Page 22 of When the Last One Falls
“Look, while I’m not condoning it, I think you’re being a little too hard on yourself,” Onyx said. “You’d be in handcuffs right now if Keris had taken it as assault on your part. The girl might not be as rich as she was before she married you, but no one knows that. Plus, her last name still holds weight. Only you, your families, and us know that you own the mines now. Keris could make a really big stink out of this all if she wanted to.” Onyx leaned back in his seat, taking another drink of his whiskey. “I think that you’re letting your guilt cloud your judgement.”
“Her last name is fuckingKingston,”I said, focusing on only one remark, the one about her last name holding weight. “If her last name holds any weight, it’s because it’s Kingston now.”
“You’re losing it, dude,” Onyx said as he shook his head.
“He’s right,” Magnus agreed. “I’ve never seen you like this before, Brant.”
“That’s because I’ve never been married to a woman that hates me before,” I drawled out sardonically.
“You need to talk to her, and you know it,” Magnus suggested. “You guys can’t go on like this. Plus, if she hates you like you claim, who knows what she’ll do.”
“Yeah, she might fuck around with Cormac just to spite you,” Onyx added, and I could feel myself getting angry all over again.
“I’ll kill the bastard if he ever goes near her again,” I growled before tossing back the rest of my bourbon.
“But can you keepherfrom ever going near him again?” Magnus posed.
“I’ll kill her, too,” I vowed. “The last thing that I’ll ever allow is for Ares Cormac to touch my wife.” I shook my head. “He’s welcomed to try to take everything else that I have, but not my wife.”
“You sound like you love her,” Onyx stated quietly. “Do you?”
“No,” I automatically answered. “If I loved her, then I wouldn’t have stopped until I killed Cormac Friday night. However, I can admit that I might be obsessed with her.”
“God help you,” Magnus muttered.
“Fuck, and I thought I had problems with Jewel,” Onyx grimaced.
After running my hands through my hair, I dropped my head back, looked at the ceiling, then wondered how in the fuck was I going to get my wife to ever want me.
Chapter 15
Keris~
“Oh, God…that’s so freakin’ hot,” Dylan gushed, and I could only stare at her blankly.
“She’s not wrong,” Huntley agreed, and I wanted to strangle them both.
After Brantley had left me feeling sick to my stomach with shame and regret, I hadn’t known what to do. While advocate groups everywhere would claim that he had most definitely taken advantage of me, it hadn’t felt that way. In all honesty, it still didn’t feel that way. Pride aside, it had been the hottest sex that I’d ever had, and my body flooded with warm desire whenever I replayed it in my head. Even though Brantley had left me sore, I had still ended up playing with myself last night to the memories, cumming hard, feeling like crap again.
When he hadn’t come back home at all on Saturday or last night, I figured that he’d seen the light and had decided to go with his original plan of not living together. Nevertheless, actually concerned that he’d go through with his outrageous threat, I’d gone back to his parents’ house to retrieve my rings. When I had called Lorna Kingston to see if I could stop by her house, she’d been under the impression that I had wanted to talk about that stupid video circulating all over the internet, and I had let her believe it. The heavy stones were back on my finger now, and my pride was still giving me shit over it.
There was also that goddamn video of Brantley’s fight with Ares Cormac making shit more complicated than it already was. While Ares had made it clear that nothing had happened between us, and while he hadn’t divulged the nature of our conversation, Brantley still hadn’t been satisfied. He’d looked like an unhinged husband, and I knew that people were going to assume that I was being unfaithful, though that wasn’t the case at all. People liked salacious gossip, so they were bound to add more to the story than there was.
So, not knowing what to do, I had called Huntley and Dylan over for some advice. Normally, I’d call my sister because we were close like that, but I didn’t want her feeling bad or guilty, thinking this might all be her fault. Sure, I’d made the decision because of her, but she didn’t need to know that. Lindsey had enough things to worry about besides a decision that I had made all on my own. Nevertheless, I knew my sister, and if she knew the full truth, she would carry the blame on her shoulders, no matter what I said. So, while she knew the truth of our family’s finances and why I’d gotten married, she didn’t know that I’d only done it for her, not our parents. Lindsey was under the impression that I had stepped up to save the entire family, and she was also under the impression that everything was amicable.
“Can you two focus, please?” I practically hissed.
“Oh, Iamfocused,” Dylan chuckled. “I’m focused on how your new husband kicked some serious ass to defend you, and then also fucked you like a stallion determined to mark his mare.”
“Every woman has a fantasy of being ravished, so don’t sit there and lie about being any different, Keris,” Huntley added.
We were all at Dylan’s, her husband down for his afternoon nap. While there were a lot of active seventy-year-olds, according to Dylan, Sean liked to nap. Granted, if their bedroom escapades were anything to go by, the manneededhis naps. Dylan had a very voracious sexual appetite, and Sean did his best to satisfy it, even if he did have to use toys to help keep getting her off.
“Yeah, being ravished by a guy I actuallylike,”I corrected. “This was different.”
Dylan scoffed. “You admitted to cumming, Keris,” she reminded me brutally. “I’d say that you like the guy just fine.”
Ignoring her point, I asked, “Do neither of you see how he only did it to prove a point? That’s not being ravished, that’s being…being-”
