Page 44 of Chains of Recompense
But the harder I try to focus on Genevieve, the more insistent my brain becomes until I can’t recall the sound of my wife’s soft moans—but my ears are flooded with Aisling’s desperate gasps.
I can’t feel my wife’s gentle, submissive touch—but rather Aisling’s fingers tangled in my hair, crushing my lips against her sweet, silky folds as I eat her out.
What Aisling and I had wasn’t tender.
It wasn’t safe but rather raw, wild, feral, and entirely driven by passion.
A passion I’d never known before her.
Or since.
I’m breathing hard now, water pounding, my grip brutal, hips jerking into my fist, and I slam my palm against the wall again because this isn’t grief, it’s hunger.
And it’swrong.
Because every time I try to think of the woman I married, the one I buried, my grief slides sideways and turns into desire for someone else entirely.
Someone I shouldn’t want.
Someone Inevershould have wanted.
I stop moving, hand frozen mid-stroke, chest heaving.
I can’t do this. I can’t finish to the image of Aisling Murray.
I can’t come thinking about the woman I haven’t touched in five years when the one I married for love is freshly buried underground.
Ten months.
Genevieve has been gone ten months, and already, I feel her memory slipping through my fingers.
I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting to breathe through the humiliation burning in my throat.
What kind of man does that make me?
What kind of husband—widower, lover—jerks off in a shower because his wife’s ghost can’t compete with a memory of sex from five years ago?
The water starts to cool, the mist turning sharp, fogging my breath, and I force my hand away from my cock.
Planting both palms against the tile, I shudder violently.
I won’t let myself finish. I don’t get relief. Because I haven’t earned forgiveness.
So, instead, I just stand there—hard, frustrated, hungry, guilty, and pathetically alive.
My thoughts drifts back to Aisling in my bed, to the scent of her hair on my pillow, how her body fit against mine like no time passed at all.
I hate it. I crave it, and I resent every second of it.
Because the truth is cruel and merciless.How can I say I’m still in love with my wife when I can’t get the image of Aisling out of my head?
8
AISLING
The quiet hum of the bustling kitchen does nothing to slow my pulse.
I’m sitting at the small table with my second cup of coffee, still trying to defuse the lingering electricity buzzing under my skin from this morning.
