A few minutes later, Gideon was standing at the altar in the chapel. Unlike the terribly decorated version of a hunter's lodge that was the groom's dressing room, the chapel was surprisingly very beautiful. Having only seen a few thumbnails on his phone as he made his secret arrangements earlier that morning, Gideon was pleased to see that the design of the room was very simple and authentic. Tall, narrow stained-glass windows lined either side of the narrow chapel, sending colorful arrays of light across the polished wooden pews. The clean cream carpeting and soft white walls allowed the airy beauty of the simple chapel to shine without competition. Taking a deep breath, Gideon smirked at the nervousness that fluttered in his gut and looked up as the owner and his wife walked in, both wearing huge smiles. Shrugging on his sky-blue suit jacket, the older man signaled to his wife, who wore a huge camera dangling from her neck while he took his place on the top step of the altar next to Gideon. Rushing over to the organ against the back wall, the older lady hit a switch on the side, and the familiar Bridal Chorus started.
Looking down the aisle, Gideon's heart stuttered in his chest as a flash of white materialized from the shadowed entrance. Ignoring the tall blonde bastard escorting her down the aisle, Gideon focused every cell of his being on the vision coming towards him. His chest felt suddenly so tight Gideon had to force himself to breathe. That dress, he thought with a hiss.
Fitted from her breasts all the way down to her thighs until it burst out in a wave of flowing white froth, the lace gown was something out of a dream. Detailed white lace seemed to adhere to nothing and cling to her skin all at once as it trailed up her breasts and over her chest and down to her wrists. Each step she took was careful and restrained under the tight bodice that accentuated every God-given curve on her body. With her matching veil attached to the small silver circlet resting on her loose curls, Gideon could see glimpses of the long train of lace gliding gracefully behind her. Clutching a bouquet of blood-red roses wrapped in gold and black paper, Jade looked like something out of a dream. Surely this could not be real. But the ferocious beating of his heart and the nervous feeling in his stomach reminded him this was indeed real. Gideon actively committed every detail of her to his memory, making sure it burned there for the rest of time.
Only a few steps away, Dimitri leaned forward and whispered something into Jade's ear, and her eyes met Gideon's with a shy smile before looking back down nervously to the floor as if to school her own features. Handing her off to him with a satisfied smirk, Dimitri took a step back.
Everything faded from Gideon's senses but Jade. Looking down at her hazel eyes, Gideon felt his soul weaving itself to hers as the owner began to recite the official vows. Like a man in a trance, Gideon responded only when prompted, dutifully taking the tiny ring in his hand and waiting for the man's instructions.
"Do you Gideon, take Jade to be your lawfully wedded wife, to love, to honor and to cherish until death do you part?"
With a hoarse, "Yes," he slipped the simple rose gold band on her trembling finger. Gideon never took his gaze from hers. Though the rings were simple, he wondered when she would see the inscription he had the owner inscribe just hours before.
I have always loved you and always will.
"And do you Jade take Gideon to be your lawfully wedded husband, to love, to honor and to cherish until death do you part?"
Tears rolled down her cheeks, making her freckles glisten in their wet path, and Jade nodded. "Yes," she sniffed, placing his matching band onto his finger.
"Jade and Gideon, you have expressed your love to one another through the commitment and promises you have just made. It is with these in mind that I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."
~*~
They were sitting in traffic just a few miles outside of Seattle, and Gideon had to force himself not to let his jaw drop at the exquisite feeling. With cars lined up on all sides of their truck, Gideon thanked God for their vehicle’s height and made sure for the hundredth time not to let his eyes wander over to any passengers, possibly looking up at his strained expression.
With wet greedy sounds, Jade let her encircling fingers around his glistening cock slide down towards the base once more and lowered her face down in his lap.
"Sweet God," his words were a desperate plea as he painstakingly stared at the car ahead of him inching forward.
With jerky movements, he shifted the truck forward and parked it again as everyone pulled back to a stop.
As if taking her cue, Jade swallowed him whole once more, her head moving faster now as his balls tightened.
"Jade," he hissed, unable, and unwilling to stop his wife.
Humming in acknowledgment around him, Jade increased her bobbing speed as Gideon let his head fall back and grabbed the back of her head. Her pleased moan nearly did him in, and he shoved her head down further before gripping a handful of her silky hair and pulling her roughly up. One, two, three hard jerks of her head and her desperate choking sounds sounding from his lap, and Gideon felt his body ignite and burst, spraying his thick cum deep into her working throat.
Panting in fatigue, he watched her sink back onto her butt and off of her no doubt sore knees as he tiredly reached for the gear and brought the truck forward a few more paces.
"I'm going to pay you back for that," he whispered through his dry lips.
