Unchained Memory (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 1)

by Donna S. Frelick

  He bent over me and tilted my head up to receive his kiss, a gentle touch of the lips. “When I come, it’s going to be deep inside you. And not until you say you’ve had enough.”

  Jesus, the man could talk me right into an orgasm. I wasn’t sure I could ever say I’d had enough of him now that I’d started. I pulled him down on top of me, thrilling to the slide of his skin on mine, the movement of his muscled body against my breasts and my belly and my thighs. His tongue ravished my mouth while he rocked gently back and forth, his shaft heavy and hard against my wet core. My hips rose to meet his every pulse, my thighs opened to take him in, and I flooded us both with my body’s response.

  He slid down my body to nip and suckle at first one breast and then the other. He used his tongue and his hands to alternately tease and soothe the sensitive skin, until I felt every electric flicker all the way down to the heart of my building climax. I was suddenly alive in a wholly new way; every nerve was responding to his touch, every cell awakening under his attention. I began to believe that before he was through with me he would be able to stroke my arm or brush his lips across my eyebrow and I would come for him.

  He continued down my body, leaving a wet, tingling trail of rough-edged kisses along my belly, into the crease between my hip and my thigh and across the pubic bone to the other side. Then, as I quivered with anticipation, every part of me on fire for him, he spread me with his thumbs and invaded the tender folds of flesh between my thighs with his sweet tongue. He worked me slowly, confidently, as if he knew exactly what would drive me crazy. The muscles of my abdomen and pelvis clenched, empty and craving. My shoulders lifted off the bed as I curled inward with longing. He didn’t stop, but changed the movement of his tongue to a torturous flutter.

  That sent me over the top. I was coming, Jesus God, like a freight train, and I only wanted one thing. “Ethan, please, I want you inside me.” I breathed, trying not to scream. “Now, Ethan.”

  He moved to help me at last and oh, God! the feeling of coming with him pushing inside me, opening me up, filling me. Once he’d made a way for himself, he began to thrust into me with long, powerful strokes and I did scream then, calling his name over and over as wave after orgasmic wave washed through me, each one deeper and stronger and more devastating than the last.

  I had only begun to breathe again when he seated himself in deep and ground into me in slow, pounding circles that brought me immediately to another annihilating climax. I clung to him, tore at him, writhing in an ecstasy I had never experienced before and couldn’t control. There was something almost frightening about its intensity, had I been lying under a lesser man, my fear would have overruled my pleasure. But it was Ethan’s body moving with mine and Ethan’s heart beating with mine and Ethan’s soft words of encouragement in my ear as he brought me up each feverish crest and rode with me down the slope of each contracting wave. I gave him everything; I held back nothing, trusting him to keep me safe.

  The last spasms wrung grateful tears from my eyes, and I let them fall, unembarrassed, as he kissed the salt from my lips, my cheeks, my eyes. He whispered to me, “My sweet, beautiful Asia.” He touched his warm lips to my throat, to my neck at the shoulder, to my ear. Then he brought them to my own and parted them to let his tongue slip inside my mouth, starting again as we had started earlier, with a kiss. And after all he had given me, I responded to that kiss as if it was the first time—my heart hammering, my breath rising, the blood rushing to swell the flesh that had only minutes before been rolling in orgasm.

  Ethan had almost stopped moving, but I could still feel him inside me, still iron-hard, still stretching me, then expanding in the next second to fill me. I contracted in on him, signaling my readiness. It was what he’d been waiting for. He broke off his kiss and put his lips to my ear. “Tell me what you want.”

  “Come with me, Ethan. I want to feel you come with me.”

  His voice fell so low it was almost a growl. “Once more, slow and easy.” I felt him breathe deep into his belly. “One last time, then I’ll have to let go.”

