When she walked into their bedroom, John shut the door behind her, he pressed his finger to her lips. “I’ve wanted to do this since the first time you got your memory back,” he spoke, pushing close to her. His erection pressed into her belly. “I’ve been fantasizing about it for so long.”

She took a short, stilted breath beneath his finger. 

Was he saying what she thought he was saying? 

 

His other hand dropped down to find hers, to play idly with the new ring on her finger. “It’s not going to be easy, we already know that.” His chuckle brought a smile to her lips. “There will be so much scrutiny and so much sacrifice. But right now…right now, it’s just the two of us. Right now those things are far away. And right now, I’m going to make you completely mine.” 

Marlena looked up into his eyes. “Is it…are we…” she felt like she couldn't catch her breath. He grinned down at her. “Yes, Doc. I’m not going to torture us any longer.” 

She dropped to her knees. 

Not because he was going to fuck her—although that was part of it too—but because she loved him so much. 

Because she was so grateful. 

Because he was John and she was Marlena, and when they were alone, she belonged on her knees. It was as simple and as complicated as that. 

 

He stroked her hair, tangled and messy from the wind outside, and allowed her to rub her cheek against his thigh. “My beautiful Doc,” he murmured down at her. “Sweetheart. How have I lived so long without you?” 

 

She didn’t know, God, she didn't know, but now that they were together, she didn’t know how she lived this long either. 

Survived, yes. 

But living—how did that ever happen before she was able to sit at John’s feet? Reluctantly she pulled back, bowing her head and placing her palms flat on her thighs. He let out a long breath, and his hands left her hair. And then he kneeled down in front of her, his hands covering hers, his head ducking so he could meet her eyes. “Marlena, I want to give you what you want. This time, I want you to let me serve you, and I want you to let me take care of you. There’s no need for our first time after so much time apart to be…well. You know.” 

 

She shook her head before he even finished. 

So fucking chivalrous. 

So fucking wary of himself. 

It was both commendable and painfully exasperating—especially now, with her nipples pulled into aching beads and her pussy already swelling with the thought of John inside of her. Part of her distantly recognized that this was a first for him too—he had been alone and drugs almost consumed his life, and he wanted to make sure that she got the sweet, loving John. 

But still. 

“I want what you want. You know that you aren’t forcing me, right? You know that I’m not merely playing along? I choose this. I choose you. Every time I kneel, I know that I can stand back up, and every time you push me, I know I can say the word and make it all stop. And when you do things to me, I have just as much power over them as if I were doing them myself, because I can stop you at any time. I’m choosing what I want, and what I want is you how you are.” 

He peered deep into her eyes, and she hoped he could see the truth there, just like he always could. A tiny flume of anger coursed through her, and she gave it passage through her words. “You want to know what else I want? I want what I dreamed about all those months in the castle when you and Kate were together. I want to be dragged to the edge of shame and fear and darkness, I want to not recognize myself, and I want you to be the glorious, demanding beast that you are. You want to take care of me? Then fucking own me. Wreck me. Tear me up and sew me back together the way that only you know how.” 

 

His lips crashed into hers, a kiss not meant to convey love, but a kind of deep gratitude, a sort of hot joy. “You perfect thing,” he said huskily, his voice already melting into his other voice, the one that haunted her sweetest dreams. “You unimaginably perfect thing.” And with the ease and grace that came with strength, he rose fluidly to his feet. 

“Take off my shoes.” 

Relief, happiness, rightness, it all twined around the arousal, making it sharper and brighter. She did as he asked, trying to hide her happy smile behind her curtain of hair as she tugged at the laces, but he saw the smile anyway. 

“Are you happy, Doc?” he asked. “Serving me like you always did before?” 

“Yes, Sir.”

“I love it when you serve me. It pleases me to see you on your knees.” He resumed his idle caresses of her hair as she carefully levered one shoe off and started on the other. After she finished with that, he bided her to stand up and he started undressing her, his fingers sliding between fabric and skin and lingering there before he peeled the clothes from her body, his eyes hot on every new inch exposed. He stripped her like you’d strip old wallpaper or faded carpet to get to the antique house underneath, utilitarian and anticipatory and disdainful and reverent all at the same time. And soon she was completely naked, shivering in the cold room. His fingers brushed against her nipples and she squeaked, her body starving for real stimulation. 

He gave a chuckle. “Eager, are we?” 

She didn’t dare answer. 

