by A. Aubry
“Did you just pinch yourself?” I narrowed my eyes playfully.
“Um…no?”
I laughed and brought her back against me, “Is this proof enough that I’m real?”
Leaning down, I kissed her softly and silently asked her lips to open for me. Our kiss was filled with every ounce of love that I could pour into it. Our tongues ran against each other and I slid my hand down to cup her ass. It was one of the best asses I’d ever been able to get my hands on. When I needed to come up for air, I laid my forehead against hers. Julianna’s eyes refused to open to meet mine, but I could tell by her breathing that she enjoyed the kiss.
“Is that enough proof?” I asked quietly.
Her head slowly moved from side to side, “I might need a little more convincing…”
I chuckled, “That’s my girl.”
Starting up our kiss right where it left off, I pushed myself to put even more passion into every second of it. I picked up Julianna and put her up on the vanity. My hands skated up and down her thighs under her dress as her hands tangled in my hair. My heart was racing with every stroke of our tongues. This girl has had me wrapped around her finger from the moment she fell into my arms. Julianna pulled back as she dragged air into her lungs. Every kiss that we shared, it was as though the air we needed was burned up which forced us to come back up for air.
“Is this about Celeste?” I questioned, feeling as though I already knew the answer.
Julianna nodded slowly, “You told me last night that she was pretty. You failed to mention that she looked like she just walked off the set of a southern belle fashion shoot.”
I chuckled, “And I told you that I had raging hormones as a fourteen-year-old boy. All I saw were big tits and a round ass.”
Julianna’s mouth fell agape, and her hand hit my chest lightly.
“I’m just telling you the truth,” I held up my hands.
She looked down at her dress, “Some women were talking about how I must be pregnant. Do I really look that fat?”
If I ever found out who those women were, they would get an earful from me. Julianna looked spectacular in that dress.
I put my finger under Julianna’s chin and tilted her head back up to look at me, “You aren’t fat. That is Michael in your head talking. One of these days I’m going to show you just how much I love every square inch of your body. Until then, we both know you aren’t pregnant. You just had your period and you’re on the pill. And sometimes we even use a condom.”
Julianna giggled, “That sometimes is getting rather slim.”
That was true, let’s just forget them all together. “Well now that we’re married, we can stop using the damn things.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head as she climbed off the vanity, “Ready to get back to your party?”
“If you mean our party then yes, I am.”
As we walked through the house and got closer to the patio door in the kitchen, I could feel Julianna get more and more tense. I forced us to stop walking just inside the door and took her face into my hands. She needed just a little more convincing of how she was the only woman in my life.
“Before we go out there, you have to answer a few questions,” I smirked and locked eyes with her.
She tried to pry my hands away from her face but that wasn’t going to happen. She needed to focus on the questions, “Okay, what are the questions?”
“First, who is the girl that I chose to marry?”
She let out a deep breath, “Me.”
“Good. Who is the girl that I love?”
Her eyes rolled as she sighed again, “Me.”
“Mhm. Who is the girl that I will spend every day of my life telling her how beautiful she is until she stops being so damn stubborn and starts believing it?”
“Me.”
“And who is the girl that I will fuck so hard tonight that she screams my name?” I smirked and winked at her.
“Okay, okay I get it! It’s me!” She whined loudly.
I could feel other people’s eyes on us through the screen door that divided us away from the party, but I didn’t care. My wife needed to know how much I loved and wanted her.
“Damn straight it is. Now get your beautiful ass out there and start talking to our guests,” I let her go and spanked her ass as she walked away from me.
“Oh, you’re gonna get it later,” she scolded me and stuck her tongue out before walking back out to the party.
“I hope that’s a promise,” I mumbled as I walked back out to the party and nodded at the elderly ladies who must’ve caught onto our conversation near the door.
Ashton bumped into me, “Violet said that you were looking for Jules. Everything alright?”
I looked over at Julianna as Cooper introduced her to my Aunt Marie and Uncle John, “Yeah, everything is perfect, man.”
Chapter Twelve
Julianna got along great with the rest of my family as the party finally came to an end. Of course, the only people left in the backyard were me, Julianna, Cooper, Ashton, and their wives. To watch Julianna interact with my brothers and their wives made me smile. Natalie, or any of my other ex-girlfriends for that matter, never took to my family as easily as Julianna had. They all just clicked, and it was as though she was made to fit into our family.
Ashton was telling a story about Violet and her Braxton-Hick’s contractions after Amelia had mentioned that she had been starting to get them every once in a while. My hand was on Julianna’s thigh, softly caressing her skin with my fingers, while her arms were wrapped around my arm and her head laid lightly on my bicep. Just as Ashton was finishing his story, Mom came over to the table and took a seat between Violet and Amelia. A serious expression was on her face.
“I think it’s time for a family meeting,” her voice was just as serious as her expression.
Oh, great.
Julianna released my arm and began to stand up from the table as though she was supposed to leave. I wasn’t sure if she was taking herself out of the situation purposefully or accidentally.
“Julianna…where are you going? Your part of the family now,” I looked up at her.
