Walk Me Home – By Rachael Y

Muscle Memory

Marlena

My stomach is fluttering with nerves.  Which is ridiculous because this isn’t my grant, it’s not my Art’s Council and it’s not my future at stake.  But I have invested so much time and energy into Roger Lombard and it’s been the cause of so much friction between Roman and I that I really want him to succeed.
 

Not just to prove a point, of course.  Roman thinks he can’t change, Stella thinks he won’t change; but I see such a difference in him.  I see the hope in his eyes.  He’s rediscovering the joy of creating.  He’s finding the Roger he used to be before the drink.  Before… before he lost who he was.

There’s a certain resonance there for me.  One that I am trying to ignore.  But maybe it gives me hope.  If Roger can rediscover, recapture that love of life with Stella by his side… maybe there is hope for me.  For me and Roman.

I love Roman, don’t get me wrong.  He’s my husband and I love him.  

I just… some days… I don’t particularly like him.

It wasn’t always that way.  I mean, I’ll be honest, I can’t pretend it was ever a bed of roses.  He’s stubborn, obnoxiously so at times.  He’s… I hesitate to use the word misogynist because I genuinely think he loves and respects women.  It’s just that he… I don’t think he sees women as equal to men.  We need coddling and protecting.  We need to be… controlled.  For our own sakes, of course.  To be kept safe.  To be kept in line.

Ugh.  I am making him sound like a dinosaur.  He’s not, he’s really not. 

Oh, my gosh.  Am I saying that a little too desperately?  

I’m just… I’m a different woman than the one he left eight years ago.  I lived what feels like a lifetime in the four years between his death and the plane accident that took me from my family.  And I fell in love with a man who was so different from him.  Which seems so stupid in retrospect.  You understand what I mean, don’t you?  

But John was.  He was stubborn and protective, sure.  But he respected me in a way that I am not sure Roman ever did.  He respected my opinions, my choices, and he respected my work.  Roman… Roman sees it as an obstacle.  As something that gets in the way of our relationship.  Me having my own thoughts, opinions, making my own choices that don’t synchronise with his…. He sees it as a challenge, an affront to what he views as his natural authority within our relationship.  Roman thinks he’s in charge.  John saw our relationship as a true partnership.  And I grew to love and cherish that.  I learned what it was to be truly loved and seen. Without expectations, and without conditions.

So, it’s hard.  And I have to admit that Roman is right.  He accused me of not being open with him.  Not being honest.  And he’s right.  But how can I be honest when every time I am, it leads to an argument?  When he sees it as a criticism, a defiance.  He can’t contemplate that I might be right, and he might be wrong.  He can’t admit that I just might know a little more about human motivations and impulses than he does.  I trained for years, and I am damned good at my job, but he dismisses me out of hand, and it hurts.  It makes me frustrated and angry so yes, I avoid him, and I don’t say what is on my mind, because what is the point?  Where does it get us?

I need to take a deep breath….  

I guess that’s why I’m nervous about this party this evening.  It’s not really a party, it’s a dinner to introduce Roger to Maggie in the hopes that she will recommend him to the Arts Council for this grant.  But calling it a dinner makes it feel a little too intimate.  

And with the friction between Roman and me, and… well, I can’t even pretend that Stella Lombard is my biggest fan right now.  But I just want everything to go smoothly.  I want Maggie to like Roger, I want Roman to behave and I want Stella to feel comfortable and enjoy herself.  I’m just not sure all of those things are going to happen, or even can happen at the same time.

Roger tells me that Stella has never been comfortable around the people he knew through his painting and that he had ended up having to choose between them and her.  I know how that goes.  My choice wasn’t quite the same, but the end result is, I guess.  

I miss him.  

I had thought for a while that we could be friends, but I’ve seen less and less of him as time has gone on.  Roman made it clear that he wasn’t comfortable with John spending time with the children.  Or with me.  Even as friends.  

“Stella’s just so uncomfortable around people that she thinks are better than she is.  People like you,” Roger says, and I shake my head.  I hate that she would think that way.  All I want is to help them.  So that they can have a better life, a better relationship.  “That’s why Stella comes off as having an attitude sometimes,” he says.  “Because she’s insecure.”  

I know that of course and I wish I could do something to change the way she feels about me but everything I try either falls flat or seems to make her defensive or angry.  Roger carries on.   “I don’t know, maybe I could do something to help.  Buy her better clothes?  Or try to talk her into going back to school to finish…  I don’t know, something so that she doesn’t feel like people are trying to judge her all the time.”

I shake my head again, trying to reassure him.  “Oh Roger.  Nobody tonight will judge her based on clothing or education.  They’re here because of you.  Your art, your talent. And because of the passion that you inspire….”  I hear a familiar voice and I look up to see Maggie and Mickey speaking to Julie.   “Oh, oh, they’re here.  Good luck.”  

We stand and go to greet Maggie and her husband; Mickey is of course endlessly charming and compliments me on my dress.  It’s a new one, bought for the occasion and maybe with the hope that Roman might pay me some positive attention rather than just starting on the litany of complaints he seems to trot out these days whenever we try and spend some time in each other’s company.

My husband arrives soon after our friends and gives me little more than a cursory glance before he greets Mickey with a handshake and a manly slap on the back.  Stella is close on his heels and is far more reserved and self-effacing when introduced to Maggie and Mickey.  

Carrie comes in with Tim, the young man we met the other night.  She looks pretty and sweet in her new dress and slightly embarrassed to have to start out her date with talking to her parents.  She drags Tim away and I pat Roman on the thigh to comfort him.  Maggie is talking to Roger about his art, and I am trying to listen, but beside me, Roman is talking to Mickey about cars or something.  Art definitely isn’t Roman’s thing.  Honestly, it wasn’t John’s thing either but at least he would make an effort.  At least he would try and make sure people felt included.

Looking over at Stella, I see that her hand is bandaged.  “Stella, what happened to your hand?  My goodness.”

“I got hurt,” she says, giving a tight half smile.  “But I heal quickly.”  I am not sure what that is supposed to mean but any chance to follow it up is curtailed by Dave who has opened a bottle of champagne and asks which of us would like their glasses filled.

Maggie and Roger both decline, sticking with their sparkling cider.

Dave moves around the table and fills my glass.  I lean over and look into the glass as he moves around to Roman.

“I’ve always wondered where those little bubbles in the bottom of the glass come from, I never could figure that out.”  I laugh, trying to lighten the mood.  With a moody, defensive Stella on one side and an obstinate, resentful Roman on the other, I feel the need to bring a little levity to proceedings.

“You wondered about that too huh?” Roger smiles at me, clearly understanding what I am trying to do, and I feel Stella bristle beside me.  I determine to ignore her brittle dislike of me and the situation she finds herself in.  I can explain things to Maggie later on.

“Not great minds think alike!” My laughter is light and airy, contradicting the tension and misgivings I feel churning in my stomach.

Stella picks up her glass and raises it with an odd smile.   “I’d like to propose a toast.”  

“Oh, sure… Stella. Of course.” I can’t pretend I am not a little surprised.

“To Dr. Evans.  For doing so much to change our lives.”  She lifts her glass and there are lots of hear hears around the table.

“Thank you,” I say, and everyone clinks glasses. I take a sip of my champagne which seems extra fizzy.  I wrinkle my nose and shake my head as the bubbles assault my nose and I laugh again, as though my laughter will make the tension I feel vanish, just like the bubbles in my glass.

John

I see her as soon as I walk in the door.  I almost turn around and head straight back out, but I am captivated by the vision that she presents.  She is wearing a short, strapless little black dress that shows off those long slender legs of hers.  And, man, her breasts.  Not that they need any attention drawn to them because they are beautiful, but they are showcased by gems around the edge of her dress that glitter like ice against the black velvet.  

Her golden hair falls around her shoulders and I imagine what it would feel like to run my fingers through it.  How warm it would be where it rests against her neck. How stirring it would disturb the subtle scent of her.  I can almost smell it now.  The way she smells, a mixture of shampoo, the scent of roses and jasmine which she layers on her creamy skin.  And that scent, which is uniquely her, that sweet, musky fragrance that makes me want to bury myself between her legs.

I feel a tightening in my jeans at the thought of it and I start to turn away.

“John!” Julie stops me in my tracks.  “We haven’t seen you in here in a while.” She smiles in that expansive Julie way that she has about her.  The way that you never quite know whether she’s being genuine or utterly sarcastic.  “Can I get you a table?  Are you meeting Isabella?”

“No,” I shake my head.  How can I tell her I am here looking for an escape from my wife for a few hours?  My wife who is by turns demanding, insecure and paranoid.  My wife, who wants to monitor my every move, who resents my past, who needs control over my present.  I am exhausted and I am suffocated, and I just need some space.  If it wasn’t for Brady, I am sure this marriage would have broken down irretrievably before now.

No, actually, I have to be honest with myself… if it wasn’t for Brady, I probably never would have married her in the first place.  If it wasn’t for Brady…

But I can’t go down that path.  What has happened, has happened.  And I wouldn’t ever wish my son away.  We have Brady, I did marry Isabella, and I have to make my marriage work.  Somehow.  

Even if it’s Marlena I dream of every night.

She knows.  Isabella knows.  When I say she is paranoid, I should say she is suspicious.  With good cause.  I am in love with my ex-wife, and I cannot control what my body does when she is near.  I cannot control what my subconscious does in my sleep.  The way I cry out, the words my mouth forms.

I tell Isabella that I am committed to her, and I am.  I am legally married to her, and I will stay married to her.  But my heart belongs to Marlena.  It always has and it always will.

“I just stopped in for a drink, Julie,” I tell my hostess and friend.  She sees me looking at Marlena and she understands.

“Come with me,” she wears a sympathetic smile as she takes me across to the bar and sets me at a table in the corner.  If I move my chair to the side of the table, I can see Marlena.  If I move it the other way, she is shielded from my view.  

“Thanks.”  I nod at Julie.  “I’ll have a scotch on the rocks.”

“Double?” she asks, and I nod.  I wait until she heads back to the bar and then I seat myself with my back to Marlena and her husband.  I won’t torture myself like that.  I’ll just have one and then I’ll go home.  To my wife and my baby.  To my unhappiness.

Marlena

“Roman?” Julie lays her hand on Roman’s shoulder.  “I’m sorry to interrupt.  But there’s a call for you.  I think it’s the station.”

“Thanks Julie,” Roman looks suspiciously relieved as he excuses himself from the table and goes to take his call.  Sure enough, he comes back several moments later and says that there has been a development in a case that he needs to handle urgently, and he needs to go back to the station.

“Do you have to go?” I ask him quietly.  “Can’t Abe handle it?”

“No, this is too big,” he shakes his head and leans over to brush his lips over my cheek.  It feels like the kiss of a brother.  “You can get a cab home, yeah?  Don’t wait up for me, Doc.  This will be a late one.”

He doesn’t even wait for a reply, he is just gone, and I am left blinking.

“We can take you home honey,” Maggie says gently from across the table.  “Can’t we Mickey?”

“Of course we can,” Mickey says with a comforting smile.  “I’m sure it’s important, Marlena.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I say, taking a big mouthful of my champagne and I am discomforted to see Stella looking at me with a secretive, smug smile.

John

I’m nursing my drink when I see Roman walk out of the restaurant.  I frown and move around so that I can see Marlena.  Mickey has moved to the seat beside her which makes me think Roman is not returning.  I wonder what is going on with those two.  I don’t know for sure because Roman and Isabella have both made it next to impossible for Doc and I to be friends.  We see each other in passing at family functions, and sometimes at the hospital, but we haven’t spoken properly for months.

 Not that it makes any difference to how I feel about her.  I never stopped loving her in the long years I thought she was dead.  I tried to recapture a fraction of what we shared with other women, Diana, Yvette and Isabella.  Something to fill the unending emptiness I felt after she died. 

Something, anything to dull the pain.

None of them ever came close to measuring up to her.  But who could?  I mean, look at her.  She’s a fucking goddess.  Perfection.  And not just the way she looks.  She’s the best person I know.  She’s kind and funny and empathetic.  She’s brilliant and as sharp as a tack.  She’s ice and she’s fire in equal measure.  She’s a fucking revelation, is what she is.  She’s everything.  She was mine once and I was fucking stupid enough to let her walk away from me. 

I live with that, every day.  And when I do see her, I see a sadness in her eyes that echoes my own and it breaks my heart.  I want happiness for her.  She deserves that.  She deserves the world, and I would give it to her if I had it within my power.  But I have nothing to give her.  Nothing except a sympathetic smile and a touch which lasts maybe just a little too long.

I watch her as she raises her glass to her perfect lips and takes a mouthful.  I wish I was that glass.  I wish… God, I shouldn’t be doing this to myself.  But I can’t help it.  I am like an addict falling off the wagon.  I can’t tear my eyes from her.  I catch a passing waiter and order another scotch and I feast my eyes on her like a starving man.

Marlena

Dave is filling my glass again.  At least I think it’s again.  Not again, again.  I’ve only had two.  Or is it three?

Austin is tinkling the ivories of that old piano like an absolute pro.  I am surprised how good he is. 
“I think Austin’s just… ooh-hoohoo!”   Where did the table go?  My elbow was just there and then it wasn’t.  I can’t help but laugh.  Everything suddenly seems hilarious.  “I think Austin’s just a whiz at the keyboard, don’t you think so?” I ask the table at large.

“Yes, he’s just wonderful.  I mean, he can slide back and forth between styles so easily.” Maggie waves her hands in the air.

“Mmmm-hmmm,” I nod, aware that the room is spinning ever so slightly.  I might be a little bit tipsy.  But I’ve only had two glasses.  Or is it three?

“Why don’t you give him a grant?” Stella says loudly.

I pause for a moment and then I realize how hilarious that is and I laugh loudly.  She’s a funny woman, that Stella Lombard.  

“Well, that’s a good idea… maybe we should.” I have the giggles now and I am suddenly glad Roman is not here looking disapproving and spoiling all my fun.  “We could pass a hat.. for… him.  We…” I look around and see Mickey looking at me with a paternalistic smile on his face.  He’s making a fair approximation of Roman, and the thought makes me giggle uncontrollably.  “Oh dear… we don’t have a hat!”  I lean against Mickey and let the laughter shake loose from my body, releasing all the tension that has built up over the past day.  Or two.  Or ten. 

Oh hell.  Let’s be honest.  This has been brewing for months.  Maybe I should do this more.  It feels really good.

John

Julie looks worried as she hurries toward me, and I know exactly why.  Marlena is getting a little loud in the middle of the restaurant.  This isn’t like her, I don’t know exactly how much she’s had to drink, but she is more than a little tipsy.

