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Clearly he had the same idea because he started tugging her dress up with one hand while holding her against him with the other arm. He succeeded in getting her dress over her head, only breaking the kiss once and leaving her in nothing but her thigh-highs and panties.
She hadn't worn a bra and was grateful for that fact now as she pressed her swollen breasts against his hard chest.
His mouth broke from hers and he hissed as if the touch burned him. Heavens, it probably did…it felt like it was burning her. Her nipples stung where they were in contact with the dark curls covering his chest and she rubbed herself against him, increasing the friction and the pleasure.
"You are so sexy, Eden."
She was too busy kissing along his jaw and down his neck to answer. She found the place where his neck met his shoulder and sampled that favorite spot with her tongue, reveling in the salty maleness of his skin.
His hand slipped down her back, under the silk of her panties and cupped her bare bottom. He started kneading her flesh, his fingers coming perilously close to the apex of her thighs, but never quite touching the place that needed his touch most.
She softly nipped at his neck and ground her sweet spot against the hard ridge hidden by his trousers.
The world shifted and she found herself lying on their bed while he tore out of his slacks for the second time in twenty-four hours.
She pushed her panties off, but when she went to roll her thigh-highs down, he said, "No…leave them on."
His guttural demand sent a shiver down her spine and she leaned back on the bed, remembering how much he loved her in thigh-highs and nothing else.
Reaching her hands out toward him, she widened her legs in a double invitation.
He came down over her in a sensual rush and pressed inside of her with one smooth, darkly intense movement. "You are mine."
"Yes, and you are mine." She arched up against him, the sensation so incredible she could barely maintain conscious thought.
He drove into her with an animal-like growl and they made love with a raw intensity unlike any they had shared in all the passionate encounters of their relationship.
She felt the pleasure spiraling inside her, tightening, tightening, tightening…until it exploded. It radiated outward on a wave of such intense ecstasy, she could not bite back a primal scream of joy—despite the last bit of her sanity telling her that tonight they were not alone in the villa.
Aristide's roar was no more controlled as his body went rigid with his release.
Afterward, he collapsed on top of her, his breathing every bit as ragged as her own. "S'gapo, yineka mou. I love you."
Everything inside her clenched in rejection of the words. "No…you can't…"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
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He reared back and looked down at her, his expression grim and almost frighteningly primitive. "I do."
"You didn't before. It's just the sex…it overwhelmed me too. I'm still overwhelmed," she admitted with a panting breath.
He shook his head as if trying to clear it. "You told me you loved me last night. Do not deny it."
Ah…that explained it. "I won't deny it. I do love you, but you don't have to feel obligated to return the words in kind. You never have before."
"I am saying it now."
"You don't have to. Honestly. Please, don't worry about it, Aristide. I know you don't love me, but I've learned to accept it."
He jumped off of her with an angry movement and then stood beside the bed, vibrating with outrage. "I did not say I love you because I thought you were expecting it."
Those stupid pregnancy-driven hormones were making her eyes water again and she tried to blink the tears away. "I didn't mean to offend you." She swallowed, her insides hollow at how the most amazing experience of her life was being ruined by words. Words she had always wanted to hear, but knew could not be true. "It's just…I don't want you telling me you love me out of some misplaced sense of guilt."
"Of what do I have to feel guilty over?"
"Nothing…I…" She shook her head, unable to go on.
"Do not cry," he growled.
"I won't." She turned her head and sniffed, blinking furiously.
He swore and the bed dipped beside her. Then she was in his arms, his body wrapped around hers. "I love you, but since I supposedly did not love you before, you find it impossible to believe now. Is that not true?"
Eden tilted her head back, her gray eyes filled with wary uncertainty and Aristide wanted to curse again.
"Well, if you were going to love me, wouldn't you have discovered it before this? I mean, you were really happy when Theo was born, so proud, I thought you would burst, but you didn't tell me you loved me then."
And she had been hoping he would, just as she had hoped the night before that making love would reclaim his memories of her. He ground his teeth in an effort not to say anything damaging. His lack of memory was more bothersome now than ever before.
"I do not know why I did not tell you I loved you before," he gritted out, "but that does not mean I did not feel the emotion."
Only an idiot would not love this woman.
She took a deep breath and then her expression changed, a seductive light coming into her eyes.
She rose up on her elbow and pushed him backward, her mouth coming within a breath of his. "It's okay, Aristide, really. I don't want to think about before or how you can't remember me now. I just want to make love. I've missed you and last night didn't begin to make up for it."
No man could stand against such naked provocation. She kissed him and he responded with passion he had thought spent.
Eden lay awake as Aristide slept beside her. They had made love again, this time tenderly and for a very long time. He shouted love words in the midst of his release and she had returned them, but how could she believe his were real?
They had been lovers and then married for a total of three years as of yesterday and not once had a word even slightly resembling love crossed his lips. Tonight was the first time he had ever called her agape mou even.
Was it possible that he had truly fallen in love with her? What did that say of the time they had been together before? What if he regained his memory and with it knowledge that what he felt for her was not love?
The questions whirled through her brain, tormenting her thoughts with one unhappy scenario after another.
What if he was only insisting now that he loved her out of guilt? She'd latched on to the fact he wasn't proud of the way he'd treated her up to now, though he seemed too full of macho pride to admit that fact. Could love born of guilt last? Was it even real?
Everything was so confusing. How would she ever know the truth of his feelings when he seemed so intent on proving he was a better husband than her memories indicated?
He was even willing to fire Kassandra. Eden actually thought that might happen now. Aristide in guilt mode (even one he refused to acknowledge) was a fearsome prospect.
She didn't want him coming out of it before Kassandra was gone from their lives, but neither did she want to spend the rest of her life married to a man who stayed with her because he felt badly about the way he'd treated her at first. That was hardly more appetizing a prospect than being married for the sake of their baby.
Aristide walked into his office on Monday morning with an unshakeable sense of purpose.
He had grilled Eden the day before on Kassandra's behavior since the beginning of their marriage and he had no doubts about firing the woman. She had made Eden miserable with her subtle innuendo and manipulations and he had let her. That was his cross to bear, but he wasn't letting Kassandra's poison infect his life or torment his wife one more day.
The confrontation went much as he had expected it to after Eden's revelations. Kassandra attempted lies and further manipulations to keep her job and her place in his life, but he refused to be moved.
"You are fired, Kassandra. Security is waiting by your desk with your six months' severance check to walk you out. You no longer have clearance in any of the Kouros Industries buildings or computers."
"You cannot be serious. You can't fire me!"
"You are wrong."
"But you need me, not that American whore. She knows nothing of your business…she cannot even speak our language adequately! I belong by your side, not her!"
"Do not ever call my wife anything like that again… I can ruin you, Kassandra…completely. Do not ever do something that will make me think I have to."
She blanched and then glared, her hands curled at her sides like claws. "You would have loved me if she had not gotten in the way."
"You were never in the running."
"You made love to me."
"We had sex. Mutually consenting sex without commitment." A brief affair, nothing more. He realized why now. The woman had no heart and he now knew the difference between cold, calculated sex and making love.