  He began to slide in and out of me, letting me feel every inch of him with every stroke. I could feel the pressure building toward the climax he had promised me, and I knew it wouldn’t take long. I was tuned to him now and he to me. This final climax for me was effortless, natural, as beautiful and fulfilling as a sunrise. As I arched into him, orgasm taking me again, Ethan’s strokes came harder and faster until at last with a groan he exploded deep inside me. I felt every muscle in his body contract violently, then gradually relax as his pleasure ebbed.

  I took a long, shuddering breath and exhaled a lifetime of unhappy, desperate, disappointing, angry and just plain bad sex. When I breathed again, I breathed free and clear for the first time in years.

  “God, that was good.” I was barely able to form the words. In that state of post-coital bliss, I just wasn’t capable of telling him how I felt. The words were wrong and were coming out slurred, like a drunk’s, but I had to say something. “That was so damn good. Thank you, baby.”

  He smiled and kissed me lazily on the lips. “So much more than good. Thank you for insisting.”

  I’m not sure it’s possible for a naked woman to blush, but I felt my cheeks redden anyhow. “Just so you know, I’ve never done anything like that before—grabbed anyone, I mean.”

  “And I’ve never been propositioned quite that directly before either.” He laughed softly. “God, it turned me on. There was no way in hell I could have refused.”

  The power kicked back on and threw an unwelcome light in our eyes from the bedside lamp. Ethan reached across me to turn it off, but I put a hand on his arm to stop him. I needed to see the answer to my next question clearly in his face. He let his arm drop as he settled back onto his other elbow, one leg still draped across my thigh. He watched me with those eyes the color of deep rolling waves and waited.

  “I didn’t give you much choice. Are you sorry we did this?”

  “Sorry? Never.” He gave me that slow smile of his. “Why would I be sorry? This was the best thing to happen to me in a long time.”

  It would have been so easy to leave it at that. I wanted so badly to believe him. I searched his eyes, and at first all I could see was warmth and openness. But behind what could have been interpreted as bland and comforting (and just as quickly gone in the morning) was something truer, needier, a banked fire that was suddenly causing my heart to leap up and slam against my ribs like a deer flushed from hiding in a tangle of briars.

  Abruptly his eyes widened. “Oh, God! I didn’t use a condom. Is that it? I mean, you don’t have to worry, I can’t even remember the last time I—”

  I put a finger to his lips to stop the rush of words, wanting to laugh, knowing I shouldn’t. We hadn’t been smart, after all.

  “No, that’s not it. I’m on the pill. I haven’t had sex in months. I wasn’t worried. I trust you.”

  Ethan let it go and lifted a hand to brush a strand of hair from my forehead. “So what’s bothering you?”

  I no longer wanted to, but I asked the question anyway. “Do you still think it was wrong to have sex with a former patient?”

  His eyes darkened, like the surface of a lake when a cloud passes over. “With a former patient or with you, Asia?”

  When I didn’t say anything, he put a hand under my chin and turned my face to his. “Doctors have it beaten into them from the first day in med school that there are boundaries we can never cross.” He was suddenly serious. “The rules are there for good reason, and the sanctions are severe for those who break them, also for good reason. They’re not to be taken lightly.”

  My heart sank. “But there must be exceptions. Or a statute of limitations or something? What if we’d met on the street instead of in your office?”

  His expression softened. “Then life would’ve been a lot easier. We’d have been here a lot sooner and poor, old Dr. Claussen would’ve had to struggle along with you in his therapy group quite a wh
ile longer.”

  “Oh, God, not that!” The thought of another session with Claussen’s group was enough to make me glad it had happened the way it had. “Let me put it a different way, then.” I had to know. “How much do you mind that we’re breaking the rules?”

  Ethan took my face in both his hands and kissed me long and slow and deep enough that my body was primed for yet another go-round. “Asia, even if hell was the price, you’d be worth every bit of it.”

  What was it about this man that made me want to settle into his arms and let him wrap me in that soft voice forever? The power of those words warmed my heart, calmed my spirit in some way I was only just beginning to understand. For the first time in a very long time, I felt something open up inside me. And I knew it wouldn’t be long before all the things I’d been missing for so many years—gratitude, joy, hope, even love—would start flooding in.