“John,” Julie starts, looking a little guilty.  “I’m so sorry to ask this but Roman can’t get away from work and I really… I don’t understand what’s gotten into Marlena, I really don’t but I can’t send her home in a cab and Mickey and Maggie offered to take her home but she’s refusing.  She insists that they have to stay and talk with Roger, and she says she’s just fine.  But you can see for yourself.  She’s not.”

“Yeah, okay.”   I nod.  It happened suddenly.  One moment she was talking with Maggie and that guy Roger Lombard and the next, she was suddenly plastered, laughing uproariously, and falling against poor Mickey Horton.  I can’t remember the last time I saw her like this.  In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her like this.  Usually she’s so in control, so ordered and prim and proper.  In public at least.  She’s going to be mortified in the morning.  I need to get her out of here before she really embarrasses herself.  

Of course, I can’t pretend I don’t find her incredibly sexy and adorable in this state.  Her laughter… Jesus, her laughter is intoxicating.  I feel like I could get drunk just on that laughter.  And her clumsiness is so fucking cute.  God, my heart aches in my chest as I watch her.  I love everything about her.  Every move she makes, every sound she makes.  Every glance.  She’s just… that woman is everything.  

“I’ll make sure she gets home safely,” I tell Julie.  Secretly, my heart is pounding just with the thought of being close to her.  Being alone with her.

“I’m so sorry to have to ask you,” Julie says.  “I just don’t know what else to do.  She’s going to be so embarrassed in the morning when she realises what happened.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell her.  And I mean it.  I really mean it.

Marlena

“Marlena, I have to tell you this is a lovely party.” Mickey tells me with a smile.

“Oh, thank you!” I catch Julie as she walks past.  “Can’t take the credit all by myself, it was, it’s… it’s Julie.  You give a nice little shindig honey.”  I laugh.  I really am tipsy, I think.  The room is spinning a little, but I feel great.  “It’s really a nice little party.”

“Well, thank you Marlena.” She gives me that patented Julie smile.  “I think.”

“She’s so nice, I like her so…. “  I look around at Mickey, “Oh, they’re playing that song, I can’t dance.  We should dance, Mickey!  Dance with me.”

“Ahhhhh, I’m not really much of a dancer,” Mickey shakes his head.

“Oh Mickey,” I feel a little sulky.  I want to dance and Roman is not here.  I am also pretty sure dancing with Roger Lombard would be a bad idea, for any number of reasons. “Don’t be an old nightstick-in-the-mud!” I say.  It takes me a moment before I realise what it is that’s come from my mouth and then I can’t help the laughter that erupts from me.  Gosh, that’s so funny!  I am so darn funny!  “A nightstick-in-the-mud!”

Mickey laughs but he pulls his hand from mine when I try and get him to get up and dance with me. 

I stumble backwards and I am caught by warm, strong arms that feel painfully familiar.  His scent envelops me, and I am flooded with emotions and memories that I don’t want.

“Hey, Doc.” I feel the warmth of his breath on my shoulder and suddenly my chest is tight.

“John,” I turn around unsteadily in his arms, and I push myself away from him, but the room is moving around me, and I lose my balance.  He catches me again as I stumble.

“Hey, careful,” he says gently.  His warm hand around my forearm makes my skin erupt in gooseflesh and I shiver despite the warmth of the restaurant.  I swallow and I see a flash of something in his eyes.  I am not sure what it is.  I can’t let myself think what it is lest I let my imagination run riot. 

“I’m fine,” I say brightly.  Fuck it.  Roman isn’t here and John is.  I’ve barely seen him in months.  The opportunity to have his arms around me is too tempting to pass up.  “Dance with me,” I pull on his hand.  “Mickey is being a party pooper, but you’ll dance with me, won’t you?”  

“Doc, I don’t think…” he shakes his head and I pout prettily.  I know he won’t be able to resist.  I know him.

“Please?” I flutter my eyelashes and he sighs.

“Just one dance,” he slides his hand into mine and I feel a wave of electricity sweep up my arm and I tremble.  He notices, I know he does, but he says nothing, just draws me away from the table and into his arms.  The room starts to spin again but I am no longer sure if it’s the champagne or the effects of being so close to him.

John

Despite the way she trembled earlier, Marlena is warm in my arms.  I curl my left arm around her slender waist and press her right hand to my chest.  I wonder if she can feel the pounding of my heart through my thin blue shirt.

I swallow heavily as she looks up at me from under those thick lashes.  I’d almost forgotten how fucking beautiful her eyes are.  A bewitching blend of honey, cinnamon and moss green.  They flash fire when she’s angry and when she’s aroused…. Oh God, when she’s aroused, they darken to a deep, smoky emerald.  

I can lose myself in those eyes.  It’s like taking a dive deep into an ancient forest.  Full of hidden wonders.  You know that calming, healing, almost spiritual feeling when you’re surrounded by archaic, gnarled trees and rocks blanketed in velvety moss?  That’s what it’s like getting lost in her gaze.  A sacred experience. 

“Spin me!” she suddenly demands and tries to break from my arms.  I tighten my hold on her because if I let her go, she’s liable to topple over, or into some poor bastard minding his own business at a table.

“Not a great idea,” I tell her.  “How much have you had to drink, Doc?” 

“Not much!” she shakes her head, her golden hair brushing those beautiful freckle-dusted shoulders.  I once spent an afternoon attempting to kiss every golden freckle, but I gave up after three dozen and gave her three orgasms instead.

My stomach clenches at the thought of it.  The way she would whimper when I licked that delicate spot behind her ear.  The way she would dig her fingers in my hair and grind her sweet pussy into my face as I fucked her with my tongue.  The way she tasted, salted caramel and honey.  The way she felt when I buried myself between her thighs, so sweet and hot and tight.

I try to smother my groan, but it slips out and she looks up at me again.  “Just two.”  Thankfully she’s misunderstood the motivation for my frustrated moan.  She frees her hand from mine and holds two fingers up.  Then she stares drunkenly at it and uncurls another.  “Or is it three?”

She stumbles awkwardly again, her heels a little too high for this amount of champagne and I clasp her firmly to me.  I hope to God she can’t feel the tumescent hardening of my cock in my jeans, but I think she might be a little too far gone even for that.  This is more than three glasses of champagne.  I know Marlena is a lightweight, but she’s actually drunk.  

Marlena doesn’t get drunk.  

People probably think she’s too straightlaced.  Too uptight.  I know she’s neither of those things.  She just doesn’t feel the need to get plastered.  She’d much rather be in control of the situation.  She’d much rather be aware of what’s going on around her so that she can direct, and finesse events as required.  She’s nothing if not skilful at invisibly guiding those around her so that everyone enjoys the way an evening unfolds.

This isn’t like her at all.

“I want to spin!” This time she manages to break free of my grip, but Carrie’s young man catches her before she can do any real damage.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”  She rearranges her wrap around her shoulders.  “John, don’t let go of me like that!”

“I won’t do it again Doc,” I reassure her, and I won’t.  As much as I love having her this close, it’s time to call an end to this evening, for Marlena at least.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Marlena says to Carrie. “Of course.”

“Julie called your dad to come get her, but he’s busy,” I tell Carrie who looks both worried and embarrassed.  I don’t know whether she’s embarrassed by Marlena or for her, but that’s not my concern right now.  I just need to get Marlena out of here and get her home where she’s safe.  “I’m gonna take her home.  Get her sobered up.”

“Good idea,” Carrie straightens the gauzy wrap around Marlena’s shoulders.  “I’ll call you tomorrow, Marlena.”

“I wanna stay, we’re having such a nice time,” Marlena turns to me and gives me one of her million-watt smiles, and my chest physically hurts.  “Let’s stay for just a little while. “ 

It feels so familiar.  As though no time has passed at all.  As though we’re not married to two different people.  My heart is hers; it always has been.  I am married to another woman, but I belong to this one, body and soul.

“Doc, we need to-“

“Dip me,” my heart almost jumps out of my chest as she curls her arm around my neck and presses herself against me. “Oh John, dip me.”

I’d fucking do it, except everyone is watching us now and I’m scared that my feelings for her are written all over my face.  I want to take her in my arms and bend her backwards.  I want to draw my nose and my lips along the ridge of her throat.  I want to taste her skin, salt and roses.  I want to nudge my lips up against her fucking gorgeous mouth.  Flicker my tongue across her lower lip and hear her moan.  I want to slide my tongue into her mouth and tangle with hers.  

I want to taste her.  I want to bury myself in her.  

I want to go home.

But I can’t go home.  That door is closed and locked to me now. 

My own doing.  My own fault, and I have to live with it.

“No, baby,” I murmur so quietly so that only she can hear me.  “We can’t.  You need to go home.”

“Dip me, alright, okay?” She raises her eyebrows, her eyes dancing.  She is so fucking sexy and adorable even when she is drunk.  “Just one little dip, one little dip an I’ll .. then we’ll go home, okay?”

“Not tonight,” I tell her with a regretful smile.  Not any night, baby.  “Carrie,” I look at the young woman that was once my daughter, “do me a favour, punkin’.  Tell Mickey and Maggie that I’ve taken her home, alright?”

“Sweetheart, I’ll see you later.”  She lays her hand on Carrie’s arm and Carrie tries to smile but I can tell she is worried. “You look so pretty tonight. You look so…”

“Can you get her purse?” I ask Carrie.  “Just drop it by the house to-”  I realise Marlena has wandered off and I wave at Carrie and stride quickly across the room to catch up with her.

“Oh Julie, it was a wonderful party, you’re such a lovely hostess…”  She gives a shocked Julie a big kiss on the cheek, and I bite back a smile.  She is really gonna be mortified tomorrow.  But I think it’s more than adorable.  She’s such a sweet and silly drunk.  No edge to her, no aggression.  Just pure Marlena, funny, loving and goddamn sexy as fuck.

“Thank you, I love to see my guests enjoy themselves.”  Julie humours her, but it is edged with her famous sarcasm.  “I think.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” Marlena drapes her wrap over her head and wanders off towards the door, weaving as she goes.

“I’ll make sure she gets home safely,” I assure Julie, following the beautiful blonde that once was mine.  

“Goodnight darling, thank you…”  Julie’s voice floats after me as I rescue Marlena who heading in the direction of the kitchen and just about to run into a waiter with a tray full of glasses.

Marlena

“Why’d they put that table there?” I demand.  “It was practically in the doorway.”

“It was against the wall, Doc,” John says.  “Where it’s always been.”

“Are you sure?” I shiver.  It’s cold out here.

“Here,” he puts his jacket around my shoulders, and I look up at his face.  It’s a cold, clear night and the moon is bright.  It casts a silvery glow across the ground, but his eyes are in shadow.  They are a dark, midnight blue and they make me ache.  The way he is looking at me makes my stomach tighten.

“You look beautiful tonight, Marlena,” his voice is low and smooth, and it floats across my skin like melted chocolate.  “You always look beautiful, but you look particularly beautiful tonight.”  He reaches out and twists a lock of his hair between his fingers.  I feel myself blushing and I feel flustered.

“Thank you,” I say.  I can’t stop staring at him, at his face, at his lips.  The dreams I’ve had about those lips.  About what they did to me.  What they do to me in my dreams.

No, I can’t think like this.  I love Roman.  I’m married to Roman.

“I don’t think it was,” I add, turning toward the car.  “I think they moved it.”

“Moved what?” he asks as the car hoots and beeps and the hazard lights blink.  

“The table, dummy!” I giggle, leaning against the car as the world begins to spin again.  “Silly darn place to put a table if you ask me.”

“Okay Doc, whatever you say,” he grins.  “Get in the car, I’m taking you home.”

“I don’t want to go home,” I say when I am strapped into the car, and he is pulling out of the parking lot.  I don’t.  If we go home, that’s it.  He’ll go back to Isabella, and I won’t see him again for weeks.  Maybe months.  

I nestle into his coat.  It’s warm it and smells of him.  I breathe in deeply and throw my head back.  The roof of his car seems to be swimming.  “Let’s go have a drink,” I say.

“Uh-uh,” he shakes his head.  “You’ve had more than enough, baby.”

There it is again.  He said that earlier.  Called me baby.  

Fuck.  

That simple word does a multitude of things to me.  Elevates my pulse.  Makes my mouth dry.  Makes… other places… wet.  

I feel an ache between my thighs.  It’s been a while since I’ve felt like this.  I can’t feel like this.  I’m a married woman.  John’s a married man.  I can’t fucking let myself think…. I can’t let myself remember.

“I need a drink,” I insist, more forcefully this time.  I do, I fucking need a drink.  I need to numb things.  Body parts.  My brain.  This ache in my chest.  

Most of the time I ignore how much I miss him.  How much it hurts to see him with Isabella.  I bury myself in work and my children and it dulls the pain.  But here, with him next to me, with his scent enveloping me, it all comes flooding back.

The way he kissed me on the pier.  The way he devoured me on the beach in Miami.  The way he held me while we slept in San Cristóbal.  And his face that morning in Mexico.  When we finally knew he wasn’t Roman Brady.  The morning after he’d spent the night with Isabella.

I look away, suddenly unable to breathe.  Everything is suddenly blurry, and I surreptitiously wipe away the tears with the backs of my fingers.

“I need a drink,” I insist in a whisper.  “Take me somewhere.  I just…” I look across at him and he is staring determinedly at the road, but his knuckles are white on the steering wheel.  There is something happening here.  I am not sure what.  I am a little too drunk to really understand what’s going on.  I just know that I need more time with him.  “I miss you,” I say quietly.

I see a muscle twitching in his jaw, and I wonder what is going on in his head.

“Doc…”  his voice is strained.  “Marlena…”

I probably shouldn’t have said that.  We’re friends. That’s what we tell ourselves, anyway.  Good friends.  The best of friends.

But my other friends don’t make my skin tingle when they touch me.  My other friends don’t make me ache between my thighs. 

“It’s true,” I say, looking at him.  He is beautiful in profile. Strong roman features…

I giggle despite myself.  How ironic.

“What’s so funny?” he asks, glancing across at me.

“Nothing,” I chuckle.  “Everything.”  I think about how I took him to my bed thinking he was my husband when really, he was so much more than Roman could ever be.  “My crazy life,” I have to laugh, or I might burst into tears and that would never do.

John turns briefly and looks at me.  His raised eyebrow makes me laugh even harder and I fold double, my arms clutched around my middle, tears leaking from my eyes.  

“Crazy life, huh?” he asks, and I howl even harder.  I don’t even know why it’s so funny, but it is.  Roman, but not Roman.  My husband but not my husband.  Coming back to him and then losing him.  Loving him so hard I can hardly breathe without him and then having to live without breathing.  Being suffocated by Roman and his rigidity.  His rules.  His expectations.

