Chapter 4

That evening was so hard to get through. I dressed carefully in another white dress they’d given me, but I decided to forego a bra. I let my hair down so it spilled across my shoulders and I applied a light shade of lipstick.

I wanted him so bad, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

I didn’t know how the food tasted. I barely gave any answers to any questions. I was so aware of him. I remembered the feel of him inside me. God, how I wanted him.

Finally, when midnight came around, I entered his suite and saw him sitting on the bed waiting for me. He was wearing nothing but his boxer briefs. His perfect abs seemed to tempt my eyes lower and lower. As he came closer to me, I noticed how beautiful his legs were. He had strong muscular legs, perfectly proportional to the rest of his muscular, hard body.

He slid his hands up my arms. Just the feeling of his hands made me shake even though his touch wasn’t provocative at all.

I couldn’t say the same for his look, as he slid his hands under the spaghetti straps of my dress and watched the dress pool around my ankles.

He took a step back, allowing me room to step out of it.

He stared at me, not touching me at first, and then slowly he took my hand to lead me to his bed and lie me down. He took that moment to step out of his briefs. He was hard, ready for me.

He parted my thighs with a hand and trailed a finger across my sex. My hips rocked upwards to meet his fingers. He put his head between my legs and began to lick me through the fabric of my panties that were already starting to grow wet at his attention.

He pushed my panties to the side and began to slide one finger at a time in and out of me. I spread my legs wider and began to pant, unable to catch my breath.

“Griffin…” I moaned.

He stopped abruptly to slowly pull my panties down my legs before tossing them to the floor.

He finally reached for a condom and I parted my legs wide, looking up at him in anticipation as I watched him sheath himself.

To my surprise, he didn’t push into me. Instead he buried his head between my legs again and lazily traced circles around my clit. I screamed this time. I couldn’t control it. The pleasure was too great.

He attempted to shush me again, but I was beyond reason. I didn’t care who heard me as I moaned over and over again.

He stopped and picked me up around my waist, and we swapped places. I found myself on top of him while he lay underneath me. I thought he wanted me to ride him, so I moved to mount him when he pulled me further up, past his pelvic bone, across his chest, until my legs were on either side of his face.

I didn’t understand what he wanted until he lowered my hips so they were just above his face and started to lick me.

I planted my hands against the headboard. My thighs quivered as he ate me out. He was relentless, taking what he wanted, using his hand to penetrate me while allowing his mouth and tongue to lick and suck.

I rode his face, gasping. Finally, I let go of the headboard as he anchored my hips and I began to play with my nipples. I pretended my hands were his hands. And shortly after, I came hard, covering Griffin’s lips with my wetness.

As I anchored my hands against the headboard, coming down from my orgasm, I realized that Griffin was watching my face while touching himself. He was stroking his manhood up and down and I wanted him inside me so bad.

I climbed off him and he looked puzzled. “Don’t want to be on top?”

I shook my head and got on all fours in front of him.

“What a beautiful ass,” he said, before I felt him getting up behind me.

I stretched my hands out in front of my body and placed my breasts against the mattress. My hips were up in the sky and I could feel his dick pressing against my behind. He teased me again, tracing my outer lips with his dick while rubbing my clit.

“Put it in…” I moaned.

“Shhh...”

“Put it in, please, Griffin…”

“As you wish,” he said softly, as his hands came up to either side of my behind and I could feel him opening me a little more as he slid slowly, inch by inch, into me.

I felt my insides stretching, adjusting to his welcomed invasion. I was gasping, breathing heavily, ready to come again when he stopped taking his time and pushed into me.

“Griffin!” I screamed over and over. I wasn’t thinking and I didn’t care who heard us.

“Deeper?”

“Yes,” God, yes.

“Faster?”

“Please.”

I gasped as he began to pound into me again. His thrusts were pushing me forward and I grabbed the foot of the bed, trying to steady myself.

As I did, he pulled out slowly, leaving only the tip of his dick as he pushed back into me.

“How’s that feel?” he asked between breaths.

Amazing, I wanted to say, but I was too gripped by pleasure to talk. He stretched me, filled me, and my sex embraced him like he was the answer to all my problems.

I grew wetter and wetter as he thrust into me, changing the depth and rhythm of his thrusts periodically. I had thought the experience in the closet had been mind-blowing, but what he was doing to me at that moment rendered me unable to think. I could only feel and what I felt was his warm thickness moving in and out of me. The pace was almost hypnotic. I wanted even more of him even though he was already inside of me.

I pushed my hips back against him and I heard him moan. I did it again and was rewarded by another moan.

