A Love Like Ours

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

"Aria!"

This time, I didn't stop at the call of my name. I stepped on, my high heels sinking into the soft, damp earth as I made to cross the vast gardens.

"Aria!"

The steely undertone to the masculine was unmistakable.

I stopped but refused to turn around.

"Where the hell are you going? Leaving your own engagement party? Leaving me?" Justin grabbed my arm, swinging me around to confront me suspiciously.

"Air!" I spat out furiously. "I was going out for some air."

Justin stared down at me. His expression was not entirely visible in the moonlit night, an otherwise romantic setting wasted on a couple without romance and a couple who literally only coupled.

I reached out to grasp the gigantic stone draped across my dainty finger and moved to toss it back at him.

"Oh, no you don't! There is no way you are walking out on me this time. I won't let you." The quiet menace in his voice was now actually threatening. So much so that I stumbled back a step, triggering his own advance as he moved to swiftly close the distance between us 'til there was none left at all.

"What do you want with me?" I moaned out pitifully, the despair I was feeling welling up recklessly. I shoved back to break free, but his hold only got tighter. His grip on my shoulder was unnecessarily rough and painful. I felt sure that the bruises forming would be visible in my sleeveless dress.

"Let me go," I muttered, struggling against his hold. I lifted both palms up to push at his chest like mad.

"Let you go?" he murmured darkly. "Never!"

His grip on me tightened, and I was rattled some more.

"I will never let you go," he said through clenched teeth. "Do you hear me? I want you for my wife!"

I felt the tears prick at my eyes before the waterfall started. Helplessly weak, I went lax in his arms to slump up against him as sobs started to rack through my not quite fragile frame.

His arms went around me then, and the menace left his voice as he began a barrage of soothing nothings cooed into my ear. The gentle flow of his soothing words was a sheer contrast to the harshness of before.

I didn't understand.

Did Justin care? Or didn't he?

Did I care?

Buried as I was, face first against a massive torso, I did the only thing I could. I used the time between the racking sobs for some quiet reflection. But my thoughts were too muddled at first. Then, I felt Justin's hands pushing through my tumbled hair to rake through it. Again and again, I felt his strong fingers part through it like waves. The effect was strangely hypnotic. Soothing. Entrancing.

I stopped sobbing, which was good. Only I had stopped thinking, too. The wrenching tightness in my chest became suddenly too much to bear. It was almost as if my heart were trying its level best to leap out of my chest and land with a splat at his feet.

That thought made me oddly sad, so its rapid beats slowed down to sluggish thuds of an irregular beat. A stone was surely trying to wedge itself in. Helpless to do anything else, I rubbed my chest to his, willing the pain away.

"Here? Does it hurt here?" Justin questioned me huskily, his hand reaching up between us to splay across my heaving chest. I felt him rub—not at my tits as I would have expected him to do, but at the exact point where my heart suddenly began trying its level best to fall onto the palm of his hand.