To Break a Vow Read online

  “Jereth, this is truly an honor. Not only did I get to hear your voice this morning, but I get to lay eyes on you, too. All within one hour’s time. What a coincidence.” Gripping the envelope in front of me like a shield, I pasted a bland smile on my face and used my most upbeat but condescending tone.

  Those chestnut orbs bore into me, and I hate how turned on being in his crosshairs made me. “We need to talk.”

  “Well, actually, the time for talking has come and gone. Now is the time for action and since you’ve been a man of inaction for the last ninety days, I decided to make the first and final move.” Holding the legal-sized manila envelope out to him, I felt a twinge of satisfaction as he stared at it like it was a snake.

  “I’m not taking that shit, baby.”

  “Don’t call me that!” I snapped at him, instantly infuriated that he’d somehow weaponized the nickname he’d insisted on calling me during our brief time together. What was once a pleasing moniker now felt like sharp nails dragging across my skin.

  “That’s your name.” He spoke matter-of-factly, and it only served to crank up the heat under my anger.

  Allowing a couple of minutes to pass, I took several deep breaths. I needed to gain control of the situation because as I’d told Toy, I refused to be pulled out of my professional persona in my place of business.

  “Jereth, just take these, please, and let’s put an end to this mess.”

  He grabbed the envelope and threw it to the ground before clasping his big hands over my shoulders.

  “We’re not getting a divorce, woman.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes, born of frustration along with an undesirable smidgen of relief buried in the far recesses of my mind that I didn’t want to acknowledge right then—or ever. The pain was so much easier to hold on to—to justify—when I thought of all the time I’d spent not having a clue as to where Jereth could be when he wasn’t with me or within eyesight.

  “Why not?” I cried. “You don’t want to be with me, so why won’t you just let me be? Release me from this hold you have on me so I can find someone to give me all of them like I’m willing to give all of me. Why are you doing this to me?” I was sobbing hysterically by the end of my rant, eyes swollen and cheeks soaked, yet he still pulled me into his chest, squeezing tightly like he never wanted to let me go. It was the most confusing thing, and I just couldn’t stop crying as I bounced between indignation and lust.

  “Who told you I didn’t want you? I love you. I’ll never let you go.”

  Defeated, I sagged against him even as my heart thumped with joy. Had we ever declared these words to one another? Had I ever whispered them in earnest and waited for them to be reciprocated back to me? “You don’t love me. You probably never did.”

  His fingers tightened at my hips, the bony tips managing to dig into my flesh over my clothing. “Why would you say that?”

  My tears hadn’t subsided, but thankfully my sobbing had waned. I looked up into his beautiful face, wanting but refraining to brush my palms over each unblemished inch of the smooth skin. “I haven’t seen you in three months, Jereth, and haven’t spoken to you in more than half of that time. Is that how you treat the people you love? Tell me now because I can assure you that I want no parts of that shit.”

  “You told me to leave and then you blocked my fucking number! You’re being really irrational right now.”

  A loud gasp sounded in the empty space, and I had already pushed at his chest to put some space between us before I realized the sound had come from me. “I told you to leave if you couldn’t be open with me. You made me feel like a dirty, little secret!”

  One ring-adorned hand scrubbed at his head as he sighed. “I was working on that, man. I told you that I just needed time.”

  “And I gave you that!”

  “How are you giving me time if you’re serving me with divorce papers? That sounds like my time is up!” His tone jumped to a roar, startling me and shocking my pulse into overdrive. My heart thumped rapidly in my chest, and I felt lightheaded as my body temperature increased.

  Clutching at my throat, I suddenly felt raw, and the notion that I might have been wrong bounced around in my head like a gong in an empty room. “Three months…” It was all I had to cling to, but it was enough. Nothing he could say would make his disappearance okay for me.

  “You said you needed a mental break, so I gave you that. I called you every day until you made that impossible. At what point do you take responsibility for your part in this?”

  “I blocked you because I couldn’t think straight with you in my ear all the time.”

  “Well, I needed time to think, too.”

  “You couldn’t do that here?”

  “Not with you breathing your frustration and disappointment down my neck every minute, no.”

  Shaking my head, I took a step back away from him. “You didn’t need time to decide to marry me—you did that within hours of us meeting each other—but you needed an indefinable amount of time, apparently longer than a year, to prepare yourself to introduce me to your family, to bring me into your world. You know what that sounds like?” I didn’t want for him to answer me; the vapid look in his eyes was enough for me to continue. “That sounds like bullshit. That sounds like you needed to move some shit around, get your story straight and push someone—some woman—in the closet before I could enter the room.”

  “I’m not cheating on you, and I’m not cheating on anyone else with you.”

  “Your family calls you The Rebel. Cheating sounds like something The Rebel would do.”

  “Come on with all of that. You know they call me that because I’m the only one who goes against my mother.”

  Shrugging, I took another step away from him, breathing easier with every feet that grew in between us. “I actually don’t know that. I mean, you’ve told me, but other than your words, I have no proof of its truth.”

  “Why can’t you trust what I’m saying to you?”