“You’re going to make me come,” he gasped.

“Good,” I managed to breathe.

He grabbed my hips then and quickened his pace. He was so deep inside of me that just another fraction of an inch would have hurt.

I knew I was about to come again as he pulled out and my walls tightened around him, making his entry and exit difficult. I was massaging his dick with my pussy and apparently he liked it.

“Fuck me harder,” I said to him, surprising myself.

But he didn’t question me. He did what I asked, riding me hard, pushing in deep. When I came, he came too, with a hoarse shout that was my name.

I slumped forward in the afterglow of orgasm, moaning a little as my sex clenched and unclenched around Griffin’s length.

Instead of collapsing next to me, he picked me up and placed my head on a pillow and lay next to me. He gave me a kiss on my cheek and I settled into a deep sleep. The only thing on my mind was the perfect man lying next to me.

* * *

I don’t know how long I slept but when I woke up I realized the sun was up. I was a little embarrassed for sleeping too long.

“You should have woken me up,” I said to Griffin as I turned over, except Griffin wasn’t there.

I sat up and looked around. His bedroom looked very different in the light. In the dark, I didn’t know how beautiful it was. In the light, the opulence was painfully noticeable. I’d thought my room had been impressive, but it might as well have been a cheap room in a motel in comparison to Griffin’s.

I wondered not for the first time how much this island cost for the week.

But I pushed those thoughts aside as I put my clothes back on and looked for Griffin. I expected to see him in the opulent bathroom, but he was nowhere to be found.

I didn’t know what time it was, but I knew it had to be around seven given where the sun was.

I slowly opened the door and let myself out of his room, only to run right smack into someone’s chest.

That someone was Jackson.

“Hey, Nina…” He looked a little nervous.

“Hi, Jack, have you seen your brother?” I didn’t see the point in pretending that I hadn’t spent the night with him.

Jack looked ready to bolt and my stomach dropped. Why would Jack be afraid to talk to me?

I gulped. “Let me guess, he’s no longer on the island and he sent you here to do his dirty work.”

Jackson ran his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Nina. I know this looks bad, but—”

I was tearing up and I struggled to maintain control of my voice. “It’s ok. It’s not your fault. I think I’ll be leaving too. Do you know who I can talk to?”

Jack looked ashamed. “It’s all been arranged. Gertrude already knows and made arrangements for you. But it’s not what you think—”

“Don’t cover for him, Jackson. It’s exactly how it looks.” I wanted to get as far away from Jackson as I could. I needed to remove myself from the situation. I was hurting. How could Griffin do this to me?

“He had an emergency come up…”

“It’s ok, you don’t have to lie for him, Jackson.”

“It’s not a lie, my brother’s not a liar,” Jackson said, more to himself than to me.

I was done listening and walked off. Jackson followed behind me.

“Nina, I know this looks bad, but my brother genuinely likes you. I’m sure he’ll make this up to you.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said pitifully, wiping at my eyes. To my chagrin, the staff seemed to be interested in the public scene unfolding in front of them.

“Look, he told me to give you his card,” he said with a hint of desperation. I guess Jackson was a genuine guy… unlike his brother. I took the card out of his hand and ripped it up. I was enraged.

He watched, open-mouthed, and then tried to stop me. He froze when I glared at him and took a step back.

“I’m leaving. Now. Give your brother my regards, wherever he may be.”

And with that I stomped off. I kept my bravado up to the point when I reached my room. It was then that I allowed myself to breakdown. I was just happy I’d kept it together that long.

I hadn’t been with many men and I certainly didn’t jump into bed with just anyone. I’d thought Griffin was special, but apparently he was a piece of crap. I’d let the romance of the island and the circumstances of how we met cloud my judgment.

I wanted to go home. And I didn’t just mean Kenny’s apartment. I meant Georgia. I wanted to get as far as possible from Griffin and the reminder of how Griffin had walked away and left me like I was some sort of cheap whore.

At that moment, I looked in the mirror and saw the dress that before looked alluring, now suddenly looked slutty. I flung it off and put on my own clothes.

I grabbed my bag with my meager belongings and walked out the door. I didn’t have a plan other than to wait at the pier until the yacht came for me. Someone would come for me eventually. The girls and the other guys were gathered around having a laugh about something and they were caught off guard as I went stomping through their group not bothering to say a word.

“What’s up with her?” I heard one of them say. I was sure my exit would give them tons of juicy gossip while they remained on the island. And I didn’t really care. I had to get out of there.

I then heard footsteps behind me. It was Jackson. Again.

