Solid: 2 1/2 (Twin Duo Book 3) (5 page)

“We weren’t together.”

“Shhh, I’m telling you from my eyes, not yours. I didn’t know you were running from a life like that. I didn’t know you were gang raped.”

I tried to protest again, but his twisting fingers cut off my words. A moan. That’s all I had.

“As soon as I had what I needed, I set it up. I came home from work at one, picked you and Rowan up and went to the courthouse. We got our license in one room, and married by the justice of the peace in another. I dropped you back off at home and went back to work. That was our wedding.”

That pissed me off and I didn’t even know why. It wasn’t like I could have remembered anyway. He could have told me we had the Cinderella wedding and I wouldn’t have known the difference. Instead, he chose to tell me the hurtful truth. “You had zero feeling for me? None at all?”

One thumb moved to the aching between my legs while the other one kept up the assault on my right nipple. My backed arched, and my pelvis moved into his, matching every thrust. “None whatsoever. Lane kept haggling me over it, telling me how nice you were, and what a good wife you would make. I finally started to think about it after the last failed attempt to get Tatiana to come back to Rowan and me. My plan was to get you knocked up. I knew you would never walk out on your own child like Tatiana did. I knew that if I knocked you up, you would never leave. You were just what I needed, just not what Lane thought I needed.”

A grunt escaped my lips before the words. “What do you mean?”

“I mean Lane thought you would be a good mother and a loving wife, someone that would be loyal, only I didn’t believe in that. I was sure women weren’t capable of being faithful. I planned to scare it into you, and punish you when you stepped out of line, starting with our wedding night.”

A few more thrusts of his hips into mine, and I moaned out my reply, wanting to hear more. “Tell me.”

“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s it. You were vulnerable and I picked up on it like a dog in heat. It wasn’t you at all. I worked the rest of the day, building up anger toward Tatiana while thinking about you. That was the first night I really felt it, the power I held over you. Lucky for you, Jim Beam and I had spent two hours together at the bar before I made it home to you. My failed marriage to Tatiana and her cheating ass stirred in me all day and night. I didn’t want to come home to you, my wife. You made beef ravioli that night, except you forgot the beef.”

My eyes blurred as I listened to Paxton’s words fade into a past I wanted no part of.

“Where’s my daughter?” he questioned loudly as he walked into the door.

“Shhh, she’s been asleep for an hour. You’re late,” I said with a little bit of attitude. I worked hard preparing that meal minus the meat so I could show him how much better it was without it. It backfired, Paxton was angry, but I wasn’t sure why. The simple meal I’d tried to prepare for him seemed trivial. Surely he wasn’t mad over that.

“Is this what I ordered for supper? Did I say vegetable ravioli? Did I, cunt?”

My heart beat out of my chest as he screamed in my face, but I didn’t move. I eyed him right in the eyes, just like my mother taught me to do. I wasn’t about to back down, yet I was too afraid to speak. I swallowed a heavy lump instead.

Paxton grabbed a fistful of my hair and brought me to my knees, right in front of him. “If you’re going to be a Pierce, you’re going to have to learn what to do. Really fast. Do you know what that is, slut? Huh? Answer me?”

My body trembled just like it had the night I was held down by a gang, and my words vibrated out. “No.”

“It’s whatever I tell you to do. I say we’re not doing this bullshit of no meat in my house and you’re going to listen. You’re going to listen to everything I say. Are we clear on that?” Paxton shoved his jean covered crotch into my face and pressed his hips into me. “If I say you’re going to eat meat, you’re going to eat meat. This is the last time this will happen. Do you understand me?”

Again, no words. I nodded, looking up until he told me not to.

“Don’t look at me. You look down to the floor when I look at you. Unless I tell you otherwise, you look down. Got it?”

My eyes darted quickly to the floor and I nodded, feeling his hand still grasping my hair. “That’s it, baby girl. Now I’m going to teach you a lesson, teach you how to like your meat. You’re going to have so much meat tonight, you’ll remember for days.”

All I could think about while Paxton released himself into my mouth was my wedding day. I wanted my mom to smile down on this day, not feel bad. I never wanted her to feel bad for me. I gagged several times, singing a silly song my mom had sung to Izzy and me when we were little, mostly nights out in the open. When we were scared, when she acted crazy.

I could hear Paxton’s words, and I could see the smile on his face, but it was strange. I teetered over two worlds, trying to focus on one. Mostly the one from the past, the one seeing the truth, not this made up, sugar coated, description my husband lied about. Paxton came in and out of focus, explaining something different than what I’d saw.

