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“Elizabeth,” he dragged the word down her body, finding her womanhood and lashing it with his tongue.
She cried out at the experience that was both familiar and not. His hands caught her legs, spreading them, holding them pinned to the bed, as his mouth pushed against her most sensitive flesh. He had always been able to drive her wild. A look had been enough. But this?
She reached above her head, digging her fingernails into the white bedlinen, and holding on for dear life, as pleasure whipped her body. She arched her back, writhing hard, but his grip on her legs was firm, so she whimpered, completely at his mercy, and knowing there was nowhere else she’d like to be.
And she knew what he was doing. He was seducing her as his salvation – as a path back to recollection. Would he find it? Would he find their pleasure triggered an answer to his past?
His tongue was pushing her to the edge of her own sanity and salvation was at his fingertips. He scored her with his kiss and she tipped over, into an abyss of doubt and confusion, but also, immense, all-consuming delirium.
“I know you,” he dragged his mouth to her thigh, then her hip, then her belly button, running kisses along her flat stomach to the hollow between her breasts. He kissed her there and then lay his body over hers, his weight a dream she’d felt too many nights to count.
“I know the way you feel, the way you taste. I know your body like I know my own. Why can’t I remember you?” She stilled beneath him, not wanting to feel sorry for him. Not wanting to feel sadness for him.
But she did – how could she not? The dynamic, powerful man he’d been in London, before, had no weaknesses. No chinks in his armour. He was charismatic, powerful, insanely in charge.
So was this version of Xavier, and yet she understood the demons that must drive him. Demons that vulnerabilities would breathe into his soul.
“Because we meant nothing,” she said softly, her hands finding his chest and pushing at it. She ignored the pang of guilt – the guilt that Joshua’s existence spawned inside of her. Their son.
God. What had she done? She’d thought she was a different woman, less needy, less easy, and yet she’d fallen into his bed yet again, just like before. Fool! Idiot!
She needed to get out of his hotel, away from him, away from this.
“Sleeping with me isn’t going to change the facts. You’re obviously not going to remember me. The truth is, what we shared wasn’t worth remembering.” The words hurt. They cut so deep inside of her. “Okay?” She pushed away from him, standing with an attempt to hide how unsteady she felt. When had he removed her underwear? Somewhere between the lounge area of the suite and this palatial bedroom. She hadn’t even noticed. She looked around, vulnerable and exposed.
“No. That is not okay.” He, on the other hand, was completely dressed. He stood, turning his back on her for a brief moment so he could dispose of the condom and zip his pants back up, and then he was Xavier Salbatore once more. Unattainable, strong, intimidating.
Lying. Cheating.
She clamped her lips together, and turned her back on him. She had to get out of there.
“It’s the truth,” she insisted.
“There’s no way we felt like that and it didn’t mean anything.” He shook his head. “That doesn’t make any the sense.” He ground his teeth together, expelling a guttural noise of impatience. “My English isn’t as good since the damned accident.”
More sympathy. More ache. She forced herself to remain strong.
“It isn’t possible for you to have felt like that in my arms and not meant something to me. Or for me to have meant something to you.”
You meant everything to me. She wanted to shout the words, she wanted to throw them at him, so that he would know how badly he’d hurt her. How completely she’d lost herself with their affair.
But she’d be a fool to give him that kind of power over her. She wouldn’t do it. He would never, for as long as they lived, know how easily he could hurt her.
“It was sex,” she snapped. “Get over it, Xavier.”
He was silent, regarding her as though she were an alien.
“Don’t you stand there judging me,” she bit out. “You were the one who was engaged. You were the one who got married months later.”
“When were we together?” He demanded, moving closer towards her. She stepped back and then turned, walking away from him. He followed.
“I was in London right before the accident. And three months prior to that. You said ‘four years ago’, so it must have been around the time I had the crash?”
She swallowed, the past all so close. She scooped up her dress and tried to step into it, but her legs were wobbly and her eyes were blurred by the threat of tears she was too proud to let fall.
“Does it matter?” She demanded.
“Yes. To me it matters very much.”
