Back in London, I could just call someone and have the most expensive food I could think of brought right to my door on a silver platter. Out here, I was lucky to find a place that offered a decent slice of pizza. Très Coûteux was the most expensive restaurant I could find in a fifty mile radius. It would have to do…

From the look of the place—and the gaudy name they’d chosen—they styled themselves like some upscale French eatery like you’d find in Paris.

Assuming you’d only seen Paris on television.

Their décor, their ambience—all of it was a comical mimicry of what Americans thought a French restaurant looked like right down to the pompous maître d’ with his pencil-thin mustache. I could barely contain my amusement, and it raised my spirits. I only hoped Elizabeth was in a pleasant mood as well.

An odd procession of feelings passed over me as I glimpsed the car service I’d hired to bring Elizabeth to the restaurant round the bend. From that bundle of nervous energy came a kind of hopefulness. Despite how angry she’d been, I hoped that Elizabeth and I could come to have at least a civil relationship, if not a friendly one.

Finally, fear and regret joined the party upstairs. Fear that I’d already mucked things up too much to repair them. Fear that everything I thought about myself—that I couldn’t be loved, that I wasn’t worthy—would be confirmed. Regret that we hadn’t met under better circumstances, that I hadn’t even gotten to know Elizabeth before everything around us had gone to shit.

As the car pulled up to the curb, I stepped forward to open the door and help my “wife” out of the car.

“Très Coûteux?!” she whispered, half in awe, half in what seemed like agitation. “You tell me we’re going to dinner and bring me to the nicest restaurant around? I’m wearing blue jeans!”

Indeed, she was—and a very nice pair. They did marvelous things for her figure, hugging her hips and her slim thighs. Her blouse was rather nice too, not too dressy but not a t-shirt either, and she had her makeup and hair done, those pretty eyes of hers rimmed with winged liner that made them look even wider than they were. Her hair was pulled back from her face, the silken waves of it styled into a beautiful and complex fishtail braid.

“So am I,” I assured her, glancing down at my rather informal attire. “I don’t think that they’re going to mind.”

She looked unconvinced as she glanced through the windows at the front of the restaurant. “I’m so embarrassed. If I’d known, I would’ve…” She trailed off there, leaving me to wonder where that sentence could have gone. She’d have what? Dressed up for the occasion? Oh, the thought of those sweet curves in a dress made my knees weak. I almost missed it when she asked, “What if they don’t let us in?”

“Perish the thought. We’ve got a reservation,” I told her, taking her by the hand and gently leading her into the restaurant. “Just let me do all the talking.”

The moment we entered, I had to suppress a gag. Playing over the speakers was the exact same music you hear whenever an establishing shot of Paris shows up in a god-awful rom-com, along with a montage of mimes and the Eiffel tower. I almost wanted to walk back out and find somewhere a little more down-to-Earth.

“Pardonne-moi, m’sieur, but we have a strict—” the maître d’ began.

I shoved a hundred-dollar bill into his hand with a smile. “Bastille,” I said, ignoring whatever indignant noise that was coming from beneath that moustache of his. “Party of two.”

I could have sworn that that poor bastard was going to try to argue with me—right up until a manager rushed out and pushed him aside.

“Right this way, Mr. Bastille,” the much portlier man said, waving us toward a corner booth that seemed perfectly secluded—or what passed for secluded, in a place like this. He leaned into me a little closer than I’d have liked and added, conspiratorially, “My daughter is a huge fan.”

“Is she?” I beamed at him, hoping my enthusiasm would dissuade any further closeness. “That’s brilliant! Does she want an autograph?”

“That would be wonderful, Mr. Bastille,” the manager said, practically falling over himself to get us seated. “Please, have a seat and I’ll have a waiter with you in just a moment. And I’ll get you something to sign…”

“Take your time,” I said, smiling as he tottered off.

Elizabeth, however, didn’t seem nearly as pleased as I would have thought she’d be. As she sat down in the booth, she began chewing on her lip, her brows furrowed in a way that created cute little divots above her nosebridge.