My laughter peters out and I look away, suddenly bereft.  I want his arms around me again.  I shiver.  “Let’s go get a drink,” I say again, insistently.  “Cheatin’ Heart.”

No-one who knows us will see us there.

“Dressed like that?” his eyes rake me carelessly and I blush despite the coolness of the night air coming through his open window.  “Doc, you’re way too classy for a joint like the Cheatin’ Heart.  How do you even know about that place?  It’s a dive.”

“Carly took me there once,” I tell him.  “We played pool.  I drank beer.”

“You.” He laughs.  “The esteemed Doctor Marlena Evans?  Played pool?  Drank beer?”  He shakes his head disbelievingly.  “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” I nod but it makes the interior of the car wobble around me, and I have to grab the door lest I topple against it.  “It was a dive though,” I say confidentially, “and the beer was horrible.”

“And you want to go there now?” he smiles.

How can I tell him I just want to spend more time with him?  And I really want another drink.

“I told you,” I say nonchalantly.  “I’m not ready to go home.”

“You might not be ready, but you need to.”  He turns into Sycamore Drive, and I sigh loudly, folding my arms across me.

He pulls into the driveway and turns off the engine and then the lights.

“C’mon Doc,” he nods towards the house.  “Let’s get you inside where it’s warm.”

John

I climb out of the car and round the back of the car.

I open the passenger’s door and say, “get out of the car,” a little more harshly than I intend.  She’s so fucking beautiful; she’s got me all at sixes and sevens.  Her warm golden skin.  Her hair which shines silver and gold in the moonlight.  The jewels on her dress which glitter like icicles.  The flush, high in her cheeks.  That laughter, silvery and drunken.  It twists me and almost breaks me.

I told her earlier that she looks beautiful but it’s an understatement.  She is perfection.  Jesus, it’s hard to be this close to her and not touch her.  I want to take her face in my hands and find those delicious lips with my own.  Kissing her was always one of my favourite past-times.  Kissing her made the world slow down.  Kissing her would make everything else just fade away.

I can still remember the way she tastes.  The softness of her lips against mine.

Shit, I can’t keep doing this to myself.  I have to get her into the house and make sure she’s safe and then leave. 

I have to leave her and go back to my wife.  My wife.  I can’t be feeling like this about Marlena.  It’s wrong.

Isn’t it?

She climbs out of the high seat but missteps and collides with me.  I catch her in my arms, and she giggles as she curls one forearm around my neck and presses that sinful body against mine.

“Sorry,” she says in a voice that is low and so fucking sexy it feels like it’s physically climbing inside my body and igniting fire in my blood.  “I might be a little bit drunk.”

“Yeah, I think you might be,” I curve my hands around her warm waist, below my jacket which she still wears.  I can’t help myself.  I stretch my fingers so that I can feel the outline of her lower ribs underneath the warm, soft velvet.  I swallow heavily over the lump in my throat and hope to God she’s too drunk to notice the lump in my jeans.  “Let’s get you inside.”

“Okay,” she turns and tries to walk but she trips over her own feet and almost goes over on her ankle.  I have to catch her again and this time her back is to me, and one hand is around her waist and the other across her chest, brushing the top of her spectacular breasts.  

“Oooops,” she draws out the word with the echo of laughter in her voice.  Then, and I am pretty sure it is completely deliberate, she wiggles her fucking perfect ass against my hard-on.  “Ooooops,” she says again and this time she throws her head back and laughs, the sound deep and throaty.  My cock responds immediately.  

Fucking hell, I am in big, big trouble. 

“Inside,” I mutter darkly.

She takes another step but it’s clear that she’s barely able to walk.  “Exactly how much did you have to drink, Doc?” I ask again.

She turns half around, grabbing my arm to stabilize herself and holds up a hand with three fingers.  “Jus’ two,” she says brightly.  

“That’s three, baby,” I tell her, smiling despite myself.  “C’mon then.”  I sweep her into my arms, one curled under her back and the other scooping her long, slender legs up.  She giggles and wraps her arms around my neck.  Her face is so close to mine I am momentarily unbalanced.  Her scent is warm and floral.  I can see where her beautiful breasts disappear under the bejewelled velvet, and I want to lick her right there.  

I swallow and the harshness of the sound is painfully audible to my ears as I carry her to the door.  I use my own keys to unlock the door, praying that she’s too drunk to realise hers are still in her purse which is with Carrie.  I should have given my keys to the house back to her last year when we returned from Mexico, but I couldn’t.  Holding onto them made me feel just that little bit safer.  Like I could get to her if anything happened.

Exactly what I thought would happen that I would need keys to the house she shares with Roman, I don’t know.  But no-one ever thought to ask for them back.  So I kept them.

I turn the door handle and push the door open with my foot.  Moonlight spills into the living room from the open door behind me and the French doors to our right.  I back up against the door to close it and then carry Marlena across to the sofa and place her gently on her feet.

She doesn’t let go of me, her arms still around my neck.  I feel her fingers feathering in the hair at the base of my neck as she stares up at me.  My heart is pounding so loudly that I can hear it in my ears.

“Marlena…” I say, my cheeks flaring red.

“Yes?” Her fingers glide around my neck to my throat.

“Doc!” I grab her hand and pull it away from my sensitive skin.  I can’t allow this.  She is drunk and I am a married man.  Hell, she’s married to a man I consider my friend.  “Stop.  Please stop.”

“I miss touching you,” she murmurs, her other hand lacing through my hair.

“You need to sober up.”  I push her away from me and catch her wrists in my fingers.  “Doc, we’re friends.  That’s all.  You can’t miss touching me.”

“Do you miss touching me?” She seems to have ignored everything I just said.

“I’m going to make you some coffee,” I say gruffly.  I drop her hands almost forcefully and turn before I can see the hurt in her eyes.

Of course I miss touching her.  Jesus, I dream about her all the fucking time.  About how it feels to touch her.  How soft her skin is, how warm.  About her scent and how she tastes when I lick her below her ear.  About how the sounds of her moans and whimpers vibrate in my ears and travel along my nerves to my cock, making it swell.  About how she feels, hot and wet and tight when I drive into her.  How glorious her warm tongue feels swirling around my throbbing dick.

But I can’t admit that to her.  Jesus.  She’s another man’s wife.  I can’t remember what it feels like to make love to her while she is right there in the room.  I can’t talk about it with her.  If I so much as even touch her like that, I feel like I will lose every vestige of self-restraint.  

I’m barely clinging to it as it is.

Marlena

I flinch as John slams the door to the kitchen open and it rebounds off the wall.  It swings back and forth, and I hear a bang from the kitchen.

I’ve upset him.  

I know I shouldn’t have touched him like that.  I shouldn’t have said those things.  Whatever it was that I said.  I don’t remember.  There’s a line and we’re always so careful not to cross it.  But tonight… I don’t know if it’s the moonlight, or the champagne….

It’s probably the champagne… let’s be honest.

But God, being that close to him.  Feeling his arms around me.  Smelling his scent, it brings back so many memories.  So many happy memories. 

Those months we had together… it’s six years ago but I lost five of those years.  So it’s only months ago for me.  

Everything is so vivid.  The way he made me laugh.  How it felt with him curled around me in bed with the rain drumming on the roof.  Taking Sami and Eric to the park and watching them toddle around, his arms wrapped around me, his chin on my shoulder.

And the long, long nights just lost in each other.  Just running our hands slowly over each other’s bodies.  The taste of salt on his skin.  His hips as they rocked against mine.  His hands on my breasts.  His cries and mine as we rode the waves of our pleasure. 

Oh fuck.  I should tell him to go.  I should just go to bed and sleep this off.

Yep, that’s exactly what I should do…..

….But it’s warm in here and I need a drink.  

I kick off my shoes and shrug off his jacket, throwing it over the back of a chair.  I stumble across to where we keep the wine.  I pull out a bottle of champagne and I’m surprisingly dextrous as I unwrap the foil from the cork and undo the wire cage.  I drop them both on the floor and ease the cork from the neck of the bottle with a loud *pop*.

The liquid starts bubbling up and out of the neck of the bottle so in the interests of reducing wastage, I seal my lips around the top of the bottom and gulp down several mouthfuls.

John comes out of the kitchen with a mug in his hand and finds me like this, my eyes wide, my mouth wrapped around the top of the champagne bottle.

“Fuck, Doc!” he still looks pissed off.  “What the fuck are you doing?  Haven’t you already had enough?”

I swallow the wine in my throat and bring the bottle down in front of me.  “No.”  I shake my head.  He glares at me, and I feel confused and hurt.  “Are you angry at me?” I ask in a small voice.

He stops and thinks about what I’ve said, and his shoulders drop, his expression softening.  He shakes his head and walks towards me.  “No,” he reaches out and brushes my hair behind my shoulder.  “This is just… it’s hard being close to you.  You asked if I miss you.  I miss you more than I could possibly put into words.  This is just… it’s hard.”

“It’s hard for me too,” I tell him and hold out the bottle to him.  “That’s why I wanted another drink.”

“I don’t think alcohol is going to make it any easier,” he says.  He looks sympathetic and he looks like he knows my pain.  He probably does.

“It numbs it a little,” I confide.  

“I have to drive home,” he says.

“Leave your car here and get a taxi,” I take another mouthful of the champagne and splutter and laugh as the bubbles go up my nose.  

“I don’t think Roman would be too thrilled to see my car in your driveway,” he points out.

I shrug.  Quite frankly I don’t give a shit what Roman thinks about it right now.  He went to work and left me alone in a restaurant with no way home.  I thrust the bottle at him again and he takes it this time.  I wander over to the French doors and unlock them, throwing them open and letting the night air and the moonlight in.  

John comes up behind me and I feel the heat coming off his body.  My heart quickens.  We shouldn’t be doing this.  I shouldn’t be drinking more.  I shouldn’t be encouraging him to stay longer.  

I’m going to get us into really big trouble if I’m not careful.

John

The light from the moon silhouettes her like a silver aura, illuminating her curves.  I have so many misgivings.  I know this is probably the stupidest thing I’ve done in a long time.  Probably the stupidest since I walked away from her.  But I can’t help myself.

I’m a moth and she’s the flame.  She’s magnetic.  She’s magnificent.  I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to.  And fuck, I don’t want to.  The coffee is brewing in the kitchen, but I forget it as I am drawn to her.  I stand behind her and look out over the front garden to the street.

“I should move my car,” I murmur.  “So that Roman doesn’t see it when he comes home.”

“Roman won’t be home until the morning,” she says, and I hear the sadness in her voice.  It’s heart-breaking.  “Where does Isabella think you are?”

She knows me so well.  She knows I couldn’t tell Isabella I was taking her home.  IzzyB would spin out.  It would send her paranoia into overdrive.  Although is it really paranoia if I am dreaming about this woman every damn night?

“Isabella and I had a fight earlier,” I tell her before I take another big mouthful.  I reach over her shoulder to hand her the bottle.  She shivers as my shirt comes into contact with her back and I feel a tingle run through me, centring in my groin.  “I needed some space.  I stopped at Wings for a drink.  She has no idea where I am.  I’ll get the third degree when I get home.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she takes a swig of the champagne and then sighs.  “Roman and I fight all the time lately,” she confides.

“You do?” Her voice is flat and unemotional, and it makes me curious.  “What do you fight about?”

“What don’t we fight about?”  She shrugs and turns side-on to look at me.  Stepping back, she leans against the doorframe, her face bathed in the silvery moonlight.  “Carrie, the twins, my job, his job.  You….”

“Me?”  I feel momentarily surprised by the turn this conversation has taken.  I had no idea.  They put on a good show when they are in public.  

She nods at me, her golden eyes luminous but says nothing more.  Instead, she takes the bottle and takes another big gulp.

“Hey, hey,” I reach out and take the bottle from her, my fingers brushing against hers as I do so.  The warmth of them, the frisson they elicit in my skin, in my stomach, is disconcerting.  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough, honey?”

“Not nearly,” she shakes her head, but the action unbalances her, and I have to catch her again as she stumbles slightly.

“Baby, you’re drunk,” I whisper, and I can hear the love in my own voice as I speak.  Fuck, an hour with this woman and she’s back under my skin.  Oh Christ, who am I trying to kid?  I never evicted her.  From the moment I laid eyes on her in that hospital room, she has been indelibly etched into my heart.  She is part of my soul and loving her comes as natural as breathing to me.

“So?” she demands.  “The good, proper, perfect Doctor Marlena Evans is allowed to get shitfaced you know.”  

“This isn’t like you,” I tell her. “Doc, you’re going to regret this in the morning.”

“Well, add it to the fucking list.”  She grabs the bottle back from me and takes another swig as she leans back against the open doorway again.

“What does that mean?” I ask her.  She’s not making any sense.

“Are you telling me you don’t have any regrets?”  She pierces me with a look that makes my heart pound.  How can I tell her I regret every move I’ve made since she came walking out of the mist on the pier that night more than a year ago?  I should have taken her in my arms, kissed her and then taken her home and made love to her for a week straight.  

It hurt so much to lose her back in ’87.  When that plane carrying her crashed, my life crashed and fractured with it.  I’m still not sure how I survived it.  And then she fucking walked back into my life like an angel, and I was terrified.  I couldn’t imagine having to live through that kind of pain again.

But instead, I am a man only half-alive because the other half of me is over here living in this house, married to another man.

“I have regrets,” I tell her but I’m not going to tell her what they are.  “Roman has a problem with your job?”

“Roman has a problem with me having an opinion these days,” she sighs.  “But yes.  He doesn’t like me being involved with criminals.  He thinks people can’t change.  He thinks people like Roger Lombard will always be trouble and that I should be staying far away from them.”

“He probably thinks he’s trying to protect you,” I try and look at it from Roman’s point of view.  “You know, keep you safe.  I mean, that guy Frank came here, to your house.”

“Roman doesn’t respect me professionally,” she says acerbically.  “It’s not about trying to protect me.  It’s about trying to control me.  John, I’m a professional.  I trained a long time for this.  I know what I’m doing.”

“I know you do, Doc,” I nod.  She doesn’t need to tell me.  I have always known how fucking special she is, how wonderful she is at her job and how many people she helps.  That Roman doesn’t or refuses to see this… well, he’s a fucking idiot.

She sighs and hands me back the bottle and rolls her shoulders.  Then, unconscious of how fucking sexy she looks, she closes her eyes and stretches against the door frame.  One hand snakes up to clasp the corner as her back arches and the opposite stocking foot slides up the wood as her long leg bends.

“I’m so lonely,” she opens her eyes and fixes me with a smouldering gaze.  “He works late, and I leave early because I can’t bear the arguments.  I don’t understand how I got here.”

I say nothing.  But my heart aches.  

