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"I already told you that you don't love me."
"I told you this?"
"Not in so many words."
"I want you to stop being sad."
"I don't know if I can."
"Why?"
"Rejection isn't an easy thing to overcome. You, never having been the recipient of it, don't know that, but to put it delicately…it sucks."
He laughed again, the sound not exactly one of humor. "Are you saying I rejected you?"
"You forgot me. Isn't that the same thing?"
"No. As Sebastian reminded me today, I suffered a concussion…looking further for the cause of my amnesia is foolish."
"You don't want to sleep with me anymore."
"That is not true. I told you last night."
"But you don't need me."
"I do."
He meant physically, but her battered heart would take comfort where it could.
"You don't stay awake at night aching—" She cut herself off, but not before she had revealed more than she wanted to.
"Do you?"
"If I say yes, will your Greek pride be satisfied?"
"If I tell you that you are wrong, that you are not the only one who aches with a need that is not wholly physical, will your feminine pride be gratified?"
Not wholly physical? Did he mean it? "Are you saying that?"
"Yes, I am. And you?"
"Yes."
He tipped her chin up and pressed a soft, claiming kiss to her lips. "If I cancelled my dinner… if I stayed home and made love to my wife tonight, would you like that? Would you allow it?"
"Your dinner is too important.
He pressed his finger against her lips. "No, Eden, it is not. I do not pretend to understand why our dinner date meant so much to you, but I hurt you when I broke it and I am sorry."
"It's the anniversary of the night we met."
Aristide heard the words without them registering at first. Kassandra had said she thought the dinner date with Eden was no big deal. He had believed her, trusting his long-time friend and personal assistant to know.
"You always contrived to make it a very special evening and canceling just reminded me how much we have lost." She made it sound like they were on the brink of divorce.
He wasn't going there. "You are still my wife."
But even if he was as dense in the emotional department as she had accused him of being, he was in tune with her enough to realize she wasn't looking at their marriage as an uncontested permanent part of her life.
He kissed her again, this time with all the hunger in his predator's soul. He could taste her tears and that did something to him, twisting his insides with unfamiliar pain. This woman was his wife and she was wrong about what that meant. It did make her special.
He kissed her until they were both breathing heavily, until she moaned with need and he ached with it.
He stood up with her in his arms and then carried her into their bedroom.
He laid her down in the center of their bed. "This is where we both belong."
She said nothing.
"I will not be leaving it again and neither will you."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Absolutely sure."
"Okay, then." She arched her back, the invitation to touch unmistakable.
He groaned, his sex so hard already, he thought he might explode before he got his clothes off. He tore out of his suit, ripping his soggy tie and shirt off with more impatience than finesse.
"You're certainly in a hurry," she said softly, the feminine laughter in her voice seducing his senses.
"I do not want you to change your mind." He said it jokingly, but part of him was very serious.
When she had turned him down the night before, he had felt a desperation he had not understood and liked even less.
She shook her head from side to side, her hair spreading out around her head like a silky brown halo. "Not a chance."
"That is good to know."
She smiled, Eve bent on seduction. "Take off your pants." The look in her eyes said this wasn't the first time she'd made such an order and he knew, from the response of his body, he'd liked it when she'd done so before.
She was not an aggressive woman, so for her to make sexual demands would be the most erotic form of lovemaking.
He stepped out of his shoes, before toeing off his socks. Then peeling his slacks away, he pushed his boxers down with them. He stood completely naked before her, his body throbbing with the need to join with hers.
She stared at him, her chest rising and falling with shallow pants. Her pretty gray eyes were so dark with passion they were almost black as her gaze moved over him like a hot caress. "You are so beautiful, Aristide."
He felt a twinge in the region of his heart. No other woman had ever called him that. Sexy, yes. Masculine. Buff, even, but never beautiful. He liked it, though he would never admit it out loud.
She kicked her shoes off, but when she went to pull her shirt off, he shook his head. "Stop."
Stilling, her eyes wide, she asked, "Why?"
"I want to unwrap you like a present."
She swallowed and hope flared in her eyes, making them shine with silver lights. "You used to say that to me all the time."
He didn't want to think about before, the time he couldn't remember. He only wanted to think about now. In a rush that made her gasp, he came down over her. His entire being jolted with pleasure as they made contact. The layer of her clothes could have been gone for all the notice his body took of the barrier.
"Aristide…what is it?" she asked, her voice catching as he settled himself between her legs and rubbed the apex of her thighs with his iron-hard sex.
"No more talking," he growled and then devoured her lips with his own, his kiss primal and hungry, demanding a response.
When she opened her lips on a small moan, he swept inside, claiming the warm wetness as his. He could not remember making this woman his own, but tonight she would know without doubt she belonged to him in the most primitive and binding way a woman could belong to a man.
She locked her legs behind his hips and arched into him.
He shuddered with pleasure and could not help pressing down, increasing the friction—though it undermined his control.
She felt so small beneath him and yet so womanly, more tantalizing than any woman had ever been. Her tiny curves drove him to madness and he cupped her breast, glorying when her nipple peaked instantly. He did not have to remember to get her to react to his touch…to be a husband in every sense of the word.
He played with the rigid bud through her top, realizing immediately that she was not wearing a bra. The knowledge made him desperate to touch the bare skin he knew waited for him under the cotton of her snug-fitting T-shirt.
Aristide's hand slipped under the hem of her top and glided up her ribcage, the light touch of his fingertips against her skin giving Eden chills. He stopped below the curve of her breast, his thumb brushing back and forth in a teasing caress that made her whimper into his mouth with need.
She ached for him to touch her breasts the way he'd touched them so many times before.
But would it be like it had been before? Or would it be different because she was a stranger to him?
It didn't matter. She remembered him and wanted him. She needed this confirmation of her importance to him. His hand made contact with her breast and her thoughts exploded in a maelstrom of feeling. The caress was familiar and yet it wasn't. It had a tentative quality that hadn't been there since the first time they made love, as if he was trying to figure out what pleased her.
She could have told him it didn't matter. He had never touched her in a way that did not wring pleasure from her. But she was too busy kissing him to say anything, not to mention too busy reveling in the deep concentration he gave to the task.
He played with her breasts, squeezing them and then teasing their rigid peaks with knowing fingers. He didn't know she was pregnant and yet he instinctively did not press too hard on her ultra-sensitive skin. He was good at this, an expert.
She started to moan and thrash under him, finally tearing her mouth from his to beg for more.
But it was still several minutes of teasing foreplay before he began unwrapping her like a present as promised. Would he notice she was pregnant? She barely showed a difference in her waistline and he didn't remember what she'd looked like before, but the thought was tantalizing. To have all the secrets revealed, to be able to share her pregnancy with her husband.
He touched her in a way that sent all thoughts in her head exploding into space. He kissed every inch of skin he exposed, starting with her feet and then paying close attention to her already highly stimulated curves. He laved the turgid peaks like an ice-cream cone and she shivered with delight.
He growled against her skin, the sound so animal-like she shivered again…this time an atavistic fear mixed with her sensual pleasure.