“Something wrong, love?” I asked, as I sat down opposite her. I quickly ran back through everything I’d done since we came here, and for the life of me, I couldn’t pick out a single thing that might be considered wrong. Well, except for the faux-pas on the dress code.

“I don’t…” She heaved a frustrated sigh and then forced a smile, shrugging as she looked around. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just not used to being treated like this.”

“Like what?” I asked, following her gaze as it roamed. I thought women liked places like this. Then again, my knowledge of legitimate dates involved less of my own experience, more of secondhand teachings. Either I’d heard stories from some of my mates, or I’d seen on TV that this was supposed to be how it goes. But maybe something had gotten a bit lost in translation along the way.

“Fancy restaurants? Cars picking me up?” She shook her head. “It’s just not how people do things here. Or at least, it’s not something that’s ever been done for me.”

“I’m not trying to show off. I just thought we could get a bit more privacy here so we could talk. You didn’t ask to get tangled up in this mess, and I want to make things right.”

“It’s not just your fault,” she said quietly. “It takes two to tango…”

After the waiter came by with water and to take our drink orders I said softly to her, “Do you remember anything about that night? Anything at all?”

She gave another little shrug and ran a finger around the rim of her water glass. “I remember a few things…”

I cocked a brow at her. “How much?”

Elizabeth looked at me then. God, were her eyes striking. “Enough to know that I wanted to make the biggest mistake of my life…”

Ducking my head sheepishly, I said, “Ah. Well at least there’s that.”

“Liz…” I started. Then I looked up at her with a wince. “Is ‘Liz’ all right, love? I know no ‘Lizzie,’ but…”

“Liz is fine,” she said, and even afforded me a little smile. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

Carding my fingers through my hair, I collected myself and then continued. “I know I’m not the kind of man you’d have chosen for this, but we can make the best of this situation. I think you deserve that much from me.”

Liz considered me carefully. “So is that what dinner is all bout?” she asked, leaning back in her seat slightly, her gaze pensive. “Are you still trying to get me to go along with your manager’s little game?”

I sighed, rubbing my face in frustration.

“Tessa is a royal bitch, but like it or not, this is something that needs to be handled so neither of us get thrown under the bus. We can’t change the circumstances that brought us here. I know you’ve seen the tabloids and the news. They think you’re some kind of gold-digger who tricked me into marriage. They don’t think I’m the kind of guy who settles down without some fucked up ulterior motive.”

“And they think you’re some filthy British rockstar who knocked up a slutty bimbo,” she replied coldly. “Is it so hard to believe maybe I just wanted to let loose for once in my life? You were supposed to stay in Las Vegas damnit! Isn’t that how it works?”

She flattened her lips into a thin line and bowed her head, blinking rapidly. I grabbed her hand and gave it a little squeeze. That’s when the lyrics to one of my songs came to mind.

“I confess, I’m a mess

Saying ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t clean it up

You’re like chess in a dress—

I don’t know the moves, and I’m completely fucked…”

Liz laughed a little as I quietly sang, looking up at me through her lashes. I grinned and took her other hand in mine as well. Her laugh was the perfect complement to my song.

“Everything’s gonna be all right. You’ll see. We’ll make this work.”

“And you think it’s going to be that easy? Just play nice and everything is lollipops and gumdrops?” she asked.

“I’m running up a tab, hoping and dreaming

You’ll burn just like whiskey when you finally ask me,

‘Why don’t you just drop dead?’ ”

It was one of the songs that Tessa had convinced me to write way back when. She’d wanted pathos and heartache, the story of a man pining after a relationship gone wrong.

“What’s that one called?” she asked, and now her voice sounded just a little steadier than it had before.

“Ah.” I rubbed my thumbs over her knuckles. “That’d be the classic hit, If I Had Three Wishes I’d Waste Two On You and One On the Booze.”

Liz laughed again, surreptitiously wiping at her eyes. “What’s the deal with the long name?”