Marlena

I look at him.  He’s bathed in moonlight, his dark skin painted parchment silver, dark indigo eyes glittering.  He takes my breath away, he is so, so beautiful.  

I have never wanted him more than I do right at this moment.

My heart is pounding, and I feel breathless and dizzy.

“Are you happy, John?” I hear myself asking him.  “You and Isabella, are you happy?”

I am not sure what I want his answer to be.  I can’t stand the thought of him touching her.  His hand on a body that is not mine.  His lips…

But if he is as unhappy as I am, then what has been the point of all this?

He says nothing, just fixes me with those bottomless eyes of his, deep pools of cobalt.  I could get lost in them.  I used to dive into them and lose myself for hours.  In his eyes, his touch, his tongue.  He would take me to places that were beyond the physical realm.  Beyond thought, beyond senses.

“I miss you,” I say again, and I push myself away from the doorway with my stockinged foot and take a step towards him.

“Doc..” he puts his hands on my shoulders as if to push me away but instead, his hands become tender, and he cups my neck.  “We can’t do this.”

“I dream about you,” I tell him softly.  “All the time, I dream about you.  That’s why Roman and I fight.  He knows.  Not that I dream about you.  But that I still think about you.  I still want you.”

My throat is tight as put my hand on his chest.  I can feel his heart thumping under my fingers.  

“Doc,” his voice comes out as a hoarse whisper, and I hear him swallow dryly.  “Marlena…”

“When I’m in bed with him,” I step closer, so close I can feel the heat of him on my skin.  “I fantasize that it’s you.  It’s your lips I’m kissing.  It’s you that I’m touching.  It’s you inside of me.”

“Fuck Marlena!” His hands thread into my hair and he pulls it tightly, keeping my face a little distance from him.  My lips part and my stomach clenches.  I want him so badly my pussy is throbbing.  It’s been growing ever since we danced at Wings.  This need for him.  I keep it under control, mostly.  But the alcohol, and being close to him, it’s unleashed my desire.  I feel wild with it.  My whole body feels alive in a way it hasn’t for months.

“Do you dream about me, John?” I ask him, my voice low and feral.  “Do you imagine it’s me in your arms when you make love to her?  Do you imagine it’s my body that you’re pounding into, my mouth sucking your cock?”

John closes his eyes and groans.  I can see the bulge tight in his jeans.  I felt it earlier when we were outside.  I see the desire in his eyes, the arousal.  I know that look.  He wants me, he wants my body.  He’s fighting it, but he wants this.

I should be fighting it too, but I’m tired of being good and moral and upstanding.  I’m tired of doing the right thing for everyone else.  When do I ever do the right thing for me?  When do I ever do the thing that feels good instead of the thing that is good but feels like crap?

“Kiss me,” I murmur.  “Just once.  Just so I can remember how you taste.  How your lips feel on mine.”

It’s a lie.  I don’t need to be reminded.  I remember only too well.  I have relived that night on the beach in Miami a thousand times.  I have dreamed our reunion on the pier another thousand.  

In my dreams, it always ends differently.  He takes me home to our children and he makes love to me.  He kisses me and strokes me and licks me.  He fucks me with his tongue and his fingers and makes me scream his name over and over again.  And then he’s inside me, and my world is right again.  Everything that was empty and broken is now whole again.  I am whole, my world is full of colour and life, and I am happy.  I am joyous.

And then I wake up with Roman next to me and I am horny and frustrated and sad, and I don’t want him to touch me.  I want John.

And now, here he is.  And I shouldn’t be doing this, but I can’t help myself.  I miss him so much it’s painful.  And maybe just a taste of him will make it worse, but I can’t pass it up.  I am like a starving woman sat in front of a banquet and expected to just look at it.  It’s an impossible ask.

“Baby,” he looks at me helplessly, but his hands slide around to cup my face.  He’s trying so hard to resist.  God, I love him, he’s such a good man.  

“One little kiss,” I whisper.  “No-one has to know.  It’ll be our little secret.”  I deliberately slide my tongue out to wet my top lip and he moans softly.

I slide my hand up his chest until my fingers meet bare skin and that tuft of dark hair that peaks out from the unbuttoned vee of his shirt.  Then my fingers walk up his throat and skim lightly over his jaw and they trace the line of his bottom lip.  

They’re so soft and he’s so still he’s barely breathing.  

My eyes lift to his and I see the hunger in them.

“Just one kiss,” I repeat breathlessly.

I slide my hand around to the back of his warm neck and tug him closer.

He says nothing but I see his adam’s apple bob as he swallows.

My heart is pounding so loudly I’d be surprised if he can’t hear it.  I’d also be surprised if his isn’t beating a concurrent rhythm.

“Oh Doc,” he whispers and then his lips swipe across mine, just a featherlight touch and I feel my knees go weak.

My breath hitches at the feeling of his lips against mine.  Just the ghost of a kiss.  A tease.  The warmth of his breath on my skin.  The tingle where his lips brush against mine with a hint of friction.  He nuzzles the side of my face with his nose, brushing his cheek against mine, and I feel the warmth of his breath against my ear.  I moan quietly and press my face against his.  I want more.  I want so much more.  But I will settle for a kiss.  A real kiss.

“More,” I whisper.  “Let me taste you.”

He groans and I feel his pelvis move almost imperceptibly, pressing against my lower belly.  He is hard in his jeans, and I can feel my panties growing damp.

I pull my head back and look at him, my gaze drawn inexorably to his mouth.  Those lips that have brought me so much pleasure.  Those lips which hold me hostage in my dreams.  “Please.” I beg him.  I have no shame; I want him so badly I am beyond that.  I am consumed by this desire; this need which I have kept at bay for so long and which is now erupting like a tsunami from me.  “Please, John.  Please.”

I can see his chest rising and falling, his breaths short and strained.  He is fighting with everything he has to resist me, but I know him so well.  I’m probably not being fair.  He’s probably right and I will probably regret this in the morning.

Right now, I don’t care.  I just want his mouth on mine.  Just one more time.

I stand on my tiptoes, and I lean forward and press my lips to his.  He closes his eyes and whimpers and I part my own lips and lick my way along his lower lip.

His hands are still cupping my face and he is stock-still as I try and use my tongue to insinuate my way into his mouth.

“John,” I whine, threading my fingers in his hair and tugging at it.  “Please, just one little kiss.”

John

She’s fucking driving me insane.  I can’t give into her, but I can’t bring myself to push her away either.  Part of me, a detached interested part, wonders if I don’t respond, how far she will go before she gives up.

Will she give up?

I have a feeling, staring into those emerald eyes, blown with arousal, that she would not.

”Just one kiss, Doc?” I ask, already knowing her answer and the true answer bear no similarity to each other. 

“Just one.”  She presses her breasts against my chest and casting my eyes down I can see that luscious cleavage that haunts my dreams.  Now it’s going to haunt my waking hours too.  

She’s lying.  Whether it’s to me or to herself, I don’t know.  But there’s no way once I taste her that this is going to end at just one kiss.  

We could never stop when we were married and had all the time in the world to love each other.  But now, after a year watching each other from across crowded rooms, catching fingers in passing, short fraternal hugs in greeting at the pub.  After a year of yearning for her, of dreaming of her and waking with hard-ons which need to be hidden from my wife and dealt with in the bathroom…

If I kiss her, I won’t be able to stop at one.  I won’t be able to stop at just kissing.

I know myself.  I know the way my body responds to her.  I know how obsessed, how addicted I am to her.  I am a slave to her desires.

Nothing has changed, not the way I feel about her, not the way my body reacts to her.  

And not the way I bend to her will.

I am lost, I know it.  She is everything to me and she is offering herself to me.  I know this isn’t just a drunken kiss.  This isn’t just a stolen moment in her dark living room while her husband is at work.  I’m not exactly sure what it is and honestly, I probably shouldn’t be going here when she’s drunk, but I am weak, and I will take whatever it is that’s on offer.  Because I am a man dying of thirst and she is the water that will quench my parched throat.

I dip my head and pass my lips over hers again, harder this time, slower.  My tongue slides out and tastes her bottom lip and I hear her heady whimper.  It makes my cock twitch in the confines of my jeans.

I run my tongue along her lower lip and then back along the seam, where her lips meet.

I flicker my tongue slowly, like I am knocking at a door, waiting for her to let me in.  

“Oh,” she gasps, folding her arms around my neck and my tongue is granted access.  I dig into the recesses of her mouth as I thread the fingers of one hand into her hair and pull her head backward, giving me a better angle to feast on her mouth.

The other hand strokes her cheek gently as I withdraw and then meet her lips again.  Soft and then hard.  I whisper my lips against hers, I nibble, I suck.  I break again and pull back, looking into those eyes full of honeyed mystery.  I want to make sure she is with me.  Wherever this is going to go.  

She stares at me.  

Her eyes, I can’t even describe how they change from gold to green and back again. Despite the way the moonlight bleaches everything to a ghostly hue, she is still vibrant and vivid with colour. 

She pulls on my neck again and presses the full length of her body against mine.  I can’t help myself and I push her back against the doorframe and I groan as I roll my hips against hers.  She feels so good.  So right.  

I lick her lips again and then bite her jaw.  She gasps, arching her back so that her breasts press against my chest.  I can feel the heat of her skin through the thin fabric of my shirt, and I want to strip her of that velvet and see what she’s got hidden under the warm, soft fabric.

“Doc,” I murmur as I kiss and lick my way along her jaw to that sweet angle where it curves up towards her ear.  Then my lips whisper to that spot just under and behind her ear, the one that makes her legs go weak.  I lick her gently and it’s like pressing a button.  She whines and for a moment, I have to catch her weight as her limbs turn to spaghetti. And then she is gasping and pulling me towards her.

“More!”  She begs.  “Please, John.”  Her hands scrabble at my neck and my shoulder, trying to get closer to me and I press open mouthed kisses to her neck and her throat, sucking at her flesh in the spots that I know will be hidden under her waterfall of golden hair.  

And I can smell her, that distinctive sweet smell of her desire and it makes me want her even more.

“Fuck baby,” I stop kissing her, but I press up against her so that she is sandwiched between my body and the door frame.  I rest my forehead against hers and struggle for breath.  “I can’t…. we can’t do this.”  My hand skims down over the velvet that embraces her curves even as I say it.  I am saying the words, but they are just lip service.  I am saying them because I know I should, not because I believe them.

My hand slips around and caresses the curve of her gorgeous ass.  “Oh fuck,” I groan again.  “Fuck.  Fuck.”  

“I…” her hands find my face and she runs her fingers over my skin as if she is trying to memorise every line and plane by touch alone.  I hear a sniff and I pull back slightly.  She’s crying, tears sliding slowly down her cheeks.

“Don’t cry, baby,” I whisper, lifting my hand and wiping away the tears with my thumb.  I can’t bear it when she cries, and she knows it.  It breaks me into little pieces, and I will do anything to make things right with her.  “Please don’t cry.”

“I miss you so much,” she sobs.  “A kiss isn’t enough.  I need more.  I need you.  I need all of you.”

“Oh baby,” I nuzzle her face, her tears wet on my skin.  “A kiss was never going to be enough.  I love you, Doc; I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” she cries.  “Oh John, I love you too.”

I pull back from her and look into her eyes.  

“Doc, you’re drunk,” I say softly.  “You’re going to regret this in the morning.”

“I’m not,” she shakes her head, her eyes dark and lust filled.  “I’ve been dreaming of you for more than a year.  I’ve longed for your hands on my skin, your mouth on my body every waking moment.  I’ll never regret a moment I spend with you.  It’s the moments without you that I regret.”

“Oh, Doc.” I caress her beautiful face.  I know I should be a better man than this.  I should walk away.  But I can’t.  I love this woman more than life itself.  I would die for her.  And I can’t pass up this opportunity.  The opportunity to love her again.  To feel her body against mine.  Even if it never happens again, I will have this memory.

“Are you sure?” I ask as I curl my arms around her and find the zip that joins the back of this sexy dress together and keeps it covering her.

“I’m sure,” she assures me with suddenly sober eyes.  “I’m sure.”

Marlena

He stares down into my eyes as he slowly drags the zip downwards and I feel it peeling apart, tooth by tooth.  I shiver in his arms, the intensity in his eyes stripping me and making me emotionally defenceless.  I know I shouldn’t be doing this.  My head tells me I am married to Roman, and this is wrong.  I made vows to Roman, vows of honesty and loyalty.  But I made vows to John too, and more recently.  

My heart tells me this is where I belong.  In John’s arms.  I am bound to him.  Not by words or signatures on a marriage certificate.  But by our hearts.  There are threads that bind us together.  Threads of silver and gold.  When he walks into a room, I know.  When he is sad or in pain, I know.  I am unhappy because he is unhappy.  And he is unhappy because I am.  Because our hearts beat in rhythm, because without each other we are not living full lives.  We are not living without our other half.

“I love you,” I repeat quietly.  “I’m in love with you.”

“I never stopped,” he tells me.  “It’s you, Doc.  It’s always been you.”

The zip finally reaches its nadir, and he peels the dress down and pushes it over my hips.  It falls to the ground, and I step out of it and kick it away with my stockinged feet.

I am wearing a black lacy basque over lacy french knickers and John groans as he sees what has been revealed by the shedding of my skin of black velvet.

“Fuck, baby,” he breathes, and steps back to admire the way the corset enhances my curves, my breasts spilling out over the top of it.  His reaction is gratifying and far outweighs any misgivings I had earlier about wearing it.  I’d had no idea when I bought it that it would be John that would be the recipient of this little ensemble, but it makes me overjoyed that I went to the trouble of pouring myself into it because his response is everything I could have hoped for.

“Touch me,” I invite him, and I take his hand in mine and draw it to the warmth between my thighs.  “I need you to feel how much I want you.”

His breath catches and stutters as he feels the stickiness that coats my inner thighs and his eyes cut down to watch where his fingers cup the slick, wet satin of my panties.  He can’t say anything for a moment, he just closes his eyes as he slides the pad of his middle finger along the satin-covered seam of my pussy.

“Oh, oh,” I moan and roll my head back against the door frame.  Just that delicate touch of his fingers over my most sensitive parts sends me reeling.  Everything tingles and throbs with that single stroke and I feel another trickle of moisture soak the gusset of my panties.

“Oh, Doc,” he looks up at me with heavy lidded eyes.  They reveal a world of want in their indigo depths.  “Are you sure about this?”

Why does he keep asking me?  Does he want me to say no?  Does he want me to save him from this?  From this sin we are about to commit?  Because I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.  I don’t care if it’s sinful.  I love this man and I need him.  How can it be sinful to love so deeply?  To give yourself to a man who’s only desire is to love you and to respect you and cherish you?

If this is sinful then I am an unrepentant sinner.  He might be right; I might regret this in the morning but at least I will have the memory of it burned in my brain.  I will have the knowledge that he loves me above all others.