 

Every time she played this game with John, it felt like the first time, like she was peeling back a new layer of herself with every humiliation she endured, revealing a woman light-skinned and raw and glowing underneath. 

“Hands on the footboard of the bed. Legs spread.” She obeyed, swallowing. She knew what was coming next, and sure enough, she felt a large hand between her shoulder blades. It ran a gentle, almost exploratory, path down her spine, and then rubbed circles on her ass and flanks. 

“Breathe, Doc.” 

 

Crack. 

 

The first one was never that bad. No, the first one was fun in a way, like being scared at a haunted house or jumping into a cold pool on a hot day. Startling, bracing, sending sensation sparking down your legs. 

 

Crack. Crack. Crack. 

 

“Breathe,” her master repeated. Marlena breathed in. 

 

Crack, crack, crack. 

 

She breathed out. 

“Again.” she breathed again. John deliberately disrupted the rhythm, making sure she relaxed before he stroked, or that he stroked several times in quick succession so that her body has no choice but to yield to his dominance. Pain shimmered behind her sternum like a living entity, pulling at her lungs and stomach, and her hands shook as they tried to grip the footboard. Her whole body shook, and there was heat glowing in her eyes. 

She’d be crying soon.

Very soon. 

Her feet scrabbled at the floor as John continued his assault, a leg involuntarily kicked up and trying to cover her ass with her foot. John pushed it back down with a noise that could only be described as evil delight, and spanked her all the harder for her resistance. 

Crack went his hand, and there was the heavy panting of his breath, and the pain in her chest like a familiar houseguest, rifling through her feelings like a pantry, tossing out fear and anger and humiliation and leaving behind a deep mindlessness that felt almost like bliss. There was only the pain and John, and everything else shrunk to a pinpoint and vanished. 

 

Crack, crack, crack. 

 

And then John folded his body over top of hers, his jeans scratching painfully at her raw ass, his thick cock hard as steel against her flesh. He fisted her hair and yanked her head back so he could kiss her cheeks. No…so he could kiss the tears on her cheeks. The visible and undeniable proof of her submission. 

 

In a wrenching instant, his body was gone over hers, and she actually moaned a little at the loss. Only to moan again as she felt his mouth somewhere other than her cheek, somewhere much, much better. 

It started with a kiss on her center, an almost chaste one, if such a thing could exist. Then it blossomed into wet, warm caresses, his tongue tracing up from her clit to her entrance, firm on one stroke, flat and wide on the next. The pain where she was spanked flared around the hot point of his mouth like the corona of a sun, like the halo around a saint, the golden thing that highlighted the beauty within its circle. He rubbed her back as he tongued her, petted her thighs as if she was a horse that needed gentling, and God helps her, she loved it. 

 

Marlena bucked into his touch, practically purring as he ran his warm hands over her abused flesh, and occasionally she heard him chuckle to himself as she got especially eager. The pain subsided, but the bliss stayed, and all that nibbling and licking and sucking was stirring a twisting pressure in the cradle of her pelvis. She was going to come soon, the delicious kind of orgasm that could only happen after pain and pain-triggered endorphins, but then something unexpected happened. 

 

John’s hands came to rest on her ass, and slowly, ever so slowly, they spread her cheeks apart so that she would have no secrets from him. 

She was completely exposed. 

The twisting pressure froze mid-twist, discomfort, and embarrassment managed to gouge their way past the bliss. 

“John, you know I’ve never—” 

He silenced her with one lick. One brush of his tongue against her darkest secret. The sensation was like nothing she’d ever felt, too shallow, too slick, too dirty, to everything, and she squirmed frantically away from him. 

A hundred what-ifs ran through her mind, only to be chased away by a fingertip and John’s stern voice. “This is mine, Doc. My hole. Yes?” 

The fingertip was probing. 

Pushing. 

Gradually and almost lazily breaching her most elemental barrier. His other hand came up to slap her ass, right on top of the spots still raw from the spanking. Her leg kicked up and he impatiently pushed it back down. “I asked you a question. Is this mine?” 

 

Oh, the invasion. How small it must look and yet how big it felt. 

 

“Yes, Sir,” she answered, her voice cracking on the last word. 

“That’s right,” he said arrogantly. “This one and this one” —a finger entered her pussy — “and your mouth. Every hole belongs to me, doesn’t it?”

“Y-yes, Sir.” 

The finger finally tunneled past the first ring of muscle, sinking up to a knuckle. She sputtered and panted and kicked her legs, and all she got for her pains were more spanks. “And this ass—this is mine to bite or to spank. And the hole there, that’s mine to lick. Mine to play with. Mine to fuck. Isn’t that right?” 