“It’s a matter of artistic integrity,” I answered. “Can’t be a real pop-punk-emo-rock-star without it.”

For the first time, the silence that fell over Liz and I was a comfortable one, broken only by her occasional sniffle. She still hadn’t let go of my hand, and I’d be damned if I was going to make her. It felt good to comfort her, to affect some change in her life that wasn’t horrific. For the first time, I felt like I was actually helping.

“I suppose you’re about to have some more material,” she said. “What kind of run-on title do you give to a song about a marriage and a pregnancy born from a drunken stupor?”

“I’ll have to think on that one,” I said with faux pensivity. I eyed her. “Does that mean that you’ll give this a try?”

“For now,” Liz agreed at length, and after another moment of silence.

“For now,” I nodded back, smiling as food finally arrived at our table.

“So what do we do next?” she asked quietly.

“I think we eat, and see where things go. No pressure, no expectations. For now it’s a sham marriage, but maybe it doesn’t have to stay that way.”

I leaned back and away from the table, but still she did not take her hand from mine. This was progress, even if it meant I had to eat with my left hand. It wasn’t long before I noticed a quick flash or two coming from one of the windows. They’d caught us holding hands, and I already knew that photo would be all over the damn news tomorrow. It really couldn’t have gone better if I’d planned it.

And yet I felt a little sad that the paparazzi had finally arrived. This moment should have been mine and Liz’s alone. To her credit, she put on a smile and pretended not to notice. That was good, because every time she smiled I wasn’t sure when I was going to see that expression again.

“You know, this is almost nice.”

“Did you expect anything less? You don’t seem like the kind of girl who’d marry an asshole,” I replied, laughing.

Swallowing one last bite, Liz lifted her eyes again to settle her gaze on my face. I held her stare. “Maybe I was being a little crazy, but I think I saw the actual Julian Bastille the night we met. And he’s a man I think I could like… Tequila did the rest.”

I let out a breath. Like me? Well, that was a start, even disregarding the tequila. Women threw themselves at me and men wanted to be me, but I couldn’t exactly count them as friends… or more than friends…

“I just wish I could remember more about the honeymoon suite,” she said, giving me a little smile.

“I must have done something right, or we wouldn’t be in this little predicament…”

“Maybe you did,” Liz replied. “God, this whole situation is just so… fucked. I slept with the hottest guy in Britain and all I have to show for it is a hangover, a Vegas wedding, and a baby. I mean, I’ve just pissed off an entire island of women, and I don’t even get to brag about what it was like.”

A waiter closed the blinds on yet another window as Liz finished off the food on her plate, blocking us from view from the growing crowd outside.

“Do you want to find out?”

“Do I want to find out what?” she replied, laughing nervously.

“What it was like?” I answered slowly, the words rolling off almost like a lyric to a new song.

* * *

The ride back to my hotel room took way too fucking long, and the elevator ride seemed even slower. We’d stayed close the whole way, the building tension between us almost unbearable. It was everything I could do not to pin her up against the wall of this elevator and fuck her senseless.

“So how much do you remember?” I finally asked her as the doors slipped open, walking her down the hall toward my room.

“More than you, I think. But I don’t know if you were any good…”

“You could always make something up and spare me my dignity,” I offered. “I take great care in being the kind of lay you can at least reflect upon with some modicum of pride.”

Liz looked me up and down as I swiped the hotel card and swept her up off the floor to carry her into the room. I got the impression she was sizing me up. I puffed out my chest and she laughed as I closed the door behind us and tossed her onto the king sized bed.

“I might have had too much tequila, but I’m pretty sure not all of the rumors are true.”

“Well, I suppose that depends, doesn’t it?” I asked thoughtfully, joining her on the bed and leaning back on my elbows.

She turned her head over her shoulder to look at me. “On what?”

“On just what they say.”

Again, she rolled her eyes. “What they say borders on the absurd. I’m sure I’d have remembered if that stuff was true.”

