Forgotten Love

Jessamyn’s parents, the Hortons, drove away.  Now Jessamyn and Eddie Rawson were alone, he at last back home from the hospital and rehabilitation center after almost four months.

Eddie watched as Jessamyn, or Jess, locked the front door and made sure the porch lights were on.  On his somewhat tired face was etched perplexity.  The people who had just gone kept telling him that Jess was his wife.  They all seemed to know him well, her most of all.  It seemed almost too unreal that a good-looking woman like Jess was actually his wife.  She could be a swimsuit model, he thought, with those hips and tan legs and wavy long copper hair.  Maybe she was a model.  He couldn’t remember.  Due to the plane accident back in March, he’d suffered severe head trauma and injuries to his legs.  Only recently had he learned to walk again by himself.  But memory eluded him.

The thoughts in Jess’s head darted around uncertainly, too, as she approached her husband.  He sure looked at her a lot, usually silently and appraisingly, as if straining to place her, to connect her face and form to images in his brain’s storage files.  She almost felt she was with a stranger.  The smiling swagger and charm of their courting days and first year of marriage had disappeared in the crash, yet she liked the replacement.  A serious man attracted her more than a Romeo.  And with the current situation, she almost felt she was getting to live her romance a second time with a different version of the same man.

Right now, Eddie was wearing casual slacks and a polo shirt, the short sleeves rolled up a little more to give his biceps room to breathe.  His hair was a light russet shade, thin and gelled in a wave across his hard, narrow forehead.  Jess found herself taking in his features for the thousandth time: his grave, well-cut face, its rounded jaws and molded cleft chin clean-shaven; his brown eyes, a little shy; and marks of age and adventure scarring the skin around his eyes and mouth.

“Eddie, do you want to sit out by the pool for a little bit?” she asked.  “It’s a beautiful night.”

He nodded slightly.  “Sure.”  He accepted her hand and walked out to the patio with her.

The night really was beautiful.  Nothing could top June in southern California.  The Rawsons were blest with a small but pretty house, a stucco-walled, tiled-roof affair, with a courtyard in back that boasted a pool, barbecue, and strip of landscaped yard.  Jess particularly enjoyed keeping the place inviting.  To make the house a home for Eddie was her one great desire.

Eddie pulled an iron chair out for her at the little bistro table, then assumed the other.  He slung an ankle up to rest on the opposite knee and set his elbow on the table.  The spot was sure relaxing.  He didn’t recognize anything, taking Jess’s word for it that this truly was his house.

“Did you plant all those things?” he finally broke the silence, pointing at some palms around the patio.

“Actually, they’ve been here a while,” she smiled.  “But I put the jasmine in right there.  See, it’ll climb up all over the walls and smell intoxicating on warm nights.”

Eddie inhaled through his nose.  “I do smell it.  Kind of like perfume.  Or… uh, are you wearing perfume?”

“A little.  Do you like it?” Her tone was warm and a little longing.

“Yeah.” Maybe the combination of the bright moon, the house lights twinkling off the pool water, the fresh breeze, and the beautiful woman sitting a couple of feet away made him feel a little nervous.

Just this afternoon, he’d come home.  A weird instinct told him that Jess would soon want to head to bed, and he wasn’t sure if he should go with her.  After all, she’d been without him for several months.  Maybe she liked it that way.  Besides a welcoming kiss this morning at the sanitarium, she had made no move to show any affection.  And he admitted to himself that he didn’t know how to respond if she did try anything.  To him, she was an attractive stranger, whose relationship to him he had to accept, at present, on trust.  The very idea of touching her arms or kissing her lips sent a burn to his face.

Quietly Jess stood up and meandered around the pool, just looking at the water.  Though he thought he should, Eddie couldn’t take his eyes off of her.  The graceful swing of her hips, sheathed in the pencil skirt, allured him.  And those legs! So well-shaped and smooth.  She’d ditched her heels and was ambling around barefoot, hands palms-down on her lower back.