“I want you inside of me,” I tell him, my voice low and urgent.  “I need you.  I need you to make love to me, John.”

John

She looks like a goddess.  Seriously, she is astonishing.  

Beauty personified.  And sexy as fuck.  

Christ, if I was fixated on her before, after this I will be a fucking obsessive.  I’ll eat, sleep and breathe her.  How the fuck will I be able to walk away from her after this?  Will I be able to?

“Christ baby, you’re so wet,” I can barely get the words out, my throat is so tight.

My heart is pounding, and I almost feel dizzy.

I reach out and splay my palm and fingers against the white painted door frame above her shoulder.  It keeps me upright, but it also allows me to lean in and inhale her.  Roses, lilacs and jasmine.  And the earthy natural scent of her arousal.  It makes me ache with the need to feel her.  To taste her.  To slide into her dark, hidden places.  

She reaches out and undoes the top button of my shirt and then another.  I watch her eyes as she moves deliberately downwards, the tip of her pink tongue glistening as she pokes it between her lips, concentrating hard on slipping the buttons out of the shirt with her fumbling, drunken fingers.

As she nears the bottom, I move my hand to the top of her panties and slide my fingers inside.

I encounter the soft, clipped hair and run my fingers through it as I head downwards.

“Mmmmm, oh,” she bites her lower lip and rolls her hips against my hand, her hands on my shoulders.  She feels incredible.  Warm and humid.  She is coated with the slippery viscous evidence of her arousal, and I can’t help the growl that tears from my throat as I slide my finger along the seam of her swollen pussy.

“Jesus Doc, you feel so fucking good.”   I slide my finger back and forth, making her mewl, her fingernails digging into my shoulders as she tries to control the twitching and bucking of her pelvis.

“Oh God, oh God, John,” she pants as she starts to rock her hips backwards and forwards.  “Oh, fuck.  Oh God.”

I curl my finger so that it parts her, and I feel her warmth envelop my digit up to the first knuckle.  I can only imagine how she will feel around my hard, throbbing cock.  I almost come in my jeans just thinking about it.

“Oh Doc,” I touch my forehead to hers.  “I love you.  I’ve missed you so much.”  I pull my finger out and slide it upwards, brushing it across her sensitive clit.  She practically wails and I feel her fingernails making crescents in my shoulders.  

I don’t care.  I don’t care if she marks me.  I want the evidence of this night on my body for days.  I want to look at myself in the mirror and remember what we did and how it felt to move inside her.  After all these years, I know I’ll need to prove to myself that this wasn’t a dream.

“John,” she glides her hands up to my face and pulls my lips fiercely to hers.  She crashes her mouth against mine, her tongue desperately plundering my mouth as though she is seeking some kind of absolution.  And maybe she is.  Maybe, like me, she is drowning in unhappiness, and this is her salvation.  Maybe it is our deliverance.

“Doc,” I say as she pulls back, panting.  “Baby.”  Do I need to say anything else?  I attack her mouth again, reassuring her that I want her as much as she wants me.  This is desperation, pure and simple.  I don’t know whether this is an ending or a beginning.  I just know I need it more than I need to breathe right now.

I smooth my finger over the small pebble of her centre, and she buckles against me.  I grab her and press her back against the wooden door frame as I slide my finger down and curl it into her again, dipping it in to the second knuckle this time.  I kiss her as I use my thumb to arouse her nerves again and she sheds tears as she moans.

“More,” she looks up at me, her voice smooth and languid like honey dripping off a spoon.  “I need more, baby.”

I push further into her until my finger is fully sheathed in her sweet, moist heat.  “Oh, fuck baby,” I bury my nose in her hair as she grinds herself against my palm. I withdraw my finger and add a second, pushing again into her welcoming warmth.  She is so slippery that I can hear the wet squelching of my digits moving in and out of her as I begin to finger-fuck her slowly.

I can feel the satin of her bustier rubbing against my chest between the sides of my shirt which now hangs open.  I breathe her in and allow the sounds and the scent of her to envelop me.  She fills all my senses, and I am lost in her.  She is a fever dream, but she is real.

I have dreamed of this moment for years.  And it is everything and more that I remember.

Nothing else feels like her.  Nothing is as sweet or as hot.  Nothing makes every one of my nerves sing the way she does.  The feeling of her hair brushing against my skin.  The generous dusting of those gorgeous freckles across her nose and her cheeks.  And her graceful shoulders.  I could spend hours tracing the way her neck curves into her shoulders, the beautifully defined collarbones and the sweep down to the swell of those incredible breasts.  I mean, I have spent hours walking, gliding my fingers and my lips over those self-same expanses of golden skin.  But I could spend many more.

“John,” she gasps, rocking against my hand and I realise she is close to coming already.  I withdraw my hand and she sobs her frustration.  

“Just a minute, baby,” I tell her as I lower myself to my knees before her.  When she comes, I want her to come against my tongue.  I want to taste her pleasure.  

“Oh,” she lifts her hand to her hair and drives her fingers through it, a visual sign of the frustration and anticipation that has all her nerves on edge.  When she comes, it’s going to be like a goddamn tornado.

“Doc, I need you to be quiet,” I tell her as I glance towards the street.  We are largely hidden by the garden shrubs here but if she is as loud as she can be when she orgasms, the whole street is gonna think someone is being murdered and they’re all gonna come out to see what’s going on.  Tom and Alice Horton seeing me going down on Roman Brady’s wife is not really an idea I relish.

I should close the door but somehow the idea that we might be seen makes this all the hotter.  I am going to make Marlena orgasm so hard it’s going to turn her world upside down and part of me wants to the world to know it.  Wants everyone to know that her heart is mine and just for tonight, so is her body.  And I will make her scream louder than Roman fucking Brady ever could.

Just not this time.  

“Can you be quiet for me?” I gaze up at her, finding myself lost in her beauty for a moment.  Those high cheekbones brushed a delicate shade of rose.  Her luminous eyes, the perfect blend of forest green and dark honey.  Those luscious lips, swollen and red from my bites and kisses.  How the fuck did I think I’d ever be able to stay away from her?  

How the fuck do I think I am going to stay away from her after this?

We are so, so screwed.

Marlena nods, biting her lower lip and I smile.  “Good girl,” I tell her and see her take a short, sharp breath.  Some things don’t change, and I am assaulted by memories that I have worked hard to supress.  All those things that we did with, and to, each other, six years ago.  I have tried so hard to lock them into a corner of my mind.  Those are filing drawers I could not open.  

Until now.  

But now I won’t be able to close them again.

I hook my fingers over the sides of her panties and smooth them down over the curve of her perfect ass.  My heart beats a little faster as that dark patch of wiry hair that frames her centre is revealed inch by inch.  

My god she smells like memories.  She smells like home.

I let the panties drop to the ground around her ankles and then I grasp one calf with warm, damp fingers and drape it over my shoulder.  I look up at her and raise my eyebrows.

“Is this okay, Doc?” I ask her.  I have to give her every opportunity to change her mind if she wants to.

But she doesn’t want to.  

“Yes,” she nods eagerly.  “Oh God, yes.  Please.”

I inhale deeply and then run my tongue ever so lightly along the swollen lines of her lips.

“Mmmmph…” she slaps her left hand against the glass of the open French door and winds the fingers of her right in my hair.

I flick my tongue over the little button of her clit, and she grips my hair harder.  “Yessss,” she hisses.  “More.”

I repeat it, the long stroke of my tongue up the length of her slit, finishing with a twist and a flourish over her sensitive nub.  No other woman has ever responded to me the way she does.  I don’t know if she’s just super sensitive and responsive, or whether I am so attuned to her and the way she sounds and moves, that I know just how to elicit those responses.  Whatever it is, she just falls apart under my ministrations so quickly and so explosively that I barely have time to breathe before she is writhing under my fingers and my tongue, ready to fall over the edge of that cliff and into orgasmic oblivion.  It’s gratifying and, I won’t lie, it does great things for my ego.

It’s also super-sexy.  I mean, look at her.  She’s the most gorgeous creature to walk god’s green earth.  And I can make her sob in ecstasy.  With a few flicks of my tongue and the right combination of curl, stroke and thrust of my fingers I can have her whimpering and clutching at me, begging for release.

And then the force with which she comes, with which she grabs, and twists and stretches can blow my mind.  She is a force of nature, and I can make her erupt or I can soothe her to calmness with a whisper, a stroke of my hand and curling my spent body around hers.

She pushes her hips up towards my mouth and I curve my hands around her buttocks.  “Gentle baby,” I tell her.  “Let me enjoy this.”

“Oh, I want you inside me,” she cries.  “Please John.  I need to…. I was so close.”

“Okay sweetheart.”  I part her lips with my tongue and push it into the entrance of her sweet darkness.  She tastes so fucking good and I could feast on her for hours, just languidly exploring her while I make her come over and over again.  Maybe I will later.  But now… now is for quick and explosive.  Now is for reminding ourselves of what we’ve missed for six years.

I flutter my tongue against her sensitive walls, and she cries out again.  I squeeze her ass and slap it lightly to remind her to be quiet, but it only makes her cry out louder.  I should have remembered that’s not a warning to her, it’s part of the suite of foreplay that we used to engage in.

I pull my mouth away from her core.  “Shhhhh baby,” I remind her.  “You don’t want to wake the neighbours, hmmm?”

“Oh, fuck,” she says quietly but before she can say anything more, I am alternately licking and probing her pussy with my tongue and then moving my attentions to the swollen bundle of nerves which will play such a big part in her forthcoming orgasm.

I bring my hand up between her legs again and stroke her wet, glistening folds with my fingers as I massage her with my tongue.

“Ahhhh,” her hips rock desperately towards my fingers.  I know she wants me inside her, but it’s been so long, I want to recommit to memory the way she feels under my fingers.  Between my own legs my cock throbs mercilessly.  I want to fuck her so badly I’m in physical pain, but I can’t drag my mouth away from her because this is also where I need to be.  Stroking, licking, sucking her towards a blistering climax which shatters her into a thousand pieces.  

I want to watch her come apart.  It’s been so long and yet, it’s like yesterday.  I’ve fallen off the wagon and headlong into my addiction to her.  I was lying to myself when I vowed to get over her.  I was never over her.  I’ll never be over her.

I press my fingers into her again as I nudge her with my tongue again, swirling the tip around that pink pearl as I fill her with my fingers.

“Oh, yes,” she clutches at the door frame above her head, and I feel her heel digging into my back.  “Oh John, yeah.  Just there baby, just….” I start to suck on her clit as I thrust my fingers into her, and she squeals and throws her head back so that it smacks against the wood behind her.

I stop for a moment, worried about her but she glares down at me, and I almost laugh.  “Don’t stop!” she gasps.  “Please!”

“Remember to be quiet,” I tell her.  “You can be loud later, when I fuck this gorgeous pussy of yours.”

“Oh fuck!” she bucks against my mouth, and I go back to fucking her with my fingers and massaging her with my tongue.  She grinds against me with low moans and whimpers, trying to be quiet but slowly losing any and all semblance of control over her reactions to my pleasuring of her.

I shift uncomfortably, my rock-hard erection contained painfully by the denim of my jeans.  I need her to come now so I can get her upstairs and fuck her senseless. 

“C’mon baby,” I murmur between strokes of my tongue.  I curl my fingers slightly and find that spot, the one I know will make her lose her mind.  “I want to see your pretty face as you come.  Come for me, Marlena.  Show me how good I make you feel.”

I brush my fingers against her inner wall again and again and I flick and then suck her.

“Oh, fuck!  Fuck!”  She grinds against me again and then I hear and feel the start of her orgasm, that long slow whine that slips from her gorgeous mouth and the tensing of her leg against my back.  Her knuckles whiten where she grabs the wall and then she is arching her back and rolling her head against the door frame and she is crying out.  She bites her lip, trying to control the sounds that spill from her but it’s too much for her.  It feels too good as I thrust my fingers into her, firm and hard and I hold my tongue firmly against her as she grinds and thrashes out her orgasm into my mouth.

I feel her contract around my fingers, and I feel the moisture gush from her, coating my fingers and my palm.  I taste her as I suck and lick and she weeps against my mouth.  She tastes of champagne and sex.  She tastes fucking amazing.

Marlena

I almost pass out, my orgasm is so intense.  No one has ever made me come like John does.  He does things to my body I didn’t even know were possible.  Sometimes I think he can make me come just by looking at me.

“Oh, oh God!”  My knees buckle but he slides my leg from his shoulder and catches me before I completely collapse.  I struggle for breath as he holds me against the wall, and he climbs up from his knees.

“I love you,” he tells me, and it brings tears to my eyes.  I love him and I can’t stop this.  I won’t stop it.  I need him.  Everything that has been wrong suddenly feels right.  As he pulls me into his arms, the emptiness that has been vibrating inside me for so long is suddenly calmed and filled with contentment.  He is here and I am complete again.

“John,” I say.

“Shhhh,” he puts his fingers to my lips, and I can smell myself on him.  It is oddly sexy.  

“I love you too,” I cleave myself to him but there is not enough skin.  He still wears his jeans, and I am still spilling out of this corset of satin and lace.  “I don’t want to stop.  I can’t stop.  Not now.   Baby, I need all of you.”

He looks at me with a question in his eyes.  I know he wants this as much as I do, and I also know he is dubious about my sobriety. Do I understand the implications of our actions?  Do I?  I am cheating on my husband.  He is cheating on his wife.  We are committing adultery, which is a sin.

But how can it be a sin when we love each other the way we do?  It’s denying this love which feels wrong.

“I don’t know what happens after this,” I tell him.  To be honest, I can’t think beyond this moment.  Other than I know what I want, right now.  I don’t know what happens in the morning.  I don’t know if our marriages can survive this.  Or if they even should.  “I just know I love you and that I can’t do anything to make myself stop loving you.”

“I’m not saying we should stop, Doc,” he says.  “But I can’t pretend this isn’t going to explode our whole lives wide open.  This isn’t just one kiss, one night.  Once I make love to you, I don’t think I’ll be able to go back to pretending to love Isabella.  I am yours.  Only yours.”

“And I’m yours,” I tell him, digging my fingers into his hair.  “I know what I’m doing, John.  And I know we should probably stop this right now and work out what we need to do before we can be together.  But I can’t wait any longer.  We’ve waited too long already.  I need this.  I need you.”  

He nods and pulls me away from the doorway.  I watch as he closes the doors and locks them.  I hope to god no one heard me earlier and I shiver with the cold and the thought that I may not be able to control the fallout from this.  This is fraught with danger and if I was in my right mind, I know I would not pursue this without carefully thinking through the consequences.  I don’t want to hurt Roman, or Isabella.  I don’t want to hurt my children or our families.  But I can’t stop this.  It’s inexorable.  It’s inevitable.  We are like magnets, in that the moment we were in proximity, we snapped together and now I don’t know if anyone will be able to pry us apart.

