She could no longer contain the words and they spilled from her lips with desperate earnestness. No, he would take a few moments to compose himself before heading for the shower, where she always imagined him frantically scrubbing her scent and touch from his bronzed skin. He lay spread-eagled, also magnificently nude, his eyes were shut but she knew he wasn't asleep. She wrapped her arms around her legs, pressed her cheek to her knees and watched as his breathing steadied, his own shaking was subsiding slightly. She sat up, naked, her body still trembling and drew her knees to her chest. They were words that she could no longer swallow back no matter how much it killed her to say them. It wasn't an abrupt realization, rather it was one that had been growing steadily since the very first time he'd said the words.īut Theresa had her own five words! They were words that had been on the tip of her tongue for months and should have been spoken long before now.

After eighteen months of the same, Theresa had finally realized that it would never change.

With those five words, he inevitably killed the afterglow, destroyed the intimacy of the moment and relegated the act into nothing more than a biological imperative. His words, the ones that were always wrenched from him during his climax, still hovered in the air between them and they still, after all these months, hurt more than they should have. Theresa turned on her side to lovingly trace his harsh profile with her eyes, yearning to touch and caress the smooth, silky and slightly tanned skin but knowing from experience that her touch would be rebuffed. Alessandro had disentangled, detached and distanced himself from her within seconds of their mutual orgasm and lay on his back beside her, his breathing heavy and ragged. Spasms of her powerful release still violently racked her slender frame. Theresa fell back onto the mattress, her body slick with perspiration and limp with pleasure.

The Unwanted Wife by Natasha Anders