“Oh?” I peaked my brows. “Do they say I’ve got a foot-long and an insatiable lust for post-coital cuddling with a pint of brownie ice cream? If so, then I’m afraid that you’ll be disappointed on one of those fronts.”

Her eyes sparkled with a kind of mischief I hadn’t seen in her before. “So you’re not a cuddler, then?”

I grinned. “Lactose intolerant, love. I can cuddle for days… Come on. Tell me what they say about me.” Playfully, I smacked my knee into hers. “Stroke my ego a bit, after how thoroughly you demolished it the other day.”

“Well…” Liz said, eyes sliding skyward as she thought. “They say you’ve got a reputation for… stamina. Pretty sure I remember that being true.”

I grinned even wider. “What else?”

“And I know that you’ve got quite the tongue,” she said, her skin blushing red.

“Is that it?”

“No.” She didn’t continue.

I bumped my knee into hers again. “Well?”

“Well… maybe you haven’t got a ‘foot-long,’ but…” She actually did the air quotes, and it made me laugh. “I remember you’re blessed… Maybe…”

I howled. “Blessed! Is that the word for it?”

Liz threw up her hands. “What did you want me to say? ‘Well-hung’?”

“Only if you think it’s true.”

“Like so much else about that night, I don’t know. Maybe my own drunken brain was exaggerating. If it were so big, wouldn’t I remember it a bit better?”

“You were as hammered as I was! At any rate, how do I know you weren’t awful and I was the amazing one?”

“Oh please. You wanted in my pants so bad you married me! And besides, if you were as good as all that, I would have remembered.”

“And by your own logic, if you were as good as all that, I would remember.”

Liz regarded me for a moment, lips pursed. After a time, she conceded the point with a muttered, “Touché.”

Oh, I liked this side of her. As irksome as it was, it was also exciting.

“I guess there’s only one way to settle this,” I ventured. I wasn’t sure if I was really hitting on her, or just trying to get a rise out of her again. I suspected it might be a bit of both. As expected, she laughed, giving me a bit of a push.

“Is that how it is? You expect me to hop into bed with you just like that?”

“You did follow me home… What’s the harm in having another go?”

She arched a brow at me.

“I’m your husband,” I reminded her. That gave her pause, one I took a bit more pleasure than intended in. “That’s who I am—the man you decided you wanted so damn badly that you just had to tie me down. Besides, don’t pretend you haven’t been thinking about this ever since you ran out on me that morning…”

Liz shook her head at me. Her smile had softened a little. “You’re the worst,” she teased. And that was the thing—I could tell it was a tease this time. She didn’t actually mean it. And that meant the world.

“I could be,” I admitted, completely subverting the intention of what she’d said. “But there’s only one way to find out.”

Tentatively, instead of pushing her with my leg this time, I laid mine against hers. I felt her tense, but she didn’t move away. She merely looked down, a grin on her face as she said, “This is a terrible idea. You know that, right?”

“Those are the best kinds,” I countered, grazing my thigh past hers. She tensed again, but I swore she moved against me a little, pressing nearer. I felt like a schoolboy all over again, butterflies in my stomach and jitters in my hands. “You always end up with the most interesting stories afterwards.”

“We tried this once,” she protested weakly. “It didn’t exactly work out.”

“You don’t know that, and neither do I. Didn’t you say you wished you could remember?”

“I…” she bit her lip. “Well, yes, but…”

“So…” I leaned a bit closer to her, slowly allowing my gaze to slip from her eyes to her mouth. “Why don’t you let me have a go at jogging that memory of yours?”

Liz swallowed hard. I could see the flutter of her pulse in her neck and watched as it quickened. Lifting my hand, I brought my fingertips to her cheek and softly traced from the hollow of her cheek to just under her jaw. Her pupils dilated and a sharp intake of breath followed as I brushed my palm down over her collar bone.

“Do you remember anything?” I asked her.