He turns to look at me and I shiver.  I had been so lost in him, in the heat that we produce when we are moving against each other, I had forgotten how cold it is outside.   To be fair, it has been unseasonably warm for Fall, but it’s late now and there is a real autumnal chill in the air, a harbinger of the winter to come.  And I wonder for a moment if it harbours more than just the coldness of the weather in its warning.

“Here,” he picks up my knickers and I look at him in confusion.  “If you put them back on, I get to take them off you again.”  One eyebrow lifts, and he smirks at me.  “Doc, you look really fucking sexy in that get-up, if I haven’t already said it.”

“If you didn’t say, I certainly got that impression,” I return his smile as I step back into my panties and he guides them up, over the thigh-highs until they fit snugly back on my hips.  

Then, without warning, he sweeps me into his arms.  

“Where are we going?” I ask him.

“Upstairs,” he tells me with an odd kind of smile.  “It used to be our bedroom, Marlena.  It was the first place I made love to you.  I want it to be the first this time also.”

I swallow.  I share that bed with Roman.  With my husband.  It feels disrespectful to cheat on him with John in his bed.  But then John is right.  This was our bed too.  And that respect, it feels right.  Oh, so right.  

And honestly, when was the last time Roman was respectful to me?

He obviously feels my hesitation because he sighs.  “Okay, if you want….” He nuzzles the side of my face.  “We could use the spare room?”

It must still be the champagne talking because I find myself shaking my head.  “No,” I say.  Using the spare room doesn’t make what we’re doing any better.  I am still cheating on my husband.  In our house.  Why does it matter which bed it is in?  And he’s right.  This used to be our house.  And our bed.  Every time I enter that room with Roman, I think of John.  I dream of him making love to me in that bed.  “No.  It’s fine.”  I curl my arms around his neck and press my lips to the coarse stubble that lines his throat.  I lick his skin and suck at it, knowing I will mark him the way he has marked me.  We are throwing caution to the wind, almost as if we want to be caught.  

If we care caught, then our guilt will not be able to overwhelm us into silence.  We will be forced to give voice to the truth we both know.  We cannot continue to live a lie.  After tonight, everything will crash and burn.

But in these precious few hours, we will take our pleasure and our joy where we can.  We will shut out the world and our souls will be whole and complete for just a little time.  Until everything falls apart again.

I hear the growl of lust rumbling deep in his throat as he takes the stairs two at a time.  I can feel the champagne and the desire coursing through my veins.  My world is whirling, and I want it to slow down, but at the same time, I don’t.  I want this heady, desperate, lust fuelled part of me to stay in control.  Without her, I fear I may lose my resolve to take what it is that I need.  Because I do need it.    I can’t continue to live my life as it has been.  Full of arguments and resentment and duty.  I need this.  I need love and laughter and a man who respects me and looks at me as if I make the sun rise in the morning.

He stops in front of the bedroom door, and I twist the handle and push it open.  He carries me to the bed and gently sits me on the edge.  He kneels again and parts my thighs, finding my lips with his.  He kisses me, long and slow and with gentleness and passion in equal measure.  His tongue flicks and dives against mine as he does an intimate dance of exploration and desire.

I want him so much.  My previous climax was wonderful, but it only served to intensify the need to have him inside me.  To feel him, solid and heavy, surging into me.  Filling me, branding me, making me his.

It’s no lie to say that Roman’s lovemaking does not even come close to fulfilling me the way John’s does.  It seems absurd to me now that I could have ever confused the two of them.  I laugh, despite myself, the alcohol still seemingly having its way with me.

“What?” John asks, sitting back on his knees.

“It’s nothing,” I shake my head and then giggle again.

“Well, obviously not.”  He raises his eyebrows in that very John way he has, which is absolutely nothing like Roman, and I collapse in a fit of the giggles.

“You and Roman,” I gasp.  “Just thinking how crazy it is that I could ever have thought were him.”

“You wanted to believe,” he reminds me.  “It made it easier for you to accept that you had fallen in love again.”

“I didn’t love you because I thought you were Roman,” I tell him.  “I thought you were Roman because I loved you.  I felt it so intensely, so fast.  I thought if you were Roman, that would make it alright.  It would explain it.”

I think about the first time we made love though, and my sudden misgivings.  

“I knew.” I say quietly.  “I knew the first time we made love that you weren’t Roman.  But I wouldn’t let it settle.  I kept pushing the thoughts, the knowledge away because I had convinced you and the family…. I had convinced everyone that you were Roman.  How could I suddenly turn around and say we’d made a mistake.  So, I buried it.”

“You knew?” he asks, standing and walking back to the door.  He turns around and stares at me.  “How could you have known….?”

I look down at the bulge in his pants and I chuckle.  “You can change a lot of things with plastic surgery, my love, but you can’t change that.”  I give him a sly smile.  “And you could do things with that and with your mouth and fingers that Roman never could and never will.

“So, I’m…” he can’t help the grin that curves his mouth.  “Better?”

“Oh,” I stand and take several steps to meet him in the middle of the room.  “You are so, so much better.”  John is nothing if not competitive and while this is a conversation that bears further discussion and some apologies on my part, right now I have other things on my mind.  “Why do you think I dream about you….” I reach up and brush my lips against his, “…every…” and then I nip at his lower lip with my teeth, “….night?”

“Oh, baby,” he spans my waist with his large hands, pulls me into him and kisses me with intent.  “We need to talk about this more, but not now.”

“Not now,” I agree.  “But yes, later.”

“Don’t move,” he whispers in my ear as he crosses the room and switches on the bedside lamp.  Going back to the door, he turns off the main light, dropping the room into semi-darkness.  Fixing me with an intense stare, he stalks back towards me, his feet bare and jeans clinging to his muscular legs.  

I lose my breath for a moment, watching him.  Watching the way his muscles move under his skin as he moves around me.  He is so beautiful.  I had almost forgotten how astonishingly handsome he is and how spectacular his body is.  

I feel him come up behind me and I feel a throb and an ache between my thighs as it feels like all the blood in my body rushes back there.  He is warm against my back, the hair on his chest brushing against my shoulder blades.  He reaches over my shoulders, and I am assaulted by the memory of the first time we made love in this room. 

He had done just the same thing, reaching over to help me unbutton the orange jumpsuit I was wearing.

I gasp, much like I did that night as his fingers search for the hooks that hold my bustier in place.

“You have a habit of making me feel like a schoolgirl,” I whisper as I feel the moisture pooling between my thighs.

“This might not be the first time I’ve made love to you this time, Doc,” his voice vibrates against my ear, and I feel his tongue dart out to lick me.  I cry out and I feel the hardness of him press into my behind.

“I want to be inside you, baby,” he unhooks the top three clasps and we both groan as he peels back the stiff fabric to release my breasts.  “Oh fuck.”

His hands cup my breasts, enveloping the soft mounds within his large grasp.  He squeezes and massages them, pulling me back against his chest, his nose in my hair.  I moan and reach up behind me, running my fingers through his hair.  

“Oh Doc!” He slides his hands down and uses the pads of his thumbs to circle my nipples and then roll them across the top of his fingers.  I cry out loudly.  I want more, I want his hands on them, his mouth on them.  I want him to fuck me.  I want everything and I want it all now.

I drop my hands and try and undo the next clasp on my basque but my fingers are clumsy with the champagne and I struggle to get my fingers around the hook and eye.

“Let me,” John stills my hands and then unhooks the next few fastenings until he is able to pull the garment free and drop it on the floor.

He kisses my shoulder gently and then whispers his mouth up the side of my neck, licking and kissing me so that I feel weak and breathless.

“Turn around,” he tells me softly as he pushes on my left shoulder, and I ease myself around so that I am looking up into his eyes.

My heart beats harshly against my ribcage as I reach for his belt.  We both know this dance.  It’s been forever but it’s also been no time at all.  

Muscle memory.  

My hands move of their own accord, pulling the leather and releasing the buckle, letting it clink as I drop it and attack the button and then the zip of his jeans.  I peel open his waistband and he sighs with relief as we both work push the stiff denim over his hips, releasing the tight package of his stiff shaft so that it bounces against his satin boxers.

He steps out of the jeans and kicks them away.  And then he takes my hand and leads me to the bed. 

He slips his fingers under my heavy hair and traces the line of my spine with his fingers, down and then up again, making me shiver.  Then he takes his other hand and uses it to brush my hair from my cheek.  He strokes the side of my face, slowly and tenderly.  I swallow as I lift my hands and run my fingers over his abdomen.

His stomach jumps as I touch him, and he moans quietly.  His breathing quiet and intense as he traces the lines of my face with his soulful eyes, as though he is committing every curve, every feature, every blemish to memory.

I do the same, my gaze roving over his face.  His lower cheeks and jaw are peppered with stubble and I can feel the sting of their abrasiveness between my thighs.  But it is a feeling I welcome.  It brings back memories of night-time trysts between stakeouts, and stolen hours in the afternoon as the twins napped.

Gosh, we made love everywhere in those summer months, between comas and kidnappings.  We had so little time together, but it is burned so brightly in my memory.  He made me come alive.  He made my skin fizz and burn, my stomach clench and roll and my heart thud.  He made me ache and pulse and tremble in places I wasn’t even aware could do those things.

He still makes me do all those things.  He consumes me, he frustrates and thrills me.

I am desperately in love with him, I realise that now.  I tried to move on, to get over him but I’ll never get over him.  Not ever.  When I gave him my heart, he took it and moulded it until the only place it will ever be happy is right next to him.

“I love you,” he whispers as he smooths his lips over mine.

“I love you,” I respond, my fingers brushing up and over his chest, weaving through the soft, dark hair.  “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to make love,” he tells me with certainty.  “You are going to spread those gorgeous legs of yours and I am going to sheath myself in that sweet, tight heat between your thighs.  And you are going to beg me to let you come.”

I whimper my arousal against his lips.  When he talks like this it drives me crazy.  I sometimes think he could bring me to orgasm just with his dirty mouth alone. 

“Yes,” I breathe out my agreement.  I want that, more than anything.  But I also need reassurance.  That I won’t be left to pick up the broken pieces of my shattered heart, my fractured life, when he chooses Isabella again.   “But after?”

“After….” He drags his lips along the hollow of my cheek and then presses a kiss to my throat.  “Baby, I am yours.  I’ll do whatever it takes to make that a permanent arrangement.  We’ll talk.  We’ll make decisions.  But later, okay?”

“Okay.” I slide my hands up and over his shoulders and I feel the welts from my earlier assault on him with my fingernails.  He’s not going to be able to hide this from Isabella, if he even wants to.  I tip my head back and to the side as he moves the curtain of hair away from my neck and begins a careful assault, kissing, licking and sucking on the delicate skin at the side of my neck and down to my throat.  “John,” I moan.  He’s going to leave marks that I cannot hide.  

But I am not even sure I want to.  I don’t want to hurt Roman, but it seems inevitable at this point.  Whatever happens, however I do it, however he finds out he is going to be heartbroken, and he is going to hate me.  

This is going to destroy my family.

And still, my body yields to the man that holds me in his arms.  My heart yields to him.  Because he is my past and my future.  He is my everything.

“Baby,” he murmurs.  “You feel so good.  You taste so good.”

He wraps a strong arm around my waist and carefully guides me down to the bed so that I am lying on my back with him at my side.  He runs his hand down over the curves of my breasts and over my stomach.  “You’ve lost weight,” he tells me as he runs delicate fingers over the small curve of my lower belly.

I nod.  The stress and the unhappiness of my marriage and the endless arguments do not stimulate my appetite.  I’ve never really used food or alcohol as a comfort, or to numb my pain.  I am far more likely to bury myself in my work than find solace at the bottom of a tub of ice-cream.  

“You need to take care of yourself, baby,” he tells me gently.  He understands me better than Roman could ever hope to.  

“I will,” I promise.  “Or, you can take care of me?”  I raise my eyebrows hopefully and he smiles.

“Is that a promise?” he asks.

“If you want it to be,” I reach out and smooth the hair from his forehead.  I am trying to gauge how serious he is, and I think he is doing the same.  He may have more cause given how drunk I was earlier.  I still feel fuzzy and the world around me has an odd expansive feel to it.  Hell, yes, I am still drunk.  But I am also deadly serious.  I want this man.  Tonight, and always.

“Yeah,” he swoops in and licks my lips, so that I roll towards him, looking for more.  “I want it, baby.”

John

I push Marlena onto her back and cup one of her breasts, brushing my thumb across the swollen nipple.  I watch in pleasure as she twists under my touch, sweet sounds of tortured pleasure raining from her beautiful lips.

The sounds she makes make me so fucking hot for her.  Those little moans and ah’s.  The little intakes of breath as I lick her throat.  The whimpers and mewls as I suck on her breasts or stroke her between her legs.  She is so fucking sexy it actually physically hurts at times.  I ache and I throb with my wanting.  I imagine the way she feels as she seeps over my fingertips and I remember the feeling of her tightening around me as I push my length into her and I grow so aroused I can barely stand it.

So, I try not to imagine, I try not to remember.  And sometimes I am successful.  But then I see her in passing, and my unconscious reminds me how good she feels in vivid dreams.  And those night-time visions bleed into my waking daydreams.

Recently, I was at the hospital, there for a meeting about a donation and I heard her just before I rounded a corner.  I stopped and pasted myself against a wall and just listened for the honeyed cadence of her voice as she spoke.

And then she laughed.  That deep, throaty laugh that she does, when she throws her head back and lets it rip.  And it fucking near broke me.  It reached into my chest and twisted my heart like it was a fucking sponge, like it was exsanguinating all the blood from my body.  For a moment I felt so dizzy I thought I might pass out.  A passing nurse asked if I was all right.

All right?  When my heart is walking around outside my body.  All right?  When the simple sound of her sparkling laughter can practically slice me in two?

I left the building, shaking.  Marlena never even knew I was there.  But that night, I dreamed of her.  I dreamed we were picnicking, just like we did on our honeymoon.  And she was teasing me, her eyes glittering like topaz, her hair gleaming like spun gold in the sun.  

She laughed as I stripped off the tank top and cute shorts she wore.  And as I made love to her, her laughter dissolved into those moans and whimpers that make me want to shoot my load like a cannon inside her. 

I woke in a tangle of wet sheets.  Luckily Isabella was already up feeding the baby and she said nothing when I scrunched up the bedding and threw it in the washing machine.   Sometimes I think she knows, she just says nothing because once it is an issue, we will have to discuss it.  And I will have to admit I have wet dreams about my ex-wife when I can barely touch my current one.

