Forbidden Awakenings (Awakenings Series Book 1) Page 14

  “Me, too.” And she meant it. Seeing her sister happy and marrying the man she loved gave Elle hope for her, Callum, Derek, and Sadie. “You’re going to be a beautiful bride. Now, let’s get you ready to get married.”

  With a simple nod, Ivy turned and walked over to the dressing table and sat down, releasing a deep breath. Elle looked at Helina before she moved so that she was standing behind her sister. Though there was so much she wanted to say to her mother, she wouldn’t, not right now. Today was about Ivy and Nick.

  —FA—

  Just before seven, Elle stood behind Ivy, one hand resting on her sister’s shoulder as they gazed over each other in the mirror. Ivy looked beautiful. In a form-fitted dress that hugged her body and had a slight flare at the knees, she reminded Elle of the glamorous actresses from the twenties, the ones who were always perfect. The off-the-shoulder, ivory dress had a delicate lace over the smooth fabric and complimented her skin-tone perfectly. She’d opted out of wearing the traditional veil, much to Helina’s displeasure, but Ivy gave her a look and said, “No, Mother. Drop it or leave.”

  Helina gave up, and it was the first time in a long while that Elle saw her mother being put in her place. She hated that every thought she had about the woman who had raised her was negative, but it was hard to have any positive opinions after the way she’d been treated and ignored over the last couple of days. However, today was about Ivy, and Elle would do everything she could to remain civil with Helina, even if that meant allowing her mother to spout hateful insults at every turn.

  “Are you ready?” Elle asked, dragging her hand down the mauve-colored dress she was wearing. Just as Sadie had said it would, the dress looked amazing on her. Strapless, it hugged her chest, making her breasts look bigger and fuller than they were. The soft, silky skirt flared from under her bust line, caressing her with each step she took.

  “I think I am.” Ivy smiled. “Feels perfect, doesn’t it?”

  Elle nodded. “I’m happy for you and Nick. He makes you smile, and that’s important to me, Ivy.”

  “I’m happy for you, too,” her sister said, and she knew Ivy was referring to all of her lovers.

  “Thanks,” she murmured.

  “Sweetheart, it’s time,” Helina called out as she came storming back into the bridal suite with James right behind her. “Elle, get off your sister. You are going to wrinkle her dress.”

  “Mom, stop,” Ivy said, turning to face their mother. “I know you’re upset with her, but you have no reason to be. Elle is a grown woman and has the right to date whomever she wants. You’re holding a grudge, and in the process, ruining my wedding day. Now, please, for me, just stop.”

  Helina looked abashed, but nodded.

  “Good.” Ivy grinned. “Now, let’s get this show on the road.” Turning to James, Ivy reached for his arm. “Daddy?”

  James smiled and allowed her to wrap his arm around his bicep. “You look beautiful, sweetheart.”

  “Thank you.”

  Helina shifted her eyes to Elle, and for a moment, she thought her mother might say something kind to her, but instead, the woman shook her head, turned, and walked out of the bridal suite. Ivy sighed, but didn’t say anything, knowing that it wouldn’t help. Plastering her best smile on her face, Elle led Ivy and James out of the room and to the entrance to the sanctuary. Today was about Ivy — Elle kept repeating that inside her head as she did her best to swallow the hurt.

  As the music began, Elle blew out a calming breath and began to walk down the aisle. Five hundred of Nick and Ivy’s closest family, friends, and business associates stood up and turned toward her as she slowly made her way toward the alter. Ivy had refused to have a large bridal party, knowing that other than Elle and Sadie, there wasn’t anyone she was close to. As Elle reached the front and shifted her eyes back toward the set of double doors, she found Sadie sitting between Derek and Callum.

  Reverend Peterson smiled at Elle, and though she returned it, she knew his wasn’t a kind gesture. She’d never cared for the man, and he’d made it clear that he considered her to be a lost cause. He was one of those hard-core, never bending, type of preachers, who felt he had the right to pass judgment on those he deemed to be sinners. On more than one Sunday, he had pulled Elle aside after church and give her a good talking to about how she was taking the wrong path in life.