Eddie swallowed.  What if all of this was somehow a big lie? In his condition, he might be duped.  But what would be the reason? No, it didn’t make sense.  He tossed that thought away.  If Jess was his wife, then there was nothing wrong in looking.  Besides, the way she was swaying her lower half was impossible to ignore.

“You know what?” she suddenly asked, turning back to him.  “It’s so warm, and I’m feeling a little dangerous.  Let’s go swimming!”

His eyebrows popped upwards.  “As in… this second?” he wanted to know.

“Well, I’ll go get into a bathing suit,” she laughed agreeably, “but I love swimming at night.  We, uh, used to sometimes, Eddie.”

A look at the pool, dark and clear with light flashing off the ripples, and then another look at her, and Eddie sighed in some despair.  “I can’t remember any of it!” he broke out.

She came up and knelt in front of him, taking his hands with hers.  “It’ll come back.  The doctors are so hopeful,” she reassured him earnestly.  The tenderness of her eyes, which looked so much larger and softer in the dark, pulled him.  He thought about leaning in and kissing her, but she stood up.  “Now I’ll go change.  You know, you could just go in your shorts.”  And she vanished into the house.

Was he supposed just to undress here, outside? Well, no one could see them.  Thank goodness for the privacy.  But… she would see him.  Okay, okay.  Remember, she’s seen you lots of times, and not even with your shorts.  It feels awkward, but it really isn’t.  Trying to convince himself and taking long breaths of the summery air to relax him, Eddie unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it over his head.  His undershirt followed, then his shoes and socks, and lastly, his belt and slacks.  He stood there in his undershorts and combed his fingers through his hair, noting that the fresh air on his skin was quite pleasant.

A little wolf-whistle startled him, and he jerked around.  Jess had paused in the doorway under the light.  It only took a millisecond for his brain to take in the half-opened short silk blue robe partially covering her luscious body.  Underneath, he could see a very revealing white bikini.

She had a tiny smile playing at her lips and admiration in her eyes.  “Hello, handsome.”  He didn’t know she’d arrived back in time to see him strip, and the sight heated her blood.  The weeks of therapy and exercises had given him back his muscle, though he still had to work on his tan, and his chest and arms and legs rippled in their masculine tautness.

Realizing he was staring and thinking again that he really should look away, Eddie licked his lips.  “Do you… always… wear that when… we swim?” he asked.

The way he was looking at her, his eyes roaming all over her body, seemed so innocent, so refreshing—as if it were the first time he’d ever done it, and Jess had to laugh, though in a very touched and flattered manner.  She approached him.  The slight jiggle of her thighs caught him.

“When we first got married, I promised you that I’d wear things like this for your eyes only,” she explained.  “So don’t worry that other men will get to see this.  This isn’t just for the pool.  I’ve got some for the bedroom you’ll enjoy seeing again.  You are my man, Eddie, and I love you.”  She didn’t touch him; she didn’t step any closer.  But Eddie felt her words permeating his innermost soul.  She meant it, and he knew right then he did love her.

As abruptly as she’d appeared, she slipped towards the pool and gave a happy little jump while removing the robe.  “Coming? Or am I the braver one?”

He grinned and loped after her.  They both hit the water at about the same time, sending up a heavy splash.  The water was luxuriously warm after days of having the sun glowing over it.  Jess doggy-paddled in place, watching her husband do the crawl to the far end.

“Say, you’re as good as ever!” she praised when he stopped near her.

“Think so?” He slung wet hair from off his forehead and wiped his eyes.  “It feels swell.”

“Can you still do the butterfly?”

He deliberated.  “Let’s see.”  It took a few tries, but once he got the rhythm, he swam the length of the pool.

“I think you splashed ninety percent of the water onto the patio,” Jess joked.

“Well, come help me with the last ten percent.  Race you to the end and back!”

They plunged through the water, churning it up with their feet and straining to propel themselves with their arms.  Jess won and turned with a giggle to him.

“No fair.  I’m still catching up on my exercise,” he scolded.

“I want to be able to say that just once I beat you at something,” she said archly.  “Boy, your hair’s all over the place.  Come here.”  She was seated on the second pool step, half out of the water.

