Forbidden Stranger

  The dream lover had been faceless. In the inky blackness, she could pretend her own hands were the touch of that stranger from her imagination . . . or her memory, Nina couldn’t be positive which it was. When her hand slid between her legs, she decided she did not care.

  Her center was slick and hot in the dream’s aftermath, and when she found the sweet knot of pleasure there, Nina shuddered. For a moment she paused, half-thinking she ought to somehow be embarrassed by this sudden, aching hunger, this craven need. But why? She could not imagine herself as a woman who’d ever been ashamed of sex or pleasure, and if she’d ever been that sort of woman, that was a set of memories she would be very happy to never recall.

  She concentrated, trying to recreate the feelings in the dream. Her fingers circled slowly, slowly on her clit. Arousal buzzed between her legs and in her belly, at the base of her throat where her pulse throbbed, and in her wrists. Her breasts felt heavy, her nipples tingling. She lifted her hips again into her own touch and bit back a moan.

  Her head tossed on the pillow as she used both hands to manipulate and tease her body. The dream had faded rapidly, leaving nothing but the sensation of pleasure. Now she found herself no longer thinking of a faceless lover, but one who most definitely could be identified.

  Another pang of embarrassment tried to shiver through her as she thought of Ewan’s dark hair, the strong lines of his face, his lean body. Those hazel eyes that sometimes looked at her as though she were something far more precious than a clerical assistant. Another flare of burning desire curled through her, and she gave herself up to be consumed by it as thoroughly as flames will eat a piece of paper.

  Her climax swelled and surged, powerful as the tides, and swept her away with it as fiercely as a stormy sea will scourge the shore. Nina bit her tongue to keep herself from crying out too loudly. Her entire body tensed and shook and released until she sprawled, limp and sated on the bed.

  She’d kicked the covers off and as the heat of her arousal faded, a flurry of shivers tickled up and down her body. She couldn’t judge how long it would be until morning, but she couldn’t sleep any longer. Nina swung her feet onto the floor, but didn’t get out of bed right away. Her head throbbed, and although she didn’t feel dizzy, she wasn’t taking any chances about passing out. The last thing she needed was another bump on the head. She waited until she could be sure the floor wasn’t going to slip out from under her feet, and then she pushed upward.

  Standing was better than she’d expected. The dizziness disappeared abruptly. She pulled a robe from the hook behind the door and put on a pair of soft slippers. The door creaked when she opened it, and she listened carefully for any signs that she’d woken anyone else. She heard the wind outside and the patter of soft raindrops. She heard a sigh and a snuffling snore, the shift of a body against the sheets. Ewan’s room was at the far end of the hall, and his door was closed. How could she be hearing all of that?

  His body is beneath hers. She’s straddling him, her knees pressing his sides. Her fingernails dig into his bare skin, and her lover arches into the touch with a moan that she loves. She’s hurting him, but he likes it. She likes it. She loves it.

  She loves him.

  Nina’s fingernails dug into the wood of the door frame. She blinked, hard, and the hallway brightened. There were no extra lights on, but she could see everything as though it were the sort of sunny afternoon that hardly ever happened here on this island. Pain sparked in her fingertip. A splinter. She shook her head and bit back a gasp, still too aware that it was the middle of the night. Aggie and Jerome’s rooms were in the back of the house off the den, so she didn’t have to worry about them. She did not, however, want to wake Ewan. He would worry about why she was up so late.

  Also, she wasn’t sure she could face him right now. Not after that searing bout of self-gratification. The sound of her name on his lips had been in her head when she burst into orgasm; his face her focus. Even if he’d never know it, she would.

  She put her fingertip in her mouth to soothe it. The splinter jutted angrily from a red scratch, and she plucked it out with her fingernails. She heard Ewan mutter something, followed by another, louder cluster of words she could hear but not make out. She froze. Had she woken him?

