only man she had ever kissed.
His lips were hot, firm and commanding as they moved over her own, his tongue a slick, sweet enticement as it delved deep inside her mouth, sliding against her own. Immediately, her breasts felt heavy, her core a hollow ache, wet with need for him at the first touch of his mouth to hers.
She was drowning. In this. In him. In the desire. Completely and utterly at its mercy.
She wasn’t even sure she cared. Because she was being swept away on a tide that she couldn’t even hope to fight against. Desire dictating her every response, her every movement.
She felt... She felt ravenous for him. Completely and totally starved of the one thing she had craved for so long. She wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning out of her chair and crushing her breasts to his chest, nearly sighing with relief as she pressed herself against him. She wanted to meld herself to him completely, wanted to get lost in this forever.
It was a sickness, a kind of madness that overtook her completely. The desire to feel his skin against hers, to have nothing at all between them. His memories didn’t matter. His broken ribs didn’t matter. His betrayal of their vows didn’t matter. All of the hurt, all of the torture she had endured over it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered but this. The fact that she was kissing him finally.
He slid his hand down her back, pressing her more firmly against him. She parted her thighs, resting the part of herself that was aching the most for his touch up against his hardened arousal.
He growled, drawing his hand down lower to cup her rear, pressing her even more tightly to him, rolling his hips against hers.
It occurred to her then that it wasn’t only alcohol he had gone a long time without. Granted, she had gone twenty-three years without this kind of sexual contact, but Leon was accustomed to more.
And it was that thought that found her pulling away from him, running her shaking hands through her hair and sitting back in her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said, the words rushed.
He looked at her, frowning. “Why are you sorry?”
“You don’t remember anything. You don’t remember us. And you’re injured...”
“This,” he said, his eyes meeting hers meaningfully, “has nothing to do with memory. This is another bit of honesty, I think.”
Except it wasn’t. Because they didn’t do things like this. Because he had never touched her before. She couldn’t bring herself to voice that admission. Could not do that to what was left of her pride.
“I think it would be for the best if we held off on things like this.”
“Why is that?” he asked. “Is it because you are so angry with me about something that happened before?”
“It’s because I don’t feel right about asking you to sleep with a stranger.” It was nearly the truth.
“Everyone is a stranger to me. I’m a stranger to myself. And yet I seem to sleep in my own body every night.”
“It’s different. And you know it.”
“Is it?”
“I think you’re just...just male. And therefore would come up with any excuse for sex.”
He shook his head slowly, his dark eyes searching. “You are my wife. You are not a stranger to me. And I can feel...that there is something broken between us. I know it, as surely as I know certain things about myself. I do not need a memory to know that I wish to fix that.”
Her throat tightened, pressure building in her chest. “It is not entirely on you to fix it.”
“I want to try.”
She gritted her teeth, trying to hold her emotions in check. “Let’s wait. Let’s wait until you remember.” The words nearly choked her, because the last thing she wanted was to wait. If they waited, he would remember his indifference. If they waited, he wouldn’t want to fix what was broken. Because in Leon’s eyes their marriage wasn’t broken. Why would it be?
With their current arrangement he was allowed to behave as he saw fit. To do exactly what he wanted whenever he wanted with whomever he wanted. Once he remembered that their arrangement consisted of her staying home while he behaved like a man with no wife at all he wouldn’t want to change a thing.
“You are not my doctor, agape.”
“No, I’m not. But I am the one who—”
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because I don’t have my memories I’m not in full control of my desires. A man does not need a memory to know that he wants a woman. He feels that in his body. In his blood. Mine burns for you. My mind may not remember, but my body suffers no such affliction.”
She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, the weight of all the restraint, of the denial pressing down on her. He was promising things that didn’t exist outside of misty fantasy for her. Pleasure, satisfaction on a level she could hardly comprehend. But it wasn’t for her. Not really. And she had to resist. No matter how enticing it was.
“No,” she said, standing from her chair and sweeping past him, not pausing to look back at him as she walked straight into the house. She kept going. She nearly ran. All the way through the house, up the stairs, down the corridor and into her bedroom. She shut the door tightly behind her, and leaned back up against the wall.
And she couldn’t help but feel she had run away from her salvation.
SHE WAS BREATHING HARD, her heart fluttering in her chest like a trapped bird in a cage.
She wanted him. And this sorely tested her. All of her willpower, all of her restraint. He was offering her what she wanted on a platter. Seemingly. But she knew that as decadent, as wonderful as it all seemed, it would be poison in the end.
“It would be. It would kill me.” She spoke those words aloud into the emptiness of the room. Trying to make herself believe them. Trying to force herself to feel it.
She squeezed her eyes shut tight, curling her fingers into fists. And she waited until she stopped shaking before she moved away from the wall.
When she could catch her breath she reached around and took hold of the tab on the zipper, drawing it down, feeling as though she was casting some of the weight off as she let her dress fall from her body and pool at her feet on the floor. She wandered into the bathroom, turning the tub taps on and letting the water run until it was hot.
She unclipped her bra, flinging it onto the floor, not caring where it landed. She pushed her panties down her thighs, leaving them behind, too. Then she walked back into her bedroom, digging through her closet until she found a pair of sweats, something that would entice her to stay away from Leon for the rest of the night. If she put on anything too silky, anything that might not humiliate her to stand before him in, she could not guarantee that she wouldn’t go and find him later.
With that thought in mind she stared down at the pair of pajama pants in her hand, then shoved them back in the drawer, digging until she found a slightly older, slightly baggier pair. Insurance. It was what she needed.
Additional insurance came in the form of large white cotton panties that would provide more than full coverage, and handle any Leon incidentals that might occur.
She grabbed hold of an equally ancient sweatshirt and added it to her pile of clothing before heading back into the bathroom.
She wasn’t foolish enough to think she would behave rationally now she’d tasted him. Wars were started over sex. The desire for it. The anger over someone else having it in a way you didn’t like. Or with someone you wish you were having it with.
Sex was powerful. And she knew better than to think she was immune.