  In fact, when Sadie and Elle received their acceptance letters from Berkeley, Reverend Peterson insisted that they attend a counseling session, but when they arrived at the church, they found their parents and the rest of the church’s council waiting for them. Each and every one of them told the pair that moving to California would cause them to drift further away from God’s loving embrace and that they should consider their eternal souls before making such a hasty decision. After promising that they’d give it some serious thought, Elle and Sadie fucked each other in the backseat of Elle’s car before going home and accepting their spots at UC Berkeley. The last words Reverend Peterson ever said to her were, “May God have mercy on your soul, but don’t expect to be welcomed back here if you throw your life away.”

  As Mendelsohn’s Wedding March began to be played by the organist, everyone in the church shifted their attention to Ivy — everyone but Sadie, Callum, and Derek. All three of them watched Elle with hungry eyes and wide smiles. The tension left her shoulders, and for just a moment, only the four of them mattered.

  Throughout the ceremony, Elle could feel her lovers watching her, undressing her with their eyes, and lusting to be inside of her. Every time she looked at them, one of them would smile coyly, wink at her, or wiggle an eyebrow. They were torturing her a little too much, and she couldn’t wait to find an empty room and bury her face in Sadie’s pussy or suck Derek and Callum’s cocks, maybe even do all three.

  “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Reverend Peterson announced, shaking Elle out of her lustful thoughts. “You may now kiss your bride.”

  Feeling her cheeks warm, she watched as Nick leaned down and whispered, “I love you,” before he kissed Ivy. Their kiss was brief, but the passion behind their love was intense. As they pulled away from each other, everyone in attendance stood up and began clapping for them. The music started once again, and Nick wrapped Ivy’s hand around his arm as he led his new wife up the aisle. Elle moved over and wrapped hers around Nick’s best man — one of his cousin whose name she forgot. Damon maybe? All she knew was that Nick wasn’t close to him, but because he didn’t have any acceptable friends, at least not in his uncle’s eyes, Nick chose his cousin instead of his best friend.

  The things we do for family, Elle thought.

  The moment Elle was out of the sanctuary, she was ushered outside to the garden for photographs. Though the sun was already setting, the garden had been lit up with flickering candles and twinkling lights that provided a warm, inviting atmosphere. She smiled and posed, following the instructions from the photographer and Helina, who appeared to be having a difficult time letting the poor man do his job. Elle was getting frustrated, and more than once, she’d struggled to stop herself from sputtering a mouthful of four-letter words that would have her mother seeing red.

  Finally, after an hour of being patient, they were done. Elle followed everyone inside, veering off to go to the ladies’ room just so she could have a moment to breath without Helina hovering over her, but before she got there, a pair of hands grabbed her and pulled her into one of the classrooms. Elle laughed when she found Sadie with a smug look on her face.

  “Lover, what are you up to?” Elle asked, placing her hands on Sadie’s hips and tugging her firm against her body.

  “I missed you,” Sadie cooed, sliding her hands up Elle’s bare arms until she reached her face. “Besides, I have something for you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Elle whispered, and when she nodded, she added, “What’s that?”

  “This.” Closing the distance between them, Sadie kissed Elle, thrusting her tongue into her mouth.

  Elle mo
aned, her hands roaming over Sadie’s body, desperate to touch her. She slipped her hand under the short, sea-foam green dress Sadie was wearing and groaned. Pulling her lips away, she smirked. “You’re not wearing panties.”

  Sadie grinned. “Nope, and Derek and Callum left you a present, too. Can you guess what it is?”

  With narrowed eyes, Elle slipped her fingers between Sadie’s legs, feeling how wet she was. There was no doubt in her mind that she, Derek, and Callum had spent the afternoon fucking, leaving Elle to taste them on Sadie’s pussy. “Hmm, how considerate of you.”

  Pushing Sadie back so that she was sitting on the edge of one of the tables, Elle dropped to her knees, pushed her dress up, and gave her pussy a slow lick, moaning at the delicious taste of her lovers.

  “Baby, please,” Sadie pleaded, grabbing the back of Elle’s head.

