“Lucy,” he said, his hold gentling.“I’m here.”
“You’re here,” she confirmed, heart clenching.“With me.”
“I was someplace dark.I was alone.”He turned his face until it nestled in the crook of her neck.
Lucy shuddered in the grip of something deeper than satisfaction and stronger than pleasure.“It was only a dream.You’re not alone,” she told him, lifting one hand from his back to pet at the hair curling damply against the nape of his neck.
He would need a trim soon, she noted, and almost smiled at the soft domesticity of the thought.
“I’d been alone for a long time, in the dream.”His voice was ragged and slow, the words dredged up out of the depths of his chest.“I didn’t think I was ever getting out.”
Lucy wondered if it was some sort of dream metaphor for his injury—his memories, locked up somewhere inside his head, perhaps never to be released.“That sounds horrid,” she said, stroking his nape.“Now I’m glad I woke you.”
“Do I have nightmares often?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy admitted.“We only actually slept in the same bed the once, and you seemed to sleep unperturbed that night.”
“Only the once,” Gabriel sighed, lifting his head to blink slumberous dark eyes at her.“And I can’t remember it.Do you know, I think if I could get that one memory back, I’d be willing to forgo all the rest.”
Lucy’s heart snagged.“Don’t say that.”
“Why not?It’s the truth.”
Lucy became suddenly aware that she was all but sitting in his lap, her arms still loosely draped over his strong shoulders.The muscles bunched and shifted under her forearms as his hands smoothed down her back to frame her waist.
“I want you to get all your memories back,” she said breathlessly, the heat of his palms searing through the thin fabric of her dressing gown and night rail.
Even though it would mean the end of this faux betrothal and he’d probably never speak to her again, it was true, she realized.She did want him to get his memories back.
“Why?”He glanced down, shadows flickering across his face.“Maybe I’m better off without them.”
“Because,” Lucy said, “you deserve to feel whole again.”
“Maybe I don’t need my memories to feel whole.”His thumbs moved in soft circles at the bottom of her rib cage; Lucy’s breath sped.“Maybe all I need is you.”
He looked up and into her eyes for only a heartbeat before tilting his head to claim her lips in a deep, drugging kiss.
But one glance was enough for Lucy to be bowled over by the pain in that midnight-dark gaze.
His lips moved over hers hungrily, desperately, and Lucy couldn’t help but respond.She curled her arms tighter, hitching herself closer, feeling as though she couldn’t ever get close enough.
They kissed with the desperation of star-crossed lovers, as if they would soon be parted and never see each other again.He made Lucy’s head ignite, setting fire to every reasonable, sane objection before it could reach her lips.
It was lowering to realize she would have let him press her back into the mattress and take her, without so much as a whimper of protest, if he hadn’t pulled back from the kiss on his own.
“My apologies,” he said, strained and hoarse as he eased her away from him.“I forgot myself for a moment.You’re far too tempting for your own good, Lively.”
Tears abruptly threatened.As if reading it on her face, his expression went from rueful to terrified.
“What’s wrong?Did I hurt you, or?—?”
“You used to call me Lively,” she croaked, trying not to sniffle.“Before.To tease me.I didn’t realize how much I missed it.”
A complicated look passed behind his eyes.“I suppose that’s reason enough to want all my memories back.Cursed though they might be.”
That reminded Lucy of her theory about his dream, that perhaps it represented the memories he seemed to both want and fear.“Earlier, why did you ask if you suffered from frequent nightmares?”
He looked away, frowning.“It felt…familiar, somehow.The place where I was trapped.It was so dark, but I knew every inch of the place intimately, as though I’d explored it all, over and over, trying to find a way to escape.But there was no escape.”Remembered horror suffused his tone.
