The Amnesiac Bride

by Marie Ferrarella

  Her eyes caressed his face. “Do we have to get dressed yet?”

  Zane didn’t want to get dressed. He didn’t want to move. All he wanted was to remain beside her like this, forever.

  “No, we have about ninety minutes before we have to meet Quinton at the casino.” Tonight there would be a private game in one of the rooms set aside for only a few players. Quinton hadn’t used exact words, but their presence was mandatory.

  Whitney noticed that Zane didn’t mention Sally and wondered if that was an oversight, or if the woman wasn’t coming. Either way, that was something to think about later. Right now, there were more important things on her mind.

  “Ninety minutes.” Her eyes on his, she slowly ran her tongue over her lips. She saw the response she wanted. “Do you know that I can get dressed in five minutes?”

  He laughed softly, then kissed her shoulder. There was no way he was ever going to get enough of her. “Ten, I’ve timed you.”

  She could be flexible. Whitney inclined her head. “All right, for the sake of argument, let’s say ten minutes.” Her body moved toward his invitingly. “What do you figure we should do with the other eighty minutes we have left?”

  Whitney took his breath away. Who would have ever thought that beneath that cool, competent exterior was this insatiable goddess?

  “Get our strength back?” he proposed tentatively.

  “You mean I’ve weakened you already?” Whitney shook her head in sorrowful disbelief. “Zane, where’s your stamina?”

  Zane spared a glance over his shoulder. The room looked as if a hurricane had hit it. Once they had begun making love, it was as if flames had ignited. They’d made love on top of any flat surface they found in the suite. Over and over again. They made love on the desk, in the shower, on the floor.

  Each time they reached an end, one of them would provoke the other and the delicious journey began all over again. But this time, Zane had been certain they were both completely depleted.

  Zane looked at her again. “I left my stamina somewhere in the rubble, I think.”

  She wove her arms around his neck, moving enticingly beneath him. She didn’t have to have full possession of her memory to know she’d never felt like this before about a man.

  “You’re not going to start disappointing me now, are you, Zane?”

  She was teasing, but her question drove a shaft through his conscience. Or was that his heart? “No,” he told Whitney quietly, “not yet.”

  She shivered suddenly as a chill passed over her heart. “You looked so serious when you said that.” He was smiling at her, but there was something beneath that. She could have sworn it. “Zane, is there something that you’re keeping from me?”

  Damn, he was an idiot. Why had he said that to her? Zane shook his head. “No, I think I’ve given you absolutely all that I’ve got to give. For all intents and purposes. I think I’m dead.”

  Maybe she’d just imagined that he was keeping something from her. And she didn’t want to let it ruin what time they had left before they had to make their mandatory appearance at the casino.

  Whitney slanted her eyes down along his anatomy. They shone as she raised them again to his face. “Mind if I have a stab at it?”

  He laughed. “Only if that’s not what you actually intend to do.”

  She’d probably always loved a challenge, Whitney decided. This one invigorated her.

  “No, what I intend to do is this.”

  . Ever so lightly, Whitney brushed her lips against his throat, arching so that her breasts brushed tantalizingly against his chest. She could feel his reaction to her, in the shift of his weight, in the warming of his skin. He wasn’t nearly as dead as he professed to be. And he was going to become less dead by the moment.

  “And this.”

  Still moving her body in erotic waves against his, Whitney glided just the tip of her tongue along his lips. As he opened his mouth to kiss her, she suddenly pulled away and then used his surprise to her advantage. With the agility of a cat, she reversed their positions, her body pinning his.

  When he tried to get up, she pressed the flat of her hand against his sternum, keeping him in place, a captured trophy.

  “And maybe this.”

  Her breath hot against his belly, Whitney watched the spasm work across it, his muscles tightening in anticipation. Her mouth spread in a self-satisfied smile as she moved first just her lips along Zane’s waist, then her tongue, anointing his skin here and there ever so lightly.

  The effects were dramatic. He’d ripened, ready for her. Whitney felt her own excitement growing as the game progressed.

  Zane reached for her, wanting to drag her back up, wanting to make love to her mouth, her eyes, her face. Wanting to worship her body with his hands and every fiber of his soul.

  She felt his hands on her shoulders, his fingers digging in as she moved along his skin, edging lower, ever lower. Her descent was foreshadowed by the light sweep of the edges of her hair along his body.

  She was testing him, driving him to the limits. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold himself in check. Zane groaned. It was an animal sound, half agony, half ecstasy. It sounded very much, she realized, like her name.

  Whitney raised her head to look at him.

  He ground out each word. “For Pete’s sake, Whit, have a little mercy.”

  “Oh, but I do.” Her reply skimmed along his skin, already slick with anticipation. “I have a little mercy. Very little.”

  Hands cupping him, she gently massaged, then brought her mouth down to him.

  Unable to withstand the assault any longer without consequences, Zane grasped Whitney by her shoulders and dragged her back to his level. The feel of her body sliding along his had every nerve ending tensing, bracing. Yearning for release.

  He was completely besotted with her. Desire drummed so strongly that he could barely focus on her face.

