Tattered & Bruised

by Allie York

  “Get off me.” I pushed pointlessly at his chest.

  “My fiancée hasn’t kissed me in six days. She doesn’t eat.” I went to push him again, but he grabbed my wrists, forcing them over my head. I was entirely at his mercy. “She lays in bed and stares at the wall. I have no idea what to do. I let her stew, I let her grieve, I’m a patient man. I can tolerate a lot, I can bide my time, but for all I know, I may never get her back.” I finally looked at him, his light eyes full of uncertainty. As if I wasn’t feeling bad enough, a whole new wound opened. “For all I know, she’s carrying my baby, but won’t even look at me. I’m supposed to be planning a wedding right now.”

  “Please stop.” I felt the burn of tears starting in my throat, working themselves up to my eyes, I tugged at my wrists. Griffin leaned down close to my face and my eyes closed again, letting a tear fall down my temple.

  “Tell me what to do.” His lips touched mine, barely, and another tear fell. The ache I had been suppressing opened wide at the hurt in his voice, but I was quickly sobered by the memory of Richard. I turned my face away from Griffin and he groaned, dropping his head against mine. “I love you, Cori. No matter how long you stay hung up on that asshole, I’ll be here.”

  Then I snapped. My hand came free from his grip and I slapped him, right across the face. “You bastard!” I kicked and shoved at him, trying to get him off me, but it was useless and only made me angrier. “He was her father!” I went to hit him again, but he came off me and the bed. I scrambled back into middle of the bed, starting toward the door.

  “No fucking chance!” Griffin came across the room after me, grabbing me by the waist and I screamed, beating his arms locked around me. “I don’t give a fuck who he was!” Griffin yelled in my ear, dragging me kicking and screaming like a child into the bathroom. He backed me into the wall, looming over me with a look on his face that warned me I had crossed a line. I swallowed hard. His body blocked mine and he reached down to turn the water on. The sprayers came on and the bathroom quickly filled with steam. I stood, pinned by the most terrifying gaze while he peeled his shirt off, then his shorts, standing completely naked in front of me. “Strip, now.”

  When I didn’t move, he pulled my shirt up over my head then slid my shorts and panties gently down to the floor. “I’m not showering with you.” There was no way in hell I was getting anywhere close to intimate with the jackass.

  “You have obviously lost the ability to care for yourself, so I’m doing it for you.” In one motion, he hauled me up over his shoulder and stepped into the shower with me in tow. I beat his back until his hand hit my ass, hard, and I screamed.

  “You fucking asshole! Let me down!” I beat him harder and was dropped to my feet. I was pushed into the wall again, but instead of him blocking me, he pressed against me, pinning me.

  “Timeline for the wedding just got pushed up. You have a week to pick a date or I swear to God, I will carry your ass down to the court house and spank your ass in front of everyone until the words ‘I do’ come out of your mouth.” He stooped, sliding down my body to reach the shampoo, and started lathering my hair. I hadn’t showered in six days. “Axel needs you, Celia needs you, Jovie needs you.” I stopped pushing on his chest, letting my hands slip to his hips. Every part of me was smothered by a part of him. “I need you. God, Cori, I need you.”

  I glared up at his perfect face while he scrubbed at my hair. “Tomorrow.” It was the only word I could think of to fix what I had done. The man may have looked like the most badass person on the face of the Earth, but I hurt him, a lot. He watched me grieve for a man who wasn’t him, who I didn’t love. Maybe I had at some point, but it was the idea of what Richard represented that I loved, not the person. Everything I wanted, needed, was standing in front of me. All six-foot-something of him was staring down at me with tortured blue eyes, covered in tattoos. He was ready to commit to everything I ever wanted in life.

