I grabbed her hip and pulled her ass out. I was so much taller than her, but it wasn’t a hardship to bend my knees and line my cock up against her ass. I eased in and she let out a sorrowful whimper. I knew she was sore, but I was making a point here.
The fuck I’d ever let her divorce me.
Once I was seated to the hilt, I made more demands of her. “Say it, Just,” I ordered. “Tell me you’re mine and I own every inch of you.” She didn’t answer me fast enough, so I started pounding into her until she was begging me to cum inside her. “If you want my cum, fucking say it!”
“Yours, Gabriel,” she finally conceded. “It’s all yours.”
Just when I thought I couldn’t be any more pissed at her. “Not it,” I growled. “You.”
“Gabriel, please,” she begged.
“Not until you fucking say it, Just.”
She pushed her ass back, trying to take more of me, but I held her hips still. She finally couldn’t take it anymore. “Yours, Gabriel. I’m yours. Only yours.”
I jack hammered into her body with a singular focus and it wasn’t long before she tightened around me and she was screaming out my name. A few thrusts later, I was joining her, unleashing whatever I had left in me.
We’ve been fucking for three days straight. My sources were depleting faster than they were generating. It was a weird experience to cum without streams and steams of semen to accompany the orgasm.
I finally pulled out of her, and grabbing the shampoo, I squirted some in my hand and proceeded to wash Justice’s hair. For the next half hour, I washed and scrubbed her clean and then surrendered the soap so she could do the same for me.
It felt…good.
Matrimonial.
We wrapped ourselves in the hotel robes and silently ate what we could, considering we were still slightly hungover, even after the shower. The silence was a comfortable one, but I knew we’d have to talk about our marriage at some point.
I did not want to leave here as a married couple only to end up going to separate homes. I understood that Justice had a career and a home and that she might not be keen on just uprooting her life and moving in with me, but we couldn’t live apart.
I didn’t regret marrying her and divorce was not an option, but I could have thought this through a little better. I suppose I could always commute. The drive was only an hour long. It would only be the late nights that would be a bitch to deal with, but I could do it.
I owed her.
I owed her six years of making her feel like she was second best. Hell, she probably didn’t even think she ranked that high. I had parents, three brothers and two sisters-in-law. Who knew where she thought she stood on my list of priorities.
Fuck.
I looked over at her quietly munching on some plain toast, and suddenly, I didn’t want to put it off any longer. “We can fly back tomorrow. I’ll pack some stuff and be at your place by the evening.”
The toast slipped through her fingers as she gaped at me. “Wh…what?”
I leaned forward, across the table, and said, “I sleep where my wife sleeps, Justice.”
Chapter 13
Justice~
It was Sunday night, and I kept straightening up my house because, even though Gabriel’s been here a million times, his arrival tonight was different.
My head was finally rejecting the final aftereffects of my drunken Las Vegas binge and the only evidence that remained was the stupid tattoo that decorated the prominent hill that made up my collarbone. When I made it home, showered and finally studied the piece of art, there was absolutely no way to deny I was drunk out of my mind. There was no way on earth I’d get a tattoo on such a painful part of my body had I been sober.
Hell, had I been sober, I wouldn’t have gotten a tattoo at all.
In very delicate script the tattoo read ‘If you could only see me…’. It was done beautifully with small, accented designs floating around it. The only problem was that Gabriel had a very similar tattoo in the exact same spot, only his read ‘I do…because you’re the only thing I do see.’. If we hadn’t been drunk and had actually been in love with each other, the tattoos would have been sweet. But since we were and we aren’t, they just felt ridiculous.
And now I was waiting for him to show up, suitcase in hand, because he was going to commute to work while we figured shit out.
What was there to figure out? We needed to get a divorce and move the hell on. I mean, once upon a time, this would have been everything I ever wanted, but I didn’t want Gabriel because we got drunk in Vegas or because he wasn’t ready to accept change.
