Page 103 of Rome
“Exactly,” Saint nodded, completely missing the irony.
Abby was cooking dinner when I got home, and I recounted the story as I set the table. By the time I finished, she was laughing so hard she had tears running down her face. As she wiped them away, she looked at me with a naughty gleam in her eye.
“You know, talking about that awful reminds me…I seem to remember that you promised to fuck my ass.”
I shot her a wicked grin as I reached for her.
“You’re right, baby girl, and I vowed to always keep my promises, didn’t I?”
I had just lowered my head to kiss her when Ethan ran into the kitchen to tell us that Everly had just pooped in her diaper, demanding that we change it right now because it was “stinkin’ up the place.”
Abby laughed while I just dropped my forehead down on her shoulder in defeat. Man, I loved that kid, but he sure knew how to ruin the fucking mood.
Luckily for Abby and me, I was able to keep my promise later that night.
Life slowly returned to normal over the next two months, although I had a whole new fucking appreciation for “normal” after what we’d been through.
Jagger helped me move the last of my things out of the duplex, and Sinner arranged to rent it out again to Viking’s great-niece, who was moving back to the area. She was apparently coming out of a break-up herself and was grateful that Molly offered to leave her furniture there for the chick to use.
Abby got busy planning our wedding, with the help of Molly, Amelia, and Molly’s friend Emma, who happened to be an event planner. I’d wanted to have the ceremony the weekend after her birthday, since it was the anniversary of our first wedding. That had been much too soon to pull anything together, Abby had claimed. I’d wondered if she felt it was too soon, period, but she flatly denied it.
She suggested a Saturday in mid-June instead, telling me the date didn’t really matter. She said she would always consider our original April wedding date to be our anniversary, anyway.
“This isn’t a new marriage, Caleb. It’s a continuation of the one we should have had all along. I don’t want to pretend those first five-and-a-half years didn’t exist. The good memories far outweigh the bad. I think we should just have a simple ceremony with our close friends and family, and then carry on with living out our very own happily-ever-after.”
I’d spent the next hour showing her how much I fucking loved that idea – in very explicit, very thorough detail.
The ladies had managed to secure a venue for the ceremony, thanks to Emma’s connections. Abby was excited as she showed me pictures of the old Victorian home which had been converted into a space suitable to host small events. There were visits to a florist and a bakery to deal with, and I tagged along for both. We decided not to have a traditional reception. Been there, done that.
Instead, after the ceremony, we were going to host a dinner for our guests at an Italian restaurant run by La Famiglia Rossi. King called Luca Rossi himself, to ask about renting out one of their restaurants for the evening, and Rossi had agreed. He’d even offered a discounted rate, since he was so pleased with the kickass job the MC did hosting and providing security for the underground MMA fights.
Life was going well, except for trying to navigate the minefield known as triggers. It turned out, Abby wasn’t the only one who needed to learn to deal with them. We’d discovered that the first time she tried to give me a blowjob. She dropped to her knees in front of me, and it was a toss up as to which one of us froze first. Abby ran into the bathroom crying, and it took me a few minutes to try to get my own emotions under control enough to go after her. We clung to each other for a few minutes before we both agreed we needed some space to work through things in our own heads. Abby took a bubble bath, and I sat out on the back porch and stared out into the darkness, trying to erase the image of another woman kneeling in front of me, reaching for my cock, as well as an image of my sweet wife, on her knees for that fucking bartender, or Grant-Motherfucker-Mowery.
An hour later, I made my way back upstairs to find Abby lying in our bed crying. I crawled into bed and pulled her into my arms, and neither of us said a word. After about fifteen minutes, Abby started lazily tracing the tattoo on my neck with her fingers, which had become one of her favorite things to do. I felt her place a soft kiss right over the spot that had caused so much heartache for us both.
Neither of us slept well that night, and luckily, we already had an appointment with Kim scheduled for the next afternoon.
It was embarrassing as hell for both of us to discuss blowjobs in such explicit detail with her, but Kim helped us through it with her usual calm professionalism.
She suggested that we try something called immersion therapy. The idea was to basically expose yourself more and more to whatever situation triggered you, with the idea that your mind would come to accept it as you got more comfortable.
She also suggested that we do it in a different position other than Abby kneeling, since that was a huge visual trigger for both of us. We talked through various scenarios and ideas to try, and I felt a little more hopeful about things as we got ready to leave.
“Remember, if it becomes too much, don’t force yourselves to continue. Stop, and try another day. Also, keep in mind that you can still maintain the same level of intimacy, even if oral sex isn’t part of it right now. You also need to consider the fact that you might never regain the level of comfort needed for that to truly be an experience you both enjoy.
We had tried a couple of times, starting with Abby lying her head in my lap, just trying to handle having her mouth so close to my erection. The first time had been a disaster. She wanted to try a week later, and we made it for a minute or so before calling a halt to things for the night.
I hoped that it would get better over time, but I knew that I would rather spend the rest of my life without having her mouth on me, than to spend another night with Abby in tears at the very idea of it.
Chapter 34
Rome/Caleb
It was a perfect day for a wedding.
I stood at the end of the aisle, with Jagger by my side just as he’d been the first time around. Abby had decided she wanted a slightly less formal ceremony this time, thank God, so we didn’t have to wear a suit and tie like we had at our first wedding.
We were both dressed in black slacks, with a gray vest over the top of a white dress shirt, with the collar open. Abby had requested that we roll up the sleeves, because she wanted some arm-porn, whatever the hell that was. Molly and Amelia had both nodded in agreement, seeming to know exactly what she was talking about.
