Amnesia, a Psychological Thriller (Centrifuge Duet Book 1) Read online

  Honestly? I might not remember the man or my feelings for him, but he’s my fiancé not hers. Her behaviour gets my back up. Unsure how to react, I take a bite of the French toast. A moan escapes me as the cinnamon bursts over my taste buds.

  Wow, he can cook.

  “You like that, baby?” He asks, running a finger down my cheek as he gazes into my eyes. A haze of lust overcomes me at his touch, my nipples pebbling noticeably through the sheer top I’m wearing over a silky camisole. Belinda’s sardonic snorting breaks through my mindless response and I make myself pull away from Jax.

  Swallowing, I nod. “It’s yummy.”

  Peering up at Jax when he doesn’t answer me, I notice the silent conversation he’s having with Belinda over my head. He doesn’t look happy, wrath colouring his demeanour as he appears to chastise her for laughing at me. Intrigued, I chance a look at Belinda, shock at what I see clouding my mind.

  Fear is written all over her face—her eyes wide and beseeching, her face pale under her makeup, her mouth opening and closing as she silently pleads for forgiveness.

  She’s scared of Jax.

  “Amber.” Jax is gruff, demanding my attention.

  Swivelling my head back to him, I’m thrown further when I take in his blank countenance. Not a sign of his anger can be seen; he’s expressionless. My misgivings from earlier in our bedroom return with vengeance. Maybe my suspicions are founded, after all?

  “Amber.” He clicks his fingers in front of my face, pulling me from my dark worries.

  “Jax.” I answer him after a long second.

  “Eat up, baby. You need a full stomach before I administer your meds. I have time for a quick memory session before I’m needed at the hospital, but only if you hurry.”

  Hesitant to call him out on what I just witnessed, I’m equally reticent to question the meds and memory session. Instead, I bite my tongue and smile as if I’m blasé to what just happened. Digging into my now-cooled toast, my mind whirls in a million directions with thoughts about Jax and his strange mood swings.

  “Okay, baby.” Jax blows on the crook of my elbow to dry the antiseptic wipe he’s just spread over my veins. “Take a deep breath. It’ll only be a slight pinch.”

  Screwing my eyes shut as he injects the reddish-brown fluid into my vein, I immediately feel woozy. Turning my head from where I’m lying on the velvet settee in his office, I search for his handsome face as the room spins.

  Regret fills me when I meet his unforgiving stare. There’s a lack of emotion in his chocolate-brown eyes that scares me as much as it excites me. I should’ve asked more questions instead of blindly following them into the office once I’d finished breakfast. In the dark recesses of my mind, the thought that I’m not the meek, easy-to-please girl that I seem to be around Jax pops free.

  “I’m gonna be sick.” I try to tell him, but the words are jumbled, tripping over themselves in their rush to leave me. As quick as it comes, the nausea leaves and I’m left with a feeling of indescribable ecstasy. My body feels as if it’s glowing, my cheeks heating as a smile breaks free of its own accord. It’s impossible to describe how awesome I feel. I’m positive that I could climb Mount Everest, leap tall buildings in one bound, and run a marathon all at the same time.

  And then some.

  “Amber?” Jax sounds as if he’s underwater. “Baby, ride the wave for me.”

  Clasping my hand in his big warm one, he grins at me. His eyes appear comically large in his head and his hair takes on a life of its own. It looks like it’s waving from the top of his head.

  “Wave.” I giggle as I watch his hair moving. When the motion of his hair becomes impossibly faster, dizziness grips me. My eyes begin to roll back in my head and that makes the smile slip from Jax’s face. He slaps me on the cheek. It stings and pulls me back to the present.

  “Stay with me. We can’t afford to lose this progress.” Jax doesn’t sound happy anymore. The compassion that usually tinges his tone has been replaced with a callous disregard for my drugged state.

  “Tell me your name?” His terse question makes my eyebrows draw together.

  Jax knows my name, and I open my mouth to tell him that. The desire to question him dies a sudden death when the relentless need that I feel to please him hits me.

  I answer in a rush, eager to stop the scowl that’s beginning to cross his face from taking shape.

  “Amber Marie St. George.”

  Pulling my hand into his lap, he runs his thumb over my inner wrist. His tender touch increases my already erratic pulse and the cloud of desire that overpowers me every time he touches me takes over again.

  “Good girl.” He rubs the thin skin on my wrist. I clamp my thighs together in response.

  “How does this make you feel, Amber Marie St. George?”

