Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)(88)

Rating: Mature

Fandoms: Gods of the Gates – E. Wade, Gods of the Gates (TV)

Relationships: Aeneas/Lavinia

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Modern, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Arranged Marriage, Lavinia Has Body Image Issues, For Obvious Reasons

Stats: Words: 1893 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 47 Kudos: 276 Bookmarks: 19



Untouchable





Unapologetic Lavinia Stan


Summary:


Lavinia knows exactly why her husband doesn’t touch her, doesn’t kiss her, doesn’t bed her. Possibly, however, she may have made a few assumptions along the way. Ones Aeneas intends to correct.

Notes:

Thank you to my fabulous beta, Book!AeneasWouldNever! He’s been helping me work on emotional heft in my fics, so whatever such heft this story has belongs rightfully to him.



* * *





At night, the irony choked her. Somehow, having a beautiful husband, having a husband she’d grown to love, had made her married existence so much worse, so much more painful, than if she’d simply married Turnus instead. Turnus, her fiancé before fate—and parental interference—had broken the engagement. Turnus, all brown curls and bluster and righteous anger and wiry strength.

Turnus, who would have bedded her in darkness, fucked her from behind whenever possible, and avoided looking at her face the same way he’d avoided looking at her face since meeting her.

But at least he’d have taken her to bed. Unlike her actual husband.

Her husband, golden in the sunlight. Her husband, smooth muscles and features polished to perfection. Her husband, polite and attentive and distant as the moon overhead.

For Aeneas, evidently, no amount of darkness was sufficient to disguise whom he’d married, whom he’d have to fuck. For him, she was more than simply homely and awkward and everything else her father had ever told her. She was untouchable. So ugly he couldn’t abide a fingertip’s worth of contact.

Or so she might have gone on believing forever, until she got drunk one night. Very, very drunk. For the first time ever. At Dido’s bachelorette party, drowning her stupid envy over how Aeneas’s ex—now Lavinia’s faithful friend—had managed to get over the man and move on in a way Lavinia never could as his wife.

When she came home in a cab, he met her at the end of their driveway, forewarned of her arrival by Dido’s text. When she staggered, he tugged her against his side and supported her with a strong arm around her shoulders.

When she looked blearily up at him and slurred, “Don’t have to touch me. Know you don’t want to. Made that clear enough,” he stopped dead on their front sidewalk, still holding her, brow furrowed in confusion.

Then, when she repeated the horrible, humiliating truth, he glared at her with eyes blazing like the stars above and spat out his own truth.

“I have wanted to touch you every minute of every day for months now,” he said. “What the actual, ever-loving fuck are you talking about?”





24


APRIL HAD SHRUGGED AWAY HIS ATTEMPTED COMFORT IN her parents’ guest room, so Marcus didn’t try to reach out to her again. Instead, he silently accepted her keys, passed her the tissue box and a bottle of water, set the GPS to her apartment’s address, and began driving them home.

She didn’t want him to touch her. That was her right, and no doubt she had good reason to distance herself from him. He simply didn’t understand what that reason was. And he might not be allowed physical contact, but he could still steal glances at her as he drove. At stop signs and red lights, and when he needed to wait behind someone making a left turn.

In fleeting glimpses, he scanned her tear-stained countenance for some hint of what he’d done wrong, and found . . . nothing. Nothing.

Her face was speckled stone. Impervious.

His confusion and anxiety ballooned by the moment, filling his skull until he wondered how his ears hadn’t popped from the pressure.

Without warning, she pointed to the right. “Pull off here.” They’d reached a little park not too far from the freeway, and he obediently turned into its lot. “Pick a space without anyone else nearby, please.”

The farthest corner of the lot offered spots with the most privacy, and he chose the last space on the end. Within moments, the car was parked, and the hum of the engine went quiet, but he kept his hands clutched tight on the steering wheel. Because he was nervous, and because he needed to keep them away from her until she was ready to be touched.

He studied her blotchy face and the balled-up tissues in her lap, his jaw aching with tension, his need to offer comfort overwhelming but stymied.

She didn’t speak. Not one word.

“April . . .” he finally said, her name a gravelly plea. “I don’t know what happened with your mom, and I don’t know how I fucked up, but I obviously did. I’m sorry.”

He’d thought he understood. Her father was an asshole, and being in his company upset her. If Marcus offered himself as a human barrier, then she could spend time with her mother and escape the visit home unscathed. Simple as that.

Only she’d emerged metaphorically bloodied instead, and Jesus. Jesus. Evidently he hadn’t helped at all. Best he could tell, he’d hung her out to dry instead.

His skin fucking crawled with shame at having inadvertently abandoned her in need. It was the absolute worst feeling. The worst.