Page 81 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
I kiss her because I’m starving for her. Because I can’t hold myself back from her anymore.
The kiss is full of violence. It has to be.Iam full of violence. I don’t know where it comes from, and I don’t know where it’s going. But I can’t stop myself. I can’t hold myself back. I expect her to turn away from me. I expect her to push me. To make it clear that she doesn’t want this. That she doesn’t want me. But instead she clings to me. And I feel all the desperation that passes between us each and every time.
I understand now why she stayed for four years in spite of claiming misery. I understand now why she married me in the first place even though she barely knew me.
Because this thing is bigger than we are. It’s bigger than memories. It’s bigger than what we know is good and what we know is bad. It’s bigger than logic, bigger than reason.
I kiss her, and trace her lower lip with my tongue.
I cannot remember sex, and that fuels me. I know the steps, and yet there’s a novelty to it all the same, and it… Excites me.
“I’m a virgin,” I say.
She laughs against my lips. “Hardly.”
“I might as well be. I cannot remember this. But I know it. The feel of it. The way of it.”
“Well. It’s only fair. You took my virginity. I suppose it’s right that I should take yours.”
She snarls, the sound feral, as she pushes me up against the wall and tears at my shirt, ripping it from my body.
Her nails rake across my chest, and a guttural sound escapes me.
I grip her chin and hold her steady as I deepen our kiss. Deepen our connection. I taste her deeply, and she gasps, leaving claw marks in my skin, her breath hot as it tangles with mine.
“I don’t know what you look like naked,” I say. “I can’t remember any woman.” I move my hands over her clothed body. Cup her breasts, trace the outline of her glorious figure, and I let myself relish in that feeling of the unknown.
Where that cliff was my enemy before, now it becomes my most cherished friend. I let the unknown stoke the fire of the delicious longing I feel. And then, I pull her dress up over her head. She is wearing nothing more than black lace. I growl against her mouth. “Were you going to let him see this?”
“No,” she says.
There’s a challenge in her eyes, and I know that she considered lying to me. Just to make me angry.
I know, because it’s who we are.
“I told him that it wasn’t going to be like that. I told him we were only going to be friends.”
“He wanted you. That was why he went out with you. All he could think about was being inside you.”
“Probably. And I probably went anyway for that reason. To defy you.”
“Such a dangerous game, little girl.”
“You’re the most dangerous game a woman can play. And I keep doing it. God help me.”
She bites my neck, kisses her way down my chest, and I wrap my arm around her shoulders, taking us both down onto the stairs, her knees planted on a step, positioned over me. She presses her palm flat to my chest, and my heart is raging. “I like this,” she says. “Maybe I should take control for once.”
Yes. I like it. My Cassandra, the warrior, poised to take me. I move my hands up her slim midsection, skim my thumbs over her nipples, still barely concealed by the lace cups of her bra. “Then take me. As I did you.”
She’s breathing hard, and she undoes the closure on my pants, freeing me before squeezing me tight in her soft hand. Then she licks her lips, and positions herself so that the blunt head of me scrapes against that black lace. I can feel that she’s wet beneath the fabric. But she teases us both. I grit my teeth, tormented by the near penetration. Until she sweeps the fabric to the side and impales herself on me in one smooth stroke. The cry of triumph on her lips nearly sends me over the edge then and there.
I grip her hips but I let her set the pace.
I watch her face. I memorize it. There are no memories. There is nothing. Just this first time. Me, as I am, with her.
Yes, there is darkness threatening to close in on us. Yes, this began with anger, but it continues now because of what has always driven us.
This extreme desire for one another. This need that is never ending.
