel when her and my father started fighting about money.

Like they always did.

Then Grant stuck his hand down into the pocket of the hammock and pulled out the most incredible pink diamond ring I’d ever seen.

“Grant,” I said breathlessly.

“A merger like that would undoubtedly draw some eyes, yes,” he said as he held the ring up to me. “But a merger like that would also fulfill a passion of mine I’ve had for the past few months. This company, though it doesn’t make as much as I do, fulfills a part of my company that has been dead, lost, floating at sea without a light. Bringing a company on like this as a merger would preserve the emotional and intelligent foundation upon which the company was built. Merging instead of acquiring would mean that company still had free rein, could still conduct their business as they felt necessary while knowing my company will always back them, always support them so long as they talked with me about big decisions first.”

Tears crested my eyes, and my hands began to shake. I sat up in his lap, and I wiped my fingertips underneath my eyes. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. What I was hearing. What I was experiencing.

Grant Jacobs was proposing.

“But, I can promise your company one thing,” he said as he slipped the ring onto my finger. “I can promise that I’ll always be your company’s safe place to fall, the company yours can always fall into at night. You’ll have your space, but you will always be protected. You’ll be free to be yourself without ever having to doubt who loves you, who cherishes you, who respects you.”

“We aren’t talking about companies anymore, are we?” I asked lightly.

“Crissy Marks, will you consent to be my wife—and Chief Sexual Officer?”

I threw my head back and laughed as the ring sat heavily on my finger. I threw my arms around him, our naked bodies falling together in the hammock. I peppered his face with kisses as his arms snaked around my back, and for the first time since my mother passed, I felt like I was at home.

At home in the arms of the person who loved me most.

“Yes, Grant. Of course, I’ll marry you.”

He raised his head to kiss my lips, and I cradled his neck from behind. His hands pressed me into him, his cock rising between my legs. I drank him in, remembering everything about this moment. My life was about to change forever. I was no longer the same woman I was five months ago when I started at my father’s old company, and I was venturing into a world that would surely change me ten times over as we grew old together.

Old and in love, just like it should be.

“I love you so much,” I whispered into his lips.

“And I love you, Miss Marks.”

“Oh, I know what that means,” I said, giggling.

“You just have to promise me one simple thing, Miss Marks.”

“Anything, Mr. Jacobs.”

“You have to send me pictures of those beautiful tits of yours on a regular basis. I’m never going to be able to get enough of them.”

I giggled, burying my face in his neck. My body hummed for him as his fingertips danced along my skin, and my hips ground down into him as his cock teased my entrance. I felt him groan, rolling his hips to try to slip into the heat he’d become so addicted to.

I rose, planting my hands on his chest as I rolled my hips. His dick slid into me smoothly, his lips sucking in a sharp gasp of air as I rolled my head back in ecstasy.

“Anything for you, Mr. Jacobs,” I said breathlessly. “Anything for you.”

***

END OF THE FIRST STORY