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He’d had no choice, but that had not made it any better.

And he had fully believed that he would never taste her like this again.

God help him, but Aeryn was making those noises in the back of her throat, all of that greedy longing, and need, that had haunted him ever since.

He could feel his cock heavy and hard, pressing against her—and she pressed herself right back.

Every kiss, every slide of her mouth against his, was another flash, another memory.

He could remember everything.

One of his hands moved of its own accord, finding its way beneath that smooth, fleecy top she wore. He tracked the shape of her spine and all of that smooth, supple skin, learning the contours of her body as if this was new.

Except it wasn’t new. And he knew exactly how to touch her to make her moan.

She made a noise that sounded more like a sob and then they rolled again, and he found himself flush in between her thighs, his cock pressed hard into the softest part of her. Even through the thick lounge pants she wore, he could feel her heat.

Especially when she drew her knees up so that he pressed even harder against that soft place between her legs, then let her back arch so she could flatten her breasts against his chest.

The kiss grew hungrier, more desperate.

Any other time they’d been together like this, he would already have been inside of her. Any other time, neither one of them would have been able to bear clothing in the way. Those things had always been a barrier, a hindrance.

On their stolen holidays, they had barely dressed. Even when they talked, for hours and hours, they did it skin to skin, and often with him so deep inside of her that it was like they were making themselves one.

That had always been the dream.

And what had followed the stolen moments of that dream had been two long years of wide-awake reality, and Vesuvius—because he remembered himself now, he knew who he was and what he’d done—could recall with perfect clarity the look on her face when she’d opened her front door to him earlier.

He’d watched her dawning recognition, followed quickly by that same broken hopelessness he’d seen all over her face the last time he’d seen her in that villa in Liandero.

Only this time, he’d watched as all of those painfully familiar expressions turned into a bright kind of fury.

And he had absolutely no doubt that if he’d known who he was, if he’d arrived in all of his state instead of bloodied and frozen through and had knocked on her door on a pleasant evening at a reasonable time, she would have slammed it at the sight of his face.

As hard as possible.

Aeryn never would have taken him in. She certainly wouldn’t be kissing him now, locking her ankles in the small of his back and letting her own hands find their way beneath the flannel he wore.

He had come to her as someone else, and that was the only reason he was still here.

Vesuvius was not sure he could bear it.

He pulled away and when she went to kiss him again, arching up toward him, he shifted her off of him. Though he once again lacked the strength—or perhaps he meant the moral fiber—to stand up and walk away from the couch.

“Has your headache come back?” she asked, with the flush of desire all over her face. “Is it stronger? Do you have any blurry vision?”

The irony here, Vesuvius was well aware, was that all he wanted was to stop lying. He wanted to stop playing roles. He wanted to stop wearing masks. He was tired of his public persona and all the things it had been determined by people who were not him that he owed his kingdom. He was tired of choosing duty over his own desires, his own happiness, his own heart, and he had vowed that he would never pretend to be something he wasn’t again.

Except tonight, he had to put all of that aside and focus instead on Aeryn.

Aeryn, who still tasted like magic and wonder. Whose gaze still took him in as if she had never stopped loving him, and he knew that could not be the case.

He looked past her to all those photographs on her mantel and felt as if his heart broke all over again, because now he knew exactly who that round-faced, chubby-cheeked, happy little baby was. His own daughter, who he had decided he would never know—so perhaps that was why, the first time he’d seen her in the pictures Aeryn kept of her, he hadn’t felt anything because he’d forgotten her right along with himself.

If a worse excuse for a man or a father existed, Vesuvius could not imagine it.

He loathed himself.