  Elle didn’t need to be asked twice. She wrapped her arms around Sadie’s thighs, pulling her legs apart and lapping at every inch of her wet sex that she could get. No matter how many times she had tasted her lover, she never got tired of her. She lifted one of Sadie’s legs up and rested it on her shoulder before she slid her fingers inside of her, curling them upward so they massaged her sensitive muscles.

  Sadie was moaning, almost grinding her herself on Elle’s eager mouth, and she loved every minute of it. Just as Elle moved her lips to Sadie’s swollen clit, the sound of the door opening and a loud, piercing scream filled the room. The women startled and looked over with a look of horror on their faces.

  Helina Reid had caught them.

  Fifteen

  “Oh, my Lord! I cannot believe this!” Helina yelled, her voice echoed throughout the corridor and down the hallway.

  “Mom,” Elle said and she scrabbled to her feet. “Listen —”

  However, Helina interrupted her. “Of all the … You just …” Frustrated, her mother blew out an angry breath and shifted her eyes from Elle to Sadie, who was clutching onto her like their lives depended on it. Perhaps they did. Her mother’s hateful glare could define the phrase, ‘If looks could kill.’ “I never realized that you were such a pervert, especially with that little tramp. And at your sister’s wedding of all places! You’re in a church, Elle. A church! Is nothing sacred to you anymore?”

  Elle gasped, flinching backward at the venom laced in her mother’s words. But before she could defend herself or Sadie, her father, Callum, Derek, Ivy, Nick, and what appeared to be several of their wedding guest, including a smug Reverend Peterson, came rushing toward the commotion. She could see the concern in Callum and Derek’s eyes as they pushed their way into the room and came to stand next to them, each placing a gentle hand on their backs.

  Helina groaned, but before she could say a word, James asked, “What is going on here?”

  Being quite dramatic, Helina wrapped her arms around him and began to sob. “I caught them being intimate together.”

  “What do you mean?” her father asked, though based on the tone of his voice and the glare on his face, he knew exactly what she meant.

  “Together!” Helina cried out. “Elle was … you know … to her. She’s a . . ,” She gulped, “… lesbian!”

  Murmured outrage rippled through the crowd of gawkers and Elle resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

  “How typical! The scandal, the outrage! How dare I fuck the woman I love? You know, what? I’ve had it with your better-than-everyone, judgmental ass, Mother!” she snarled.

  Helina gasped, as did the people standing behind her, but Elle didn’t care, not anymore. She’d had her fill of being treated like nothing more than yesterday’s trash. “Sadie and I have been lovers for ten years. Ten goddamn years of hiding my feelings for her!” she screamed, causing Helina to flinch backward into James’s arms.

  Ivy turned to Nick, giving him a look before she stepped into the room and closed the door, leaving just Elle, Sadie, Derek, Callum, her, and their parents inside. “Look, I understand that everyone is upset, but —”

  “Upset? Upset doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel, Ivy,” Elle seethed. She could feel her body shaking with rage, and hated that she’d ruined her sister’s wedding, but she’d held onto her anger for far too long. “I’ve been in love with Sadie since I was sixteen. Instead of being able to tell Mom or Dad, to share my feelings with them, I’ve had to hide who I am. Do you have any idea how much it hurts not to be able to tell my mother that I fell in love?”

  “Love? You can’t love her,” Helina scoffed. “It’s a sin.”

  “I don’t give a fuck if you think it’s wrong,” she cried, ignoring the way her parents cringed when she cursed. “I am in love with Sadie. Unlike you, she’s never made me feel less than perfect.”

  “Baby,” Sadie whispered, sliding her arms around Elle.

  “Get your hands off her, you dirty slut,” Helina hissed, crossing the room and grabbing Sadie’s arm and dragging her away. “This is all your fault! You turned my daughter into a whore!”

  “Shut up!” Elle screamed, causing everyone to look at her. She ripped her mother’s hand off Sadie, pulling her lover back into her arms. “How dare you talk to her like that? What gives you the right to judge her? You’re a bitch — a mean, hateful bitch, who refuses to accept that I’m not like Ivy. I will never be as perfect as her, or pretty or smart, and you just can’t handle that, can you?”