  “You’re a witch, you know that? A witch who’s spun an incredible spell over me.” Zane never thought he could actually love anyone, but he loved her. Completely, hopelessly and irrevocably.

  That’s what made it so terrible.

  He had to tell her, now, while she was so warm and willing in his arms, while there was still a chance that she could understand his reasons. If he told her in the cold light of day, when her heart and her body weren’t heated, weren’t his, she might never forgive him and that would be more than he could endure.

  He’d never thought much about courage. It was just there when he needed it. Except now. Now he felt empty. As shaky as a kid on his first two-wheeler.

  “Whit.”

  Whitney looked into his eyes, her body vibrating from wanting him. Slowly, she saw it. Something in his eyes that made her afraid.

  “What?”

  The words wouldn’t come. They just refused to form on his tongue. He wanted her too much. And was afraid that she would turn away, even now. And he needed her. He didn’t think it was physically possible to want a woman so much after having made love with her for the better part of the afternoon, but he did.

  Desperately.

  And if he told her, she might leave. It shamed him, but he was too much of a coward to risk it. He’d risked his life, faced certain death more than once, but he was afraid to have her turn away from him.

  Every man had his limits and she was his.

  “What?” she repeated. Whitney pressed a kiss first to one side of his mouth, then to the other, as if to coax the words out. “Tell me.”

  He couldn’t. God help him, he couldn’t. Not yet.

  Zane filled his hands with her hair, wondering if this was the last time he would touch her like this, like an intimate lover. Quinton was leaving tomorrow. The exchange would be made then. There would be no more reason to go on pretending.

  By all rights, he would still have tonight, but he’d learned a long time ago not to count on anything. That way, he wouldn’t be disappointed.

  But he had learned to cou
nt on Whitney, a small voice whispered along the parameters of his mind. Even before now, he’d learn to count on her.

  He wasn’t as strong as he had thought.

  Zane shook his head. “I don’t think that eighty minutes is enough.”

  It wasn’t what he was going to say. She knew it, but she let it pass, going instead on the path he’d opened. Afraid, perhaps, of what he was going to tell her. “I thought you were exhausted.”

  “I was.” But he wasn’t any longer. It was as if Whitney was pure adrenaline, injected straight into his veins. “I think you could probably raise the dead if you tried.”

  She laughed in response, and the room sang with the sound.

  It was a wonderful sound, he thought. A sound he would always remember. As he would this afternoon.

  “If eighty minutes is all we have,” Whitney said philosophically, “then we’ll just have to make the most of it, won’t we?”

  It was his turn to surprise her. Moving as swiftly as a leopard that had sighted his prey, he flipped her over onto her back. “My sentiments on the matter exactly.”

  Before she could speak, Zane covered her mouth with his. He lost himself in the scent and the taste of her. Wanting desperately not to think, only to experience, to revel in what was so bountifully given him.

  And what would, all too soon, be abruptly ripped away again. She wouldn’t forgive him. Not for this. He knew her too well.

  She’d initiated the foreplay, wanting to arouse him, but now she was the one who was caught in the trap that she had so painstakingly laid out. She was the one being aroused to a frenzy.

  She loved it.

  Zane was like a man possessed, driven to using what little time they had left together to bring her to the brink of pleasure and take her beyond. So far beyond that it was as if she had entered another dimension.

  She thought he’d shown her everything there was to know about lovemaking.

  She thought wrong.

  There was so much more to learn, to experience. Zane made her body sing and her soul weep from the sheer pleasure of it. Like a guide who knew secret places unknown to the average man, Zane showed her about the parts of her body where ecstasy hovered, just waiting to explode.

  Whitney gasped as Zane made love to her just by teasing the inside of her elbow, the back of her knee, the center of her instep with his mouth, with his tongue. She thought she would lose her mind if he continued. If he didn’t take her there and then.

  It was all, she discovered, the beginning overture before the symphony got under way. She’d been bent on arousing him, but in comparison to Zane, she was a hopeless amateur. An apprentice to a position that he had held for a long time.

  It was as if his entire body had been fashioned with lovemaking in mind.

  Zane used his lips, his teeth, his hands to bring her from climax to climax. He began cautiously, as if testing various theories he formulated in his mind. And proceeded with more and more fervor.

  Each step took him closer to his goal. Each area he conquered paved the way to the next.

  She was limp, her limbs liquid and useless, when she realized that he had replaced his hands with his lips. Her body jerked to attention. When his mouth claimed the essence at her very core, she thought she couldn’t bear it anymore.

  The sweet agony was overwhelming her even as ecstasy poured through her veins, waiting for one final release. And then it came.

  “Stop,” she whimpered. “I don’t think I can take any more.”

  Zane raised his head to look at her, satisfaction glinting in his eyes. His own body was taut, waiting, hovering just on the brink. But he needed to do this, to get her to this place, to this edge where she now tottered.

  She would remember. No matter what else would eventually crowd back into her head, he vowed to himself that Whitney would remember this. And in remembering, in the secret recesses of her heart, maybe she would not hate him quite so much.

  “Sure you can.”

  “No, really, I don’t know if I can take any more.”

  His heart swelled with love. “Okay, say uncle,” he told her.

