WAITING FOR THE BEGINNING

41. Erasing The Other

She is not alone. And these are not Wei Xin's arms. Not Wei Xin's smell.  With Wei Xin, she never knows what she's going to get - be the sweat of a man working in the fields or a man who's spent the night with the scent of other women. 

This man smells of familiarity - consistent with something embedded in her memory.

Wei Xin feels strong and dangerous at the same time. Yet in his arms, she feels protected from the world. While she is in his arms. She is never assured of her place with Wei Xin, except for that moment.

This man whose arms draped over her and his hand covering hers embraces her with a sense of ownership, like the rightful captain of a boat sailing her into a safe harbor where she can drift for a long long time.

Last night, he knew. He knew why she wept without her telling him. He held her and comforted her. He wiped away her tears and said "I'm here."  

Last night, in this man's arms, her sham marriage with Wei Xin unraveled, leaving her the bittersweet aftertaste of a fantasy.

This man, she pauses as these words spark a memory.  "De Yi Ge."  She tries out these words, barely a whisper.

He hears her. And his eyes open alertly.  "What did you call me?"

When she doesn't response, he lifts himself up to check if she's awake or simply talking in her dreams.

"De. Yi. Ge." She looks into his eyes and repeats.

"You remembered." A surge of joy, bringing tears to his eyes.

"Only that I used to call you that."  

"Anything else?"  

They stare at each other for a long while, while she traces the features of his face.

"I love you." He confesses. "Do you remember that part."

"I..." She chooses her words carefully. "I know that we loved each other."

"Loved...as in the past..." He couldn't help the shakiness in his voice. In business, he'd always been a realist, knowing exactly the stakes - the cost and the benefit. The leverage he held in his hands. Here, even if he were fully aware of his advantages, he wouldn't want to use it against her or to create artificial momentum.

"I don't now." Ping Ping touched his face tenderly, to lessen the taut muscles. "I feel a special kinship. A special connection to you. As if you are the gate and the key to myself, my past. And my future."

He didn't know if that was good or bad. To rejoice or not. He leans in and kisses her.  she doesn't resist.

De Yi's kiss feels completely different than Wei Xin's' kiss - one tainted with the flavor of forbidden, a kind of desperation like a man needing air.

De Yi's kiss feels like life, like promise, like hope, like sunshine. Like a dream. They carry a sense of home.

The kisses unlock more memories and while she cannot connect them, she knows that she wants to keep kissing him. She kisses him back with full force. No longer shy and tentative like their first kiss.  She responds with raw pleasure accompanied by unashamed moans. 

It dawns on him that she was no longer the pure, innocent teenager he once knew; the thought that another has claimed her angers him in the most primal way. Someone has taken what belongs to him rightfully.

"Ping." His lips land on her neck, her shoulders. "I'm going to make love to you." He declares. "Again and again...until you cannot remember him."

When she cries out in pain, he realizes that her chastity is intact.  Between gentle coaxing and the belated, elated apologies, he invades her thoroughly.