“I’m fine. Go away.”

“It’s my brother. I have him on the phone, he wants to speak to you.”

“Tell him to go screw himself.”

He handed me his phone and I don’t know what got into me, but I threw it. Straight into the bushes.

“Hey! I just bought that.”

“Well, now you can buy another. Have a great wedding, Jackson.”

I left him walking through the bushes trying to retrieve his phone. I didn’t feel sorry in the least. He might have lost a phone that day, but I had lost my heart.

A month and a half later, I sat on my mom’s front porch. She and my stepdad lived in a lovely neighborhood. I never really appreciated it until that moment.

“This was a great place to be a kid,” I said to her, avoiding the conversation I knew she wanted to have.

She had been the first one to notice the slight changes. After things went sour with Griffin I’d gone home to lick my wounds. I felt silly that a man could make me feel so bad. But he had.

I told Kenny I’d be back shortly. But what was supposed to have been only a few weeks turned into over a month. I was depressed and feeling listless. I knew I needed to try harder to be more resilient, but I tended to give up on things easily.

But I wouldn’t be allowed the luxury of that flaw anymore, I thought to myself, as I swung on the porch swing with Mom. In between us sat a little white plastic stick that told me I was pregnant.

“You know you can stay here as long as you want.”

I turned to look at her, full of love and gratitude. She was just an older version of me. We had the same color hair, the same color eyes… I briefly wondered if the child I was carrying would look like us too. But I couldn’t focus on such inconsequential things. I had to focus on what my mother was saying. I needed her now.

Her words meant a lot to me. She didn’t care that I was having a kid out of wedlock, no matter how conservative a town we lived in. My mother was a special woman who made her own rules and one day I hoped to make her proud.

“Thanks for that, Mom. I think I’ll need to take you up on that offer, at least until I get back on my feet.” I laughed bitterly. “Pregnant and unemployed at the ripe old age of 22. I sure know how to be successful, don’t I?”

“Don’t beat yourself up. Life’s a whirlwind, Nina. You never know what it has in store for you. You just have to roll with the punches or at least fight back.”

I needed to start learning how to fight. I had a lot to learn about life, about motherhood, and she was the best person I knew to teach me. I knew she’d be supportive of me, she always was. But part of me didn’t want her understanding. I wanted her to sound disappointed in me because I was disappointed in myself.

A long moment passed and then she said, “Are you going to contact the father?”

I nodded. “After the baby’s born. I don’t have the strength to really deal with it before then.”

I didn’t know if I could handle Griffin’s rejection again. I wanted to focus on the child growing inside of me and I didn’t want to deal with the stress of Griffin’s reaction. Not that I could guess how he would react. I hadn’t guessed he’d leave me after making love to me.

Truth be told, I didn’t even know how to contact him if I tried. My only contact with him had been on the island and we’d been too busy doing other things to ever exchange phone numbers. I didn’t even know his real name. I felt like such a cheap floozy. How could I not even know the name of the father of my child?

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” my mom said yet again. “You’ll do fine.”

“I hope so. I have a great example.”

She squeezed my hand and went back inside. I folded my arms around my waist, giving myself a hug. I heard footsteps behind me expecting mom again, but it was my stepdad.

“How ya doing, angel?”

I attempted to smile, but failed. I shrugged. “Not too great, Dad.”

He nodded. “Well, you’re not going to feel any better moping around here. Let’s go build something.”

“Let’s go build something” was his motto every time I felt like crap. I wanted to tell him no. I wanted to tell him that he couldn’t comfort me through this as he had comforted me through childhood troubles, but the words froze in my throat. Maybe I did need to distract myself.

“Lead the way, Dad,” I said.

He smiled up at me proudly and I followed him towards his work shed. As we went, I looked at my old swing that still sat in the backyard. I looked out over the hillside where I used to run after butterflies and suddenly the butterflies in my stomach stopped fluttering. I no longer felt sick to my stomach. Maybe it would all be ok. Maybe, just maybe, being a mom would be something I’m good at. I touched my stomach, this time seeing promise instead of failure.

“Don’t worry little one, I won’t fail you.”

I shrugged off my fear and made a commitment to myself and to my baby to succeed. I didn’t know how to define success, but for my baby I was going to make it.

“I hope you’re ready for an adventure, little one.”

I shoved my bitterness and resentment towards Griffin out of my head. I wasn’t going to dwell on the pain. After all, it was a one night stand. It wasn’t love. At least that’s what I was going to keep telling myself until the pain either subsided or life became too busy that I would just simply have to ignore it.