  She’d been quiet, and with two closed doors and a hallway between them, he should not have been able to hear her. She ought to have been too far away to hear him. Yet, she could. Nina shook her head against a sudden low buzz. She wasn’t dizzy, but the noise reminded her of the way it felt to faint. The sounds of Ewan’s muttering faded.

  Her heart was beating too hard. She tasted copper. She swallowed hard as chills tingled up and down her spine, disturbingly reminiscent of her recent climax, but not nearly as much fun. It was the same feeling of her body being out of her control, though. A rising sense of something impending, looming, imminent, and vaguely menacing but also formless and shapeless.

  She needed to run. She had to get out of this house, into the night and dark, into the rain. She had to work her body, to force it to comply with her instead of betraying her the way her mind kept doing.

  Quickly, Nina pulled on a pair of soft leggings and a fitted, long-sleeved shirt from the bottom drawer. Like the nightgowns and everything else in the room, the clothing “belonged” to her, but she’d never worn this particular outfit before. Unlike the nightgown, this set of clothes felt familiar the moment she slipped into it. She paused in the dark, aware that she’d dressed without turning on a lamp but had been able to find her way without stumbling or fumbling, because despite the lack of light, she’d been able to see.

  Something was missing. Something she should be wearing. She ran her hands over her body, this time not to encourage arousal but in an attempt to figure out what she ought to be adding. It didn’t come to her, but she told herself it didn’t matter as she tied her running shoes and headed downstairs.

  She opened the front door and went out on the porch. The rain had eased, but she could smell the salt from the sea and imagined she felt the mist of it on her face. Nina closed her eyes and drew in breath after breath, each one calming and soothing her until she no longer felt like she needed to run off wildly into the night.

  When you’re mine, you’re mine all the way.

  Nina opened her eyes. She’d stepped off the porch and into the front yard. Soft mist settled lightly on her upturned face. It was far from the first time she’d heard that voice in her mind, but this was the first time she recognized it as her own.

  “I want to remember,” she whispered without opening her eyes. She spread out her arms, her palms facing up, fingers slightly curled. “Please, let me just remember one thing.”

  “You do need something from me,” she says to him. Her lover. “Right? And you hate it.”

  He doesn’t want to hear her. He walks away. His back to her. Leaving. She follows.

  “You wanted this. Us. Together, like last night.”

  Last night, when they made love.

  “You’re the one who said it would be a mistake,” he tells her.

  “Was it? Are you one of those men who only want something until he’s had it? Or are you the sort who doesn’t like to think about anyone else having something you’ve had? Maybe you don’t like that I’m stronger than you. Most men don’t.”

  It had only been pieces of a memory. Dialogue. A phantom face and body, the voice of a man she knew she’d . . . what. Loved? Fucked? They’d been arguing. She remembered feeling both angry and sad.

  She’d had a lover. Maybe they’d no longer been together by the time she came to work for Ewan. Maybe the man in her memory didn’t know or didn’t care what had happened to her. That would explain why she hadn’t heard from him in all the time she’d been here, but although that would make sense, it didn’t feel . . . right.

  He was dead, she thought, but that also did not feel right. Something had died, though. The love they’d had for each other, and it had not passed away, it had been murdered. That f
elt like an absolute truth.

  The recollection, as brief and disjointed as it had been, nevertheless was more than she’d ever had. It was already melting away, and although she tried hard to hold onto it, in a few minutes all she had left was the vague sense of the emotional reactions the memory had elicited in her.

  She’d come out here for a run, but the foolishness of that slapped her in the face now. It was close to dawn, based on the blush of light she could see on the horizon, but the sky was still mostly dark. If she set out now, she would surely end up tripping over something and breaking her leg or arm or rattling her already battered brains.

  Nina frowned at herself. The urge to work her body had been so strong in her room that it had sent her out here, and although common sense was tempering it, she still felt the desire to be active. If not a run, then . . .