  “Uncle,” she exhaled.

  He flicked his tongue and gloried in the shudder that went through her body. “Sorry, the password’s just been changed.”

  “Uncle,” she repeated. “Aunt, cousin, sister, mother, father—” Whitney surrendered. She was going to die here, on this floor, and she couldn’t think of a better way to go. “Oh, the hell with it.”

  “Not hell. Heaven.”

  She was gasping for air as she felt his weight shift again.

  When she opened her eyes a hundred years later, Zane was over her, as he braced himself on his hands, his arms on either side of her.

  His breath teased her face. She could feel her body tingling. Waiting for him.

  “Want me to stop?” he asked. As if he could.

  Whitney didn’t know where she found the strength, but she did. Maybe she’d been reinvigorated by his ardent lovemaking—she didn’t know. All she knew was that she wanted to be one with him, to feel him inside her. To share the ultimate gift a man and woman could share.

  “You do and I’ll be forced to kill you.” She said it so seriously that he almost laughed out loud.

  “Can’t have that.” And then the next moment, he felt himself a prisoner again, completely captivated by the love he saw in her eyes. A love he had fooled her into thinking she felt.

  A love he wanted to claim as his own.

  She opened for him. Her breath stood still in her lungs as she held it, waiting. Very slowly, deliberately, he entered, his eyes holding hers.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “I know.” And that was his guilt, his burden. He’d made her love him when she wouldn’t have, if she had known. “And I love you.” He framed her face with his hands. “Remember that.”

  He said the oddest things at the oddest times, she thought. But she didn’t have the energy to ask him why. She needed it for other things now.

  Winding her arms around his neck, Whitney began to move with him. A second ago, she’d been too exhausted to even breathe on her own, but now she wanted to be with him on this final step of the journey, to use her body to bring him up and over just as he’d used his for her pleasure.

  Hips locked, they moved in an escalating pace that swiftly catapulted them over the tip of the highest mountain. And then they were falling, embracing to protect each other from the impact. The ground far below was rushing up to meet them. It was lined with the soft leaves of spring, and when they finally fell, it cradled them with the warmth of a loving parent.

  Zane remained over her a long time, aware that he was probably crushing her. But he was unwilling to feel the slight breath of air along his chest that would signal the final separation of their bodies.

  He didn’t want to let her go. Not yet.

  Not ever.

  “Zane?”

  The sound of his name rippled along his chest. His arm tightened around her in protest. But he knew he couldn’t hold back the inevitable.

  “Hmmm?”

  She could have stayed like this until her golden anniversary. Maybe longer. “Do you think we could tell Quinton we died?”

  He laughed. Shifting, he kissed the top of her head, then lay down on his back. He tucked her against him. “I don’t think he’d believe us.”

  “We could try.”

  “Shh.” He kissed her again, wishing there was some way he could prevent what was going to happen. “Just stay there a minute. I want to hold you a little longer.”

  They were lovely words, words to cherish. But they were motivated by something. Something she didn’t want him facing alone.

  Euphoria slipped away, edged aside by concern. She rose to look at him. His eyes wouldn’t lie to her. “There is something wrong, isn’t there?”

  Zane stared at the ceiling. “No.”

  She didn’t believe him. “There’s something dangerous about working
for Quinton, isn’t there?” she pressed. Why wouldn’t he trust her with the truth?

  He couldn’t just remain lying here, no matter how much the idea enticed him. That wasn’t how things were done.

  “Only if he feels his luck’s been tampered with. Speaking of which, we’d better get started.” He sat up reluctantly. “If we’re not there, he’s going to feel jinxed—and then he might cancel our deal.” She nodded behind him. “Want to take the bathroom first?”

  Whitney rose. There was something he wasn’t telling her. She had no doubts that he probably thought he was protecting her, but she didn’t want to be protected. She wanted to be there to help him shoulder whatever was thrown his way.

  It was just going to take a little time for her to get him to trust her. And undo whatever impression she had made on him before the accident.

  “Sure.”

  Not bothering to pick up any of her clothes, Whitney walked into the bathroom. Maybe she would think of a way to get Zane to open up to her while she was showering.

  Chapter 13

  Whitney sat in an armless, gold-and-green brocade chair that had been drawn away from the playing table and placed against the wall. It was an extra and so was she. Her adrenaline had been running high all evening. It warred with the need to remain as unobtrusive as possible. That was what she had promised when she had been ushered into the room.

  She hadn’t the knack that the waitress and the butlers had developed. They did their jobs and withdrew without making anyone consciously aware that they were even there. They were close to invisible in this room where only men and women with money were allowed.

  Here there was no soft, piped-in music as there was in Quinton’s suite of rooms. Music would only distract the players from their five-hundred-dollar-minimum-bet game. Even the air moved lazily through the room, in contrast to the energy she knew had to be pumping just below the surface within each player.

  Her back was beginning to ache. The chair was not the most comfortable, designed to keep people at attention. She’d been sitting here for the past three hours, watching fortunes change hands in a blink of an eye. The drink that the waitress had brought her had long since become watered down, its ice cubes melting into the amber liquid, replacing the little she had sipped.