He got upset because I said I wanted to start dating other people, and like a kid who’s never had to share his toys, he followed me to Las Vegas, and created a tattoo having, fraudulent marital mess.
I still loved him, though. That hadn’t changed. Even though I wasn’t letting love render me completely stupid, and I knew, realistically, I had to move on from Gabriel, I still loved him. I still craved him, and I still fantasized about having his little black-haired, green-eyed babies.
And then there was the silly, wistful girl who loved how the rings looked on her finger. Loved how Justice Buchanan just rolled off her tongue. Loved how Gabriel referred to me as his wife.
God, I was in such a chaotic shit storm.
I was about to fluff up the couch pillows once more when I heard the jingle of the doorknob. My stomach fluttered with…I don’t know what. I just know that the last time Gabriel was in my apartment, we fought, he fucked me and then he left me.
I’d never felt uncomfortable in my own home, but watching Gabriel walk in with a suitcase in his hand, had me feeling all kinds of anxious and unsure.
And I’d really been thrown for a loop when he shut the door behind him, walked up to me, place a kiss on the top of my head and then headed towards my bedroom.
I stood there stunned for a few seconds before I got my feet to work and followed him. I must be a glutton for punishment. I couldn’t let things lie for one night before we had to tackle our work weeks.
We’d both been hungover when we flew home, so we didn’t speak much then and we had to talk. We had to talk about this whether he wanted to or not. This shit was serious.
Gabriel was standing next to my bed pulling his clothes and toiletries out of his suitcase when I walked in and, God, I wished he wasn’t so damn good looking. It made it hard to concentrate when the man looked liked like a goddamn Greek God.
Without looking up from what he was doing, he announced, “We’ll be staying this upcoming weekend in the city at my place.”
I leaned one shoulder up against the doorframe. “We are?”
“Yeah,” he answered, still unpacking his things. “I told my brothers we got married and we’re going to have a small family dinner at Mason’s so you can meet Shane and Denise.”
And just like that, my emotions spiraled into an unreasonable mess. I wanted to scream at him that I should have met his sisters-in-laws years ago. I wanted to scream at him that I shouldn’t feel this anxious about being around his brothers when I’ve been fucking him for over six years.
I wanted to scream at him to get the hell out of my house.
My feelings were hurt that I hadn’t been worthy enough to meet them before. But now that I had his last name-no matter how temporarily-I was finally good enough to be graced by their presences.
Real or imagined, the slight stung.
“I don’t see why.” I replied, straightening upright from the doorframe.
That’s when he finally stopped his machinations and looked over at me. Gabriel’s family was everything to him. So, by the look in his face, I could tell my casual wording didn’t sit well with him. “You don’t think it’s necessary to meet your sisters-in-law or get to know your brothers-in-law better?” he asked, his voice icy.
I’ve seen Mason and Aiden, but I’ve never met them. I got a couple of head nods when they’ve been in town dropping Gabriel off at my house,
but that’s it. Michael’s the only Buchanan, besides Gabriel, that I’ve ever spoken to. He and Gabriel had been inseparable, so I was around him a bit during our high school years.
“They’re really not my in-laws, Gabriel,” I said, hoping my voice was steadier than I felt. “It seems pointless when I’ll be filing for divorce as soon as I talk to someone tomorrow on how to go about it.”
Gabriel folded his muscular arms over his chest, and I could feel my breathing speed up. The man made me feel shamefully weak, and I hated it. Love was supposed to make you feel strong. It was supposed to make you feel like the Wonder Twins activating all the time. Love was supposed to give you a partner who made you feel invincible.
My love for Gabriel just made me feel foolish.
“And what makes you think I’m going to let you divorce me, Justice?” he asked simply, and to the point.
He couldn’t stop me, and no judge would hinder it knowing the marriage was a result of a drunken bender in Las Vegas. “You can’t stop me, Gabe,” I pointed out.
