My sleepy brain is telling me not to move, though I’m not sure why. I’m aware that I’m curled around Ava’s body, my front to her back, snug and tight. And I’m aware that I slept the best I have in over a week. I’m also aware of something growing between my groin and her arse. That’s why I shouldn’t move. But Ava doesn’t get the warning. Her body starts to stretch, and she groans. Oh, shit. My muscles lock, my body freezes, and I hold my breath as she grinds her arse into me, causing all kinds of chaos in my cock and my head. Good God, what kind of torture is this?
Then she suddenly stills, my erection wedged between her thighs, my teeth grinding as I fight my way through the torturous sensitivity. ‘Oh . . .’ she breathes, shimmying a little, as if I’m not in enough fucking pain.
‘Don’t move, Ava,’ I warn. I’m so fucking hard, it could break off. ‘Please.’
‘Sorry.’
‘So you should be.’ I need to get out of this bed before the radar on my cock wins and finds its target. Half of me wants it to. Actually, the best part of me wants it to. I could fuck her memory back. I mentally slap myself for my unreasonable thought. But, then again, my lack of reason is one of the things Ava loves about me . . . right? Jesus, Jesse, sort your shit out.
Quiet falls, and she waits patiently while I focus on talking down my wayward dick. Five minutes later, I’m still iron. ‘It’s no good,’ I finally admit. My cock has and always will have a mind of its own where my wife is concerned. ‘It won’t go down.’ I relax and squeeze Ava closer, hoping that restricting the rampant little fucker might help.
‘It’s okay,’ Ava says, surprising me a little.
It is? What, my dick hard, or my dick where it is? Just a little nudge to the left and I’ll be inside her. Would that be okay? Shit, change the subject quickly. ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘No. Something wasn’t . . .’ She fades off, stilling. ‘Right.’
‘This. You didn’t have this.’ I squeeze her tight, and she nods, sighing and settling again.
‘This is nice.’
‘It would be better if you were naked,’ I say without thought, wondering just how much I want to physically hurt myself.
‘Really?’ She sounds truly surprised by that, and I frown at the back of her head. ‘Because I had a very good look at my body in the mirror last night, and, frankly, it isn’t pretty.’
My hard-on shrivels to nothing in a second as I stare incredulously at her hair.
‘Stretch marks,’ she grumbles on. ‘Saggy boobs, and what the hell happened to my waistline?’
Is she playing some kind of cruel game? ‘Take that back,’ I all but growl in her hair. I won’t have her speaking such bullshit. ‘Turn over.’ I bully her body over until she’s facing me, a little alarmed. ‘Let’s get one thing straight, lady.’ I wave an accusing finger up and down her reclined body. ‘All this here is mine, and I love it. Your boobs are perfect.’ I allow myself a brief glimpse at the mounds beneath her lace negligee, my mouth watering for a taste. ‘Your waistline is perfect, and the stretch marks you speak of make me smile every day. They’re part of you, a part of us. I love them, almost as much as I love your boobs, and I love your boobs a lot. A real lot. And, for the record, so do you.’
‘I do?’
‘Yes, you do.’ I nod sharply. I’m immoral. I don’t care. ‘You love them because I love them. So are we done?’
‘I guess so.’ Her eyes are wide, taken aback, though I sense some satisfaction somewhere inside her.
Her gaze drops down to my stomach, her teeth sinking into her lip and biting down. ‘What happened?’ she asks, tracing a continuous line over my stomach, brushing over both scars.
I close my eyes and follow my instinct, confirming what she thinks she knows. ‘I had a motorcycle accident years ago.’ I hate myself for not telling her everything, though I’m quick to reassure myself that it’s for the best. That shit could break her right now. I take her hand away from my stomach and move her fingers to my lips, kissing them sweetly. I haven’t lost my master ability to distract my wife. Her eyes sparkle and she blinks rapidly. ‘Turn over,’ I order gently.
She obeys without a second of hesitation, spinning over as I grab my phone and put the Sonos on, letting the tracks shuffle. She wriggles back into my body, and my cock springs to life again just like that. And quiet falls. And I think about the spark of fire that I saw in her eyes before she turned away from me. And like an omen or something, a song that has been with us through good times and bad drifts from the speakers. Massive Attack’s ‘Angel’. I stiffen, wondering if it’ll jolt anything in her.
‘Jesse?’ she says quietly, and I hum my acknowledgment, holding my breath in anticipation. But she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she shuffles over again and stares me straight in the eyes. And I see her. My wife. The hunger for me that she can never keep at bay. The urge to tackle me and ravage me. The visibly potent desire that I’m faced with daily, from the moment she wakes to the moment she falls asleep in my arms. It’s all staring back at me right now, and for the first time in our history together, I’m reluctant to give her what she clearly wants. What I need.