  “It took me months to get over the guilt of Celia’s mom. Had I known, had I been there, my daughter would have a mother. I sat up so many nights, trying to figure out what I could have changed.” Griffin’s hands slid out of my hair to my shoulders and he guided me to the stream of scalding water. He very gently rinsed the shampoo from my hair. “The answer is nothing. He’s been gone, Cori.” I quit fighting and jumped at him, wrapping my arms around his neck, kissing him hard. Griffin caught me mid jump and smothered my kiss with his, letting the water run over my back. His tongue swept into my mouth letting everything I had missed over the last six days came back. With his cock nestled against me, his mouth on mine, every stupid thought from the past week disappearing more by the second. I realized how stupid I was.

  “I’m so sorry,” I gasped between kisses, sliding down his body, back onto my feet. He shut the water off and I barely had time to grab a towel, before he had me sitting on the sink. His hands in my hair. “I’m so, so sorry honey.” His lips traveled down my neck between my breasts and to my stomach before moving back up.

  He snatched me from the sink and turned me to face the mirror. “Grab it.” The tight growl in his voice had me following directions fast. Instead of what I was anticipating, Griffin carefully kissed down my back, down my ass, dropping to his knees behind me. His broad shoulders nudged my legs wider he made quick work of licking my inner thighs until I was squirming. “You make me crazy, Cori. Completely fucking crazy.”

  “Good,” I panted, and moaned when his tongue traced a light path back up my leg to my ass, where he nibbled lightly, and kept going. He slid his hand into my hair, tugging it lightly.

  “Look at me.” I let my eyes meet his in the mirror. “I’m done fighting for you, with you.” Griffin stepped closer behind me, grabbing my hip with his other hand. “Do you understand?” He pumped his hips slightly, and I had to fight to keep my eyes open. I nodded. “My wife is forever. You can get pissed, but you better know that when we cool off, I’m still there and you will be too. You’re either with me or not, I deserve that, you deserve it. The girls deserve it.”

  It was more than I had ever heard from Griffin. I never questioned his feelings for me, not from day one, but I did fight it, hard. After a week of watching me slowly slip away to be with a ghost, the man had seen enough, and Griffin Steele did not put up with bullshit.

  “Can you let me go?” I couldn’t let him make love to me with the last six days hanging between us. His hold on my hair was gone and I picked up my towel, wrapping it around me. Griffin looked defeated by the time I looked back up at him.

  “Thank you.” I touched his face gently. “You are patient, and you do deserve what you’re asking for. I want to be the person who gives it to you.”

  “Tomorrow?” Griffin took the towel from my hand and let it fall back to the floor, so we were naked in the steamy bathroom again.

  “Tomorrow.” I ran my hands up his chest.

  “No more fighting, no more guilt.” He inhaled the top of my head and I nodded. “Good. Can I please fuck you now?” After an hour of fighting over my horrible treatment of him, it all came down to one question.

  “Yes, please.” Griffin barely let me get the sentence out before I was facing the mirror with him bracing my hands on the sink. I closed my eyes when he sunk into me, but the tug on my hair had me snapping my eyes back open again.

  “God, I missed you.” His eyes left mine long enough for him to lean down and bite on my shoulder. His free hand found my nipple. His teeth had me moaning, begging for more in a second. “I don’t want to leave a bruise.” His momentum picked up and I panted out a please, begging him to sink everything he had into me. As soon as he did, I fell apart in his hands, our voices echoing around the bathroom.

  Before I could even recover from our mutual orgasm, Griffin scooped me up, carrying me to bed. He laid with me in the darkness until my phone rang again, instead of silencing it, he turned it off. It was Wanda again, no doubt, and a tiny pain hit my chest, but I shoved it down. My eyes closed, and Griffin whispered to me,
telling me how amazing the following day would be. He talked, mostly to himself, about the girls being sisters, and Axel being his. My silent tears soaked into the pillow when I realized how close I was to losing the most amazing man I had ever met.

  I slipped out of bed to put on sweats before pulling the black bag from the closet. I left it hanging on the closet door and picked up his phone to go make the necessary calls. Turning my phone on was a mistake, so I left it. I let Tank outside and stood on the porch sending out a mass text to everyone we knew. I didn’t announce the reason for the party, only that we were hosting, and sorry for the late notice. I cancelled Arianna picking up the girls then went down to their room to find the nicest dresses they owned.

