Page 53 of Now and Forever

“Don’t you dare curse at me, Jared!”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, detesting how my temper was getting the best of me. “It’s been such a grave week. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to disrespect you.”

I wasn’t a mommy’s boy, but one thing my mother had taught me since the beginning of time was to never dare curse at her. And I never did…up until tonight.

“You have to get yourself sorted, young man, or you’ll end up like your father. Always onto the next best thing, never settling because he deemed himself too good for anybody,” she somberly said, aching for her son’s chaotic life choices.

“That isn’t the case with me at all—”

“So, are you telling me there’s no other woman in your life apart from Gisele?” she pressed on, clearly unconvinced.

Damn. “No, you know me too well to even ask me this.”

“I pray she finds someone else, then. She’s too precious to be alone at a difficult time of her life. And if that day ever comes, I hope you won’t intervene in her affairs. Promise me that you won’t, Jared.”

“I promise,” I half-heartedly said, feeling the full impact of her words hitting me where it hurt most.

My mother and I chatted for a few more minutes before ending our conversation. Though she was displeased with my decision pertaining to Gisele, it couldn’t be denied how she became fond of her as well.

My mother’s words rung into my mind. How could you leave your young wife when she’s so in love with you?

“Bloody hell!” I bellowed into the empty house, loathing this hollowness rutting into my soul as I carelessly poured the liquor into the glass, filling it to the rim.

Gisele loathed my guts now. Love, she surely never felt for me. Lust, yeah, unquestionably. But love? No…How could she when she barely knew me? Throughout the years, I could count how many times we shared a conversation, and there weren’t many. I made it my mission to stay away from her. It successfully lasted until Peter requested I marry his daughter. Things had gone downhill since I had shared her bed. It certainly had gone to the shitters when she had kissed me and I’d responded in the same feverish manner.

My chest heaved as I recalled how it felt to have her in my arms…that day in my bedroom closet…

FUCK.

Was I destined to be hounded by Gisele, too? Did I not have enough to deal with already?

“Bloody fuck!!!”

My throat bobbed before I gulped down the entire whiskey without pause.

I wasn’t truly sure what possessed me, but I somehow found myself weaving towards the office instead of my bedroom, bottle in hand. The lights immediately flickered to life the moment my foot stepped across the threshold. Scurrying towards the computer terminal, I instantly scoured for the compounds’ security cameras. It took forty seconds to access it. Gisele didn’t have cameras in her bedroom, but I somehow wanted to double check that she was safe, if she was home and wasn’t partying elsewhere, that was.

After promptly choosing the first floor, the massive screen filled with twenty-four rectangular squares, each showcasing different locations inside the house. My eyes zeroed in on the first one at the top left, making sure there weren’t any movements. I was about to place a call to Mike, the head of security in charge out of six men, when something caught my eye.

Box twenty-one and twenty-two, the kitchens.

Zooming in on the particular cameras, the enlarged scene unfolding before me stopped me dead. All brain and body activity halted as my eyes zeroed in on the screen.

Gisele was on the granite counter, dress hiked up all the way to her thighs, legs hanging loosely behind a man’s shoulders while his head latched onto her snatch. There was a seductive smile on her face before she tenderly looked down on him. Wyatt Rinaldi came into view. She murmured something that halted his laborious ministrations before he crawled in between her legs and met her lips, kissing her explicitly, implicitly. After a good minute, they then exited the kitchen, heading straight to the second floor, towards her bedroom.

I didn’t dare blink until her bedroom door shut. Only then did I let out a drawn-out breath. The air hitting my lungs pained my chest. It stung.

The nonsensical riot ensuing in my mind made me reckless. My chest ached, and all I could focus on was Gisele on the bed, wanton and magnificently naked with Wyatt Rinaldi…seductively enticing him to satiate her needs as he crawled in between her legs while she offered her luscious breasts for him to suckle on.

My entire body overheated. My imagination didn’t help ease the blistering inferno raging in my body.

I wasn’t a daft man. Of course I knew they were shagging each other blind in her bedroom. Her birthday fuck and I was quite certain she was reveling in his undivided attention. She was a responsive lover who thrived on being touched, stroked in all places.

After I left her in such a dejected state, this pain she unconsciously inflicted upon me was what I truly deserved. My mother made me promise not to intervene when she found someone else. Could I truly keep a promise when all I could see and think about was Gisele?

The unwanted wife no longer.

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