‘What?’ I whisper, brushing a lock of stray hair from her face as the music builds and takes over.
Without a word, she pushes me to my back and straddles my stomach. I swallow down some restraint when her bare arse meets my skin, the heat of her core against my flesh. She takes the bottom of her lace nightgown and pulls it up her body.
‘Ava, what are you doing?’ I ask, despite desperately wanting her to do it. Her boobs spring free, heavy and swollen, and I swallow again.
‘I don’t know.’ She tosses it aside and lowers her torso to mine, taking my cheeks. ‘But everything is telling me to do it.’
‘Are you sure?’ Never have those words come from my mouth. Not ever. And my cock is seriously throbbing in protest at my reluctance.
Her answer is a kiss. A gentle kiss on the corner of my mouth. It’s light and chaste, but the most consuming imaginable. My hands move to her back and skate across her smooth skin, my eyes closing in bliss. Let her be. Let her take the lead and dictate our reunion.
Relaxing into the mattress, I open my mouth when she licks the seam of my lips, her tongue soft and searching. Oh God, this is heaven. Holding back is a killer. Letting her control the pace is a battle like no other. Her bottom lifts from my stomach, and my cock springs up, skimming the heat between her legs. I jump. She jumps. I moan around our kiss, and she swallows it on a sigh. Her mouth seduces mine lazily as she lowers a fraction onto my weeping, eager cock. And like she was made just for me, which she was, she cushions me perfectly, gliding down my shaft with ease.
‘Oh God,’ she breathes, and I smile around her lips, thrown into bliss.
The track, our track, continues to play, building to the crescendo. ‘No, baby. That’s me.’
She jerks and flies off my body, making me hiss from the sudden, unexpected withdrawal. ‘Fuck!’ I cup myself, gritting my teeth, and find her sitting on the edge of the bed staring at the wall. What’s happened? Didn’t it feel right? ‘Ava, what’s wrong, baby?’
I quickly shuffle to the edge of the bed and wrap an arm around her body, instantly getting a hint of her shaking form. She’s trembling. ‘Ava, talk to me, please.’
She shakes her head, looking up at me with eyes that are disturbed. ‘I had a flashback.’
I try not to recoil. Is that good? ‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know.’ She looks at the carpet, her fingers twiddling in her lap. ‘It happened so quickly. Oh my God, please turn this music off.’ She looks around the room, as if searching for the stereo. ‘I can’t bear it.’ Her hands cover her ears, and my damn heart splits.
I quickly find my phone and shut it off.
‘Rowing boats,’ she mumbles, her forehead heavy. ‘That track. Your words. I saw rowing boats.’
‘Rowing boats?’
‘Yes.’ She gets up and starts pacing the room, naked as can be, though she’s too preoccupied to notice, or maybe give a toss. ‘Why the hell would I be seeing rowing boats?’
It clicks, falls into place. I get up and take her hand, leading her to our own bedroom. ‘This is why.’ I open the bedside table drawer and pull something out, handing it to her. She glances down at the book. ‘Giuseppe Cavalli,’ I tell her. ‘You had one of his pieces hung in the master suite of my penthouse at Lusso.’ I sit next to her and open the book to the page where the photograph is, eager for her to see, hoping it’ll spike more than a flashback. ‘There.’ I point to the picture. ‘The original is hanging in our dining room. He was the master of light. You told me all about him when you gave me a guided tour of my new apartment. It was the first time we . . . well, made love.’
‘We did?’
‘Yes.’ I frown. Haven’t I told her this already? ‘In the bathroom at Lusso on launch night. I bought you this book.’ I flick to the back where the note still sits. ‘With this.’
Ava pulls out the piece of paper and reads it aloud. ‘“You’re like a book I can’t put down. I need to know more.”’
‘Do you remember, baby?’ I ask, watching her scan the words, hoping and praying she finds something to match the flashback.
Her eyes clench shut, as if she’s desperately searching for any recollection. And I know she is. But when she sags and a tear falls, splashing the paper in her hand, I know she hasn’t. ‘It was so vivid.’ She looks at me. ‘So real. I felt someone there with me, looking at the boats. It was you. I couldn’t see you, but I felt you. Like I’m feeling you since I woke up after the accident. I feel you all the time, even when we’re not touching. Even when you’re not in the room.’
I smile sadly and pull her onto my lap. ‘Time, baby. Give it time.’ While I’m reassuring her, I’m working hard to reassure myself. That flashback must have been fucking powerful to launch her off my body like that. Nothing can ever distract her from me, especially when I’m inside her. Facing the fact that there’s a force more powerful than me in my wife’s life right now is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to contend with. Because, of all the things in this world that can make her better, I just know I am her strongest chance.