16. CHAPTER 16 #2
"I don't. Not really." The images were already breaking apart. She grasped at them: his younger face, the music, the moonlight, the rightness of his hands in hers. They came away in fragments. "I can see it as if through a dream. But I can't hold it."
He took a step, closing the distance between them, and took her hands in his. Brought them to his mouth, kissed each one. His lips warming her palms with reverence and fervor. Unleashing a wave of heat that traveled up her arms to the rest of her body. It was… transcendent.
And she wanted more.
"Aren't you going to kiss me properly?" she asked, knowing she was echoing words from long ago and meaning them in the present as well.
One corner of his mouth twitched, but his eyes were molten with longing and suppressed desire.
As an answer, he brought her hands to his shoulders, letting his hands travel down her arms to her back.
One wrapped around her waist, bringing her body flush against his, while the other cradled her jaw, his long fingers teasing the back of her neck.
Such warmth and strength enveloping her, supporting her.
A gasp broke free, and her lips parted in invitation .
"Do you remember what I did next?"
He had broken away from the playacting. He was talking to her present self now. Her present self who was befuddled and yearning. Hungry for a taste of his kiss.
"Maybe. I don't know. Everything is muddled, coming to me in bits and pieces." Was he going to stop? She would die if he did not kiss her now. Her hands curled into his lapels, wanting to hold him close.
His head lowered an inch. His warm breath fanned over her lips when he said, "Then let me give you another piece."
And then his mouth pressed against hers, and the world tilted. She could not tell past from present, memory from reality. He was everything, the only place where she belonged or wished to be. His taste, his warmth, his essence.
For a man who seemed so reserved, sometimes even cold, his kiss was all fire and tenderness. So much feeling, so much intensity. His mouth slid over hers in wonder and adoration. She sensed it all. His yearning, his fear, and above all, his all-consuming adoration.
She parted her lips in a needy moan, past reservations, past embarrassment. Her want was too great to allow for such weak emotions. She wanted to inhale him. Consume him. Make him a part of her and let him fill all the gaping holes in her world.
Thank goodness he seemed to feel the same.
With a feral groan, his lips angled over hers, deepening the kiss, and his tongue stormed her mouth.
Hungry. Persuasive. It claimed her with tenderness.
Not too aggressive. Rather… familiar. Like he owned the space.
She reveled in his possession, in surrendering to him.
His arm around her waist was a vise, holding her ever tighter against him, while his hand on her face kept her head immobile for his ravaging.
Not that she sought escape. Her hands threaded through the silky strands at the back of his neck, softly scratching his scalp in her urgency to hold him to her .
He kissed as if pouring his soul into her — focused, intent, driven by something fierce and unrestrained. Like time had ceased to exist, and they lived only in this moment.
This had been the place of their first kiss. She was sure of it. It was something to ponder later. Right now, she could only feel.
She felt it all. His hungry desperation beating against his iron control.
The hardness that prodded her belly. Its heat branding her even through the layers of their clothing.
Although she had no memory of ever engaging in the act of love, she knew immediately what that hardness meant.
Writhing bodies, naked skin, lips, heat… untold pleasure.
Her body remembered even when her mind could not. She whimpered as a rush of warmth flooded the place between her legs. The place that felt empty and pulsing to the rhythm of her heart. The place where that hard rod belonged.
She burrowed deeper, pressing herself against the hardness, undulating against it. Seeking relief for a very particular ache…
He hissed as if in pain, and she froze. Had she done something wrong?
But then the arm curled around her waist loosened. Slowly, as if exercising a supreme effort, he nudged her away from his body. Cool air flooded the space between them, and she could have wept with the loss.
"We need to stop, Vivi." His voice was ragged, almost panting.
"Why?"
His chuckle was rueful. "Because if we don't, I'm going to ravish you. I'm a breath away from lifting you onto the stone balustrade and taking you right here in the garden."
Her eyes went wide as saucers at the image he painted in her mind. No doubt he meant to shock her into retreating, but it had the opposite effect.
"And if I want that?"
He shook his head, moving a few more steps farther from her. Leaning back against the low balustrade, he gripped the stone edge until his knuckles whitened and leaned his torso forward. "You tempt me almost more than I can resist. But no. It's too soon. It wouldn't be right. "
She tilted her head, confused by his refusal when he so obviously desired her.
"How can it be too soon? Didn't you say we have been married for years?"
"Yes. And you don't remember any of those years." He looked at her, and his eyes reflected the conflict within. "When I make love to you," he said, "I want you to know who I am. Not a memory. Not an echo. Me."
He wanted her memory. All of it. And she wished to give him that. She wished it for herself. How many precious moments like this had she lost?
She wanted to hold on to this one, but she could feel it drawing back behind the locked door in her mind.
Trying to go the way of dreams that disappear upon waking.
She reached for it and held it tight. She would not lose it.
Not this memory. This feeling. The certainty of her answer. The warmth of his hands.
Yes, she wanted to remember the past, but also to build something new. The present.
Him beside her. The press of his fingers. That rough note in his voice when he said stop, and what it had cost him to say it. The way he kissed her, hungry and desperate, yet searching too. Exploring. Learning her anew.
He was not kissing a ghost.
He was kissing her.
And she was not falling in love with a hazy memory. Not with the husband she could not remember, not with the man in the moonlit fragments that surfaced and dissolved before she could hold them. She was falling in love with the man in front of her now.
S he was the one with amnesia, but Dalton had not realized how much he had forgotten as well.
No, not forgotten. Willingly buried deep in his mind, where it could not reach him. It had been the only way to survive — to encase his feelings in a sheet of ice so thick he could no longer touch them .
But the first brush of her lips against his began to crack that ice, like the first rays of spring sunlight striking a frozen lake. Cracks appeared. Small at first, then spreading, branching, until the entire surface threatened to collapse beneath him.
He could not allow that to happen. What turbulent waters lurked underneath? He did not know, but judging by the strength of his response, it was a wild and dangerous thing. The newly liberated waters were bound to rush and devastate everything in their path.
His body wanted things his mind knew were dangerous. Her beneath him, around him, nothing between them. But what might follow if he was not careful — what had followed before, three times — was blood and grief.
He could say none of this. So he needed to keep his control. For her sake, even more than for his.
She said she wanted this. Did she even realize what she was asking for? Could she remember the act? He didn’t know, but he knew that when he made love to her again, she would know who he was. And he would have his emotions under control.
Her hand found his, and she laced her fingers through his. He looked up, startled by the unexpected touch.
She studied his face, and whatever she saw in it, her next words nearly undid him.
"I think," she said, "that I am beginning to see you, Val."