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.
The water was hot, steam beginning to fill the air. She took a deep breath, sighing as she exhaled. Then she turned toward the counter and began to pin her hair up, slowly, methodically, trying to erase the past few moments from her mind.
“I wonder.” She heard a rich, masculine voice coming from behind her and she turned. There was Leon, standing in the door, his dark eyes like black fire. “I wonder how many times I have stood here in this very place and watched you prepare for your bath like this. I have no recollection. This does not make my mind itch in any way.”
Heat scorched her skin, fascination and embarrassment warring for equal place inside of her. He had never seen her naked before. No man ever had. But of course, he didn’t know that. Of course, he wouldn’t have any concept of just what an invasion this was.
That was her own doing. There was no one to blame for that but herself. And she still wasn’t doing anything to correct it.
“An itch in your mind?” She looked around, desperately searching for a towel, something, anything to cover her exposed body.
“That is what it feels like sometimes. When something is familiar but I can’t grab hold of it. As though I have an itch deep in my brain that I can’t quite get to. But this... This is free of all of that. Perhaps because when I look at you it becomes difficult to think at all.”
She swallowed hard. And she forgot to look for a towel. Forgot to be embarrassed. She was completely frozen in her tracks. It would be easy—or it should be—to move her hands strategically and offer herself some modesty. But she felt like she’d been turned into a pillar of salt. Punished for looking at him when she should have turned away.
You don’t want to cover yourself. You want him to keep looking at you.
Yes, she did. As disturbing a realization as that was, she did.
Historically, people were very stupid when it came to sex. She was proving beyond a doubt that she was doomed to repeat history.
“You do say very nice things,” she said, her voice thin, soft.
“Have I always?”
She shook her head. “You don’t say unkind things. But...”
He took a step into the bathroom and her entire body stiffened. “But I do not lavish you with the sort of praise you deserve. I get that sense. I get the feeling that I never adequately appreciated how glorious a sight you were.” He was gazing at her openly, with no shame at all. Like this was the Garden of Eden and nudity was simply right.
“Do you even remember what women look like naked?