I bend my head and nuzzle my nose and mouth between her breasts.  I groan as my cock responds with a hard jerk and throb and I feel moisture oozing from the tip and soaking into my boxers.

“Oh fuck,” I bite the inside of her breast and suck on the creamy flesh, dotted with those amazing golden freckles that turn me on so much.  I have dreamed of these perfect soft mounds of flesh.  I have dreamed of those hard, pink nipples and how they feel under my tongue.  I have dreamed of the way her back arches as she pushes her breast into my mouth, and I suck on her and roll those hard little nubs between my tongue and the top of my mouth so that she sobs with pleasure.

“Honey.”  She arches her back like she does in my dreams, but the movement undulates like a wave down her body and she rolls her hips against me, the wet gusset of her panties sticking momentarily to the satin of my boxers so that I can feel her heat and her moisture against my own skin.  “Oh God, John,” she pushes on my hand so that her nipple brushes against my mouth.  “Please.”

“You want me to suck it, baby?” I ask and she nods her head, biting her lower lip.

I grin up at her like the cat that’s got the cream.  Nothing will give me more pleasure.  Well, okay, maybe being inside her will but that’s coming as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.

I flick my tongue lightly across the tip of her nipple, just a tease, a taste for both of us.  She lets out one of those gasps that drives me wild, and I suck the hard pebble into my mouth and swirl my tongue around it.  She cries out and digs her fingers into my hair, holding my head to her as I worship her with my tongue.  She feels absolutely fucking incredible.  

I had forgotten, I had really forgotten how amazing she feels and tastes.  How responsive she is, how a stroke here, a flicker there can dissolve her into a chaotic mass of nervous reaction.   I don’t think any of it is artful, it is all completely spontaneous and natural.  She gets lost in the sensations I arouse in her body, and it makes me so fucking hot to see it.

I roll my tongue around her nipple and slide my hand around to the small of her back before sliding it down to palm her ass.  She’s still wearing those satin knickers I slid back onto her in the living room, and I pull the edge up so that I can run my hand over her ass-cheek.

I squeeze her and it elicits another moan and I feel her pressing her wet core against my hip.  She surrounds me, she’s inside me and she is everything I have ever wanted and ever will want.  

I was crazy to let her walk away.  I wanted to love IzzyB, I really did.  I thought I did love her.  When she told me she was pregnant, it seemed like an answer.  Maybe not the perfect answer but it gave me somewhere else to put my focus.  I could make a new family; it wouldn’t be the same but it would give me something to live for.

Except it hasn’t made me happy.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Brady.  But when my heart is still walking around Salem in the shape of a blonde beauty with endless legs and the dirtiest laugh you’ve ever heard… how can I be happy?  How can I be content when this is my family, here in this house.  I still think of them as my children, her as my wife.  My vows to Isabella felt wrong the moment I made them.  Because I had already made vows and they still meant everything to me.  

They still do.

This here is where I am meant to be.  Sleeping with Isabella has felt like cheating on her.   And I can’t do it anymore.

I shift, my shaft tightening with the thought of what is coming.  I don’t think I can wait any longer.  I physically ache to be inside her.  I need to consume her the way she consumes my every waking moment.  I need to be the only sensation she’s aware of, the only thing that exists inside her head, even if just for a few minutes.

Marlena

“Oh Doc,” he murmurs around my nipple.  “I need to be inside you, baby.”

“Yes,” I gasp, “oh, please, yes!”  I need to see him, need to feel all of him.   I am almost incoherent with the need of him, and I use my hands to lift his head from my breast.  “Now.” I say.

He nods and lifts himself from the bed, divesting himself of his boxer shorts in one fluid movement.  His cock springs free as he does, his proud shaft bouncing against his belly, the base nestled in that bed of dark, wiry hair that I love so much.  God, he looks so good he makes my mouth water. His olive skin, those well-defined muscles, the dark shock of hair and those piercing sapphire eyes.  I’ve never seen a more beautiful man.  And I’ve never wanted a man like I want this one.  

I mean, I wanted him six years ago this much, I know I did.  The more we made love, the more I wanted him.  He was like a drug to me, and he still is.  The physical pleasure he brings to me is off any chart I could even begin to imagine.  But it’s not just that.  It’s the way he makes me feel emotionally.  Safe.  Cared for.  Seen.  Known.  Respected.  Loved unconditionally.

And he still makes me feel like that.  Even though he’s married to another woman.  Even though we see each other so rarely.  When we do it’s like we’re drawn together, and we sense each other’s emotions and even thoughts at times.  I rarely have to explain myself to him because he just gets it.  He gets me. 

And he’s certainly getting me now.

He leans over and peels off fist one lace-top stocking and then the other.  Then he slides his palms up the insides of my thighs and sliding them over the top and around to the sides, he digs his fingers into the waistband of my panties.

“You are so beautiful, Doc” he tells me again.

I am lost for words.  I can’t believe we’re here.  After all this time, after thinking I had lost him forever, this is really happening.  I almost have to pinch myself to prove it’s not a dream.  I have forgotten all about Roman.  All that’s in my head right at this moment is John.  Only John and what he’s about to do to me.

“Up the bed,” he orders me, and I move around so legs are no longer hanging off the side of the bed.  I lie with my head propped on pillows and wait for him.  He stands at the end of the bed and my heart beats soundly in my chest as our eyes devour each other.  Then, after a beat, he leans over and crawls up nudging my legs open.

I hold his luminous eyes as he leans over to kiss me, his lips soft and warm, his tongue hot and wet against mine.  I can feel him brush against my belly and all my muscles tighten, my stomach rolling with desire.  I moan against his mouth, and he thrusts against me, his length moving over my centre and I tremble violently.

He kisses his way to the side of my face and whispers in my ear, “you feel so good, baby.”  I bend my knees and he slides his length between my thighs, so that the underside of his cock is coated with the copious moisture that has been produced by my body, ravenous for the feel of him pushing inside of me. 

“Oh, fuck,” he groans.  “You’re so goddamn wet.” He pulls back and pushes again, his cock gliding over my centre and providing friction and lubrication to my clitoris.  I whimper, pushing up against him as he moves backward and forward over me.

“Please John,” I don’t know how much more I can take, it feels so good, but I need him inside me.  I need to feel him deep within me, our bodies moving together in synchronicity.   “Please.”

He says nothing but raises himself on his elbows and forearms and looks at my exposed sex.  “Fuck, Doc,” he says in awe as he pushes the head of his cock against the cleft of my drenched pussy.

I can’t help myself as I reach down and encircle him with my hand.  I want to feel him for just a moment, the softness of his skin juxtaposed with the steel hardness of his length.   He pulses in my hands, bulging veins and moisture weeping from the tip.  He shudders and moans as I run my thumb across the top of his beautiful pole, and I smile wickedly.  “I’m going to suck that gorgeous cock of yours later,” I tell him, and I am rewarded by the rolling back of his eyes in his head,

“Jesus Christ, baby, are you trying to make me come before I even get inside you?” he asks in a voice that is gravel and oil.

“No,” I guide him towards me and rub the head of his dick against my aching centre.  “Just giving you fair warning.  Oh!”  I suck in a breath as he breaches me, his ample girth stretching me wide as he sinks into me.  “Oh, oh God!”

He takes it slow which is just as well, because as I alluded to earlier, he is quite a bit bigger than Roman and quite honestly, it’s been a while since Roman and I had sex anyway, so this is a little bit of a shock.  I had forgotten, although also I had not forgotten, how it feels when John enters me.  It takes a little while to adjust.  But clearly, he remembers that, and he is slow and gentle, pushing in and then withdrawing, teasing me with a little more of his length on each incursion.

“Oh baby,” he breathes, kissing me softly.  He always makes me feel like I am the most beautiful, sexy creature he’s ever seen, but ever more so when he is inside me while we make love.  It feels like a sacred act which is ironic given it we are committing adultery by doing this.  But I don’t even care anymore.  I don’t even think I’m drunk any more.  Although maybe I am, or maybe I am just intoxicated with desire for this man.  With love for him.

He rocks his hips against mine and I wrap my arms around his neck.  My knees lift higher around his hips, and I fold my calves across his muscular ass, my heels digging into the tops of his thighs.  He sighs with what sounds like happiness and he licks my lips, slowly and deliberately.

He fills me, deeper and deeper until he is buried deep, his groin nestled against my ass, and he stops, thrusting ever so slightly, groaning as he rests his forehead against mine.

“Oh Doc, you feel so good,” he says, his voice deep and strained.  “Fuck, you’re so tight.”  He withdraws a little and then pushes into me again, slowly and deeply.  I cry out.  It hurts but it feels so damn good.  He stops suddenly.  “I’m not hurting you, am I?” he asks, full of concern.

“No,” I shake my head.  It does hurt a little but it’s the good kind of pain, the kind that will melt into pleasure in a matter of minutes.  I know this pain and I welcome it.  I’ll feel the ache and sting of it in the morning and it will remind me with every small wince how much pleasure he brought me tonight.  “No,” I say again when he looks unsure.  “It feels good.  John, it feels wonderful.”

He still looks worried, so I kiss him, lapping across his lips and darting my tongue into his mouth so that it meets and tangles with his.  “I love you,” I whisper as we part.  “Make love to me.  Remind me how good we can be together.”

“Oh, Doc,” he captures my lips with his again and then buries his face in my neck, nipping and sucking on the skin there so that it stings.  I will be bruised tomorrow.  On my neck, on my breasts, my stomach, my hips and my thighs.  But I don’t care.

Even without the marks, I will not be able to hide this from Roman.  Tonight is changing me.  Ironically like the phoenix rising from the fire, I am being reborn in the crucible of our love.  He transforms me and makes me so much more than I am alone.  Roman only wants to tear me down, to make me less.  John builds me up and makes me more.

This is where I belong, and I have never been more sure of anything in my life.

John starts to move his hips slowly and I feel him sliding out of me and then pushing back in.  The friction is exquisite, dragging against all of my nerves, setting me on fire.  I clench tight around him, and he groans and drives deeper into me.  My stomach tightens and I roll my own hips up against him in a matching rhythm.  We are sweaty, our bodies moving in synchronicity, and the room is filled with the sound of our moans and the creak of the bed with each slow, insistent thrust he makes.

I’ve finally relaxed, and I can hear my own wetness sucking at him as he moves in and out of me.  I tighten my legs around him pulling him closer with my feet as they pull against the backs of his thighs.  “More,” I pant, “give me more.”

“Harder baby?” he asks as he brushes the hair from my face.

“Harder,” I groan.  “Faster.”

“Oh, baby,” he digs his forearms under my shoulders and cups his fingers around my shoulders.  He starts to increase his pace and I arch my back, baring my throat to him as I clench and expand around him.  I am suffused with sensation; he is in me, around me, and on me.  His tongue assaults my neck as he feeds his hard and heavy length into me again and again.  One hand clutches at his hair, which is now damp with sweat, and the other digs into his strong back, feeling the muscles moving beneath his smooth, hot skin.  I drag my nails heavily across his shoulder-blade, knowing I am leaving parallel score-marks and caring little for the implications.

“Oh, fuuuuck,” I cry out in abandon.  Our sweat-slicked bodies slap together as John’s thrusting becomes ever more frantic.  I can feel my orgasm approaching like the waves on a seashore.  It approaches and recedes, coming a little closer each time.  I want to grab hold of it, to fracture and dissolve into the chaotic pleasure of climax but at the same time, I don’t want this to end.  

Being this close to John, feeling his skin against mine, his lips worshipping and assaulting me, to feel his hard shaft impaling me over and over.  It’s heaven.  It’s everything I have missed in my life for a year.  Since the moment I awoke in that gauze draped room on that island, this is the moment I have dreamed of.  In both waking and sleeping moments.

“Oh, Doc,” John licks my jaw and then sucks on my ear lobe.  “I don’t think….” He closes his eyes and slows his pace for a moment.  “Unnnhhhh… Oh God, I don’t think I can last… much longer.”  He looks me in the eyes, his huge pupils, blown with arousal surrounded, by a thin band of electric blue iris.  “This feels… you feel too good.”

“I’m so close,” I tell him, rocking my pelvis up to meet each stroke.  The hair of his chest is rough against my sensitive nipples, and I arch my back again, trying to get ever closer to him.  He meets my mouth with his, his lips and tongue teasing me, sending me closer and closer to the abyss.

And then it’s his mouth on my throat again, the suction, the stinging pain as he draws the blood closer to the surface.  And he moves one hand and grabs at my ass, clutching, digging his fingertips into my flesh, and then spanking me lightly.  And that is all I need to trigger the wave of my orgasm which crashes over me, engulfing and sweeping me away into a tumult of pleasure and release.

John

“I’m so close,” she whispers the words hotly against my ear and the sound of her voice, suffused with pleasure and longing brings me to the edge of my own oblivion.  Her skin is soft where it rubs against mine and her arms are tight around my shoulders, her fingernails scoring crescents in my muscles.

I kiss her and she mewls into my mouth.  I can tell her orgasm is coming.  The way she moves against me, the moves she makes.  She bends away from me, her back curving in a graceful arch as she pushes her centre against me.  I press my mouth to her throat, sucking on the delicate skin there.  

I feel bad for a fleeting moment.  But we will face Roman together.  And I will tell Isabella.  There is no turning back now.  I suck harder, knowing I am raising a purple welt, knowing a little pain will tip her over the edge into freefall.

As I suck her, I glide my hand down the undulating curves of her hot, damp body.  My hand flows over waist and hip and finds the ample curve of her shapely ass.  I dig my fingers in and then I draw my hand back and slap her lightly.

She cries out and then I feel it hit like an earthquake.  She shudders, her body tensing and stiffening, her legs and arms gripping me tightly and then she is arching away with a cry and an “oh fuck!”

I feel her clench and tighten around me as I thrust into her, and the pressure feels incredible.  Like I am being squeezed in a vice, but in the best way.  “Oh, fuck baby,” I pant.  “Oh God, I’m gonna….” I pull out and thrust into her, hard and fast and she wails in response and that sound and the feeling of her claiming and pulling me in shatters me.  

I feel that tell-tale pressure at the base of my balls right before it washes over me, and I explode inside her.  It briefly occurs to me that maybe we should have used protection and then all thought is swept away as fireworks burst in front of my eyes and I feel pulse after pulse of pleasure sweep through my balls and my cock, buried deep inside her.  I empty everything I have into her depths, physically and emotionally.  She is mine and oh God, everything I am, and I have, is hers.   I have just been playing at love with Isabella.  Dabbling at the edges, but it’s all been pretend.  This is real.  Marlena is the centre of my universe and the only woman who can possibly make me feel this way, or bring me to these hights.