“Yes…” she gasped. 

“Mine to show off, mine to display. I could order you to display yourself in my office, to pull down whatever pretty pencil skirt you’re wearing, and have you bend over for inspection, like a prize at a show. Would you like that?” The thought was so degrading for a respected psychiatrist as her, so awful, that of course it triggered a wave of submissive lust. 

“You don’t have to answer, Marlena. Your pussy just answered for you.” 

 

She pressed her face into the bed, humiliated, shaking, on the precipice of orgasm. The finger left, replaced by his tongue again, but this time he didn’t stop at licking. This time he pushed the tip of his tongue into the pleated rosebud, sending a frisson of filthy electricity straight to her clit. The pleasure was undeniable and immediate, but so was the shame, the reflexive resistance. Her hands flew back instinctively to push him away, her legs trying to close, and that earned her an angry growl. 

 

John wrestled her wrists away from herself and kicked her legs back open with a grunt. “I could fuck you like this,” he hissed. “Holding you down. Is that what you want?” 

Marlena’s answering moan filled the room. 

His arm wrapped around her waist like an iron bar and then she was lifted bodily from her feet and tossed onto the bed, as if she weighed nothing more than a sack of flour. “On your stomach. I want to see your face.” 

Moving her limbs took a strange kind of effort, as if the leashed-up orgasm inside her body was weighing her down, but she managed, and there was a moment of unfiltered tenderness when she felt John’s fingers gently brushing her hair away from her forehead, sweeping it over her head so it won’t tickle her face. He dropped a light kiss onto her jaw.

“Doing okay?” 

“I’d do better if you’d fuck me.” 

He laughed. “I love it when you get desperate. What’s your safe word?” 

“Black.” 

“Keep it close at hand. We’re going to try something new.” He straightened up, and from her vantage, she saw his strong and certain fingers as they worked his belt open and slid it from the loops. She swallowed as she watched him double up the belt and ran it through his palm. 

 

Marlena’s mouth parted, protests rose to her lips. She’d never been belted before, never had anything more intense than a hairbrush, but before she could run through her options before she could rationalize this or ask him to stop or to pause, he let fly with the belt and a leather stripe of pain hit her upper thighs. 

It was agony. 

It was unbearable. 

 

The breath left her body as she arched backward and her mind went blank. There was nothing but pain, nothing but the sparking static of it, and when she finally drew in a breath, it came in and back out as a choked sob. 

Black. 

For the first time ever, her safe word was there on her tongue, ready to be spoken. “Too much?” He asked right as a shot of endorphins hit her bloodstream, right as a pulse of swollen arousal hit her center. 

“Don’t you dare stop.” 

 

The belt flew again, slicing through the air with a whistle, higher up on her thighs this time, on the crease between her legs and ass. A real sob came out, an actual cry, and she writhed and buried her face in the bed.

“Doc.” She sensed rather than saw his arm pull back, and she knew—she just knew—this one will be on her ass, on the skin already inflamed and welted from his hand. The moment hung in the air like the belt, and as she drew in another shuddering breath, she realized this was her chance to say the word. 

Her chance to end this. 

But she won’t. 

She pressed her lips closed, sucking in her crying breaths through her nose. The belt fell, and her lips opened right back up in a scream. All across her ass, there was fire, not just where the belt hit, but everywhere, as if the skin ignited under the leather and the flames spread instantly everywhere else. 

 

Her scream died into a sobbing groan, the blanket underneath her face was wet with tears, and she rubbed her face against it without even knowing it. She heard the belt drop to the floor. 

“Oh, Doc.” His voice was as broken as she felt, as flayed raw. “Sweetheart,” he murmured, crawling onto the bed over her. His hand slid between her stomach and the bed, and then she was turned over as gently as a child so that she was on her back. “Oh, Doc…You’re such a good girl. Such a sweet, obedient girl.” 

 

Through her tears, she saw his eyes like blue fires in the dark. 

“John,” she choked out. His head bowed and then his mouth was at her pussy, eating her like a man possessed. Wildly, with noises coming from his throat as he tasted her, with the passion of worship. And somehow, magically, her orgasm was fusing itself back together, ten thousand times stronger for all the pain, as if all the nerve endings singing along her skin had now all joined together to sing in pleasure. Her groans turned into moans, moans into whimpers, and she heard John say with his lips against her clit, “Come on, Doc, take it. Take it from me.” 