He obeyed.  Something flared in him when she touched his face and smoothed back his tangled wet hair.  He also felt the warmth and draw of her body, slender and tan and curved and hardly clothed.  Her round breasts, perched in the soaked hammocks of her bikini top, were inches from his nose.

The wandering of his eyes didn’t escape her, and she smiled to herself.  It felt good to have him with her again, his gaze hungry and desirous.  Yet she knew she mustn’t hurry anything.  Eddie still felt unsure, alone in the world of amnesia.  As alluring as her body might be to him, he probably considered her a stranger and would just as soon make a pass at her mother.

They sat a moment, catching their wind after the sudden exertion.  Then Jess stood up and headed, dripping, for a long chaise lounge at the poolside.  Eddie watched her buttocks tense and bounce with each step.  The triangle of fabric only did half its task of covering those firm, feminine cheeks.  She grabbed a towel from several that were stacked by the lounge and patted herself dry.  Gracefully, she lay down on the lounge, extending her legs.

Those legs! Eddie scanned then from her exposed hip down to the arched foot.  A peculiar pounding thickened his hearing and made his blood hot.  He wanted to touch that soft, womanly skin.  With measured moves, he got out of the pool and came over to pick up a towel, eyes glued to her irresistible form.

With a woman’s instinct, she felt his gaze and promptly drew up one leg.  Just the curvature of a leg and half-naked buttock can arouse a man so much, she knew.  She pressed her towel against her breasts, ostensibly to soak up the water from the bikini, but really because she wanted her hands somewhere enticing, where Eddie was looking.

He was looking all right, his sparse-haired chest expanding and deflating with heavier breaths.  The muscles in his fingers spasmed, clenching into balls.  The blood was racing to his shaft, and he felt himself flaming and going rigid.  What was Jess doing to him? Men don’t typically get hints, but right then, a providential light switched on in Eddie’s brain, and he came to the conclusion that Jess wanted him.

As if on cue, she turned her eyes up to his face, her damp eyelashes lowered enough to give her a seductive, shadowy look.  That and the rise of her breasts under her hands overpowered him.  He dropped to one knee, filling his hands with her soft arms and slim waist, and planted his mouth on hers.

A sigh, a moan of delight, caressed Jess’s throat.  She received her husband’s lips and tongue as if starved for them.  The kiss grew in fire, in need, in the depth of its search for oneness.  Eddie felt he could never stop; the sweet wetness of Jess’s mouth intoxicated him like a heavenly wine.  The light citrus flavor of her lips suddenly reminded him that she always liked to use a natural orange lip salve.

Finally, he let her up for air, the flesh around his mouth and hers red from the pressure and the passion.  “Jess, your lips… they’re like fresh oranges!” he murmured, staring at them meantime.  “I remember that!”

Her breasts were heaving, her hands locked around his neck.  Joy lit her eyes.  “Oh, Eddie! I knew it would come back! I prayed a million times a day for it! But don’t stop! Oh, I’ve missed you so bad…” and she pulled him down again.

As he kissed her, Eddie’s hands wandered along her smooth arms, her shoulders, tracing the little indents and hollows of her neck, and then the deeper cleft between her tempting breasts.  He ripped the towel away and slid his fingers under the bikini, kneading the two provocative globes.  Her body started and swelled and squirmed under him, arousing him more every second.  Everything in him wanted to take her, to feel as if for the first time that she was his.  Should he ask her?

Jess abruptly broke the kiss.  “Eddie, please, please, will you make love to me?”

“It’s not too fast for you?” he whispered huskily.

“No.  Unless it is for you.”

“I want you.”  He nuzzled her lower lip and chin hungrily.

“And I want you.”

“It might take some relearning.”

“Then we’ll relearn together.  That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

“You won’t feel like I’m someone else?”

Jess laughed in a bit of exasperation and stroked her palms over his broad back.  “Eddie, I didn’t wait all these months to be with someone else.  I waited for you.”

For the third time, he besieged her mouth with his.  He still couldn’t really grasp it.  This was his wife.  This was all right to do.  In fact, it was way more than all right.