Slowly, she shook her head. “No. Not yet…”

One after the other, I let loose the buttons of her blouse. Her stomach trembled when I caressed a trail up to her breasts with my knuckles. “Now?”

Liz made a small noise I took to be an answer in the negative. Smirking, I bowed my head and pressed my lips to the dip in her throat, eliciting another sound. I parted my lips, the tip of my tongue laying flat against her skin to savor the taste of her.

She squirmed. “That feels…”

“Familiar?” I asked, kissing her sternum now, just above the twin swells of her breasts.

Liz’s pulse quickened again. “No. It feels… good.” When I nipped at the top of one breast, she gasped. “So good…”

Taking her ribs in my hands, I laid her on her back upon the bed, my affections drawing a line that led down past her navel. The temperature of her flesh flared beneath my ministrations, burning my mouth. She lifted her knees to make room for my body between them and I groaned at her acquiescence, hardening against the mattress.

It was hard to believe there was a life inside her right this moment, just a few inches below where I was kissing her. When she arched for me, I looked up to see she’d tossed her head back, pretty hair fanning over the pillow behind her. I smirked. Perhaps there was one way in which I could tell Liz was pregnant—she certainly did have a glow about her.

“You’re not playing fair,” she whined, looking down at me as I began to unzip her jeans. I tugged them down from her hips, dragging my nails very lightly over the backs of her knees in the process, then threw the offending denim to the floor.

“All’s fair in love and war,” I told her, lowering myself even further to feather my attentions along the center seam of her panties. When I reached the expanse of cloth shielding her slit from me, I took a nice, deep breath of her and blew it back out across the dampness there. Liz moaned.

“Oh, Jesus.” The sheen of her lust had reached her inner thighs, glistening in the dim light of the room. I chuckled low, letting the vibrations of it tease her.

“Remember anything yet, love?”

Liz bit her lip and looked down at me, threading her fingers through my hair. I leaned into her touch, savoring the tingling sting of her nails in my scalp. “No, goddamn you.”

I laughed again, lightly pulling aside her panties to slip my fingers inside them. With all the lightness I could muster, I brought my finger down from the apex of her cleft to the bottom of it, testing her center. I found her hot and soaking. “Relax. It’s no fun unless you actually let go a little bit.”

“Easy for you to say,” she breathed, moaning as I teased open her inner folds. “You’re not worried about the consequences.”

For just a moment, I stopped touching her and looked up the line of her body, raising my brows. “Just what is there to lose, love? Worried I’ll get you more pregnant than you already are? I know I’m quite the virile male, but I don’t think I’m that virile.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sakes,” Liz groaned. “Shut up, Julian.” And then she grabbed the back of my head, pushing my face between her thighs.

I offered no complaints. This was exactly where I wanted to be. Though I was a bit surprised by her forwardness. I wasn’t sure she’d had it in her, until now.

Easily I found her clit, pushing her panties all the way to the side so I could flick my tongue against it in earnest. Liz arched, toes curling as I plundered the most sensitive parts of her, coaxing from between her lips the rasping moans I’d been looking for. Wantonly, she bucked against my mouth, and I hummed with appreciation for the flavor of her desire. Seemed as though once Liz got going, she transformed into quite the wildcat. Spreading her wider with my fingers, I doubled down on the pleasure I applied to her sweet little bundle of nerves.

“That feels so good,” she said, running her tongue over her lips. “I remember this…”

“And you had your doubts,” I murmured, withdrawing from her soaked pussy and undressing myself in short order. Liz’s eyes went right to my tattoos, admiring them in a way I hadn’t really experienced before. There was a sort of reverence in her gaze, a real appreciation for the art rather than just a pretty young thing getting visual confirmation she was about to have her bad boy fantasy fulfilled. She reached out, stroking along the outside edge of my abs where the gigantic koi curved toward my hip.

Using her feet, she slid my boxers down. My dick throbbed eagerly as the fabric slid over it, and Liz gasped when she saw it.

“You… you have a piercing?”