He forgot the part where he made me dance around the bar where our children ate their breakfast while he ate three plates of my meatless ravioli. He forgot to mention the part where he used a sharp knife from the drawer to trace my spine, my lips, and my nipples. My body trembled below his, but this time for different reasons. Paxton thrusted deep into me, telling me how him holding a knife in his hand, away from my body, persuaded me to do everything he told me to do. He was a liar, the knife touched me all over. That’s when the realization hit me. My thumb brushed over the cut on my finger and I said it.

“You cut me that night.”

That stopped all his moving and the smirk was suddenly gone. “I never told you that.”

I swallowed away a pain that came out of nowhere, lodging in my throat when I tried to talk. “You didn’t tell me that you made me fuck myself with a carrot while you enjoyed your supper, oh wait, that was while I danced on the bar for you. The same one our kids eat oatmeal from. You didn’t tell me that you spanked me with a spatula until I dropped to the floor either, you didn’t tell me that you threatened me without words, using a knife to manipulate me into doing whatever you wanted me to do. You didn’t tell me that you screamed in my face while you traced my fingers with that same knife, or that you cut me with it. You didn’t tell me about screaming in my face because we had to go to the hospital for stitches. You didn’t tell me that you sent me threatening text messages while the nurse took my vitals. You didn’t tell me that I slept with your dick in my mouth as punishment for you cutting me. You didn’t tell me—

“Jesus Christ, Gabriella. Calm down, baby. Come here.”

I had to blink my eyes to realize what,
come here
even meant. I was clear across the room, backing away from him with every tear. Tears that I didn’t know were there until that moment. Unbearable pain. I didn’t wish on my worst enemy. God almighty. I mean, I knew all this, but not like this. Not real like this. Not like this.

Chapter Five

Paxton

Now we had a thing. Fuck, things got any more complicated, I may have taken the easy way out and swallowed a bullet. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I knelt beside her, falling to the floor with her in my arms. One second I had her over the bed, fucking her, describing the sex we had on our wedding night, and the next, this. Whatever the fuck this was.

I knew I was the one in the wrong, but it didn’t keep me from twisting things around to put the ball back in my hands. “Is this the way it’s going to be, Gabriella? Why don’t you just tell me all the things you don’t remember right now? Why don’t we lay it all out on the table? Go, baby girl. What else would you like to throw in my face?” I questioned while my open hand spread across the air.

She didn’t fire back the way I expected her to do. She didn’t point out the fact that it was me, that it was all me. That I was the one that paved the first six years of our marriage. She didn’t slap me with truthful words that I deserved. She asked me to leave.

“I can’t be around you right now, Paxton. Please just leave.”

“You want me to leave?”

“I can’t do this anymore. I hate this feeling.”

“Don’t you even think like that, Gabriella,” I ordered with a tone that she knew meant business. Fuck that. After all we’d been through we weren’t surrendering now, especially now.

She shoved me away with two hard slaps to my chest, meant to hurt, I was sure. My hands clasped both her wrists and I backed her to the closed door. Two steps.

“You don’t know what this is like, Paxton,” she said through hoarse words, and a shaky tone.

“Tell me, baby. Don’t run from me. Tell me.”

“I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like I’m stuck between two worlds and I can’t get unstuck. I don’t know if this Gabriella is weak enough to forgive you. Tell me what you heard on the video. Don’t lie, Paxton.”

“I just did,” I confessed. “I hid the plan to knock you up in order to keep you like a slave. I hid those things that you’re seeing. You moved your hand. I didn’t cut you on purpose. You fucking moved.”

I have no idea where the strength came from, but blubbering wife turned from weak and distraught to angry and strong as hell. Her hands shoved me away with one easy push, and the left hook caught me totally off guard.

“Don’t you make this about you. Don’t you fucking play that card. I was scared. I was terrified, and you didn’t care. You never fucking cared!”

Tasting the blood on my already fat lip, I went after her, stopping dead in my tracks when she skated across the bed, a straight finger pointed right at my nose. “No, Paxton. No, stay away from me. Don’t fucking touch me.”

I walked around the end of the bed quickly and she dove to the bed. “Seriously? Stop it, Gabriella. Come here.”

“No, stay away from me. Just leave. Sleep on the couch tonight.”

I took another step and moved another inch away. That was starting to piss me off. “I’m not doing that.”

“Then I will.”

