Page 47 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

And I know that he exists because without him he wouldn’t be alive. And Cassandra certainly wouldn’t be safe.

Whatever she thinks.

I let him take over me then. This man who knows things I don’t. It’s the only way I can think of him. It is not two personalities. But there is an instinct there I have not earned.

“You’re my wife,” I say. “Till death do us part, Cassandra. And not a moment before.”

“You were killing me,” she says.

She gets up, pulls away from me and storms out of the room, but I follow her. “Stop,” I say.

“No. Is this…? This is who you are. Even without your memories, this is who you are.”

“You don’t understand. I’m remembering things. I remember… I remember that day, and I remember how I felt. I was so afraid for you.”

“That’s what you say. But the truth is that you just don’t want me to leave you. You don’t know how to lose, Dragos. I do expect that everyone is going to fall in line, especially me. Because you put a spell on me the first time we met.”

I close the distance between us, and I grab her wrists and pull her up against me. “The spell was mutual. You wrecked my life the first time I saw you. I knew that I would do anything to have you. Anything. There has never been another woman…”

I stop, because I don’t know what to say next. Because suddenly, everything I think I know ends. Like a cliff. There’s nothing. It’s just her. Her, her, her. I don’t have facts anymore. I only have my beating heart, the way that it hurts to breathe. I only see her.

So I do the only thing I know to do.

I kiss her.

I kiss her because I’m starving for her. Because I can’t hold myself back from her anymore.

The kiss is full of violence. It has to be.

I am full of violence. I don’t know where it comes from, and I don’t know where it’s going.

But I can’t stop myself. I can’t hold myself back.

I expect her to turn away from me. I expect her to push me.

To make it clear that she doesn’t want this.

That she doesn’t want me. But instead she clings to me.

And I feel all the desperation that passes between us each and every time.

I understand now why she stayed for four years in spite of claiming misery. I understand now why she married me in the first place even though she barely knew me.

Because this thing is bigger than we are. It’s bigger than memories. It’s bigger than what we know is good and what we know is bad. It’s bigger than logic, bigger than reason.

I kiss her, and trace her lower lip with my tongue.

I cannot remember sex, and that fuels me. I know the steps, and yet there’s a novelty to it all the same, and it… Excites me.

“I’m a virgin,” I say.

She laughs against my lips. “Hardly.”

“I might as well be. I cannot remember this. But I know it. The feel of it. The way of it.”

“Well. It’s only fair. You took my virginity. I suppose it’s right that I should take yours.”

She snarls, the sound feral, as she pushes me up against the wall and tears at my shirt, ripping it from my body.

Her nails rake across my chest, and a guttural sound escapes me.

I grip her chin and hold her steady as I deepen our kiss. Deepen our connection. I taste her deeply, and she gasps, leaving claw marks in my skin, her breath hot as it tangles with mine.

“I don’t know what you look like naked,” I say. “I can’t remember any woman.” I move my hands over her clothed body. Cup her breasts, trace the outline of her glorious figure, and I let myself relish in that feeling of the unknown.

Where that cliff was my enemy before, now it becomes my most cherished friend. I let the unknown stoke the fire of the delicious longing I feel. And then, I pull her dress up over her head. She is wearing nothing more than black lace. I growl against her mouth. “Were you going to let him see this?”

“No,” she says.

There’s a challenge in her eyes, and I know that she considered lying to me. Just to make me angry.

I know, because it’s who we are.

“I told him that it wasn’t going to be like that. I told him we were only going to be friends.”

“He wanted you. That was why he went out with you. All he could think about was being inside you.”

“Probably. And I probably went anyway for that reason. To defy you.”

“Such a dangerous game, little girl.”

“You’re the most dangerous game a woman can play. And I keep doing it. God help me.”

She bites my neck, kisses her way down my chest, and I wrap my arm around her shoulders, taking us both down onto the stairs, her knees planted on a step, positioned over me.

She presses her palm flat to my chest, and my heart is raging.

“I like this,” she says. “Maybe I should take control for once.”

Yes. I like it. My Cassandra, the warrior, poised to take me. I move my hands up her slim midsection, skim my thumbs over her nipples, still barely concealed by the lace cups of her bra. “Then take me. As I did you.”

She’s breathing hard, and she undoes the closure on my pants, freeing me before squeezing me tight in her soft hand.