He slid a finger into her, and then another, and then a third probed at the tight hole underneath, and she exploded. Into a tornado of misery and shame and pain and sensation, into a storm of bliss and pleasure so raw and fierce that her womb cramped hard as it contracted.  

She thought she screamed again, and she was definitely crying as this climax tore through her, punched a hole straight through her like a hammer through sheetrock. She could barely see, barely hear, it was just feel, feel, feel, as she came with her skin on fire and her muscles sizzling. 

 

She was not finished orgasming when John moved up over her, one hand working his fly open. He didn’t bother to undress all the way, just yanked his pants down far enough to expose his cock and then found her still-clenching hole and pressed his tip to it. She was so wet that he was able to notch himself at her entrance with no effort, and then he pushed into her swollen pussy with a grunt that curled her toes. 

Or maybe it was his giant cock curling her toes. It was hard to tell. He pulled back and shoved back in—it was a tight, tight fit—and she whimpered at the stretching feeling as he buried himself to the hilt. 

“Fuck,” he panted. “You feel so good.” 

It was the same kind of perfect discomfort that she felt with him years ago, a pain that seemed to scratch a deep, deep itch on the inside of her body, the kind of pain that drew her towards pleasure almost against her will because it was so very, very right. 

 

He was still wearing his black shirt, and the fabric brushed against her erect nipples every time he thrust and moved over her, reminding her that she was naked and he was not, she was vulnerable and he was in control. 

 

Sex with John was always wildfire, uncontrollable lust, two storm fronts colliding in an eruption of electricity and noise. But sex with John these days was different—harder and deeper, more intense and more controlled and more spiritual and more everything else possible, and it felt as though he was everywhere inside of her, all over her. 

 

His hard body covered hers, his marks burn her ass and thighs, his mouth was hot and biting at her neck and jaw and breasts as his cock possessed her from the inside out. “Am I bigger than him?” he rasps in my ear. “Do I make you come harder than him?” She forgot for a minute that he knew about her and Roman. 

She gasped yes. 

Yes, yes, it was all true, because, at this moment, there was no man bigger or harder than John. There was no man other than John, and he made her feel like there was no other woman, as if his entire life and purpose was to hold her down and fuck the life out of her. He kept talking; he told her how beautiful she was, how precious, how good she made him feel. How tight her sweet cunt was, how it squeezed him, how much he liked making her tits move with each shove of his hips, how he was going to fill her up so full. Marlena reached for him, for his shirt, or for his hips, but her hands were wrestled back down over her head, and John pinned both forearms there with one hand. 

 

The submissive pose unleashed something dark in him, some animal intent on ravaging and marking, a monster that saw its perfect dick in and out of her so fast and so hard that a stream of words escaped her mouth, nonsense words mixed with uncontrolled noises and grunts, yes and no and oh oh oh and please more please Sir please, please. She was being hammered, She was completely at his mercy, and he was so big, it hurts, it hurts. 

 

Even she couldn’t tell if the whine from her throat was pain or pleasure, and then he changed the angle of his hips, and the entire world flipped over. Suddenly, like before but even stronger, the pain joined forces with the building orgasm, rendering her senseless. 

Speechless. 

She was nothing, she was everything, she was the light and the dark and the air and the void. Strong force, weak force, gravity, electricity, magnetism are all pinning her underneath this violent, tragic soldier, and as he fucked the literal breath out of her and as she saw stars and as she squirmed in abject pleasure, she knew everything was true. 

 

String theory, magic, multiple lives, miracles, God, parallel universes, it was all true and it was all real and it was all happening inside her right now at this very instant as her climax detonated like a dying star inside her. It was not a gratification, this orgasm, it was gospel.

Everything in her life has led to this one moment, this one exchange, this one feeling of her body shuddering uncontrollably under John’s. 

“Take it,” he said into her ear. “Take your pleasure. Take me.” And she did, she did, she took her pleasure and she took him and she took her, and then like the most poignant sacrifice, like the most tender death, John pulled her close, and his body rigid and frozen over hers, erupted inside her. 

 

He had one hand cradling her head and the other holding her hip down, and his mouth hovered above her mouth, so every soft grunt and needy pant was warm against her lips. Marlena felt every throb and every pulse, every hot spurt of him. He kept himself buried to the hilt until he was finished, and then he kneeled up without pulling out, stroking himself slowly with his tip still inside her, eyes locked on hers. The act was so biological, so possessive, that her center gave an involuntary clench, ready to come again. 