And he did make her pay. They traveled up all the way to the Flathead National Forest in Montana back down to the Washington coast, and Gideon fucked her at every stop, never tiring. Together they learned quite a few things about themselves, things he knew probably would have taken years for them to admit to one another if it hadn't been for their installments back in Vegas. His favorite discovery being that Jade craved domination from him. She loved it most when he held her head down as she swallowed his cock. She liked her face being pressed into the mattress as he pounded her from behind. Every rough command he gave, her eyes fogged with obedient desire. With every tug of her hair, Gideon could feel Jade's sex grow wetter. It was heaven. Till now, he never truly understood the phrase "so good it hurts," but now he had a whole new appreciation for the phrase.
Parked at a rest stop, Gideon checked the locks and the privacy blinds over the window before turning back to Jade, who lay waiting for him on his bunk. From the moment they reunited with their truck, the top bunk had been pushed up and locked against the wall. Pulling off his clothes, he secretly watched Jade's eyes rove his body with a hunger that electrified his blood. Pulling back the sheet, he was a little disappointed to see her wearing a nightshirt but told himself he would get rid of it later.
Settling in beside her, he gave her a kiss and wrapped her into his arms. Clicking off the light on her side on the wall, Jade plunged the cab of the truck into darkness.
Deciding to speak before all the blood in his brain rushed to his dick, he shared the thought he had been toying with since they left Vegas. "I have been thinking of what that bastard said to me," he began, feeling her eyelashes flutter against his cheek as she opened her eyes. "And I think he may be right. Why should we be out here far from home and struggling to survive? No, as much as I hate to admit it, Dimitri was right about that. I think we need to go back and confront this situation, confront mother, and take back our home."
She was quiet for a moment before nodding. "Yes, you're right," she said, carefully choosing her words. "It isn't fair, and we should be able to live back with our friends and family, but…
"But what?"
Brushing her lips against his cheek, her arm over his chest tightened until he could feel her quickening heartbeat against his ribs. "I don't want you to fight him, Gideon, I don't want you to get so mad you hurt him real bad….or worse..."
"I won't, I promise," he sighed, shaking his head a little in regret at the memory of his last encounter with Ron. "Last time, I wasn't thinking, last time I let my pride and anger dictate my moves. This time I'll be smart and ask for the sheriff's help. I'll even ask Mr. Rosebank if I have t
o," he supplied, realizing the idea didn't nearly affect his pride as it would have when they first left. If asking for help is what they needed to get Ron out of their life without Gideon facing charges, then he would sure as fuck do it. Feeling her sigh of relief, Gideon thought of the second thing he wanted to talk about. "Also, there has been something else I have been thinking of, it's just an idea, and it's not something I'm set on or-"
"What is it?" she prompted.
"I think maybe when I finish my degree, I will do what dad did but a bit different," he explained. "I want to start my own small fleet of drivers. Instead of me having to drive like dad did, I can manage the driver's routes. The jobs are plentiful, and the pay is good. I think it would be something I'm already good at."
"You would be," she agreed, "I think that's a great idea, and if you ran the fleet, you wouldn't have to be away from home as much as dad always was."
"Exactly," Gideon said, feeling relief that she thought the idea was good too.
"And I could help you," she offered excitedly.
Turning as much as their tiny bed would allow, he gave her a gentle frown. "No, I don't want you to have to do that. I know you have your own things you want to do."
"Yes, but let's be real," she gave him a knowing smirk. "I want to go into sound engineering, and Stardust Cove only has the one radio station that does country music and political talk radio," she made a face and shuddered, and Gideon laughed. "And the only other one is the college radio station, and that is run by students, so that isn't long term." That studious little gleam he had witnessed for years appeared in her beautiful eyes, and Gideon knew she had already thoroughly thought this out before. "Everything else I would be interested in,” she continued, “would involve moving to a bigger city, which I am not interested in at all. I figured I could work freelance, mixing and editing podcasts and other similar things. But working on your business—"
"Our business," he corrected, and she smiled.
"Working on our business would be just fine with me, as long as we're together, that's all that matters." Looking up at the dark ceiling thoughtfully, she hugged him tighter to her. "I want to go back home," she announced decidedly. "I'm excited even. I feel like Ebony and Taylor have been going through all sorts of adventures without me though we try to text often, I still feel left out of the loop on things. But…I'm nervous about how people will react to our marriage. What if they don't—"
Gideon couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his lips at that. "Babe, let's be honest. I think everyone in Stardust Cove was expecting this. Everyone but us could see how much we loved each other."'
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You really think that?"
"I do," he remarked. "Besides, everyone in the whole damn town knew we weren't actually related."
"I know, you're probably right,” she hedged. “I guess I'm just really worried about…"
And Gideon knew without another word needing to be spoken what she was really worried about.
"Mom," he supplied grimly.
Jade groaned and buried her face into the pillow with a muffled, "Yes."
Taking a deep breath, Gideon exhaled deeply. "Yeah, that one is going to be a little tricky."
A part of him was pretty confident their mother would accept their new relationship. Hell, a part of him wondered if she and Henry hadn't recognized his obsessive devotion to his sister for what it really was years ago.
"Just for a few more days, can we pretend we don't have to face that problem? Just forget we have to deal with it until we have to?” she pleaded, “I want to enjoy this time more.”
