I won’t. I won’t let her go.
I turn her and back her up against the mattress. Her hands slide under my shirt, and it’s not like the touch of other women. It doesn’t feel the same as those women, the many women, too many women, I’ve buried my guilt and loss inside, to no end in sight, no relief to be found. This is Ivy and it makes no difference that she is not in the same form she once was. Her touch, the taste of her—it’s a rush of guilt, passion, and hunger that is downright combusting inside of me, and I can feel the way it feeds the same in her.
She shoves my shirt upward and I tug it over my head, and before it hits the ground, we are all over each other. My hands are now under her shirt, shoving it upward. It’s off in an instant, and so is her bra and my hand is on her breast, fingers on her nipple.
She moans again, and it’s raw and needy. And I’m hot and hard, and way beyond any chance of turning back. All barriers are gone and my eyes devour her pretty pink nipples, her creamy white skin, her perfect body, but I’m not about lingering and lavishing in the moment. I’m far too on the edge, my gums tingling, even as I claim her mouth again.
One minute I’m kissing her and she’s kissing me, the next I’ve finished undressing us both, and we are naked, and on the bed, my weight over hers, and I can’t slow down. My cock slides along her sex, my hands under her sweet little backside and I bury myself deep inside her, but once I’m there, I have a flashback to another moment like this one.
She’d stared up at me with eyes filled with desire and love, the way she’s looking at me now, even if she doesn’t remember the love we’d shared then, and she’d said, “I want a son who looks like you,” but I can’t give her that now. I can’t ever have a child with Ivy. With anyone.
Anger burns in me at what has been taken from us, and I draw in a breath, cupping her face and whisper, “I’m sorry, Ivy.”
Her fingers tangle in my hair and she says, “Don’t be sorry. Just be with me, right now, right here. I don’t know what this is, but I know I need you right now. Please.”
She has no idea how many ways I want to make her say please, but I won’t. Not tonight. She has enough to fear without fearing just how primal my urges run. I’m not the same as I was. I can’t change that, not even if I tried. I kiss her hard and deep, and thrust into her, and I can’t control the way my gums tingle, but I fight it. I fight biting her.
She gasps again and gives a yelp. I pull back to find blood on her lips, her blood from my teeth. She captures a drop with her finger and looks at it and then me, a question in her eyes. She wants to know what I am. I catch her hand and my eyes meet hers as I lick the blood off her finger.
And I wait for her reaction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Eli
Her lashes lower, and it isn’t fear that I see on her face. It’s arousal. While I don’t understand it or this, it speaks to every part of me as a man and a husband. And I am her husband. I have always been her husband. In that moment, I flashback again to a memory of her, of us, in the past, and I bury myself inside her, my cheek to her cheek, pumping into her, kissing her. Losing myself in her. The past fades into the present and we’re there again, living that moment, man and woman, not monster and woman, cheek to cheek, body to body. I savor her touch, her body, her taste, and I don’t want there to be an end because when it does come, there will be questions.
I owe her answers. For now, there is just us, and I’m kissing her and fucking her and she’s just as ravenous as I am. But not as hungry. She doesn’t know the hunger I feel, she doesn’t know how it controls me. I am lost in Ivy, the woman I have always loved, in her moans and soft touches, and she has become the only piece of heaven I have left.
“Eli,” she whispers, and I swear, for once it’s not my imagination, my wish, a past I cannot have back. In that instant, my name on her lips is real, she is real, and it echoes straight to my soul. I am consumed by her, by us, by what I have become and as I drive into her, the hunger is real. It’s all-knowing, all-consuming. My teeth sink into her neck, my mind reaching for hers, filling her with memories of us together. She gasps with the erotic pleasure, arching her body, her fingers sliding into my hair.