“Here’s your husband now,” the doctor said.
Both Nicolò and Kiley froze,
staring for an endless moment at each other. Then she shook her
head in wild-eyed disbelief. “That’s not possible,” she denied
in no uncertain terms. “There’s no way he’s my husband.”
Nicolò bit back a curse. “Dr.
Ruiz—”
"Don’t panic, Mr. Dante.” The
doctor tossed a reassuring glance over his shoulder. “We warned
you that she might have memory issues.”
“No. I’d remember if I’d married
him,” Kiley argued.
“It’s all right, Kiley,” the
doctor said in a soothing voice. “Your loss of memory is a
result of your accident.”
Nicolò shut his eyes. Time to
’fess up. “She’s not—”
The doctor spoke at the same time,
his voice rumbling over top of Nicolò’s confession. “Kiley, you
don’t even remember your own name,” he said gently. “It’s
perfectly natural that you wouldn’t remember you have a
husband. I suggest we take this slow and easy. Your memory
could come back at any point. Hours. Days. Possibly weeks.
In the meantime, we can move you out of ICU and into a regular
room while we run a few more tests.”
“Why won’t you listen to me?”
Kiley’s gaze landed on Nicolò before flinching away. Tears
filled her eyes and her voice rose with each word, growing
steadily more shrill and hysterical. “I’m telling you this
isn’t my husband. He can’t be. I’d know if he were.”
Ruiz signaled to one of the nurses
who began to prepare an injection. “Mr. O’Dell, I’m afraid I’m
going to have to ask you to leave. Once she’s had time to calm
down and get accustomed to what’s happened, you can come back.”
Nicolò inclined his head. “Of
course. If you’d just give me a second…”
He acted without thought, running
on sheer instinct, responding to a call no one heard but him.
Crossing to Kiley’s side, he reached down to take her hand in
his. Behind him, Ruiz voiced an objection, while Kiley hissed
in dismay as she drew back in a vain attempt to avoid his
touch. He ignored everything but the demand screaming through
him, one that insisted he finally act on the urge that had been
clawing at him since the moment he’d met this woman.
He forcibly took Kiley’s hand in
his.
The Inferno struck with more
ferocity than Nicolò believed possible. Even the machines
trilled in momentary alarm before subsiding again into a steady
rhythm. Never before had he experienced such a powerful
connection. It felt as though every emotion he possessed flowed
from his hand into hers before slamming him with a backwash that
left him drowning in desire.
He responded without thought.
Without giving her time to protest, he bent down and took her
mouth in a kiss of utter possession, hard against soft,
determination overwhelming uncertainty. She tasted even sweeter
than he’d imagined, soft and warm and—after a momentary
hesitation—receptive. No. More than receptive. Eager.
He couldn’t resist. He swept
inward, taking advantage of her unstinting welcome. Never had
he felt such a reaction when he’d kissed a woman, as though
every aspect of the touch and taste of her had branded him. A
certainty filled him, a certainty that no other woman would ever
be quite right for him, except this one. The softest of moans,
hungry and eager, slipped from her mouth to his, welcoming him
home.
And in that moment he could no
longer escape the simple truth. This woman belonged to him.
* * *
Kiley froze at the first touch of
her husband’s hand, overcome by a sensation so all-consuming, it
rendered her speechless. Fiery heat shot from palm to palm,
almost painful in its intensity, before settling into a warm,
steady connection that soaked deep into that point of melding.
Second by second, with each beat of her heart, desire pierced
straight through flesh and sinew and bone, until it invaded
every part of her. It seemed to lap through her veins, filling
her to overflowing with a heavy, irresistible want.
And then he kissed her.
It was a first kiss, worthy of
fairy tale legends. It was also impossible to compare to any
that might have come before, since fate had veiled any such
occurrences. Even so, she found it the most incredible
experience in her very short memory. His mouth ate at hers, his
hunger unmistakable, threatening to consume her with that
single, unbelievably delectable kiss. Every instinct she
possessed screamed to life, telling her this was her man. That
he belonged to her and no one else. Her response came without
thought or reason. She opened to him, unfurling like a flower
beneath the blazing heat of the sun.
He possessed her mouth and she
gave back to him with unstinting generosity. In that instant
she didn’t care who she was, or who this man claimed to be. All
that mattered was that this moment never end. Where before all
felt alien and unfamiliar, this she recognized. This she knew.
Slowly, he pulled back, his breath escaping in a heated rush,
his eyes burning with black fire. And she read in his
expression all that she felt, a mating of tumultuous emotions.
She sensed on an instinctive
level that she and this man had become permanently entangled,
heart, body and soul. But…how was that possible? How could
something as basic as joining hands, or exchanging a single
kiss, cause such an undeniable reaction? How could this simple
contact bind her to a complete stranger with such relentless
power?
Her reaction to his touch told
her she knew this man, regardless of what she’d claimed only
moments before. Slowly she lifted her gaze to her husband’s.
Or at least, the man who claimed her for his wife.
Her opinion of him hadn’t changed
in the few moments since he’d first stepped into her room. He
remained fiercely handsome, a god of war, with hair and eyes of
the deepest ink and a stare that silenced with a stony glare.
He wore his hair longer than convention dictated and it fell to
his neck in heavy waves. Maybe they would have tightened into
actual curls if he hadn’t subdued them, no doubt with a single
forbidding look, the kind he currently had trained on the nurses
and doctors surrounding them.
“Who are you?” she demanded. She
waved away his response before it could even form. “I know you
claim you’re my husband. I mean, what’s your name?”
“Nicolò. You call me Nicolò.” A
smile warmed the stark coldness of his features, touching a
mouth that had left an indelible stamp on her own. “Except when
you’re angry with me. Then you choose a few more colorful terms
of endearment.”
“And how often does that happen?”
His smile grew, stunning in its
beauty. “Often enough. We both have rather…tempestuous
personalities.”