  “Oh, I know just how different you are than your sister, Elle. You’ve made it excruciatingly clear to me,” Helina snarled. “All those years, I had to sit back and listen to the ladies at church gossip about how you were sleeping around. You never cared how it made me look, you never once thought about how your actions affected me. No, you slept with David and then Martin, Dane, Luke, and by then I stopped counting.”

  “Why is everything about you?” Elle asked, desperate for her mother to understand. “Are you so unhappy with your life that you have to turn every little thing around so that you’re the victim?”

  “Elle, that’s not fair,” James argued, and she rolled her eyes. “You hid whatever is going on between you two from us for ten years. I think we’re allowed to be upset.”

  “What would you have done if I had told you when we got together, Dad?” Elle challenged. “Hmm? You and Mom weren’t shy about voicing your opinions about homosexuality. Hell, you’d have sent me away to live with Nana, if you didn’t just kick me out of your lives altogether.”

  “We deserved to be told the truth. You’re out of control. First this,” James said, gesturing to Sadie, “and then the other night at dinner. You behaved like a child by bringing them to meet us like that. You’re not the daughter we raised.”

  Elle shook her head. “The daughter you raised, huh? I will never be the daughter you think I should be. And you know what? I’m okay with that now. I’ve wasted enough of my life being worried about what would happen when you found out who I am. I’ve given up so much for you, but I refuse to give Sadie up. Or Derek and Callum, either. They love me, they accept me for who I am, and not who you think I should be.”

  “Why wouldn’t they love you?” Helina laughed sardonically. “I’m sure you spread your legs for them without as much as a hello. Why shouldn’t they want you when you’re a whore? I tried. Lord knows I tried to raise you right, but you were rotten from the day you were born.”

  Ivy gasped, her eyes wide and full of pain. “Mother!”

  Even James looked shocked as he turned toward Helina. “Honey.”

  But her mother ignored him as she glared at Elle. “I’m done with you. I give up on trying to save your soul. You’re no longer my daughter.”

  The words sliced through her heart, but somehow, Elle managed to keep herself from crying out, from cursing her mother to Hell.

  “Mother!” Ivy exclaimed, turning to look at Elle.

  “Don’t worry about it, Ivy,” she whimpered, struggling to keep her tears from falling. “I was never the daughter she wanted, anyway.”

  Wrapping her arms around her torso
, Elle tore herself out of the arms of her lovers and walked to the door. Her mother refused to look at her, not that she was expecting anything different, and her father looked conflicted, though he turned his back on her, too. Though it hurt, Elle had always known her parents would refuse to accept her, not the real her.

  Shifting her eyes to Ivy, Elle’s lips quivered. “I’m sorry. Today was supposed to about you, and I ruined it for you.”

  “Elle, don’t go,” Ivy begged, reaching for her, but Elle took a step away.

  “I’m not welcome here anymore,” she cried. “I never was.”

  Ivy opened her mouth to speak, but promptly closed it. Elle looked at her parents once more, and for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel the urge to beg their forgiveness, or plead with them to love her. She was done, over them and their judgmental ways. Though it hurt, Elle opened the door and walked out. Derek, Callum, and Sadie followed, as she knew they would. Together, the lovers walked through the horde of people who had been listening, waiting for the juicy gossip that was sure to happen. Not that Elle cared. She didn’t know these people, but they were friends of Nick and Ivy’s and she hated that she’d created a scene at their wedding, ripped apart their special day, and made a spectacle of herself.

  Nick was standing by the front doors, one hand on his hip while the other was worrying the back of his neck. He looked over at them as they broke through the crowd, and went to speak, but Elle put her hand up, stopping him.

  “It wasn’t pretty,” she told him. “She’s gonna need you to reassure her that she’s loved.”

  Nick nodded. “Are you okay?”

  Elle shook her head, unable to keep her tears from falling anymore. “It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m just sorry that I ruined your wedding, Nick. Please tell my sister that I love her, and I’ll make this up to her. I don’t know how, but I’ll figure something out.”