  My face scrunched as what felt like my entire body frowned. “You haven’t given me a reason to.”

  His face cracked open, and the first signs of raw emotion appeared in his eyes. In two brisk strides, he was upon me, bending his knees, lifting me into his arms, and walking forward until my back reached the smooth side of the lockers.

  “Baby, please. Don’t destroy us. I need you in my life. I can’t live without you.”

  A thick lump formed in my throat, and I choked, attempting to swallow it down. “That’s not true. You lived for over thirty years without me; one meaningless year wouldn’t make a difference at all.” While trying to hurt him, I cut myself with those sharp-edged words.

  Desperate eyes attempted to bore into mine, but I squeezed my lids closed against the pain of trying to sever our ties. He’d burrowed so deep within me that I thought surely I was in more pain behind this than he could possibly be.

  “How could you call what we have meaningless? How can you say that with a straight face?”

  I focused my sights over his shoulder, ignoring his question and the grit in his voice that sounded like tears and anguish.

  “I’m just calling it like it is. You showed me that what we had was meaningless when you walked away from us without a backward glance.”

  “You told me to leave. What was I supposed to do?”

  “You were supposed to stay!”

  At my outburst, he let me slide down the lockers until my feet touched the floor as he slid to his knees and pressed his face against my belly.

  “I can’t lose you. I only left because you told me to go, but I swear I never turned my back on you.”

  And maybe the crux of this story was my inability to shake this man no matter how much I say I want to because the heat of his fervent whispers against my stomach, the dull points of his fingers digging into my hips, all worked together to dismantle my defenses and I found myself conceding.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When The Ropes Come Out

&nbs
p; She moved quickly. So quickly that if she hadn’t instructed me to follow her then I would have thought she was trying to leave me behind. She climbed behind the steering wheel of her car, and I waited for the sound of the locks disengaging before pulling open the door and sliding into the passenger seat. Once she backed out of the parking lot and navigated her way into the mid-morning traffic, I reached into the inside breast pocket of my vest and pulled out a slim cigarette case. Tonya shot a brief glance my way as I popped it open and retrieved an expertly rolled blunt. Her eyes lingered on my hands before returning to the road and my lips curled into a smirk. Sliding the shiny, metal case back into my pocket, I exchanged it for a custom, leather-wrapped lighter and lit the blunt, pulling on it until the end caught the spark and a thin trail of smoke curled from the end.

  Puffing once, twice, I extended my arm in her direction, putting it near her hand and in her line of vision so that she didn’t have to reach too far away from the steering wheel to grab it, which she did without me having to say a word.

  When she offered it back to me I shook my head, knowing that she needed this, that she probably hadn’t indulged since I last pressed my favorite pipe to her lips hours after we’d made love and watched her naked chest rise as she inhaled. The thought that this was something unique to the two of us, that I had the ability to offer a level of relaxation—of calm—that she didn’t usually reach… was heady, as were the thoughts swirling around in my head as I watched her bring us to our destination.

  There was something about the way Tonya drove her car with one sure, secure hand while delicately gripping the blunt—my blunt—with her thumb and forefinger that ignited my arousal.

  Pausing at a stop sign.

  Licking out with the tip of her tongue to capture a bit of smoke that had leaked from the corner of her mouth.

  Whipping the car into a one-handed right turn ever so smoothly.

  My eyes captured each action and by the time she downshifted to park, the cage in my pants was working overtime to be worth every penny I’d spent on it.

  Within moments, we were in the bedroom smoking and disrobing until she stood naked before me, tugging on my slacks. Watching her face morph from hungry anticipation to something else entirely when my pants finally relinquish their hold on my hips and fell to the floor was a moment I would pay any amount of money to witness again and again. Her eyes widened and I heard the clicking of her throat as she gasped before her mouth gaped in surprise. She was stunned, and rightfully so.

  “Wha—”

  The same mud-brown irises that had plagued my night—and day—time thoughts throughout my self-imposed exile shot up at me, confusion plainly embedded in their depths.

  “Jereth, what the fuck am I looking at right now?”

  There was a note of hysteria in her voice that excited me. It thrummed through my veins, heating me up and rushing south. I felt the jerk of the metal resting on my thighs as my arousal was stifled but it was the way Tonya jumped that shook me from my thoughts.

  “You didn’t have this shit before you left.”

  “I did. It was at my house—”

  Fuck! The moment the words left my mouth I wished I could have grabbed them back. As soon as I mentioned my house—the one I owned in Pine Bluff, the same one I’d avoided speaking of and had never brought her to—I saw some of the light leave her eyes. We both realized at the same moment that this was the first time I’d even hinted at me having a place to lay my head.

  She sat back on her haunches and I knew—I fucking knew—that if I allowed her to voice the question that was written plainly in her eyes, the moment we were in would be ruined, and I had no assurances that it was possible for us to get it back.

  “It’s a cage.”

  “I can see that.” Her eyes never left the juncture of my thighs. “I knew you were into some kinky shit but this…”

  “This isn’t a kink.” She lifted a brow and I grinned. “I mean, it is, but for me, this is more like a…punishment.”