"Oh, hell yeah," he rumbled into the crook of her neck. Tightening his arms, he molded her even tighter to his muscled frame. "We are on our honeymoon after nearly escaping a psychotic, Russian mobster. My God, Jade, you have no idea how much I need the downtime."
Jade laughed.
As he knew he would, his fingers found the hem of her shirt and began pulling it up. Lifting her arms obligingly, Jade let him take the top off, revealing her naked and ready for him beneath.
Clasping either side of his face as he positioned himself over her and in between her spread legs, she brought her lips to his in a sweet kiss that felt like napalm in his veins. "Then let's make sure we don't waste another second."
~*~
"She still hasn't picked up?" he asked, setting down his fork.
They were sitting in a diner in Crystal Cove, California, and for the past few hours, they had been trying to call their mother with no success.
"No!" Jade cried. He could see her nerves that had been unraveling steadily all day, begin to fray at the edges.
They had been traveling for about a week since they left Vegas and they were just now heading back south.
"The last time I talked to her, it was two days before we got married. It was late at night, but she responded to my text, and I decided to just call and speak to her," Jade's finger tapped a nervous, agitated beat against the table's top. The chicken and dressing she had ordered sat cold and hardly touched on her plate. "She sounded a little off, but I thought maybe it was just me because of all the stuff we were going through at the time. I thought I was just overthinking or something. Now she isn't answering Gideon," her hazel eyes looked at him in silent agonizing worry. "I have been trying since eight this morning."
Tapping his own fingers against the metal diner table, Gideon began mentally calculating the miles. "Ok, well, we're already heading back home, and we have about twenty more hours to go until we get there and…" he could see that she was going to interject, her deepening frown more than enough sign that she needed more of a solution. Holding up a hand, he stopped her and reached into his own pocket for his phone. "And you said Ebony and Gavin aren't picking up, right?" Getting a nod, he started to tap the screen, awake on his phone.
"I could call Taylor…" her voice hedged, and he knew she didn't want to have to involve Taylor in whatever this was.
"No, I think we need to—" the phone in his hand rang with an unknown number, but Gideon knew that area code.
They both exchanged a wary glance as he swiped the call to answer, putting it on speakerphone. Thankfully the tiny diner was deserted, the only two staff being the waitress and the cook, both in the back engrossed in a loud Asian drama.
"Hello, is this Gideon?"
The sound of Sheriff Grayson's voice made Gideon's blood run cold. Looking up, he saw Jade's face pale, and he reached out across the table to her, taking her stiff hand firmly in his.
"What's going on? We have been trying to reach our mom for—"
"I know,” Grayson sighed, his voice sounding somber. "Look, I need you two to come back down here, we…"
Snatching the phone from his hand like a viper, Jade sat up straight in her booth seat and held the phone close to her mouth. There was a hard-steely gleam in her eye and a sudden quiet violence that Gideon had never, not once, witnessed from her.
"Sheriff," Jade began slowly. "I need you to tell me just what in the hell is going on right now? Where is my mom, and what the hell has Ron done?"
If Gideon wasn't so damn focused on the sheriff's next words and worried about his mother, he would completely allow Jade's furious voice to go to his dick, but now was not the time.
"I had one of my deputies drop by earlier this afternoon and do a check on your house and mother, just as we have been doing ever since you guys left but…but the place was in shambles. We found your mom barricaded in her room crying, obviously in an attempt to protect herself from Ron," he breathed out the words in one rush. "The house is severely damaged."
Gideon could see the white stars of anger bursting at the edge of his vision. He would kill Ron, he decided, he would kill him and bury him in the front yard of his house so every morning for the rest of his fucking life, Gideon could stare at the one patch of rotten earth and smile.
Forcing himself to calm down, he avoided Jade's startled gaze and stared murderously at his phone, an
d asked what they both needed to know. "And my mother?"
"She is shaken and a little underfed from what the doctor and Bayview told me, but she is fine. It seems from what she told me, was that Ron had been progressively spiraling for the past few weeks. We have her at the rest home since she can't stay in the house how it is, and her doctor thinks she should not be on her own."
"If all of this happened this afternoon, why the fuck am I getting a call from you now?!"
"Goddammit Gideon," Grayson grumbled tiredly into the phone. "You don’t think I'm mad as hell either? I have been hearing lately how Ron has been out late drinking, and just the other day, I heard that woman of his just up and left him, saying she didn’t sign up to take care of no old lady. He's been in and out of the bars telling anyone who will listen how he's Henry's real son, and you stole from him. I had my deputy go over there today, once I heard Ron went to the bank starting holy-hell, trying to yell at Jim, the bank manager, about being the one who should own the house. Of course, Jim told Ron that the house is in your name and your mom's and to get the hell out of his bank. Since finding your mom how she was and the house in shambles, I have been busy as hell trying to get your house secured, your mom checked up on, and sending out every damn available officer to find that rat-bastard."
A Love So Wrong: A Forbidden Romance Page 27