I eke out the last gasps of my orgasm, thrusting into her with one last burst of energy before I collapse against her.  She likewise loosens her grip on me and exhales deeply.  “Oh, my God,” she says in a shaky voice.  

“You okay?” I prop myself up on one elbow and look down at her.  Her eyes are closed but a tear leaks out of the corner of her right eye.  I use my thumb to stroke it away.  “Doc?” I murmur gently and not without a hint of concern.

“I’m okay,” she breathes and opens her hazel eyes which are glistening with tears.  “It’s just been so long.  I missed you so much.  I missed us.”

I take a deep breath.  I don’t know if I can explain to her how much I missed her when she was gone and how frightened I was when she came back that I would lose her again.  I owe her an explanation for the way I pushed her away.  For the mistakes I made.  But not now.  Now is for loving her.  For reassuring her.

“I missed you too,” I stroke her face with my fingertips.  It is so familiar and yet so foreign.  She called it muscle memory when we were in Miami.  The way the body responds to a certain touch, a combination of shapes and forms and feelings.  Our bodies fit together as though no time has passed.  We know each other as though it was just yesterday we made love, and not more than half a decade ago.

Indeed, the first time we ever made love, it was as though I had been making love to her for a millennia.  I wonder if that’s why that’s why they call it soulmate love.  Because no matter the bodies you wear, your souls fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.  I wonder idly how many lifetimes we have lived through as lovers.  A dozen?  A hundred?

However many, it will never be enough.  She is my beginning and my ending and everything in between.

“I’m never letting you go again,” I tell her.  “I was an idiot to push you away, Marlena.  When you appeared out of the mist that night… I should have taken you straight home and taken you to bed then and maybe we wouldn’t have lost all this time.”

“I don’t want to talk about that night,” she kisses the side of my face.  “The past is the past.”

I ease out of her and roll onto my side, pulling her with me so that she faces me.  I hook my leg over her thigh and pull her close, wrapping my arms around her.  “We need to talk about the past,” I tell her.  “But not tonight.  Tonight, I just want to love you, pretty lady.”

“I think you’ve done an excellent job of that so far,” she smiles, her eyes shining with love.

“How are you feeling?”  I ask her.  

“Guilty,” she says softly.  “But very happy.”

“Me too,” I kiss her forehead.  “I just hope you won’t regret this in the morning.  I feel like after all that champagne…”  

“I was drunk,” she admitted.  “I still am a little, but I knew what I was doing.  Maybe it took the champagne to give me the courage to tell you how much I still want you.  How much I still love you.”

“I’m so glad you did,” I tell her.  “I don’t know that I ever would have had the strength.”

She says nothing for a long moment.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask softly.

“How we’re going to tell them,” she sighs.  “It’s going to blow the family wide apart, John.  The children, Roman’s parents.  Not to mention Roman and Isabella.”

“I know, baby,” my heart aches at the thought of it.  We’re going to hurt so many people we love.  But the alternative is that we continue to hurt ourselves by remaining apart and that is unconscionable.  “But we’re hurting Roman and Isabella anyway.  Don’t they both deserve to be with someone that can really give them real love and not this half-assed effort we’re making?  I can’t love Isabella, not really and truly, because my heart belongs to you.”  I brush the tousled hair back from her face and kiss her softly.

She sighs again and nestles her face into my neck.  “I just wish it could be like it was before,” her voice is muffled but I feel it vibrate against my skin.  “When it was just us and the children and we were free to love each other without hurting anyone else.  We were so happy.”

“We’ll be happy again,” I promise her as I stroke her soft, fragrant hair.  “But for now, Doc, I think I should go.”

“Noooo,” she clutches at my waist.  “Please.  Don’t leave me.  Not yet.”

“Roman,” I murmur as she looks up at me with those soulful eyes as green and mysterious as the forest.  “He might come home earlier than you expect.”

“He won’t,” she shakes her head with certainty.  “John, he won’t.  He’s always at work these days.  Please don’t go.”  She swallows as though her mouth is suddenly dry.  “I’m scared if you go then we won’t… I won’t see you again.”

“We’re not going to be able to hide this from them,” I finger a purple bruise my mouth has made on her neck and flex my shoulder where I can feel the deep scratches from her fingernails.  “But we can choose how to tell them.  Roman finding me in your bed is not the best way, baby.”

“I don’t want that,” she scoffs, “of course I don’t.  I just think,” she pushes me onto my back and drops her head to my chest, kissing me and then flicking her tongue across my nipple.  I yelp in surprise and then my stomach clenches and my cock twitches, suddenly coming back to life.  She smiles up at me wickedly, “I think we’ve got a bit more time for you to love me, that’s all.”

With that, she scrambles up and straddles me, dipping her head over mine so her hair falls around her face like a curtain.  I grin up at her.  How can I say no to an invitation like that?  Especially when she wiggles her gorgeous ass against my already semi-hard dick.  I reach up and cup one breast with my hand and then slide the other around her neck.

“Come here,” I pull her down to my face and meet her lips with my own.

Marlena

I have no idea what the time is when John throws back the covers and unwinds himself from around my warm, aching body.

“Are you going?” I ask mournfully.

“I have to,” he tells me with a small kiss on my mouth.  “You know I have to.”

“Please, don’t go,” I beg him, my voice sleep-hazed.  “Move the car and come back to bed.”

“Baby, we can’t.”  He sighs as he slides out of bed and pulls on his boxers and then his jeans.

“Just hold me for a little while longer?” I ask in a small voice.  I don’t want this night to end.  I am not sure what I am thinking other than that.  Maybe I think that if I pretend morning is not rushing up on us, that it won’t come.  The sun won’t rise, and this night will just go on forever.

“Sweetheart,” he sighs.  “How long is a little while longer?  And will it be a little while longer next time I try to leave?”  He knows all my tricks, but I know he’s as weak as I am when it comes to us.

“Just five minutes,” I smile at him hopefully.  “I promise.”  I may as well have my fingers crossed behind my back, we both know that kind of promise, coming from me, means nothing.  Not when it comes to him and the things he does to my body.

“I’m sorry,” he shakes his head and sits on the side of the bed next to me, pulling on his socks.  “I have to go.  Isabella will be worried.”

I can’t say anything.  There is a lump in my throat the size of a golf ball.  The idea that he is going home to Isabella in a warm bed is more than I can stand.  My eyes fill with tears, and I turn away from him.

“Oh Doc,” he sighs.  “I’m gonna tell her, I promise.  I just got to pick the right time, that’s all.”

I can’t look at him.  I have a terrible feeling if he goes now, everything is going to fall apart.  

“I’ll call you,” he kisses my shoulder.  “I love you, Marlena.”

“I love you,” I say with a sob in my voice.  Rolling back, I fling my arms around him and bury my face in his shoulder, my tears hot against his skin.

“I’ll call you,” he repeats against my hair.  “We’ll figure out how we’re going to tell them so that we can try and limit the impact on the rest of the family, okay?”

I nod my head, unable to say anything more.  He kisses my hair and then he is at the door, and I am alone again.

John

I take one last look at her tearstained face as I pull the door to behind me but the sound of her sobbing haunts me as I take the stairs two at time.  In the living room, I pick up my shirt from the floor and pull it on.     

I want to stay.  I really fucking want to.  I’d spend the next week in bed with her if I could.  But she’s not my wife, and that isn’t my bed and I need to go home and sort things out with the woman who is my wife.

I jam my feet in my shoes and pull my keys out of my pocket.  Looking around I see my jacket draped over the back of a chair.  I pull it on and am suddenly enveloped by her scent.  It makes my stomach clench.  I don’t know how, after I have spent a few hours with her in my arms, I am supposed to go home to Isabella.  If my jacket smells like her, I must be covered in the scent of her and our lovemaking.

I frown as head for the door.  Closing it behind me, I lock it and lean my forehead against it for a moment.  I feel like I can still hear the sound of her tears, although I know it is just my mind playing tricks on me.

I flinch as the jeep beeps and flashes as I hit the unlock button on my remote.  I hope to God Tom and Alice Horton are sound asleep and not suffering from insomnia.  They might have legitimate questions about me sneaking out of Roman’s house in the middle of the night if they do.

I am halfway down the street when her scent hits me again, just a hint, rising from my jacket as it warms around my shoulders.  Just an echo but it brings with it so many memories.  So many nights, so many stolen moments.  Sitting by her bed looking into her eyes after six weeks spent in a coma, not knowing if she would wake.  I had vowed then never to let go of her again.  We were ripped apart by the ISA and then Milo Harp a matter of a mere few months later.  And then she walked back into my life on a misty pier, and what did I do?  Like an asshole, I walked away from her.  Just like I’m doing now.

I stab the brakes suddenly and pull the jeep to the curb.  I can’t leave her.  I don’t care what happens, I just can’t walk away and leave her in tears like this.  Not again.

I turn off the car and lock it in my wake as I run back to the house.  I take the stairs two at a time and throw open the door.

“Doc!”

She looks up at me, her expression lighting up.  Even with her face reddened and stained with tears, she is still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Marlena 

“You came back,” I say quietly, the tears still caught in my throat.  I am scared and I am hopeful.  I just know I can’t face this without him.  I need him, I need his strength.

“I couldn’t leave you baby,” he says, shrugging off his shirt as he comes to the bed.  “I kept thinking about how I left you in that motel room and I couldn’t do it again.”

“Oh John!” I sob as he crawls onto the bed and tangles his hands in my hair and attacks my mouth with his.  Our kiss is passionate and full of need and desperation.  We don’t have long before Roman comes home, and we have to make the most of it.

He crawls on top of me, the denim of his jeans rough against my centre as he grinds himself against me.  My stomach tenses, the stiffness rolling through my body as my desire for him suffuses me.  “Oh God, make love to me again,” I beg him.

“Oh fuck, Doc,” he bites my jaw and sucks on my neck, “I just can’t get enough of you.”

I reach down between us and wrestle with the button on his jeans.  He stops what he’s doing for a moment and helps me, making short work of the button and zip and pushing the denim and the boxers down his muscular legs and kicking them off with a grunt of frustration.  

And then he is on top of me and nudging my legs apart again.  There’s no foreplay this time, no pausing, no gentle, gradual incursion.  This time it’s fast and furious.  The desperation that we both feel translates into grunts and moans as he pushes against my swollen and throbbing folds.  I am already well lubricated as he pushes inside me, hard and deep.  I cry out, clutching at his ass cheeks and pulling him deeper inside me.  He feels so fucking good, so big, soft and hard like silk and steel.

“Fuck baby,” he pants.

“Fuck me,” I wrap myself around him.  “Hard.  Do it.”

“Fuuuuck,” he drops his head, his forehead against mine as he tries to collect himself.  I pull on his ass again, my fingernails digging more crescents in his skin.

“Fuck me!”  My voice comes out as little more as a hiss, even without the sss’s.  

A roar erupts from him as he pulls his hips back and slams into me again.  “Yessssss,” I cry out as he drives me towards the headboard.  I remember this, this frantic animalistic fucking while Carrie was at school and the twins were asleep.  While he was on a lunchbreak from work, pushing me over the back of the sofa, my skirt up over my hips, my panties pushed to one side.  Hard.  Fast.  Dirty.

I put my hands up, braced against the headboard and take all his passion and fury as he pounds into me again and again.  

“Fuck, Marlena, I… fuck!” without warning, he erupts inside me and the feeling of his complete abandon, and his groan of frustrated pleasure as he continues to rub against my g-spot, push me up against the ceiling of my self-control.  And then I crack, screaming my release as I arch and curl and writhe uncontrollably beneath him.

Roman

The sun is glowing on the horizon as I pull up in the drive outside my house.  I’m tired, it’s been a long night and I just want to fall into his warm bed beside my beautiful wife and forget the world exists for a few hours.

We had a cop taken down tonight.  The life of a friend snuffed out by a single bullet.  We’d been tracking the thugs in question for weeks.  Responsible for an escalating litany of crimes from armed robbery and muggings to attempted murder.  And now a cop is dead and so is the thug with the gun.  

Because I shot him.  I fucked up and Abe has taken my badge and I am going to be hauled over the coals because I shot a low-life slime who killed a good man.  A good man with a wife and children.  It could have been me.  It should have been me.  I made the blunder, caused the noise that alerted them to our presence.  But Smith took the shot meant for me.  And I can’t undo it.  All I can do is curl up beside Marlena and hope this morning, she lets me hold her.  Hope she lets me in.

The last year has been hard, I won’t lie.  I came home to a family that was no longer mine, a cuckoo in the nest had stolen them from me, or so I felt.  In the past year, I have come to respect John, but I will never feel comfortable with his presence in our lives because he reminds me of all the time I lost.  

And I know Marlena still has feelings for him.  She pretends that she doesn’t but I hear her say his name in her sleep and I know she’s dreaming about him.  It’s like a knife in my heart every time but I try not to let on.  I try and work at loving her, at being magnanimous.  

Ha!  Magnanimous.  As if.  Not really in my nature.  But that woman has my heart.  I couldn’t walk away if I tried.  

I just wish I knew how to fix it.  I wish I knew how to be more flexible, more the man she wants me to be.  Maybe I used to be that man, maybe not.  Maybe seven years spent in DiMera hell will change a man more than he would like to admit.  

In the beginning, Marlena wanted me to get therapy, but I refused.  Relive that hell?  It was agony the first time.  The idea of her was the only thing that kept me alive.  Maybe I did sanctify her in my head, make her into a perfection she could never hope to attain in real life.  And maybe I just want it all to go away, to have things be the way they used to be.  Laugh with her and love her well, if imperfectly.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m not going to find it sitting in this car.

I turn off the engine and climb out of the car, closing the door behind me.

I put my key in the front door to unlock it but find to my surprise that it’s already unlocked.

My breath hitches, and my heart starts to beat a little faster as I step over the threshold.  

Inside, I look around cautiously.  There is an empty bottle of champagne on the side and Marlena’s dress is crumpled on the ground by the French doors.

“What the…?”  There are no glasses, but I can’t… Marlena doesn’t drink at home alone.  Marlena rarely drinks at home at all.

“Doc?!”  I call her name loudly despite the fact it’s barely dawn outside.  I’m worried.

I take the stairs two at a time and see the bedroom door ajar.  That’s not like Marlena either.  She always closes the door because of the children.  It’s like a reflex action every time.

“Doc,” I call again as I near the door, “honey, are you okay?”  There is no answer and I really start to panic, a multitude of possibilities scattering through my mind.  I saw a friend die tonight, there is no shortage of horror scenarios that my head can come up with.

I round the corner, pushing open the door and stop.

Of all the things that have gone through my mind in the past few minutes, not one of them was this.

“What the fuck!?” I say as my world falls apart….

Fin.