Chapter 28 Sydney #2
His white shirt and black trousers plaster against his muscular body as he moves closer and closer. “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.”
Water covers my chin and reaches my lower lip now, so I kick off, no longer standing, but floating.
My heartbeat accelerates and my brain blares, “Danger!” My instincts here are wrong, though.
The danger is over, so, when uneasiness pushes at me, I shove it back and distract myself the best way I know how.
“Shouldn’t you take your clothes off? That can’t be comfortable. ”
He moves closer until the fabric of his trousers brushes the bare skin of my thighs with every one of my movements.
“You’re vulnerable right now. I’d hate myself if I scared you,” he says.
Every night, after he drifts off, I cuddle against him so I can sleep and know he’s safe beside me.
But I want more. He’s been careful to respect my boundaries.
Has always stayed fully dressed around me.
I’m oddly jealous and resentful of the old me—that she’s been with him naked when I don’t have those memories.
Instead of searching the smeared whiteboard in my mind for memories to prove how I should feel or what I should want, I lean into the here and now. “You won’t scare me. I trust you.”
Gaze steady on mine, he removes his tie and flings the wet fabric away from us. Then, he unhooks his belt, pulls it through the loops and tosses it to the deck with a splat and metallic clatter.
When he reaches for his zipper, he hesitates, then drags it down and pops open the closure on his trousers. He bends and drags the wet material down his hair-roughened thighs.
My nipples tighten. Mouth dry, I force myself not to take over the job for him. He submerges for a few seconds to free the clinging fabric from his calves and ankles. Then his head and shoulders break the surface, and he kicks the fabric away.
Face averted now, he watches his own fingers as he releases each button on his shirt, then shrugs it from his shoulders and sends it adrift, a fluffy white cloud in a reflected sky of blue.
Finally, he straightens, pushing his hair back and lifting his chin with a defiant tilt.
I stare. The crystal clear water hides nothing, including the way the entire width of the area above his navel appears to have received a skin graft approximately eight inches in height.
Surrounding it are dozens of slashing scars, all about three inches in length.
Torture. They tortured Gabriel. He told me what they’d planned for him, but I hadn’t pictured—
I run frantic fingers over the damaged skin. “Did Markov’s family do this to you?”
“It was more than twenty years ago. I’m healed now,” he says gruffly.
“Are you? On the inside?”
“Enough.” Jaw tense, he removes my hands from his body and places them on my own thighs. “Don’t stare, sunshine. It’s rude.”
I’ve made him self-conscious. I’d feel the same way if he’d reacted like this to my protruding hip bones or my broken nose and scars.
So I turn my attention upward. I mean to look into his eyes but get caught on the color on his upper body. I should have guessed he’d have more ink than just the flowers and vines on his arms.
Dense, colorful tattoos claim ownership of his entire chest. The swirls meander in a pattern, like a looping roadmap, but with illustrations mixed in. A bouquet of wildflowers. A skull. A clock face with no hour or minute hand, a sunrise over mountains.
Water travels in runnels over the swell of his pecs. My focus travels down, beyond the scarred ridges of his abdomen. Lower.
He left his thin black briefs on, and the fabric cups a bulge that’s growing larger by the moment.
“My eyes are up here,” he says, voice strangled.
Slowly, my gaze drifts up to those lips that look sculpted. But I’ve felt them pressed to my temple and the crest of my cheekbone. I know what they feel like moving against my own. I know Gabriel’s lips are soft.
I look into eyes the color of jade in sunlight. And find them staring down at me with blatant starvation in their depths. I’ve been that hungry, and it’s hell.
My wet hands come up to cup the back of his neck, and I press my body against his, not in the frantic way I did earlier when I panicked, but in exploration.
His skin sears mine everywhere we touch, the block of ice inside me melting. Melting. The hardness between his thighs finds the softness at the apex of mine like a jigsaw puzzle piece ready to snap into place.
“You’re killing me.” His palms land on my hips, and his fingers tighten on my butt, gripping convulsively. With one flex of muscle, he could pull me closer or push me away. “You don’t remember me yet, and there are things you won’t understand until you do. This wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“What if this helps me remember our marriage?” I hadn’t considered that possibility before, but sensory experiences have prompted most of the memories that have come back to me.
Taste and scent and touch. “I want to take back things that make me feel good. And I think you know how to make me feel very, very good. I don’t want flashbacks of torture the next time I get in this pool. I want to think of you.”
He closes his eyes.
My heart sinks. “You think I’m too fragile now—”
A cross between incredulous laughter and an angry scoff passes his lips. “There’s no version of you that I don’t want to worship.”
I trace two fingers over his bottom lip. “Gabriel.”
He lifts his lashes. And lets go of the leash.