With a light move, he climbed on the lounge, pressing his thighs and torso over hers.  She automatically clasped him against her.  Their kisses continued, heavy and lustful.  Eddie felt Jess’s tender breasts crushed under his chest and the vibrations of her thudding heart.  One hand he employed to pull down her bikini bottom, freeing her hips and butt and hair-masked garden of love.  The other he slipped behind her neck to untie the top.

Whimpers escaped Jess as she felt herself stripped by his hard, virile hands.  Her own hands weren’t lazy; they had darted down Eddie’s chest to the waistband of his shorts, lingering for a second on his lower abs.  When she plunged in, he jumped and went tense.  No one had touched him there in a while.  But her exploratory fingers were gentle.  The tension presently fled to make room for excitement as she caressed his hot manhood.  Soon she was trying to push his shorts down over the rigid shaft.

Jess felt like she was in some kind of delicious, wide-awake stupor, oxymoronic as it sounded.  Having her husband’s body crushing hers again enraptured her.  She imagined what the view would be to the bats and night birds: a slim, muscular man stretched, almost naked, over a woman also naked, his shorts pulled down over his buttocks, his legs tangled with hers, hands wandering all over her shoulders and breasts and belly.  The picture overpowered her in its eroticism.

“Eddie, now! Please now! I want you!” she gasped.

Eddie reached blindly down between them to direct his shaft towards her vagina.  The wetness leaked out onto his fingers, and he almost quivered and went over the edge right then.  To think she was so thirsty for him… but he lined up and made the plunge into his wife’s love hole.  Both gasped and trembled, Eddie’s hands reflexively gripping her thighs, hers clenching his back.

“Oh, God! You’re so hot and tight and…” Eddie couldn’t go on.  The sensation of Jess’s cushioned slit gripping his cock stole his breath and his words.

She stroked his back and moaned.  Every cell in her body burned like fire and ice.  She almost felt she could cry; it was so good to feel her beloved husband making love to her again.  For a second, Eddie lay still, adjusting to the sensation, his face lying against her breasts.  His strong fingers encased her bare waist and electrified her with shivers.  This glory might cause her to deliquesce at any moment.

And then the dance of love began.

First slow, uncertain, both having been denied this sacred closeness for the past few months, they joined and parted, met and broke.  Eddie lifted his head so he could gaze into Jess’s eyes.  She kept her arms twined around his neck, sometimes straying into his hair, other times rubbing over his broad back.

Their hunger was so intense; thus, the movements grew more passionate.  Sweat studded their skin and glimmered in the moonlight as they writhed and pounded.  Eddie breathed sharp and shallow.  He was dizzy, almost drunk with this unbelievable pleasure.  The quiver of Jess’s beautiful breasts beneath him captivated his gaze.  Her body, hot, squirming, soft against his hard muscles, spurred him to go faster, to love her harder.  The thought that he had actually done this before with the glorious woman in his arms knocked him senseless.  He strained to recall if the first time had been this awesome but stopped trying as he felt himself losing all control in the present.  Easily he noted the intoxication on Jess’s face as she clenched her teeth and sucked in air.  Her little screams pierced the summer night each time he took her.  This was true fulfillment, unity, the dissolving of two married human beings into one.

In a few short minutes, that completion deluged them both.  First, Jess trembled and shouted, feeling her belly tighten and wetness trickle down her thighs.  Uncontrollably, her legs locked around Eddie’s buttocks.  The touch of her smooth legs sent him over, and he groaned and almost passed out as his manhood pulsated and jerked in the depths of her loins.  The wave of bliss was so very real, its magnificence captured in the spilling of their love juices.

For a long time, they lay there, Eddie’s head resting on her swelling breasts, his shaft still inside her.  There was no need for talking. Instead, he kissed the tender globes and nibbled at the rosy points, making them taut again; then, still exhausted, he raised his head and met her eyes.

They were soft and dark, fixed on his face with a world of adoration engraved in them.

“Jess, my wife,” Eddie whispered.  He kissed her, long and warm and deep.  “How could I ever forget a lover like you?”

Just to let you know, once he recovered his memory, he never forgot again.