  Ethan lay awake long past midnight and watched Asia sleep, her hair falling in tousled curls around her face, her body outlined in the curve of her shoulder and hip, her breasts and the sweet triangle where her belly met her thighs hidden in shadow.

  There was no question in his mind what was happening between them would be viewed as a breach of ethics. No matter that Asia was no longer his patient. No matter that she was perfectly capable of clear thinking and showed no signs of emotional transference. No matter that he had been careful not to exploit her emotions in any way. He could guess what Claussen would have to say once he found out. Ethan could only hope the old man didn’t drag him in front of a review board. Extenuating circumstances or not, he’d likely lose his license.

  But that wasn’t what was keeping him awake with unresolved questions, despite his need for sleep. He’d meant it when he’d told Asia she’d been worth it. Not just physically, though God knows the days and weeks of wanting her had built up such a charge in him, he’d been like a machine. Even now, his cock was sending signals the rest of his exhausted body was trying to ignore.

  He was responding to something in Asia, something on a deeper level that he could scarcely name. From the beginning, she had seen him for what he was, rather than what he could do for her. And when she said she wanted him, it touched him someplace deep inside. A place he showed no one. A place he barely acknowledged even to himself.

  He had laid the first bricks in the wall that protected his heart long ago, when Elizabeth had begun to use his love for her to slice him casually in passing. By the time she had perfected the art of torturing him with a surgeon’s precision, he’d sealed a tiny portion of himself off where she couldn’t reach him—so effectively even he couldn’t get in.

  Now, suddenly, it was as if he’d stumbled upon a locked room in his own house, a room he’d forgotten was there. He gazed at the woman in his bed and wondered if maybe she had the key. The thought of that made his heart expand and bump against the inside of his chest with a restless, rising rhythm.

  Asia sighed softly in her sleep, making him smile, and he reached out to caress the skin of her shoulder. He trailed his hand down her upper arm and back up, then across her upper back and down the curve of her spine to the swell of her buttocks, savoring the sensation of her smooth skin under his fingertips, admiring the symmetry of sinuous muscle and luscious, tempting curve.

  As his hand came back up toward her shoulder, his fingertips skimmed an uneven ridge in the skin over her right shoulder blade. Curious that such perfection could contain even a tiny flaw, he moved so that the light slipping through a gap in the room curtain could fall across her back and show him the mark. He drew in a breath when he saw it—jagged and ugly, raised and dark, following the line of the scapula as if the bone itself had been pushed through the skin. She’d never mentioned an injury on that scale—she’d never mentioned an injury at all. Even the sessions with AL hadn’t revealed it. Here was another mystery to add to all the others about this woman who had fascinated him from the start.

  He pressed his lips to her poor, abused shoulder, wishing he could take the pain of it as easily. Then he brushed the hair aside to bare the nape of her neck and kissed her there, inhaling her spicy/sweet scent as his lips lingered at the spot. He loved the way she smelled, like nectar from some exotic desert flower. He had loved immersing himself in that scent as they made love, rolling in it, covering himself in it. Breathing her in now brought it all back, and he couldn’t restrain a low growl of remembered pleasure deep in his throat. He was hard again, too, as if he had not had enough opportunity to taste her tonight.

  “Mmm, again?” she murmured, awakened by his touch. She stretched, catlike, her back arching against him. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  He molded himself to her and reached around to cup one firm, round breast in his hand. “You could tell me to behave myself. If I were you, I’d start to set some limits now, rather than later.”

  She captured his shaft between her thighs. Then she grasped him where he emerged from between her legs and pressed him against her. Her flesh was hot and wet and melting everywhere except for the engorged pearl of her clitoris where she was using it to tease his sensitive tip. It was all he could do to keep from coming like a schoolboy in the heat of that delicious flame.

