Chapter 112
ASHLEY
A seemingly unending ache throbbed heavily at the side of my head as the gate to the villa was pulled open. I sniffed, driving towards the parking lot where I pulled over in the available space.
I felt so exhausted. My limbs were so tired. My eyes hurt so badly. I couldn’t even bring myself to cry anymore if I wanted to. All it brought was an unending amount of pain. It felt as though shards of glass were pricking my eyes and I found it so hard to close it because doing that only worsened the ache.
My head dropped limply on the steering wheel and the engine went off. I exhaled, detaching my head from the wheel to retrieve my keys from the ignition. And then, I got out of the car.
My legs wobbled heavily when they connected with the surface of the ground, but I didn’t allow that to deter me. I willed myself to move forward.
Stepping into the house, every wave of tiredness that consumed me dissipated into thin air. It completely vanished, replaced with a sense of eeriness and utter puzzle. As I took in the frantic maids, who were trying to arrange the disorganised living room, as quickly as they could. The tense atmosphere and the agitation that filled the air were enough for me to denote that something was wrong.
Terribly wrong.
My eyes surveyed the living room, which was in disarray, and I was unable to suppress the gasp that left my lips. This wasn’t how I left the living room. Hell, it was a far cry from what it used to look like on a normal day.Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.
The sofas and couches weren’t in their normal position. The throw pillows were strewn across the floor. The broken glass centre table glared back at me mockingly, in all its shattered glory, and the flat-screen TV looked like a hole had been poked through it. As the maids went about their business, the shards of glass they stepped on made a crunching sound that made me feel as though my heart was being crushed to bits and pieces.
It was deafening.
“What the hell is going on?” I threw the question at no one in particular and that halted their actions. They swung their heads simultaneously in my direction, their eyes widening in sheer horror.
“Good evening, Mrs. Gray.” Their greetings came in from every angle of the room. It didn’t quell my worries, it heightened them.
“Why is everywhere so disorganized?” I queried, arching my brow. They didn’t utter a word and that caused me to squint my eyes at them in confusion. Their silence, however, ticked something off in my brain, causing my eyes to go wide in shock.
“Arden is back,” I muttered more to myself than them, and uttering those words felt like a mental whiplash, seizing my breath for a moment.
If Arden was back and he was this destructive, that meant something really bad happened. Without wasting any more time with them, I dashed past them like a breeze and raced upstairs swiftly, bolting to our room.
The air that surrounded the lobby was so cold. It was dark, foreboding and had shivers crawling up my spine. It was as though the atmosphere was shifting between two temperatures, thick with utmost tension.
One on hand, the coldness that lingered in the air made me feel like I had stepped into an ice cave, snowballs shooting into my system, through my pores and denting my bloodstream with an unnerving amount of iciness, which froze up the blood that coursed through my veins. The little to no air that emitted from my nostrils was freezing me on the inside out.
And at the same time, my insides felt like they were on fire, a surge of heat rushing through my body, nonstop. The baggy tee wrapped around my frame felt so suffocating, heating up against my skin and causing hot sweat to break out everywhere.
My emotions were thrown all over the place, consuming me and making it so hard for me to swallow. I moved from the spot I was rooted in, twisting the knob with shaky hands that slipped from my grasp before I finally stepped into the room.
It was like a one-on-one encounter with the darkness. If the air out there was cold, it was freezing in here. The temperature didn’t fluctuate. It flat-out felt like an Ice Queen’s castle and it left sprouts of goosebumps crawling all over my skin.
I willed myself to move forward, and given how I knew the nook and cranny of the room, I flickered the switch.
The bright light illuminated the room, giving me a view of how much destruction my husband had wreaked on the luxurious bedroom. It was disastrous. Almost as though a train barged into the room and crushed everything in its wake.
I gasped in horror.
“Hey, Peach,” His emotionless voice filled the room, causing me to swing my head in the direction I presumed I heard his voice from. My eyes drifted to his frame that was leaning on the wall close to the bathroom entrance.
His shoulders were slumped and his posture was slouching. Almost as though he was tired. His black curls were a wild mess. His roughly buttoned shirt had splatters of blood on it. The tumbler he was holding up gave away his bloodied knuckles.
And his eyes…they were bloodshot. The coldness that was etched in them terrified me. So much. They were sharp and narrowed on my frame, assessing every inch of my body like he was shedding off the protective layers I didn’t know I had on my skin.
“Hey, baby.” I maintained a smile, through teary eyes, even though I was a nerve-wracking mess on the inside.
He pushed himself off the door frame, taking a sip from the amber liquid in his tumbler. And then, he began approaching me. With every step he took towards me, my heart pounded so hard against my chest. I didn’t know how long I could keep up the confident facade. My trembling figure attested to that.
Arden closed in on me, encircling his arm around my waist. He yanked me to himself and I allowed myself to draw comfort in his embrace, even though he reeked of alcohol. My eyes fluttered shut and I leaned into him, sighing softly. He felt so warm, so familiar. I allowed myself to drown in his essence. It was intoxicating and I let myself get high on it.
The man drove me crazy in ways I can’t decipher.
His hold was very possessive as he sniffed my hair, sighing afterwards. He spun me around and my back met his chest, eliciting a gasp from me. He hovered behind me, his breath fanning the surface of my neck. He leaned in, dropping his head on the base of my neck. He nuzzled his head against it and sniffed me in, groaning softly.
I shifted against his bulge, releasing a sigh of pleasure. He had not even touched me yet and I could feel my panties getting soaked in anticipation of what he was about to do to me.
While his other hand still held his tumbler, his free hand grabbed the hem of my shirt and I knew he wanted to pull it over my head. I raised my hands in the air, allowing him to get rid of it and he discarded it.
The rush of the cold air that washed over me had me shuddering. It brushed my hardened nipples, eliciting a sigh from me.
“Perfect,” he whispered. His breath fanned my bare skin, leaving Goosebumps all over my body. The heat of his breath pierced my skin, shooting straight to my core.
His fingers torturously grazed my skin like he had all the time in the world, leaving me to wiggle against him. They travelled down my collarbone, his index finger and middle finger clamping against my erect nipple.
“Fuck!” I tossed my head backwards, a cry of pleasure emitting from me. Arden chuckled in amusement. The breathy moans that flowed breezily out of my lips didn’t deter him from assaulting my boobs with his fingers, paying undivided attention to each one of them.
The room echoed with my loud moans and the pleasurable grunts emitting from him. His fingers dropped below, slipping into my shorts.
“Spread your legs,” he instructed softly. I did as I was told and he slipped his fingers into my heavily soaked panties, pushing it aside before gliding his finger up and down my clitoris.
I jerked in his arms, arching my back with my eyes closed. “Arden!” I cried.
“You like that, huh?” He whispered, nibbling my earlobes. I couldn’t bring myself to respond to him because he already had a finger plunging into my hole. I gasped.
“Your words, baby. Use it.” He told me, pumping his fingers in and out of me.
“Fuc__oh__fuck__yes!” My breath hitched, tears brimming in my eyes at how good his soft strokes felt. I wriggled and writhed in pleasure in his arms, bringing my hands up to my breasts to knead them. I tugged softly at my nipples, tossing my head backwards when his thrusts got faster.
“So wet for me,” he moaned into my ears.
“Were you this wet for him?”