It felt like the longest orgasm in the world, at least a minute long from start to finish. I’m not even sure if I breathed or not. Every muscle in my body tensed. Somewhere in between the ride, I caught the look on Paxton’s face. Stress wrinkles around his eyes, a clenched jaw, like he was in pain, and the expression he used when he’d just come inside me. I loved that look. His lips parted and his eyes expressed the euphoric pleasure, surging his body.
I gasped, realizing I did forget to breath. My body fell to the mattress and my eyes closed while my body came down from a glorious high.
“I love you. I love you more than I ever thought possible, but I’m still not sure I would change it.”
“Are you going to tell me? What was it?”
Paxton’s hips began to slowly move again, a snail’s pace this time. “Yes, but not tonight.”
I thought about my idea to sleep on it earlier. That was a horrible idea. I would never make it.
“That’s not fair. We said we would tell each other everything. I think we should tell Nick we’re not doing it like this, that we want to do it together,” I protested, eyes narrowed to show my displeasure.
“No, I think he’s right. I think we should do exactly what he says.”
“You say that like it could make or break us.”
“Maybe it could.”
I tried my damnedest not to feel the new stir between my legs. Talking seemed more important than my impending orgasm. “But what’s the point in going through it all if we’re just going to lie to each other?”
“I’m not going to lie to you.”
“But you’re not going to tell me everything?”
“Yes, I just need to sleep on it. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“What did I say, Paxton?”
He kissed the tip of my nose while his hips moved in tight, holding deep inside me before withdrawing. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Shut up. I’m trying to fuck you.”
Who was I to argue with that? Especially when he pushed my legs to my chest, gaining at least another half an inch. As soon as I came for the second time, Paxton dropped my legs and pulled out of me, jerking himself over my sex. I was still riding my own waves so I didn’t really pay attention to the weirdness. Paxton always came inside me. Not that I minded it. I didn’t. Not at all. The first bout of come landed between my legs and the rest my lower stomach. Paxton moved my hand to his poison, and I massaged it through my opened folds, bringing it all home. Wow. That’s all I could think in my head.
“It’s bad, right? Don’t tell me.”
“No, we’re not doing that. We made a pact. I’ll tell you. I just have to figure it out in my mind first.”
“What’s it about? Can you at least tell me that?”
Paxton pulled me to my feet by my wrists, avoiding my soiled hand. “Let’s go soak in the tub.”
“I already did that.”
He didn’t really give me a choice. Not that I expected that out of him. “Do it with me.”
Paxton brushed his teeth and shaved while I ran water, filling it with purple bubbles. “Don’t you get tired of lavender?” He questioned through the mirror.
“No, my mom loved lavender.”
“How do you know that?”
I shrugged both my shoulders. “I don’t know, but I feel like it’s true.”
“I feel like that, too. You’ve always gravitated toward lavender.”
I sank into the tub for the second time, watching Paxton’s naked ass while he shaved. “I don’t understand why I never told you about her, or Izzy. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“You’re not going to hear that part. I just listened to it.”
My eyes moved from his ass to his in the mirror. “Why didn’t I tell you?”
He splashed his face with water, rinsing white cream down the drain. “I told you not to,” he said from behind a towel.
I tried to contemplate his words, but I still didn’t understand. “What do you mean? Why?”
“Move up,” he ordered.
I slid up and moved between his legs, settling into his chest while his arms enveloped me. His lips touched my eyebrow and I felt warm words on my skin. I sort of loved this, being in the lavender scented bath with Paxton, my body nestled into his.
“It was the day you told me you were pregnant with Ophelia, the day I told you we were getting married.”
I blew out a puff of a sarcastic air. Of course he told me we were getting married. “Go on.”
“I told you we’d talk about it tomorrow.”
“Well, you can at least tell me why you never knew about my family.”
“I just told you. I didn’t want you to. That was the deal, the agreement we made when I decided to let you be my wife. It was in the stipulations.”
“What stipulations?”
“I don’t remember all of them. You wrote them down.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. You probably threw it away.”
“Okay, whatever. What was that stipulation?”
Paxton twisted my left nipple between his fingers while he talked in a level tone, dry with no emotion. “You couldn’t have any baggage. I told you that I didn’t want meddling family up my ass and in my business. Your exact words to me were ‘I don’t have any family’ and you’d been in foster care since you were eleven. You lied, Gabriella. It’s not my fault that you didn’t speak up and tell me you had a sister. Even if you would have said you haven’t seen her since you were eleven. At least I wouldn’t have been so blindsided by all this.”
That pissed me off a little and I told him so. “You’re blindsided? I don’t even remember this. You can’t give me shit for being blindsided by anything. Try forgetting your entire life and learning it step by step the way I have. I should hate you. I shouldn’t be with you.”
“I’m trying to remember how hard it is for you, but it’s tough for me, too. More so than ever.”
I shook my head and exhaled a heavy breath. “You gotta give me more than that, Pax. What does that mean? More so than ever.”
“I can’t even explain it, Gabriella. It’s so fucked up. I fell in love with your eyes the moment I saw you. The fear in your eyes, the innocence, I don’t even know. You were like a baby fawn, and I craved you. I was fascinated that I could tell you to do anything I wanted, and you did it. After I told you that we were getting married, you told me that you were days away from being eighteen. That intensified my craving for you.”
“That makes you sound like a pedophile.”
“Thinking about it now does, but not then. Not when I was a twenty-seven-year-old man with this hot little sex slave right in front of my eyes. Up until the day you crashed that car, I could tell you to come to me with a look. I could send you a text message at three o’clock in the morning and tell you to come and suck my dick, and you’d do it. I could tell you to clean my office naked while I worked, and you’d do it.”
I stopped him with that, lightening the serious tone in his voice. “I’ll clean your office naked now.”
He snickered in my hair. “Okay, I’m holding you to it, but it’s different, Gabriella. You would never say that before. I had the cleanest room in the house. You didn’t protest, you didn’t talk back to me. If I called you into my office and told you how dirty it was, you automatically stood before me and undressed, eyes on the ground. I soaked up the obedience like a sponge. I was so fucking addicted to you.”
“You know, Pax, I’m trying my hardest not to be mad, and I’m so glad that I know I was gang raped and I don’t remember it. That terrified girl you’re talking about had one hell of a life before you. She deserved better than you.”
“She still does. I never knew about the gang rape. The first couple weeks you were there, I thought you were just some slut running from the cops or some shit. I can’t explain it, Gabriella, but it’s like this. I loved who you were then. Like straight up would have kept you that way for the rest of my life and never thought a thing about it. It’s like all that newness with you back then, is new again, only different. I think your pole dance from then and now would both turn me on. Only now you would put on a show, probably give me a lap dance. You would have never done something like that before.”