I laughed at the wide-eyed look she was giving me. “I guess you really don’t remember, huh?”

She blushed fiercely. “If I said ‘yes,’ would you still finish trying to remind me?”

As I removed my boxers completely, I worked next on getting Liz’s panties onto the floor. “Hmm. I suppose I could.”

Sitting partway up, she reached for me, one bra strap falling down her shoulder as she did. “Then I remember a few things, I think. Like this…” And she oh-so-lightly ran her fingertips from the base of my shaft to just below the tip, ghosting her touch across the stainless steel ring there in a way that made my cock throb in anticipation.

“Oh, hell,” I groaned, hissing in a gulp of air through my teeth. “Now who’s not being fair?”

“I thought you said all was fair in love and war?” she replied, making the same motion with much the same result. The low, aching pulse she inspired was so intense it resonated in my balls. I sank my teeth into my lower lip as I ranged over her, using one hand to pull the cups of her bra down and expose her perfect tits.

“It is,” I told her, “but only when I have the advantage.” She wrapped her fingers around me completely, stroking my length, and I bowed my head to take one of her nipples between my teeth and gingerly pull.

I thought perhaps I was starting to remember, too—that being so intimate with Liz again had finally activated my sensory recall. Vague images of her fingers twined with mine, her ankles locked high around my back, and those gorgeous breasts heaving as I thrust into her flashed through my mind’s eye. The sound of her breathless panting echoed in my head. I knew with absolute certainty that we’d been here before.

That made this experience entirely new to me, but in a different way. I wasn’t the sort of man who slept with a girl more than once. It just seemed easier for everyone that way—we parted ways with smiles on our faces, not nursing broken hearts. Liz would be the first woman in many, many years I’d taken pleasure in ravishing a second time. Then again, she was the first woman in many, many years I actually wanted to.

“What’s wrong?” she asked me as I hovered above her, hesitating. I raised my gaze to meet hers and found a heady mix of both lust and concern there. “Julian?”

I shook my head, putting on a smile for her. “Not a damn thing, love. You’re just bloody perfect. That’s all.”

And that was a little intimidating—the idea that a woman like Liz wanted to fuck a man like me. That twice now, I’d talked her into bed when she should have been with someone who wasn’t such a colossal fuck-up. Oh, how I wanted her—how that brilliant light inside her appealed to me—but putting my hands on her divine curves reminded me of how filthy I was.

Still, I wasn’t about to disappoint. And so I rose to the occasion.

I kissed her, and time stopped. With some guidance from her hand, I’d positioned myself at her entrance and could feel each shiver she gave in prolonged fashion, my world slowed by virtue of the solace I found against her lips. For a moment, there was simply nothing that existed outside of her save for me. She, and the sensation of breaching her, became my entire universe.

Her lips were scorching upon mine, heated through by the passion and elation coursing through us in equal measure. It took me several moments of breathless wonder to realize I’d slid into her all the way to the hilt, that I’d left no quarter within her for anything else but my cock. As I drew away, Liz looked up at me with her bruised and bitten mouth slightly agape, like she’d never been so full before. Grasping her hands and fitting her fingers through mine in hopes she would remember, I angled my hips and drew a steep breath as I plunged again, my spine tingling with a craven shudder.

“Julian,” she whispered, rolling her hips to meet mine. The rendezvous wrested a snarl from deep in my throat. “Slow… slow…”

I nodded to her. Usually, that was not a word in my vocabulary—it wasn’t that the act was ever quick, per se, but it was never gentle. It was always a flurry of motion, a locomotive churning. Fucking, not making love. Just sticking my dick in something over and over until we were both satisfied enough to call it quits.

Once again, things with Liz were going different. For so long, every day of my life had seemed exactly the same. I grunted and swallowed the unbidden lump of emotion in my throat as I obeyed her command, rocking into her in a slow, methodical rhythm, ensuring neither of us lost even the slightest sensation to the blur of somatic bliss a less patient pace wrought.