  She moved without thinking, off the front porch and into the scrappy, gravelly grass in the yard. She closed her eyes. Her body moved, hands and arms stretching into patterns of motion followed by the twisting of her torso and then her feet, shifting. She settled herself into one position. Then another. She moved without thinking about it, letting her body take the lead. It seemed counterpoint to what she’d desired—taking back control of her body, and yet seemed so natural that at the end of it, when she opened her eyes, she let out a soft trill of hesitant, confused laughter.

  What had she just done?

  A vague idea of some kind of martial arts or yoga or a combination of it came to her. That was the bitch of this memory loss thing. She knew what martial arts and yoga were, and clearly, she knew at least a minimal amount of each, but she didn’t know how or why she knew how to do that. Even so, she’d calmed so much that nothing was stressing her any longer. She hadn’t even realized how tense she’d been until now, when her entire body had gone light and liquid and loose.

  She wanted a mug of hot tea, and in the kitchen she pulled up short at the sight of Ewan standing by the stove. The kettle whistled as she stopped in the doorway, and he pulled it off the burner. He’d already set out two mugs and the teapot.

  “Hi,” Nina said uncertainly. “I didn’t know you were up.”

  “I thought you might like some tea.”

  Ewan rinsed the inside of the teapot with hot water and dumped it in the sink before adding the tea leaves in a mesh strainer, then more hot water. He put the tea cozy over the pot and set it on the table, along with the sugar bowl and a small pitcher of cream. He pulled out his chair and waited for her to sit before he did the same.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you up,” Nina said.

  Onegod, she hoped she hadn’t. Her cheeks burned anew at the idea that he might have been listening to her touching herself. She swallowed hard enough to make her throat click.

  Ewan pulled the napkin off a plate of scones she hadn’t noticed until just then. “You didn’t. I was already awake.”

  He’d heard her. She was sure of it. More heat, this time settling lower into her belly.

  “Bad dreams?” she asked lightly.

  Ewan nodded and met her gaze. “You?”

  “Sort of. It was mostly a jumble of things. So I woke up and . . . I needed to get out of here for a few minutes. I wanted to go for a run, but I ended up . . . well. I did something else, instead.”

  “Something else?” He looked curious.

  She hadn’t meant to make an innuendo, but now that was all she could think about. Her stomach rumbled loudly enough for him to hear it, and grateful for the excuse, Nina took a scone and broke it into a few smaller pieces before tucking one into her mouth. She chewed slowly, savoring the taste so she didn’t have to speak.

  “Is your head hurting you?”

  “No. It’s not that. I felt restless. I’m not sure I can describe it. And I remembered something.”

  Ewan looked up from the mug of tea he was pouring for her. “What was it?”

  “It was personal. It would be weird to share it,” Nina replied with an embarrassed laugh.

  Ewan poured himself some tea and put the teapot back in the center of the table. “You don’t have to. I’d be glad to hear it though. How did it feel? The memory, I mean.”

  “Confusing,” she admitted. “Kind of exhilarating.”

  Ewan also bit into a scone. “You don’t want to tell me what it was?”

  She didn’t want to tell him, yet didn’t want to hide it from him, either. Nina didn’t know if she’d ever had a lot of friends or people to confide in, but right now she had only the three other people on the island. Her lustful crush aside, she had come to trust Ewan as a friend.

  “It was about a man,” Nina said after a moment. “I don’t remember who he is, but I sure remember what he and I were doing.”

  “Oh,” Ewan said as he got it. “Wow.”

  She laughed, holding a hand over her mouth to keep quiet enough that she wouldn’t wake Aggie and Jerome. “Yep. I told you it would be weird to share it with you.”

  “Yeah. That’s . . .” He coughed into his fist and took a sip of tea.

  “I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” she said sincerely, even as she found his clear mortification charming and sweet. “You asked.”

  Ewan shook his head. “No, it’s fine. It’s good for you to remember things. It’s a good sign.”

  “It wasn’t a great memory, to be honest. We were fighting about something. I could remember the frustration. Anger. There was an undercurrent of something else more intimate, I knew that we were . . . um . . .” She laughed again, and he joined a moment later. They both trailed off at the same time to stare at each other.