 

He shook his head at that and pulled out, leaning down to give her pussy a reverent kiss before he climbed off the bed. And then…and then she was not sure what happened. 

 

He turned on a light and somehow he ended up undressed and in bed cuddling her and crooning to her, stroking her arms and hair and back, and murmuring words of gratitude and pleasure. 

But she couldn’t speak. 

Her hearing felt fuzzy, like she was hearing everything through earmuffs, and her thoughts were nonexistent. Like she was floating, blank and warm, but she was also shaking, trembling like a leaf in the wind. Bit by bit, layer by layer, she swam up towards consciousness. 

 

“You,” She murmured to John. It was supposed to be I love you, but she was catching her breath, and it was so hard to form. 

“You,” he said back to her in a voice so filled with love that she ached. He wrapped his body more securely around her and pulled the blankets tighter around them. Marlena’s shivering slowly, slowly stilled, but she became aware of the wet pillow underneath her, her cheeks cool against the air, and realized she’d been crying. John held her as her tears leaked out, like a slow, dripping rain.

“I love you,” he whispered over and over again. “I love you.” Eventually, after a few minutes or a few hours, her tears stopped and she felt warm again. She rolled over so that she could nestle into him, and he let out a satisfied growl as if it made him happy that she sought his comfort. 

“Baby,” he said, holding her tight. 

Her world was this. 

Her world was him. 

“Doc.”

She nuzzled her face against his chest. “Will you hold me for a while longer?” 

He kissed her hair. “As long as you want. I could hold you for the rest of my life.” He let out a small laugh. “And anyway, I’ve never seen someone drop that far and that hard into subspace before. I’m not letting you out of my sight until you’ve got both feet back here on planet Earth.” 

 

Subspace. 

It happened a few times after she and John were together, but never like this. Never like a waking blackout, never to where she cried and shivered without feeling either. But as her mind returned to her body, it also returned to her worries from earlier. 

Namely to Roman and what happened at the castle.

She should have told John as he was proposing, before they had sex. She should have told him weeks ago. She should tell him now. 

“John,” she said, keeping her face away from his. “There’s something I need to say.” 

“Yes?” 

“You’re not going to like it.” 

“Try me, Doc.” 

She has no choice. 

It has to be done. 

“You already know about me and Roman.” He stiffened around her. 

“Yes.” 

“It was consensual. He didn’t manipulate me. I wanted this.”

The world seemed to freeze, time ticking on as everything waited in bated stillness. And then John said in a wooden voice, “I know.” 

 

He knew. 

He knew. 

Shit. 

Fuck. 

 

He kicked the blankets off his legs to climb out of bed. She felt his warmth pull away from her, watching his naked form as he padded into the ensuite bathroom and flipped on the light. Marlena heard the sink running. Panic squeezed her throat like a sadist, choking off enough air that she felt dizzy, but kept her conscious enough to witness the almost-certain end of her relationship with John. 

John came back out of the bathroom with a glass of cold water, which he handed to her. “Drink.” 

Even though they just had the raunchiest, roughest sex imaginable, she still covered her body with a sheet as she sat up. She drank and he sat on the side of the bed, watching her with his soldier Balck eyes, the ones that missed nothing. 

His war eyes. 

She couldn’t read his face. She finished drinking and moved to set the glass down on the end table, but he reached forward and took it from her. For a moment, he looked at the imprint of her lips on the rim of the glass, a muscle ticking in his jaw. 

 

“You know?” She finally asked, her fingers knotting in the sheet. 

“I guessed,” John admitted softly.

“How did you guess?” 

He pulled his lower lip into his mouth and then released it. “Let’s start at the beginning and work our way up to that. One of your last nights at the castle?” 

“Yes,” she answered. 

He nodded, as if this was confirmation for something he already knew. Maybe it was. Maybe Roman did tell John The details about them, and she just didn’t know about it. 

He rotated the glass in his hands a few times and then set it down on the dresser himself. 

 

“It didn’t mean anything,” she started, but he held up a hand. 

“Don’t lie to me. Please.” His tone was guarded, but there was something starkly exposed in his words. As if he wanted to beg her for something, but didn’t know how or what or even why he needed it. 

Marlena took a deep breath and started over. “It meant something to me. How could it not? It was my ex-husband—” she stopped and pivoted, realizing John probably didn't want to hear about how that night was. 