  Those brown eyes that she might have thought were so plain but I found so beautiful, ballooned. “Punishment? Does it…hurt?”

  It was evident that she was serious. She didn’t know what this was, had never seen one, and her voice was colored with concern. Still, I couldn’t help but laugh bitterly. “It hurts, alright.”

  Her eyes shot daggers up at me. “I don’t have time for your cryptic bullshit right now, Jereth! I only brought you here ‘cause I expected to get stroked to sleep. Now, I’m staring at a dick-shaped metal box and you want to be funny? You’d better start talking or I’m putting your ass out!”

  “Okay, okay. Calm down.” I held my hands up in surrender before dragging my palms down my face. I don’t know what I expected, but this shit was more stressful than I could have anticipated. “It’s a chastity device.” I paused, thinking she might have a question, but she simply stared at me silently, so I continued. “It does what the name implies. While it’s on, I can’t get hard at all. If I try, it hurts, because there’s no room to grow in this thing. I can’t jerk off and I can’t fuck. In that sense, it’s a punishment.”

  “Okay. Why are you wearing it?”

  “Because I hurt you when I left, and I deserved to be punished for that.”

  One manicured brow lifted. “You absolutely deserved to be punished for that.”

  It wasn’t a laughing matter, but I couldn’t help but throw my head back and howl at her straightforward words.

  “Damn, baby. Tell me how you really feel.”

  She smirked. “How do I get it off?”

  My pulse sped up. That was what I wanted to hear. “Just unlock it.”

  “Okay, gimme the key.”

  There was no way for me to predict what her reaction would be, and the potential outcome made me nervous. In a weak attempt to stall for time, I licked my bottom lip as I held her gaze. “You have it.”

  Those dark and captivating eyes of hers zeroed in on me. “Don’t play with me, Jereth.”

  “I’m not, I swear. You do have the key. It’s on your bracelet, the one I gave you on our anniversary.”

  Scrambling to her feet, she rushed over to the dresser and lifted the lid of her jewelry box. Holding the trinket in the air, it wasn’t difficult to discern which of the five charms was the correct one. Grasping the miniature key between her thumb and forefinger, she returned to me and crouched down until she was eye level with the steel enclosure. Her hands were steady as she inserted the tiny key into the lock on the side and turned until it gave away, opening up the cage like she was unwrapping a present, eyes widening as my dick immediately stiffened right under her nose.

  She dropped the cage, letting it hit the floor with a dull thunk and gripped me at the base, swallowing me down halfway before rising and beginning a rhythm that had my toes curling into the carpet. With one hand twisting my staff as she sloppily bobbed up and down my head, the other reached between my legs to massage my perineum, and fuck if I wasn’t done right then. It had been so long while I was stifled inside of that cage and she was giving too damn good—too fucking perfect—on her knees in front of me that I was coming in minutes, fingers digging into her bushy ponytail, stomach concaving, knees shaking, her name a silent cry on my lips.

  When the tremors subsided, I used her hair to tilt her head back.

  “Let me see.” My voice was weak from the powerful climax she’d brought me, too, but I didn’t need a heavy bass to command her.

  Obediently, she opened her mouth, showing me the pool of white resting on her tongue. And when she swallowed and flashed an empty, pink tongue at me—like the good girl I knew her to be—I grunted my pleasure and bent at the waist, crushing my lips to hers in a desperate kiss, tasting myself on her sweet tongue. Groaning, I pulled up her and backed her towards the bed, lifting her on the mattress with every intention of fucking her into a coma, but when I stepped in between her legs she placed a hand on my chest.

  “Can we just…lie in bed together?
Without sex? I mean…at least not right now.”

  “Of course.”

  Reaching behind her, I pulled the covers back and helped her get underneath them before climbing over her and settling in behind her, pulling her back against my chest. Her sigh sounded content, but my mind raced with worry. She might have let me in right now, but we weren’t out of the woods yet, and the reality that I was hanging on to my marriage by a thin thread scared me more than I cared to admit.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When The Rose-Colored Glasses Break

  “Are we going to talk about how you handled my mother?” Jereth’s low voice broke the silence of the room in the aftermath of whatever I called myself doing not even twenty minutes earlier. Once he came in my mouth, I realized that I was letting the physical distract me from the problems again.

  Grinning, I shook my head as I snuggled closer to his side, enjoying the warmth of his body far too much. “There’s nothing to talk about. She came looking for someone to run over, and she met the wrong one.”

  “I gotta tell you, J’s wife is having a ball with that story. She’s been wanting to give Sabrina Hawkins some choice words for a while now, so I’m pretty sure you just became her favorite person.”

  I frowned at his words. “J’s wife? That’s your older brother, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought you said he wasn’t married.”

  “He wasn’t. They got married a month ago. She planned a surprise wedding for him that started with a scavenger hunt. It was cool as hell.”

  As he chuckled, it hit me that he didn’t even understand what he’d just revealed to me in that moment. It was a sobering thought, and my face fell, though I tried to hide my expression, smoothing my face to become void of emotion as I used a neutral voice. “Your brother got married, had an actual wedding, and you didn’t think to bring me along. Wow.”