  There was that look from him again.

  “You’re the first thing I remember about waking up after the accident,” she said. “Your face. Your voice. You were holding my hand, sitting by the side of the bed. The medical one I had before I got well enough to move into the regular bed. You were there with me when I woke up.”

  “Yes.”

  She pressed her lips together, searching for a way to ask the questions she wasn’t sure she was ready to have answered. Why do you look at me like that? Why do I feel like I’ve known you for a lifetime, when it can’t have been anywhere close to that long? Why do I feel as though I know so much about you, if only I could get my onedamned brain to cooperate and let me remember?

  Of course she couldn’t ask him any of that, but why? Something held her back from opening herself to him, leaving herself defenseless, even though Nina understood without question that Ewan had to be one of the only people in the world right now with whom she should be able to feel vulnerable.

  “When I came to work for you, did I have someone? A partner, I mean. The person from the dream, the memory, I guess. Were we together when I started working for you?”

  “No,” Ewan said. “You weren’t seeing anyone when you came to work for me.”

  “Did I ever talk about someone?”

  Ewan hesitated. “A few times, you mentioned that there’d been some past relationships that ended badly.”

  “I guess they all end badly, don’t they?” She chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment.

  “You don’t remember anything else about him?” Ewan asked.

  Nina shook her head and frowned. “No.”

  “You will.” He sounded confident.

  She wished she could feel that way. All she felt right now was tired. She yawned. “I hope so. I guess I’m going to try to get back to sleep for another hour or so. Unless my boss is okay with me coming in late to work. Then I might sleep late. “

  “I will if you do,” Ewan said with a laugh.

  Together, they cleaned up the remnants of the tea and scones. He turned as she did, and they bumped together. His hand came up to steady her, and Nina chuckled, self-consciously aware of his body heat and how good that contact, no matter how fleeting, felt.

  “Sorry,” she said but didn’t meant it.

  Ewan didn’t release her. His fingers squeezed briefly. “You don’t have to be
sorry.”

  That look.

  Nina sank into it. Her skin burned where he touched her. She didn’t want him to stop. Without thinking, she leaned into his grasp.

  The moment passed when Ewan stepped back. As he turned back to the sink for a moment, his comm fell from his pocket and hit the floor. Nina bent to grab it for him, not trying to see the screen but catching a glimpse of it anyway. Even that brief look stopped her, fingers curling tight around the comm as she held it out to him but far enough away that he couldn’t simply take it. She looked at the screen again, a memory rising inside her.

  “I know what that is,” she said, each word tasting like a slow swell of thickness, like honey or syrup, but bitter. So bitter. The words corroded her tongue like acid.

  When Ewan reached for the comm, Nina found herself unable to let go. He murmured her name gently and put his hand over hers. She withdrew quickly, as though his touch had scalded her. In a way, it had.

  “That’s for me, isn’t it,” she stated, not asked.

  Ewan put the comm in his pocket. “Yes.”

  “This island is so small you could spit in any direction and hit the edges.” Her voice rose, harsh, and she forced herself to lower it. “Why would you need a tracker on me?”

  “To make sure you’re all right,” he said.

  Nina rubbed her hands together, her skin crawling. “To keep track of me, where I am, where I go? What I do?”

  “To make sure you’re all right,” Ewan repeated, not looking away from her face.

  She took a step away from him. They squared off. Her heart had begun to pound, her palms sweating, her breath catching in her throat as though every sip of air she took in had sharp edges that scratched and clawed. She was on the verge of tears.

  “Where, exactly, do you think I’m going to go? Do you think I’m going to try to swim away? Do you think I’m crazy, is that it?” Nina said, then added in a low, pained voice, “Am I crazy?”

  Ewan’s expression hardened. “You’re not crazy, Nina. Trust me.”

  “It’s not my job to trust people!” she shouted and took a few steps back as though the words had propelled her away from him.