  She spoke, her voice a whispery purr that resonated against his chest. “When I was first married I would try to wake Ronnie up in the middle of the night to make love.” Ethan tried hard to focus on what she was saying, but what she was doing to him made it all but impossible. “He would always tell me to go back to sleep. I remember how that made me feel. I would never do that to you.”

  He pulled her closer to him and caught her earlobe gently in his teeth, grateful that the raging hard-on he was carrying would find relief in bringing her to climax—the way it was meant to be. “My sweet Asia. I can’t believe he could have had this any night. He could have had you— your silky skin,”—he kissed her neck—“your beautiful brown eyes,”—he kissed her shoulder—“your long legs,”—his hand traveled down the length of her thigh and back up across her hip—“your perfect breasts,”—he cupped her breast once again and gently plucked the nipple between thumb and forefinger—“your round, tight ass,”—he rolled into her, offering her another inch of his swollen shaft—“and, oh, God, that juicy . . .” His words devolved into an animalistic groan as she took what he had offered, stroked it, squeezed it, crushed it against the slick, intimate folds between her thighs. A shiver of white-hot anticipation racked his body. He waited it out, knowing that in seconds he would be inside her and the waiting would be over.

  “I love the way you talk to me.” She moaned sweetly. “I love the way you make love to me.”

  She shifted again so that he lay poised to enter her. With a single, easy movement he thrust deep inside, sheathing himself in searing heat. He withdrew and pushed in again. She opened for him, her hips wide, and he knew he was reaching places inside her that were his alone. The knowledge of that intimacy brought him close to orgasm, and he struggled to find the control he needed.

  He slid a hand down her belly to her mound, found her pulsing nub with his fingers, matched the rhythm of his thrusts to the press of his hand. “Oh, yeah, I like that,” she told him. He smiled, his shaft swelling in response.

  Her hand closed over his, her body ground into his, begging for more. He pushed into her, harder, deeper, feeling her need, feeding it, until at last she shuddered under him, crying his name into the pillow. Seconds later he found his own release, ecstasy issuing like fire from the base of his spine to engulf his body and leave him spent, his heart thrashing in his chest.

  Later, much later, he withdrew from the warmth of her body, and she turned to look into his eyes. The hand she raised to touch his cheek trembled. “I—I can’t stop shaking.”

  “It’s all right, Asia. I’m here.” He thought about reaching for the sheets, but that much movement seemed beyond his capabilities. Instead, he pulled her tight against his chest and kissed the back of her neck, wrapped her in the warmth he felt for her until h
er trembling—and his—subsided. There were words that described how he felt in that moment, but he didn’t say them. Too much had already happened in one night for the two of them to think about. There would be plenty of time for the rest of it to unfold.

  For now, it was enough just to hold her, and dream.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ethan had no way of telling what time it was when he next opened his eyes. Thanks to the power failure, the motel’s bedside clock flashed a meaningless 12:00. He lay quietly and listened. He could hear the muffled sounds of a busy motel outside—cars starting up, voices approaching and receding along the outside breezeway. So, morning. Not too early, he suspected, but not too late, either.

  He disengaged from Asia’s embrace and slipped out of bed, not wanting to wake her. They hadn’t had much sleep, and there was no particular reason to hurry. They could take their time getting back to Nashville. He knew lots of little places to stop, maybe spend an extra night. He smiled and forced himself to think of something else quick so he could at least hit the bathroom before he got hard again.

  He glanced through the gap in the room curtain on his way around the bed—the day was overcast, the remnants of last night’s storm clouds still scudding across a glowering sky. Rain pooled in wide sheets across the uneven parking lot; the cars coming and going splashed sullenly through the puddles to get to the exits. Two doors up, a van sat with its lights on, the wipers on intermittent to catch the drizzle that still spit from the sky. Ethan dismissed one idea he’d been toying with for the day—hiking would be muddy and miserable, no matter how romantic the view.

  A few minutes later he was rinsing shampoo from his hair and running through a variety of alternatives to hiking, any number of which were pleasant enough to send the blood rushing to his groin, when Asia grinned at him from around the shower curtain.