The Fatherhood Affair

She could feel Damien’s eyes burning into her back. She wondered, if she turned quickly, would she see the blaze of desire she desperately wanted to see? No, he wanted her to go. He was watching her go.

She went. She walked straight past the elevator and took the staircase. It wasn’t a month any more, she reminded herself. Only another three weeks. The hurt would stop then. On both sides. It had to. She couldn’t bear to contemplate anything else.

CHAPTER TWELVE

ON HER return home from the disturbing visit to Damien, Natalie settled in front of her computer, needing to take grasp of some purpose in her life, telling herself she had work to do. It would make the time go faster if she immersed herself in her work.

Concentration eluded her. She sat blankly in front of the monitor screen, unable to summon the necessary will-power to actually strike a key. Her mind kept revolving around the consequences of the decisions she had made. Especially Damien’s reaction to her this morning.

The ringing of the door-chimes was a welcome distraction, providing relief, however short, from her tormenting thoughts. She didn’t wonder who was calling on her. She was simply grateful for some activity.

Damien stood on her porch.

He was dressed in a business suit, ready for work, but his eyes seared hers with questions. Natalie’s breath caught in her throat, rendering her speechless. Her eyes clung to his, pleading for a change of heart from his earlier stand-offishness.

‘Do you want me, Natalie?’

‘Yes.’ She expelled the word on a rush of breath that emptied her lungs.

‘Certain?’

She nodded.

‘Is it right for you now?’

A huge well of emotion threatened to choke her again. ‘Yes.’ It was a bare whisper.

Whatever uncertainties had plagued Damien’s mind were summarily dismissed. He stepped forward and swept her into his arms. There was no more talking, no more thinking, no more agonising. He kissed her, and there was no holding back from Natalie. She responded with all the pent-up feeling that had been gathering force since they had shared the bed at Merlinmist.

She craved the warm solidity of him, the passion of his desire for her. She needed to feel it was real, substantial, so deeply connected to her that it could never be taken by any other woman. ‘Love me,’ she pleaded. ‘Love me as I’ve never been loved before, Damien.’

The front door was shut. He scooped her off her feet and carried her into the master bedroom. She didn’t care that it was the bed she had previously shared with Brett. Damien superseded everything she had known with her former husband. He was earth and fire and air and water to her. He was life.

Clothes were discarded in wild haste. There was no sense of discovery this time, only a driving need to have and to hold, to lose all doubts and fears in the ecstatic security of coming together, being as one, their bodies the perfect instruments to bring harmony from the discord generated by the recovery of her memory.

Natalie had never really experienced lust before, yet from the moment she convulsed in sheer bliss around Damien she was gripped by a wild, insatiable greed to know and exult in every pleasure their bodies could find and indulge in. It was as though every fantasy she’d ever had about Damien as a lover sprang to life in her mind, demanding expression and absolute fulfilment...the power, the passion, the sensuality, the stamina, the intense virility of the man unleashed, coursing from his body to hers in tidal waves of sensation.

She wallowed in his lust for her, floated in it, drowned in it, incited it with a wantonness she had not known herself capable of. Perhaps it was inspired by the release of a host of repressions built up over years. Or the fear that she might have squandered the chance to take and know and feel all that Damien was.

Whether he sensed this rampaging compulsion within her and responded to it, or whether he was sating his own frustrated needs and desires, Natalie had no idea. Their feelings melded in a long, tempestous lovemaking that was intensely mutual, intensely satisfying, and overwhelmingly different from anything she had known with Brett.

Only exhaustion tamed their ardour for each other, and ev

en when their energy was totally depleted, the need to touch, in however a desultory fashion, kept them enthralled with each other. She loved the feel of his firm muscles, the tight smoothness of his skin. She caught a faint scent of his aftershave lotion. Not the one she had smelled earlier. He must have disliked that and washed it off in favour of this one. Natalie liked it better, too. It was enticingly sexy, just like Damien.

Natalie couldn’t help thinking back over her marriage to Brett, how devoid it had been of this kind of togetherness. Her mind inevitably drifted to Damien’s marriage. Had it been this good for him with Lyn? This...complete?

She shied from the idea, but it kept nagging, fraying the edges of her contentment. Damien had been with Lyn on Saturday night. There would have been no grounds for Lyn’s words and actions yesterday if there had been no meeting between them. Had Damien succumbed to a rebound effect? Was that why he had been so distant this morning, feeling it wasn’t right to resume a relationship with her?

Yet he had come after her.

‘Was the sex in your marriage good, Damien?’ she asked.

‘I thought it was.’ His voice was rich with contentment as he added, ‘You’ve revolutionised my thoughts.’

She smiled, happy that he was happy. All the same, she would be happier still to have the matter of Lyn completely cleared away. She couldn’t help dreading the thought of what might have happened on Saturday night.

‘Did you ever sleep with your ex-wife after your marriage ended?’