“Then allow me to undress you,” she challenged with a small smile.
His face was blank as he watched her unbutton his shirt. She worked so slowly that he wanted to pull the garment off, even if it tore it in two. But he waited, because there was something incredibly sexy about watching his wife removing his clothes. Her fingers were shaking a little as bit by bit she removed the shirt and tossed it onto the tiled deck.
She ran her hands across his shoulders, and down his arms, then nipped them in to the top of his jeans. “What happened here?” She lowered her lips and pressed them against the puckered scar just above his left nipple.
Zayn sucked in an uneven breath.
“Or have you already told me and I’ve simply forgotten?”
Zayn closed his eyes against the burgeoning need that was making speech suddenly difficult. “When we were boys, Amal and I got into a fight. We used to quarrel often, but this was different for the simple fact that it involved knives.”
Julia’s mouth gaped open. “You and your brother were in a knife fight?”
His laugh was rich with amusement. “Believe it or not, it was all in fun. We’d watched a movie and thought we’d replicate a scene for ourselves
. He was a better mark with the blade than I.”
“Oh dear. Poor Amal. Your parents must have been furious.”
“Yes.” He shrugged. “Though my mother has always held the attitude that boys will be boys, and we were excellent at proving her right.”
An image of Amal floated into her mind and a memory with it. Julia frowned. “Your brother doesn’t want to become King.” She didn’t know how she knew, but it was a fact lodged somewhere in the spongy recesses of her malfunctioning brain.
Did she imagine the way her husband seemed to tense?
“Why do you say that?”
Julia stared down at the tiled floor beneath their feet, lost in thought. “His wife… Adele?”
“Adina,” Zayn supplied automatically.
“Yes. Adina. And I liked her.” She frowned. “It is the strangest thing. I have no specific memories, but just a sense of things. I am certain she told me that Amal wants you to take his place.”
Zayn chose his words cautiously. “We have discussed the possibility in the past.”
There was something more important at the center of her knowledge but she couldn’t remember for the life of her. She groaned in annoyance. “It’s right there,” she said, stamping her foot. “I know there’s big stuff missing and I can’t get to it. It’s like clouds in the sky, just blowing out of my line of sight.”
“It will probably come back.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” She looked stricken, and suddenly, her nakedness made her feel inexplicably self-conscious.
“I have told you many times. The doctors made me promise not to give you all the answers. It could do more harm than good.”
She grabbed hold of his shoulder with her hand, and stared up at him beseechingly. “But Zayn, you wouldn’t lie to me, would you? If there was something important that I hadn’t remembered, I mean.”
Zayn felt his whole world grind to a slow stop as he tried to think of a way to answer her question. She had placed her trust in him innocently and blindly, and he felt a sudden certainty that he had damaged it beyond repair. “I can tell you something very important right now.”
She lifted her gaze to his hopefully. “Oh?”
He lowered his mouth and claimed hers, kissing her until her heart was hammering so hard against her breast that he could feel it. “I love you.”
Julia felt a strange, unbalanced sensation tip her system. It was a statement that he must have made a million times. They were married, after all. But she couldn’t recall his having said it in the week since her accident, and for some reason, the words were very precious to her. She clutched them to her heart and buried them deep in her brain, hopefully immune from the ravages of her memory loss.
All doubt evaporated from her mind. “I love you, too,” she said honestly. “It’s funny how I just know that. I’ve forgotten so much else, but I know for sure that I do love you.” And at that exact moment in time, she knew it with all of her heart. There was no room for doubt, nor uncertainty. He was her other half, and she didn’t care if she never remembered ‘their story’, just as long as she had him.
CHAPTER TEN
“Have I ever seen this before?” She asked on a sigh of total awe-struck disbelief.