Then she licks her lips, and positions herself so that the blunt head of me scrapes against that black lace.

I can feel that she’s wet beneath the fabric.

But she teases us both. I grit my teeth, tormented by the near penetration.

Until she sweeps the fabric to the side and impales herself on me in one smooth stroke.

The cry of triumph on her lips nearly sends me over the edge then and there.

I grip her hips but I let her set the pace.

I watch her face. I memorize it. There are no memories. There is nothing. Just this first time. Me, as I am, with her.

Yes, there is darkness threatening to close in on us. Yes, this began with anger, but it continues now because of what has always driven us.

This extreme desire for one another. This need that is never ending.

I reach up and grab the edges of those lace cups, pull them down so that I can see her bare breasts. I reach up and cup one, squeeze, and look at my dark, ink-covered hand on her soft pale skin.

She begins to breathe hard, fractured, as I can feel her get wetter, closer to climax.

“Yes,” I growl, unable to help myself now. I thrust up inside of her, taking over. I begin to bring her down hard against me, setting the pace now where before I was content to let her have control. But we are both lost now. We need release. More than either of us need to breathe.

This is fucking as only we can. I don’t need memories of other partners or other times to know that. That this is us, and it could never be anyone else.

I realize that this is always where I have known her. Where I have tried to let her know me.

I understand her body. It’s like we’re one person in this moment. As if her pleasure fuels mine. As if what she wants drives me.

I know it so beautifully and perfectly as I thrust up inside of her, as I bring my thumb to the center of her body, to that bundle of nerves right there, and begin to stroke her as we continue to race toward release.

And when she throws her head back and shouts my name, I thrust up one last time and empty myself inside of her.

Only then do I become aware of how uncomfortable the steps are as they dig into my back. Only then do I become aware that she has actually drawn blood on my chest with her fingernails.

I smile.

This is happiness.

It is the only version of it I know now, and the only version of it that I have ever known.

Something I realize then, as clear as I ever have, is that I have never been happy a single moment in my life before Cassandra.

That thing that I felt the first time I saw her was happiness. It was like I felt her happiness inside of me as she laughed and smiled, wearing yellow, bathed in the sun.

I knew that I could never let that leave me.

Because I had tasted joy. I could feel it now.

She won’t believe me. She doesn’t believe me.

I already know that. But I also know that it’s true. More than I know anything else.

I cup her face. I bring her down and kiss her.

She stays on me, keeps me inside of her.

And I simply hold her for the moment. Then I feel tears on her cheeks.

She moves off of me, but not away, curled into a ball on the stairs.

She lets out a watery laugh. “This is really uncomfortable. Why are you still laying here?”

“I don’t care that it’s uncomfortable.”

“Of course not. You’re probably used to it. You probably trained to be uncomfortable.”

“I think I did,” I say.

“Dragos…”

“No,” I say. “Don’t turn away from me. I’m sorry. I got angry, because I remember the feeling I had when you left me. It broke me, Cassandra. Whatever you think about me, losing you broke me.”

“I don’t understand why.”

“Find out who I am with me. Because when we find out, then we’ll know. I won’t hide it from you. Not anything. And if the man that you uncover is still a man you want to leave, then leave. I won’t come after you. I promise you that. I will let you have the life that you want.”

I mean this. From the very bottom of my soul. My soul. Do I even have one?

I must. Because without memories, I want her to be happy. And with them, I know I didn’t want her own happiness more than I wanted my own. I know that because of the blinding, red rage I felt when I realized she was no longer there.

“I will be honest with you,” I say. “When I found out that you had left me, I was determined to bring you back to me even if you didn’t want to come. I would have taken you prisoner. I was intent on doing so.”

“Haven’t you done that?”

“Yes. But because of… I want you to be safe. I promise you, when all of this is sorted out, if you don’t want to be with me, you may go off and live your life.

I will get you a security detail if that’s what it takes, but you can be without me.

I want you to be happy. You have given me…

You’ve given me great joy, Cassandra, and I feel as if I have given you none. It cannot go on that way.”

She looks shocked by those words, like she doesn’t know what to say. She says nothing. Instead she stands up, and I can see that her legs are wobbly.

Mine are too, in truth. But I rise with her, and we begin to walk up the stairs.

I follow her to the bedroom, where she pushes the door open, and reveals the box of all of my things.

“Then let’s start here.”