She nervously laughed and sat back down next to me as my hand went back onto her thigh, “Oh yeah…sorry. Force of habit.”
I chuckled and kissed the side of her head. She took the position she was in once again, and I gave her thigh a light squeeze. As her head laid back against my arm, I kissed the top of her head.
“So, what’s the family meeting for, Ma?” Cooper looked at her after he took the last swig of his beer.
“It came to my attention this morning that none of my boys followed the rules of not having sex until marriage.”
The look that Cooper and Ashton were giving me could kill. I hadn’t exactly told them what went down this morning or that I might’ve let it slip that we were all having sex with girls when we were in high school.
“You ratted us out to Mom?” Ashton accused me.
“I wasn’t expecting her to find an unused condom on my floor or walk in on me and Julianna fucking in the shower this morning,” I said quickly before I realized exactly what I said.
“Uh…Finn? You could’ve not added that last tidbit in there,” Julianna chastised from beside me.
I looked down at her and gave her a little smile to say that I was sorry. She rolled her eyes at me but surprised me when she pressed a light kiss against my lips. As I turned my attention back to my mother and brothers, I could tell I had used the wrong choice of words according to mom and surprised the hell out of my brothers.
“Didn’t we teach you anything in high school, Finn? Always have sex somewhere else,” Cooper scolded.
Yeah, last night you told me the exact same thing, then Julianna showed up to my room wearing nothing but a satin nightgown and my cock had other plans.
Julianna looked up at me, her eyebrows furrowed together, “Does that mean I was the first girl that you snuck into your room?”
; “Yeah, I followed their rule to a tee before I brought you home.”
Her cheeks flushed as a smile crossed her lips.
“The condom wasn’t all that I found before I walked in on you two,” my mom pulled my attention back to her.
Really? If she says the messy bed there will be some words that will be spoken that I will not be proud of.
“Then what else did you find that was so incriminating?”
“The torn lingerie on the floor.”
Oh, fuck. I forgot that we sort of just left it lying on the floor. I mean it was torn in two, what good was it going to do after that?
“Way to go, Finn!” Ashton held out his hand to congratulate me but Violet swatted it away.
Violet always kept Ashton in line because sometimes he had no filter.
My mother looked at me and her expression changed from serious to sad, “What hurts the most about all this is that you’re having unprotected sex, Finn.”
We weren’t having unprotected sex. Birth control was being used.
“We aren’t having unprotected sex. Well, we weren’t but now that we’re married we will.”
Julianna lightly tapped my arm, “Hold back on the details, baby.”
I chuckled a little and shrugged.
“Then how do you explain the unopened condom and the fact that there were no condom wrappers or used condoms in either trash can in your room and bathroom?”
Ohhh…condoms. Yeah, those things hadn’t been used for weeks.
“Oh you mean like, condom protected sex? I thought you just meant like…preventing pregnancy unprotected sex. Because Julianna is on the pill for that.”
Julianna let go of my arm and laid her forehead on the table as Ashton and Cooper laughed, “Finn…just stop talking.”
What? I was just telling her the truth.
“I had the no sex until marriage rule for a reason but you all chose to break it. None of you ever bothered to ask why it was so important to me in the first place,” my mother chided.
“Then why not tell us?” Ashton said from beside me.
“It runs back to when your father left us all. I was scared that something would happen, and one of you would end up being an unwed father and would turn your back on that child just as your father turned his back on you.”
Just because our father walked out on us didn’t mean that we would follow in his footsteps.
“Mom, none of us feel that way about children. I’ve specifically had protected sex any time that I have had sex because I didn’t want to have children outside of marriage. My children deserve both a mother and a father who are in it one hundred percent,” I responded quickly.
“Well said, brother,” Ashton and Cooper cheered with their empty beer bottles.
“I’m happy that you all feel so passionately about being there for your children. It’s important. There was something Julianna said this morning that really struck a chord for me and made me think about my thoughts on my rule,” Mom turned her attention to Julianna.
Julianna had said a lot of things this morning, what thing was she talking about?
“Uh…what did I say?” Julianna questioned me but I shrugged, unsure of what it was too.
“You said, ‘that’s how Finn tells me he loves me in a way that words can’t express’. What did you mean by that exactly?”
Julianna’s eyes stayed on mine as she swallowed hard. I’d never told them about her past relationship with Michael. I nodded encouragingly, if she wanted to tell the story then she could and I would be there to support her. I gently squeezed her thigh in my hand.
“When I met Finn, I had just gotten out of a very emotionally abusive three-year relationship,” Julianna stopped to take a deep breath before she locked eyes again with me, “The man I was with, he would put me down in any way he could think of. Calling me names, picking on the flaws of my body, using my body to relieve himself because he told me that nobody else would find my body or me attractive. He would tell me I was lucky that he loved me or else he wouldn’t have sex with me. Our intimacy was limited to one position because if he saw me in any other way, he complained about seeing how heavy I was and that it turned him off.”
