Avenoir

Avenoir - Marlena

Marlena

"Aw fuck, baby!" His mouth fumbles the words between swipes of lips and tongue against my neck and throat. I am at his mercy as he teases me, taking small tastes of me, sucking and biting me with gentle teeth. I feel myself tremble, feel the moisture collecting between my thighs.

I moan, unable to control the sounds of desperation and need that he draws from me. His touch is electric, it's like fire licking in sizzling trails over my skin. This is everything I have wanted for so long and having him here, now, touching me like this is overwhelming. I can't even think, I can't string a coherent thought together let alone speak. My hips move against him as I seek more pressure, more friction against my aching mound.

He moves back, capturing my eyes with his, a deep ocean blue, containing mysteries that I'm not even aware of. I swallow and my heart thumps a staccato rhythm as his fingers stumble over the buttons that hold my blazer together. When he finally manages to twist the last one free, he pulls the jacket over my shoulders with a single, frantic tug and it wrenches a sound from me that is foreign and familiar all at the same time. It's a gasp and a whine melded together, as though the heat from his touch has melted all the sounds he is wringing from my body, and they are fluid and pliable. Much like the rest of me.

He pulls me by the arm to the sofa and he finishes divesting me of my yellow suit blazer before he pulls my white t-shirt from my pants. I kick off my shoes as he starts to unbutton his shirt.

And then I catch the glint of his wedding ring and suddenly I am brought irrevocably into the present.

He is a married man, and he is not mine. Not now, anyway. While I know he wants this, I know the act of committing adultery will eat away at him. He is the most honest and honorable man I have ever known. It's going to break his heart to find out what Kristen has done. But he needs to know, and he needs to know before we do anything that will cause him pain and anguish.

I can wait until he is free. I have waited so long already. Now I know he loves me, now I know he wants to be with me, I can wait a little bit longer. I can tell him the truth about Kristen. After the baby has had his operation, I can make sure he knows the truth and he can file for an annulment. And then we can be together.

He is halfway through unbuttoning, the dark, glistening hair on his chest slowly being revealed in a vee as he moves down the front of the black shirt. At war with myself, I place my hand over his urging him silently to stop.

"John..." I bite my lip as tears fill my eyes. As much as I know this is the right thing to do, it breaks my heart to push him away like this. "John, we can't do this. You're married. You're married to Kristen. I can't ask you to betray your vows."

He looks at me, his eyes wide as his hands slow to a stop.

"I'm not..." he exhales heavily, his exasperation obvious. "I wouldn't have married her if I'd know you felt..." He wheels away, pushing his fingers through his hair. When he turns back to me, his eyes are beseeching and almost desperate. "You should have told me, baby," he shakes his head, not understanding. "Why didn't you tell me? I would never have married her."

"You weren't supposed to marry her," I tell him quietly. "She agreed."

"She agreed?" He looks confused and then slowly, some kind of realization dawns, his eyes widening, fixing me with the darkest indigo pinpoint gaze. "Doc, what's going on between you two? What aren't you telling me?"

I take a deep breath and close my eyes for a moment as I try to work out how to navigate through this maze of lies, manipulations, and deception without breaking my promise. And without causing John any more pain than I have to.

"Doc," I feel his hands on my hips, his lips against my forehead. "What is it, honey?"

"Come and sit down." I take his hand and pull him to the couch where I sit down and pat the cushion next to me. He looks at me, his brow furrowed as he tries to make sense of all the things he knows and tries to figure out all the things he doesn't know.

"Did she know?" he asks suddenly. "Did she know how you feel about me?"

"She knew," I take his hand in mine and run my thumb over the back of it as I stare at the white gold ring on his third finger. That should be my ring. He should be my husband.

He was my husband once, but fool that I was, I threw that away. Maybe that is why I have resisted telling him how I feel for so long. Because somehow I thought that I deserved to be alone. After all, I threw what we had away when I chose Roman over him. Not once, but twice. Why should I ever have expected that he would still love me after all this time? Why should I deserve that love?

The truth was, I didn't expect it. Not until I read his letter.

"John, she also knew how you felt about me," I look up at him as I carefully choose my words. The last thing I ever want to do is cause him pain. But he needs to know. "Because she read your letter."

"My letter?" He looks confused again and his fingers curl around mine, clasping them tight as if he is frightened I might fade away. Maybe he is. I understand that fear only too well.

"The one you wrote in Aremid," I tell him softly. "The night before you were scheduled to..." I can't finish my sentence. Every time I think of it, my blood runs cold. When I think how close I came to losing him forever, it makes me feel dizzy and nauseous. I would have done anything to save him. I would have walked through the gates of hell. And that is said in all seriousness. He risked his soul to save me once. I would do the same for him in a heartbeat.

As it was, I risked a lifetime as Stefano's unwilling prisoner, and God only knows what else at his hands. But John, in his turn, risked his life to save me from that hell on earth. Why we chose to keep our feelings to ourselves after that, I still don't understand.

"You know about that letter?" he blinks disbelievingly. "You read that letter? I thought it had been destroyed. Why the hell didn't you say something?" He pushes himself off the sofa, stalking across the room, trying to outpace his frustration and confusion.

"I wanted to," I tell him. "Oh honey, you have no idea how many times I thought about it, how many times I tried. But..." I sigh. "It's complicated. Kristen was pregnant and you know that the pregnancy was high-risk. She begged me not to tell you how I felt. Not to tell you that I knew how you felt. She said the stress might cause her to lose the baby and I couldn't do that to you. Or to her."

"She knew." He repeats my words from earlier. "She read the letter?"

"She read the letter and then she hid it," I stand and walk across my office to where he stands near the bathroom door. "John, she's not the person you think she is. She's a true DiMera. I hate to say that, but it's true. She learned at Stefano's feet, and she's had us all fooled for a long time."