She clutched me to her, fingers leaving hot, stinging trails down my back. We pressed out foreheads together and I inhaled each one of Liz’s sighs, murmuring a few of my own against her lips as her cries steadily became more frenetic. Those ankles locked behind my back just as they had the first time I’d taken her, ensuring I stayed in place. No longer was it a mystery how she’d gotten pregnant with this as her strategy. I smirked.

“Get your fingers in the gears, love,” I encouraged her, taking her earlobe between my teeth and lightly tugging. “I want to feel you coming around me. I need to… ah…” Her inner muscles tightened in response to my love bite, and I just barely held it together. “I need to feel it when you lose control.”

Liz slid her hand down her body, and I watched as her fingers came to settle at the place of our joining. The way she squirmed on me was heavenly, and those hungry motions only became more pronounced as the friction of her touch did its work. With her head tipped back like this, hair spilling around her, she looked like a goddamn angel. I kissed each of her closed eyelids and then her forehead, pushing forward onto my knees until her hips were off the mattress.

At this angle, I had unfettered access to her fathoms. Though evidently, our first time had been bareback as well, I couldn’t remember the sensation of it—so I basked in it now, thinking of how, before Liz, there’d been no one else I’d been inside without a barrier. Skin-on-skin felt amazing, and not only in a physical sense. There was a kind of closeness involved that transcended the meeting of our bodies and, in some ways, felt more like a meeting of our souls.

I pushed one of her legs back, grasping the back of her knee, and then kissed her calf as I sought to know her even deeper than before. Liz wailed in the most glorious way, keening for me as if nothing in her life had ever felt better. I knew for me it hadn’t. This was the pinnacle of all the pleasure I’d experienced. Any other woman in my life simply couldn’t compare. There was no competition to be won—Liz had taken the prize, and the effortless way she did it made me feel like she wasn’t even playing the same game as everyone else.

“Don’t stop,” she begged of me, and I had to bite my lip to keep myself from disappointing her in that regard. The husky tremble of her voice nearly drove me over the edge each time it sounded. I was just barely hanging on. “Please, Julian. I’m so close…”

I pushed her hand away abruptly, eliciting a short, almost indignant cry. But when I pressed my thumb into her clit a moment later, I heard no more complaints. Looking down at her stretched beneath me, giving me so much for so little in return, it reminded me that I needed to take responsibility for something. And I could start with taking responsibility for Liz’s orgasm.

It didn’t take long to send her into a fit of ecstasy. I continued to abrade her bundle of nerves with my thumb, hissing through my teeth as Liz thrashed and bared her throat to me. The arc of her body was so perfect, so graceful, and the way she gripped the pillows until her knuckles whitened was just too much to bear. I felt a tell-tale pulse rush through me, and a moment later, the rippling clench of her pussy took me over the edge and brought all that rapture into a single point of focus. I spilled into her on the back of a startled groan, the bucking of my hips taking on an erratic cadence as the most intense climax of my life overtook me.

There was a certain clarity in the spasming of my muscles, a certain sense of knowing. And in those scant few moments I could hang on to it, I knew this: whatever this had started out as between me and Liz, it was turning into something altogether different. There was a bond stronger than political necessity well on its way to wrapping itself around our hearts. Or at least, on my end it was. But the look in her eyes just now, the warmth with which she beheld me… I wanted to believe that meant something more than just a comfort lay. I wanted to believe it was the start of something genuine, something real.

Between the orgasm and the revelation, I found myself dizzy. Very gently, I let myself fall forward onto my hands on top of her, holding myself inside just a moment longer so I could feel the fading resonance of our shared bliss. I kissed her lips, once, twice, and then again for good measure. I didn’t even care if I could breathe, when my mouth was on hers. All that mattered was that I could feel her. Nothing else struck me as being quite as important to my continued survival.

Jesus, I thought to myself in the afterglow, allowing myself a small laugh as she smiled against my lips. If she fucked me like this the first go around, then no wonder I bloody well married her…