“No, you’re not doing that either. Gabriella, listen to yourself. You think I’m the selfish bastard because of my mommy and daddy hang-ups, because of my cheating first wife, because of the choice I made when I whored you out to Lane that night. If I could change one thing about all of this, it would be that, Gabriella. You think you’re the only one who gets to play the fair card? Well, you’re not. You never said no. Not once did you say, no. And whether you want to admit it or not, you never complained. It worked for us, Gabriella. You’re remembering the beginning, not the middle and the end.”

“Fuck you. You fucking dick. I was afraid of you, and you used that to mold me into your little sex slave, your housekeeper, and your trophy wife. I was a fucking robot, not a wife.”

Well, hell. She had a point. My tongue dipped between my lips and the tiny split from my wife’s fist. “And that’s the part that’s unfair, Gabriella. I can’t change it. No matter how much I wish I could, I can’t. I can tell you shit that would make you cringe, but what’s the point in that, Gabriella? I can’t fucking change it. You’re going to keep doing this. You’re going to keep getting these bits and pieces until you have every one of them. And every time, you’re going to drive another wedge between us. I don’t know how to fix this, but I know it’s not this. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but we have to come to some common ground on this.”

Her wide eyes stared back and I noticed her naked body, relax to the side. She didn’t jump across the bed when I walked to her, and she didn’t punch me when I pulled her into my arms. “I can’t fucking go back, Gabriella, but if I could, I can’t say we would be together right now.”

“What do you mean?” she questioned with a heavy breath, letting her body relax into mine.

I kissed the top of her head, feeling the pain in my lip, and rolled my eyes. “You were what I wanted at that time, what I needed. I wouldn’t have chosen another Tatiana. You needed me as much as I needed you.”

“I needed the security.”

“Gabriella,” I scolded with my hand below her chin. I turned her to look at me, and held her face between both my hands. “I thought you were some slut off the streets. That’s what I wanted. Somebody that didn’t have meddling parents. They were so concerned with their daughter dating a loser like me, they tossed Rowan away, too. She doesn’t even know they exist. You were better with her than Tatiana ever was. She had a nanny on her hip everywhere she went. She never sat on the floor and played with her, or talked to her like she was special, not like you did.

“I had never in my life met anyone as delicate as you. Rowan sensed something in you from the first time she laid eyes on you. I held her while she clutched her little fingers to my shirt. Too bad you can’t remember that, Gabriella. I’ll never forget it. I told her that your name was Gabriella, and you gave her a raspberry. That girl giggled like I had never heard before. Why she thought that was funny is beyond me,” I said while I tried my best to remind her of the other times. The times like that.

“Probably because no one ever played with her before me, and I wasn’t delicate, I was broken.”

“I didn’t know that, baby.”

“This is going to happen again.”

“I know, and I’m going to be right here ever time, but you gotta stop punching me.”

“Sorry, a little.”

“A little?”

“Well, you sort of deserved it.”

“I’ll give you that. If you feel the need to punch me in the mouth, go ahead.”

“Thanks, that’ll make me feel better the next time.”

I snickered and kissed her lips. “Christ almighty, girl. Lay down so I can fuck you.”

Gabriella dropped to her back and I slid down her body. Once again I stuck my dick inside her, and once again I fucked her, this time keeping her pinned to the mattress. She would have to be Houdini before I let her escape again. My dick slid easily into her, growing with every stroke. “We’re going to have a baby? A tiny little baby?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to accept that it’s real yet.”

I slid in and out of her, slowly, making sure my pelvis thrust into her, swelling nub. “You think it’s not real?”

“Hmm, keep doing that right there,” she moaned when I swirled my hips into her. “I know it’s real because I heard the heartbeat, but it hasn’t sunk in that it’s really real.”

I smiled down at her, watching her expression change from stressed to once again, relaxed, moving in the right direction for an orgasm. I loved that look, I loved the feel of her naked body, thrashing into mine, I loved the way her nails dug into my skin, and I loved the way she called out in profanity, her body caving to mine in my arms. I guess I understood what she meant. I didn’t think it was really, real yet either. I needed more proof.

“Aahh, fuck, baby,” she quietly moaned as I ground into her, feeling her tighten around my cock. I pulled myself up to my knees, lifting her ass with my hands, and turned her to her side. Holding one leg over my shoulder, I fucked the hell out of her while I watched. That pulled the profanity I fucking devoured like a drug. “Hmm, fuck yeah, fuck me, harder, ahhh fuck, fuck, fuck, Paxton. Fuck me.”

