Every Touch (43 page)

   The feel of his hands sliding her panties down her thighs set her trembling with anticipation and a moan escaped her lips as he broke away to remove them completely. 

   He sat back on his heels, his gaze raking her naked body.

   “Oh no,” he said, his eyes widening suddenly.

   She raised herself up on her elbows, looking down at herself and breathing in.  Was it really that bad? 

   “What?”

   “Do you have any condoms?”

   She almost burst into laughter.  “No, but we don’t need one.”

   Lowering herself back down, she reached her arms out to him.  He followed her, stretching out on top of her and looking into her eyes as she draped her arms over his shoulders.

   “We don’t?” he said.

   “I was thoroughly tested after my last jerk of a boyfriend, you’re brand new and I’m on birth control.”  She smiled when he raised his eyebrows.  “I’ve been taking it since the day before we did the ritual.  There was no way I wasn’t going to be prepared for when you came back to life.”

   “And you kept taking it, even when I was unconscious and then didn’t remember?”

   She touched her hand to his face.  “I couldn’t give up hope.”

   He stared at her for a few seconds and the anxious look she’d seen on his face several times in the past few days returned.

  “You scare me,” he finally admitted.  “I’m afraid I won’t be the man you fell in love with.”

   Laila smiled.  “You already are.”

   His eyes held hers for a few moments more before dropping to her lips again as he lowered his face.  A soft moan escaped her as their mouths met.  It had been nine days since they had last made love, what felt like a lifetime without his touch.  As his hands moved over her skin and his lips devoured hers, she realised just how much she had missed him.  How much she needed him. 

   She parted her thighs, bending her knees around his hips, moving herself into position and feeling him brush between her legs.  He lifted his head, their eyes locked, and he pushed himself into her.  She drew a deep breath in as he stretched and filled her, tilting her hips to take him in completely, then sighed in satisfaction, whispering his name before he captured her lips in his again.

   It was different and yet the same.  The way he moved she knew, his rhythms, his lips and tongue tasting her sweat-sheened skin, the power of his hips between her thighs.  Making love to Denny felt more natural, more familiar to her than anything else she did. 

   But this was also fresh and new.

  She had never been able to smell him before.  As they writhed against each other, bodies melding and hearts pounding, she breathed in the intoxicating scent of soap, masculinity and passion.  His groans vibrated through her body and reverberated in her ears.  Where she used to close her eyes and concentrate on touch, she now opened them, wanting to see his clear blue eyes shining, his gorgeous face flushed with pleasure, the strength of his incredible body moving and straining, driving them on.

   And when her body trembled and tightened and broke and the exquisite burn flooded through her, as she cried out and tears ran down her face, as his cry joined hers and he looked into her eyes, she knew that nothing could ever take him from her. 

   They belonged to each other, in death and in life.

*

Tears! 

   Denny rolled onto his side, holding Laila against him, drawing in rapid breaths and failing to stop the tears escaping from beneath his closed eyelids.  What was wrong with him?  He had never once cried after sex before.  It was embarrassing, but he couldn’t stop it.  Feelings he didn’t even know existed were plunging him into an emotional maelstrom. 

   With no idea what was happening to him, he held Laila tight, mostly because he didn’t seem to be able to let her go, but also because he didn’t want her to see his unmanly blubbing. 

   When he’d caught her watching him in the shower, desire darkening her eyes, something in him had changed.  The urge to claim her lips and her body, knowing she wouldn’t stop him, had been irresistible.  It had stripped him of every last drop of self-control he possessed. 

   But sex with Laila was the last thing he had meant to happen. 

   The truth was he was a coward, afraid of the depth of feeling with which she loved him and, potentially, the depth with which he could love her back if he gave it a chance.  He’d been intentionally trying to keep her at a distance, to ignore the pull to her he felt deep inside every single second they were together.  But when he’d seen her look at him like that, he had snapped.  The only thing that would have stopped him was if she had said no.  But she didn’t.

   And now here he was, crying, unable to think straight, clinging to her as if his life depended on it.  Something was happening to him.    

   He had no idea how long he’d been holding her when she moved against him.  He quickly wiped at his eyes and loosened his grip, pulling back to look at her.  The sight of her beautiful face, her cheeks still flushed from their lovemaking, her lips swollen from his kisses, immediately made him feel like he was going to burst into tears again. 

   “Are you okay?” she said, touching his face with her fingertips.

   He nodded rapidly, knowing if he spoke he would lose control.

   She smiled.  “I need to go and clean up.”

   He nodded again, kissed her forehead and let her go.  The sense of loss he felt when she left his embrace and stood was devastating.  When she disappeared into the bathroom, he wrapped his arms around himself and shivered, closing his eyes.

   He heard music. 

   Opening his eyes again, he looked around, half expecting a radio to be on somewhere before realising the piano was playing in his own head.  It gave him the strangest sensation of knowing he had never heard it before, yet at the same time being completely familiar to him.

   Feeling almost like he was on autopilot, he got up, pulled on a pair of jeans from the wardrobe and walked into the living room.    

   Denny hadn’t touched the piano since he’d woken up in bed with Laila four days before.  He wasn’t sure why, but the thing scared him.  It seemed to sit there in the corner of the room by the window, mocking him.  The instrument he could play, and yet couldn’t.  A symbol of the last five years he would never remember.

   But now it drew him like a beacon in a storm. 