“So, Saturday night when we were fucking on every surface of that hotel room, when you were begging me to fuck you up the ass because no one could ever make you feel the way I do…that was all drunken bullshit?”
I couldn’t stop my body from breaking out in goose bumps. Gabriel was pissed even though his voice was leveled and matter of fact. “No,” I answered, honestly. “You know I’ve never been with anyone else, Gabriel. You are the only man who’s ever made me feel…” Horny? Slutty? Like an outright whore? I wasn’t sure which word or phrase I should use to finish that sentence.
His steps were measured and purposeful. Once he was standing in front of me, he asked, “And how about when you told me how much you loved me? How you’ve loved me since we were 16? How you’ll never love anyone else as much as you love me? How about that shit?” he growled. “Was any of that true?”
“Gab-”
“Do you remember our vows?” he asked, interrupting me. “Because I sure the fuck do,” he informed me. I could feel my eyes widening. “Even as drunk as I was, I was still present during our wedding and the reciting of our vows to each other.”
“I…they were just traditional vows, weren’t they?” I asked, feeling like a complete tool.
“Yes, they were,” he confirmed, and before I knew what he was about, Gabriel grabbed me by the throat and pushed me up against the bedroom all on the other side of the door. His hand squeezed around my neck and I wanted to cry with how utterly shameless I was for him. “And as all the old, real traditional vows go-the ones we used, by the way-we finished off our vows of marriage with ‘til death do us part’.”
“You can’t be serious, Gab-”
“I will only be married once in my life, Justice. And that will be to you,” he snarled. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to let you divorce me, so you can get that thought out of your head right now.”
Fuck it.
There was only one way I was going to be able to shut this down. Shut him down. And that was with the truth. “Do you love me, Gabriel?” I said, finally asking the one thing I’ve always been scared to know the answer to. “Are you in love with me like I’m in love with you?”
The pressure on my neck constricted and Gabriel said the one thing I always knew, deep inside, would be the truth. “No, Justice,” he replied. “I’m not in love with you the way you’re in love with me.”
I always pictured this moment acting out in a million different ways, but I never imagined it’d be acted out so coldly. I always thought there’d be tears, yelling, destroyed furniture, begging, pleading…but never coldness.
But that’s what I felt. Cold. Cold all over.
However, the one thing Gabriel didn’t realize was that during all these years together, I studied him. I knew I couldn’t go up against him in a toe to toe fashion. He’s a Buchanan. He’d crush me. So, I’d let him win this battle, but I was definitely going to win the war.
Chapter 14
Gabriel~
“Shouldn’t you be on your honeymoon or somewhere?”
I looked up from the pile of reports on my desk as Michael waltzed in without knocking. “You would think,” I muttered before returning my attention back to the paperwork on my desk.
“Trouble in paradise already?” he asked. “I was sure a ring and declaration of love would smooth Justice’s justifiably ruffled feathers.”
I leaned back in my chair and ignored all the work I had to do when it was obvious that Michael wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. “Well, it didn’t,” I grimaced. “She wants a divorce.”
Michael visibly winced at that as he sat down on one of the chairs sitting directly across from my desk. “Seriously?” I nodded. “But…come on, Gabe. She has to know that you’d never let her leave you.”
You would think. “She thinks the only reason I married her was because I was drunk and feeling like a territorial kid who was told he had to share his toys.”
Michael let out a low whistle. “Ouch.”
“It felt a little more painful than a mere ‘ouch’ let me assure you,” I snipped at him.
Michael pulled out his phone and danced his fingers across the screen. His phone had been chiming, so I figured he was returning a text or responding to an email.
He stuffed his phone back in his pocket and graced me with his attention again. “So, I take it the shindig is off?”
I shook my head. “She said she didn’t see the point in meeting everyone when we’d be headed for divorce by the end of the week.”
Michael’s brows shot up. “Jesus, Gabe,” he breathed out. “How badly did you treat her?”