I moved my hand from Julianna’s thigh to her back and slowly rubbed it up and down. I brought my lips to hers, letting her know that I was there. Julianna had confessed all of this to me after Michael’s attack on her. But just because I heard it before didn’t mean that it still didn’t surprise me that she had to live through that for three years.
“The second that I met Finn, I knew he was different from the guy that I had finally just left. He even let me complain about the guy as we talked that very first night. He told me he didn’t see anything wrong with me and when we went on our first date, he told me I looked beautiful, that I took his breath away,” Julianna wiped a tear away but her eyes never left mine as she spoke.
“It was hard for me to understand that someone thought I was beautiful. After years of being put down every single day, you learn to believe what that person is saying to you. Shortly after we met, Finn made love to me. The way he looked at me, the way he held me…his sweet words…it made me feel like what he was saying was true. The further we got into our relationship, and the more we disclosed about our past relationships and loves, I could feel myself feeling better, more confident,” Julianna paused to run her fingers over my cheeks, something that we always did for one another since our very first date.
I smiled as I watched her, my brave, beautiful wife. Her smile mirrored mine as she continued.
“He does tell me he loves me, many times a day. I love to hear him say it. But it’s when we have those few intimate moments together, where it’s nobody else in the world but us, that shows me that Finn truly loves me, body, mind, and soul.”
And that was the god’s honest truth right there. Amelia sniffled from across the table as she wiped her eyes with her hands. I almost had tears in my eyes. Damn, no wonder this girl wanted to write books, she had such a way with words.
“Why did you two rush to get married at the courthouse this morning?” Violet broke the small silence that followed Julianna’s confession.
Julianna smiled and waited for me to answer as we locked eyes once more, “Because I couldn’t imagine my life without this girl being mine for another minute. I almost lost her once, I swore to her that I would never let that happen again.”
“What do you mean you almost lost her?” Cooper asked from beside Amelia who was blowing her nose with a paper napkin.
When Julianna ended up in the hospital, I hadn’t told my family exactly how or why she ended up there. At the time, I might’ve alluded to it being some type of accident because me coming home to be by her side was the reason that I didn’t come to visit. Now was probably as good a time as ever to tell them what happened.
I watched Julianna closely, “You want to tell them, or should I?”
She broke our eye contact and looked down at her hands in her lap, “I’ve already talked about it too much…it still brings back the nightmares when I do…”
“Nightmares? Over a near breakup? What the hell?” Ashton said aloud.
“Ashton Michael,” Mom scolded him.
He held up his hands in surrender. The way that Julianna’s hand raised up and touched where Michael had grabbed her told me that she was going through the memories already. When she did that, it was never a good ending.
“Come here baby, I’ll tell them,” I opened my arms for her.
Julianna carefully stood up from her seat and sat across my lap, her head lying on my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed the top of her head.
“Finn, seriously, tell us what you’re talking about,” Cooper demanded from across the table.
“Julianna was attacked by her ex-boyfriend while I was out of town for preseason,” I admitted before placing a soft kiss on the back of her head that still was tender from time to time.
Cooper furrowed his brow as he tr
ied to remember back to that time. Then his face registered surprise when he remembered that I said Julianna was in the hospital and that I had to rush home.
“She had a restraining order against him and we’d been dating for almost three weeks. By that point, we were already saying I love you. The day that I left for preseason, her ex, Michael, somehow got the order thrown out. He was a lawyer who had his father’s powerful name behind him, so he probably pulled some strings. The next day, he showed up at her apartment.”
Julianna shook slightly in my arms and I tightened my hold on her, “It’s okay baby. I’m right here.”
She sighed contently as she turned her face into my chest. Whenever this topic was brought up, I always reminded her that I was there now. It was the only thing I could do to bring her mind some peace. I looked around the table to see if anyone had anything to say, but they just sat there waiting to see what I would say next.
“He forced himself into her apartment when she accidently opened the door thinking it was her friend who had just left. He got pissed off that I started to FaceTime her like we had done the night before. Even though I was practically across the country from her, I still wanted to see her face before she went to bed. He figured out that I wasn’t in town and that’s when he choked her, threw her back causing her to hit her head, and tried to rape her. Luckily, somehow my beautiful girl found it in her to get away and run for help. He bruised her neck, her arm, and cut her cheek from slapping her…she was unconscious for three days.”
“No fucking way,” Ashton quietly stated.
Everyone else was silent.
“Her friend Angie, who was her emergency contact, called me the second that she saw Julianna in the hospital, battered, bruised, and barely alive. She begged me to come back, told me that Julianna needed me. I hopped on the next flight that I could get after explaining to Coach what happened. I didn’t even hear the whole fucking story until the cops came in and told me what Michael had confessed to. Julianna filled in the rest for me when she woke up.”
Tears began to stream down my face as I kissed her head several times. It still killed me that Julianna was almost torn away from me so soon. We wouldn’t be here right now if Michael would’ve done any more damage than he had. If Julianna’s body would’ve given up on bringing her back to me. Julianna lifted her head off my chest and gazed up at me. She pursed her lips as her thumbs wiped away my tears and wrapped her arms around me. It was almost as if she was giving me my own reassurance that she was still there with me.