   He pulled out the stool and sat down, pushing the lid back and pressing the power button.  Tiny red indicator lights flashed into life.  Without even thinking, he lifted his hands to the keyboard and began to play. 

   His fingers didn’t stumble, he hit no wrong notes, there were no uncertain pauses.  It was nothing like his usual experience at the piano.  Closing his eyes, the music flowed from his heart.

   Being so focused on what he played, he was completely unaware he was no longer alone until the piece came to an end and she spoke, startling him.

   “That’s so beautiful,” Laila said.  “I’ve never heard it before.  What’s it called?”

   Denny opened his eyes, looking up at her.  She was standing a few feet away, wearing a short blue silk dressing gown, her hair a beautiful, sexy mess. 

   He looked down at his hands on the keys.  Two words came into his mind.

   “Every Touch,” he said quietly.

   “Who wrote it?”

   His memories shifted, like puzzle pieces trying to find a link. 

   “I think I did,” he said.  He looked back up at her.  “I think I wrote it for you.”

   She stared at him for a few seconds before speaking again.  “Play it again,” she said softly, “please.”

   A sensation of being totally out of control was spinning his mind in circles.  The more he tried to make sense of his thoughts, the more they twisted away from him.  So he stopped trying, placed his fingers on the keys again, and played.

   When he finished the piece for the second time, he continued staring at his hands for a long time, his fingertips resting against the cool smoothness of the keyboard.  Thoughts that had been running from him before were now pouring into his mind, jostling for space.  Memories bombarded him from every direction, making him dizzy. 

   He remembered waking up on the floor in the bedroom after dying, losing Trish and meeting Oliver.  He remembered the people living in the building, those who had left and those who had come in their place.  He remembered Mr Duncan dying.  He remembered Oliver fading.  He remembered Laila moving in, falling in love, saving her from Avery, their first touch, their first kiss.  He remembered the first time she told him she loved him.

   “After we made love the first time,” he said eventually, speaking more to himself than Laila, his voice so soft he didn’t even know if she could hear him, “I lay with you asleep in my arms and I thought how I was glad I’d died because it had led me to you.  I felt as though every touch from you made me live again.”

   He lifted his head and turned slowly towards her.  His heart was racing.  Tears burned his eyes. 

   “Laila.”

   Suddenly he stood, crossing the distance between them in two paces and wrapping his arms around her.  She grabbed onto him.

   “Laila,” he sobbed, burying his face in her neck, “I remember.”  He gasped in a shaking breath.  “I remember.”

   She was clinging to him, her hands on the bare skin of his back, crying against his shoulder as she held onto him. 

   After a long time during which he felt as if he would never be able to let go of her again, he pulled back and looked into the most beautiful face he’d ever seen.  

  “How could I forget you?” he said, slowly shaking his head in disbelief.

   “Do you remember everything?”  She stared into his eyes, her face shining with hope.

   For a moment he closed his eyes, searching for the dark spaces of uncertainty.  He found none.

   “I remember everything,” he said.    

   He began to laugh, not quite able to take it in.  He felt liberated beyond belief.  He felt like a light was shining onto his soul.  He felt love, more love than he could have ever imagined before Laila. 

   Her joyful answering laugh made his heart leap in his chest and he picked her up and spun her around.  

   Then he kissed her, slipped his hand into hers and lead her back into the bedroom where he took the woman he adored into his arms and made love to her again as if it was the first time. 

When Denny woke the next morning, Laila was still asleep in his arms. He lay still for a while, feeling her, breathing her in. 

   Having her see him, looking into his eyes as they made love, had all but destroyed him.  The tears he had been unable to hold back threatened to fall again every time he thought of it.

  They had spent the evening in bed, wrapped around each other, talking, laughing, eating, making love.  They made love twice more before finally falling asleep in each other’s arms and both times it had been the same.  Laila’s eyes looking into his, seeing him as she never could before, affected him more than he ever thought it would.  He’d cried both times, much to his embarrassment.

  The truth was, even though Laila was wonderful about it, he was feeling more than a little awkward about how overly emotional he was and he hoped to be able to get a better handle on it soon.  Maybe it was just a side effect of regaining his life and his memories.  Or maybe it was a side effect of Laila. 

   Wonderful, beautiful, incredible Laila.  The woman who had brought him back to life even while he was still a ghost. 

   He was so proud of her, having gone from being worried and timid, afraid even to step out of the flat when she’d first moved in six months ago, to being tough and courageous.  She told him it was because of knowing him, and he liked to think that was partly true, but he knew it was mostly her.  She was and had always been so strong.  That strength had saved him, had brought him back to life.

   In every way there was, he would be lost without her.

   He carefully extricated himself from around her and climbed out of the bed, watching her closely to make sure she hadn’t woken, then padding out silently into the living room.  He grabbed a cookie from the cupboard then found a screwdriver and went to the air vent set high in the wall close to the door into the flat.  It was an undeniably clichéd hiding place, he thought as he removed the four screws from the corners of the metal grate, but it had served its purpose.  Detaching the grate, he reached in and took out the small wooden box with the heart on top, then replaced the cover to the vent. 

   He opened the box and looked at the three rings inside.  Give them to the woman who makes you the happiest man on earth, Mr Duncan had told him.  Denny smiled.  There had only ever been one woman who did that and he knew she would do it for the rest of this life.

   Walking back into the bedroom, he pulled a chair up to the bed and sat and watched Laila as she slept.