Michael’s words brought on an unsuspecting pang in my chest. “I didn’t treat her badly,” I snapped. “I just…” Fuck. “I just…didn’t treat her like she deserved to be treated.”
“Uh, isn’t that the same thing?”
“No,” I argued, not really convinced. “It was more…neglect, I suppose, than treating her badly.”
Before Michael could comment, the door to my office opened, and Mason and Aiden came filing in. I guess I now know what Mike was doing on his phone earlier.
Aiden sat down in the chair next to Michael’s while Mason pulled a chair from the mini conference table and placed it next to Michael. “Problems?” he asked.
I sat up and threw my entire upper body down on my desk. Dramatic? Sure. Warranted? Definitely.
“I’m going to take that as a ‘yes’,” Aiden said, dryly.
I turned my head, still resting on my desk, and looking over at Mason, ignored Aiden. “I fucked up, Mase.”
His lips curled inward, and he just gave me a solemn nod. “Figured when Michael texted us saying you fucked up.”
I sat up and regarded my brothers. I knew they couldn’t help me if they didn’t know everything. So, I confessed my sins since the day I met Justice up until last night’s fuck up. There was a heartbeat of silence before they finally spoke up.
“You’re a goddamn idiot,” Michael grimaced.
“I should kick your fucking ass,” Aiden added.
“Godfuckingdamnit,” Mason muttered, running his hands through his hair.
“I know. I know,” I said wishing I could have a do-over.
Mason shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Gabe,” he huffed. “If Shane finds out how you’ve taken that girl for granted, she’s going to gut you and stick your head on a stake as a reminder to men everywhere.”
“While Denise is busy mopping up your blood and guts off the floor,” Aiden chimed in.
They weren’t necessarily wrong. And it’s not like I didn’t deserve it. I was just at a loss.
When I told Justice that I didn’t love her the way she loved me, it was true. But that was because there’s no way she could possibly love me as much as I loved her. I loved her within days of meeting her. It took her a whole goddamn year to even let me kiss her.
I loved her so much; I monopolized every minute w
e had together by being inside her. I didn’t want to see a movie when I was with her. I didn’t want to go to dinner. I didn’t want to share her with my family.
I just wanted to be inside her for as long as the time I had with her would allow. I didn’t need the outside world when I was with her. I didn’t want it. So, no, I didn’t love her the way she loved me. I loved her much, much more.
But before I could explain what I had meant, she had shut down. Right before my eyes, Justice had closed herself off, and I knew she wouldn’t have been opened to hear anything I had to say after that.
I was fucking this up because I’ve never had to fight for Justice. She’s always been there for me. She has always waited for me and has given herself to me with no resistance whatsoever.
Sure, it took me a year to convince her to be more than just my friend, but once she gave herself over to me, she’d always been there. I didn’t know how to fight for her because I’ve never had to fight for anyone before in my life. Not like this.
“I don’t need the ‘I told you so’s,” I growled. “I need advice. Real advice.”
“Dude,” Aiden began, “I don’t think anything short of complete honesty and begging will get you out of this mess.”
“The problem is she doesn’t know you love her, have always loved her, and that you married her because you wanted to, right?” Mason asked, rhetorically. “So, we just have to figure out how to convince her that you really do love her while keeping her from divorcing your idiotic ass.”
I looked over a Michael and he just sighed. “What?”
He shook his head. “Like I told you the other day,” he smirked. “How am I the only one in this family without any experience with women, but I’m smarter by half when dealing with them?”
Mason side-eyed him. “Oh, well…by all means, Master, please tell us the answer to all problems female,” he quipped wryly.
Michael chuckled. “You can try to beat me down with your sarcasm all you want, Mase,” he said. “But if memory serves me correctly, I’m the one who help you clean up that mess with Shane. And, if my memory still serves me correctly, I’m also the one who convinced Denise to ignore all of Aiden’s crazy ways.”
If You Could Only Feel (Buchanan Brothers Series Book 3) Page 7