Her body thrashed below me, giving into my side of the world. Gabriella reached her peak at precisely the same moment as me. My thumb pressed hard into her clit, and I slammed into her, succumbing to my own pleasure. Her body stiffened into some fucked up demon like position and she shuddered below me, convulsing with the overzealous orgasm that fell upon me. The mixture of our bodies doing this together, the stress that hovered around us, and the fucked upness of our lives all exploded in an instant. Wave after wave surged through both our bodies until they relaxed, hers first, and then mine. Right into hers.

“You’re not running from me, Gabriella,” I said through a pant into her hair.

“I’m going to try.”

At least, she was honest. There was no doubt in my mind she would try. I won’t lie and say I didn’t seriously think about calling Nick and asking him to stop it. I didn’t know if we would make it through six years of remembering. I didn’t look forward to it, I knew that much.

I held her a little tighter that night, hoping to give her some of that needed security, but the fear was still there. This could break us, and I wasn’t too proud to consider that to be fact. I prayed to a God I didn’t know if I believed in, to please stop this. I didn’t want her to remember anymore.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened for the next few weeks. Rowan’s teacher was spotted doing another walk through on Lane’s house, and Vander lost a tooth. Before Ophelia…She was so mad because she lost a bet that she would lose hers before him. They were both ready, wiggly enough to fall out on their own, but they were both too chicken to pull them. Lucky for Van his cherry pop cycle was enough. It stuck right in the end. Other than that, we were a normal family. My wife was happy, my kids were well, and I was getting laid. A lot.

Although I was constantly tiptoeing on ice around her, it took about a month for anything out of the norm to surface again. That wasn’t because of her remembering anything, though, more like crazy hormone lady. I didn’t remember this when she was pregnant with Rowan. Then again, I wouldn’t have been the one she cried, too. One minute she would be laughing, and the next a bag of blubbering words that I couldn’t understand. Thank God none of them had anything to do with me and her memory, not that she disclosed anyway. I could feel the tension in the air as soon as I got home and saw my children outside and not in front of the television like they normally were when I got home.

“Hi, something smells good,” I said as I cautiously walked closer to Gabriella. She didn’t turn from stirring some sort of tomato sauce in a pan. That was my first warning sign.

“I thought you were going to pick up Ophelia and Vander for me.”

I took a step back and reminded her of my text. “I told you why. I had an inspector up my ass over an electrical outlet, too close to a faucet. I wasn’t anywhere near here.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“I sent you a text.”

“You didn’t send me a text.”

I looked around, seeing her phone on the counter and swiped my finger across the screen. “Right there, three ten this afternoon. “Can’t get the kids, sorry babe. Love you.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t see it.”

“Were they bad?”

“No, that’s not my point. Forget it. I didn’t know you texted.”

“Okay, so tell me what’s really on your mind. If you’re remembering something that you hate me for, tell me so I can prepare myself. Just say it, Gabriella.”

She stopped stirring long enough to shoot me a daggered glare over her shoulder, and tell me what she thought.  “I didn’t remember anything. I’m just saying.”

I smiled and moved in behind her. “You’re just saying what, baby girl? That you’re trying to pick a fight? Is that why all of our cubs are outside? Mama Bear cracking the whip today?”

“Shut up,” she said with an elbow to my ribs. I knew it was the hormones, but I didn’t dare bring that up. The ice was way too thin for that. Instead, I tiptoed around her, lent an extra hand that night with cleaning up, and then the kids, trying to keep her happy and calm. It wasn’t until they were sound asleep that things got heated in another direction.

Although I had planned on working later, needing to take care of some bills, and prepare a few things for my accountant, I couldn’t do it. She even told me to, explaining that she had just started a really good book, and planned on ignoring me. She kissed me when she said it, and I smiled on her lips, happy that we were here, and not where we could have been. I should have listened to my gut and stayed downstairs. I didn’t do that, however. I felt like she needed me to be there for her, and hormones or not, work could wait. It wasn’t like I could concentrate on it anyway.

I flipped everything off and set the alarms, looking in on all three kids before walking upstairs. Gabriella was out on the terrace, talking on her phone. At first, I thought it was just Mi, but then she asked the person to call her the following day, when her husband wasn’t home.” She turned to see, and I watched the shock cover her face. “Thank you, I’ll talk to you later,” she said as her call ended, on her end anyway. I wasn’t sure the other person had a choice.