Jumbled words escape her lips as I take my time with her. I slow my movements even further until she’s begging me and I know she’s almost there.

“Now, Aaliya!” I order, thrusting sharply inside her.

She screams and screams as she dissolves around me. Only then do I let myself go, my mind completely blanking out.

She turns, kissing my chest, right over my heart before wrapping herself around me. Again, she’s asleep within seconds.

My hand sinks in her hair and my eyes shut close on a sigh of bliss. Suddenly, I blink them open. What the fuck did I just do? I didn’t use a condom! I’ve always used protection. It’s the one critical rule I follow, always. How could I have forgotten this?

I run a hand down my face. I can’t form an attachment to this girl, no matter how much she appeals to me. I cannot get involved with her when I haven’t yet solved the mysteries surrounding me. And there are one too many.

So many questions plague me. Why were my father and brother killed? Who killed them? Who had my father and brother pissed off so thoroughly that they want me dead as well? And until I don’t have the answers to these questions, it would be wrong to involve Aaliya further. She doesn’t deserve to become a part of the mess that is my life. I need to remember the last five years before I bring her into it, even someone as special and lovely as her.

Every atom of my being rebels at the thought of leaving her like this. I gently caress the apple of her soft cheek and don my clothes. I exit the room with a heavy heart, but with a clear mind.

Aaliya

I WAKE UP TO AN EMPTY bed. My body protests as I finally rise up to go to the bathroom, the various aches and pains making me remember the way he owned me so thoroughly last night, twice. It was...indescribable. Damien had been my first lover and up until this point in my life, I had thought sex was great.

But after last night, it is so much...more!

My brain and heart are at war with one another because although my heart knows it was the same man, my husband, who made love to me, my brain refuses to recognize this stranger who so expertly consumed my soul.

I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror and my eyes fall on the bite mark on my shoulder. My cheeks flush and my skin heats as the memories from last night resurface. Each time I’m intimate with him, the same questions haunt my mind. How much of his true self has Damien kept from me? How could he hide such an intrinsic, dominant part of himself?