  An hour later, we loaded into Griffin’s Jeep to drive to the court house. Griffin’s light eyes were set off by the dark shirt, and the girls were both in their favorite color. My knee-length dress was nowhere close to a wedding dress, it was black, but what better than to match my little girls and my groom. I made Griffin pull into the parking lot of a jewelry store before we made it to the court house and bought a dark pewter ring. He could insist he didn’t need one, but no man of mine was going to walk around without my ring on his finger. After what I had put him through, I wanted to make damn sure he was all mine from then on.

  “Why are we all dressed like princesses?” Celia asked from her seat in the back.

  Griffin kissed my hand. “What do you two think about being sisters?” Once the squealing stopped, he went on, “Cori and I are getting married, so it makes you two sisters and you three my girls.”

  “If we’re your princesses, is Mommy the queen?” Axel looked skeptical.

  “Oh, yeah. Mommy is my queen. You two are my princesses. So, we are going in here to sign a paper, to make it official. Okay?” I squeezed Griffin’s fingers.

  “I always wanted a brother, but Celia can be my sister.” Axel smiled wide and we piled out of the Jeep, each picking up a little princess to go make our fairy tale complete.

  Once all the forms were filled out, we were ushered into a room with a witness and a man who looked as if he had been performing marriages when my grandparents were married, while he went over a rehearsed speech about the commitment of marriage, I leaned over to Griffin. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Griffin nipped my ear. “I have never been surer of anything in my life.”

  Epilogue

  Griffin

  “I swear to all things holy, if you don’t piss on the stick right now, Cori …,” My threat trailed off when I heard the rustling of paper behind me. If I insisted on standing in the bathroom with her, she made me face the wall and close my eyes. Her period was late and she hadn’t eaten anything but pickled beets in a week. We both knew what would happen once she took the test.

  “I can’t with you fussing at me, asshole,” Cori grumbled, “I know you can hear me peeing, so I can’t go!”

  “Yeah, and my dick has been in your mouth. Just pee!” She giggled, as I scrubbed my hand down my face, waiting to hear her tell me she was done. Maybe I should have left her alone, but I couldn’t. Despite the horrible week leading up to our sudden marriage and very large reception, the first two months of married life was nothing short of bliss. The blow up we had the day before had snapped Cori out of her downward spiral. She called her ex mother-in-law to chew her out before changing her number. They had relocated to Florida and away from my girls. Richard wasn’t mentioned at all, and I knew it wasn’t on her mind. Cori wanted a devoted husband, a father for Ax, and she got it with me. I was so devoted that I couldn’t let her piss on a stick alone.

  “Done. Now we wait.” Cori set the test down on the counter then walked right into my arms. “I know you think otherwise, but I swear I’m not pregnant, Griff.” I rolled my eyes and she kissed my scar.

  “Not puking doesn’t mean I didn’t do my job.” And I had treated it like a job. Anytime we were alone for more than five minutes, I had her shoved against something. If I only got to do it with her once, I wanted it as soon as possible and I planned on loving every second from conception to delivery.

  “Maybe, but I don’t feel pregnant.” I reached around her for the white stick. “It said ten minutes.” So, I would watch it for ten minutes.

  Fortunately, I didn’t need to wait. “Start feeling pregnant.” I flipped the test in her face, showing her two very clear pink lines. Her amber eyes went wide. The smile splitting my face couldn’t be contained. I tossed the test on the counter to gather her in my arms.

  “Oh. My. God.” Cori hugged me back, and I laughed at her disbelief.

  “I love you, babe.”

  “Love you, honey.”

  Acknowledgments

  This is my fourth book with the best beta readers ever. When I get stuck, or discouraged, you ladies are my heroes. When I sat staring at pages for days, you came in and finished the book for me. You are more than readers, you’re my salvation. Griffin and Cori wouldn’t have had a book if not for you. Thanks Bears. You know who you are!