“—But John, we didn’t think we’d see you again. It was that night that helped me see it. He was obviously attracted to me, but…well, there was something else there. There was grief.” “That’s what people do when they lose a spouse, the move on with someone they love, Marlena.”

“I’m not in love with Roman.” 

“I told you not to lie to me.” 

The sheet was all the way pulled down now, and then his hand slid up her sternum to circle her throat. He didn’t squeeze or press, but he made a collar of his fingers, a collar not of leather or metal, but flesh and blood. 

You’re mine, the hand said. You’re mine and not his. 

She fidded with her new engagement ring without realizing it, and then his other hand came down on top of both of hers.

“Stop,” he said. 

“You’re not giving that back to me. You’re not taking it off. As long as you still want it, I will be your husband.” 

“Yes, Sir,” she said, relief pricking at her eyelids. He didn’t hate her now, he didn’t want to end their relationship. If nothing else, she could live with that. His hand pressed at her throat, forcing her to lie back.

“How did he do it, Doc?” 

“Do what?”

“How did he fuck you that night?” John kneeled over her, his cock rock-hard and angry-looking. “Did he flip you over so he could see your ass? Take you up against the wall because he couldn’t wait?” 

Maybe she shouldn’t answer that. 

But she did. 

“It was…same as this. He was on top of me.” 

Quick as lightning, John stretched his body over hers, his cock pressed against her clit. Marlena couldn’t stop the moan that she let out. 

“What else?” He asked. 

His voice was rough. Rougher than she’d ever heard it. And his eyes were so dark, no longer blue but black. “He, um, he sucked on my breasts. Bit them…hard and kind of desperate.” 

John lowered his head and nipped at the tender curves of her breasts, sucking and teething and kissing, and within half a minute, she was panting. 

“What else?” He growled against her tits. “What else did he do?” 

“I didn’t stop him until he was trying to get inside. I told him I couldn't do this…when I did tell him, he got…harder. The thought turned him on too much for him to control himself.” 

 

In the here and now, there was a wide push against her folds and then John stabbed inside so hard she gasped.

“Like this?” he asked, punctuating his question with several savage thrusts.

“Yes,” she cried out.“Everything is yours now.” 

“Yes, it is,” he growled, rolling his hips and grinding against her clit. She made a low, keening noise. 

“How did he come, Marlena—on you? Inside you?” 

“Inside me,” she said, her voice breathless. “He wrapped his arms behind me and put his weight on me. Oh God, yes, just like that.” 

John felt entirely different than Roman—wider, stronger, more deliberate. 

“I want to feel what he felt,” he told her, his lips against the place where her jaw and her neck met. His hips rolled so perfectly in and out. This third orgasm was like a key turning in a lock; there was an abrupt shift and suddenly everything in her was open and ready, and the climax rushed in, vicious and cruel, each pull so painful and bright that she couldn’t catch her breath. 

 

It was her orgasm that sent John over the edge, and he gave a rough grunt and released, this time fucking his way through the orgasm with those slow rolls, his entire body shaking. And then he moved off her. 

“Are you alright, Doc?” 

She nodded. “Are you?”

“I don’t know.” He rolled next to her in bed, wrapping her in his arms. 

“Are you mad at me? At Roman?” She asked. He let out a long breath, his chin resting against her head. “No.” 

“But you’re feeling something.” 

“Oh yes,” he answered. “Definitely that.” 

“Jealousy? Because you don’t need to be jealous-” 

“I know you believe that.” A hand swept up her back and stroked along her spine. “Jealousy is such a limiting word, isn’t it? Because there are so many kinds of jealousy. There’s feeling possessive, which I do of you…There’s insecurity—that maybe Roman was able to give you something I can’t, and that you’re able to give Roman something that will change his relationship with Kate. And I know desire doesn’t always make logical sense, that it’s inherently politically incorrect, that sometimes we crave depraved things.” The hand moved to her hair, loving and lazy and indulgent. “But even knowing all that, I couldn’t have predicted how I would actually feel knowing that he fucked you. Desperate and a little angry and scared. Jealousy on its own can’t hold all of those feelings, but I don’t know what other word can. So I suppose it’s good enough, for now, to say that yes, I am jealous... Go to sleep, sweetheart. We have all the time in the world to think about this.” 

 

She wanted to protest, wanted to resist him because there was no way she could fall asleep after their first time having sex, after she got her memory back. No way at all, no matter how languid her limbs were, how thoroughly and utterly wrecked her body was, no matter how warm John’s arms were, and how steady and reassuring his breathing was.