  “Horny.” I snicker at my honesty, the snicker becoming a full-blown belly rumbling laugh when Jax joins in.

  “That means it’s working, baby.”

  The moment is lost when his voice becomes harsh and demanding as he throws questions at me, pausing only long enough for me to answer.

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Here.”

  “Who do you live with?”

  “You.”

  “How long have we been together?”

  “Since high school.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “At the Montgomery State School.”

  “WRONG!” Jax bellows at me, throwing my hand away from him. I shrink back into the settee, quaking in fear. “Belinda. Come here.”

  Nurse Belinda moves out of the shadows where she’s been sitting quietly since we entered the office. As she comes toward me, a memory breaks free.

  A big, strong-looking man with sandy-blonde hair and kind eyes is reaching for me, jokingly pleading with me to come with him, but I’m refusing. Laughing as I tell him I’m too busy for that now and that I’ll see him after work, I turn my back and walk away from him. When he heads off in the opposite direction, I spin on my heel and run after him, jumping on his back and wrapping my arms around his neck. Planting a kiss on his cheek, I whisper in his ear...

  “I love you, Xander.” The words tumble from my mouth, causing Belinda to freeze and Jax to turn red with rage.

  “What did you say?” He’s apoplectic, a vein pulsing in his forehead as he reaches for me.

  Grabbing me by the front of my shirt, he lifts my back from the settee and leans over me. My head lolls as the drug in my system impedes my ability to control my extremities. “Mention him again and I’ll double the dose. I’m taking it easy on you. If I wanted, I could make you a vegetable and rebuild you from there. Do. Not. Test. Me.”

  Throwing me back into the seat, he stalks over to his desk and grabs another syringe.

  “Hold her.”

  Belinda snatches my arm, pulling it straight. It’s futile to fight her grip, but I try. Jax curses, pushing me onto my back and straddling my waist. We wrestle for control of my arm. I scream and struggle. It doesn’t help. I feel the tell-tale prick of the needle as he propels the insidious drug into my unwilling body, once again.

  When the new dose meets the remnants already flowing through my bloodstream, the light headedness and nausea engulfs me. My eyesight dims, black spots dominating, as my eyelids flutter open and shut.

  “Get the electro wand, Belinda. Maybe another shock treatment will fix her. It worked yesterday. She was the best she’s been this morning.” Jax’s words spin around my head, scaring me to death. I want to protest. I want to defend myself, but despite my best efforts, I can’t beat back the impending darkness that’s stealing my consciousness.

  Jax. I think that’s his name.

  Turning towards the warm, unclothed body that’s holding my naked form tight, I smile tentatively when his dark eyes meet mine. I can feel the residual throbbing of a headache above my eyes as they adjust to the morning light but, otherwise, I
feel good.

  “Good morning, Jax.”

  The happy beaming smile that meets my greeting pushes away the confusion that’s trying to make its way to the forefront of my mind. Any lingering doubts are shattered when my handsome fiancé pushes me onto my back and kisses me. His hips make their way between mine. I spread my legs to accommodate him, moving against his morning erection as my ardour increases. Desire coils in my belly as warmth spreads through me and I wrap my arms around his neck.

  “Good morning. How are you feeling today, baby?” After a pause, where he runs a worried gaze over my face, he comments, “You look a little disorientated.”

  Lifting my hips, I rub my growing wetness against his length.

  “I’m good, dizzy for some reason, but I can think of something that’ll make it all better,” I purr, flexing my hips again as I speak, just so there’s no way he can mistake my invitation.

  Even with the slight pain over my eyes, and the remnants of the bizarre dream that he woke me from still lingering on the edges of my subconscious, I’m horny as hell. I don’t think I could imagine a better way to start the day than receiving pleasure from the hard body moving against mine.

  “Baby, you still have one day before you get the all-clear.” His reluctance to turn me down colours his tone, making me smile, in spite of my struggle to make sense of his “all-clear” statement.

  Removing one arm from his neck, I run my hand down the right side of my head. Encountering smooth hair and then a prickly bald spot and a puckered scar, my eyebrows pull together as I wrack my brain attempting to understand why I expected to find the scar while having no recollection as to how I knew it was there. Coming up blank, I’m grateful when Jax distracts me from the growing ache in my head by rolling onto his back and pulling me onto his chest.

  “I suppose we could make an exception, if only we could find another doctor to give you the okay.” Pausing, he looks around with feigned innocence and a strange glimmer in his eyes that I can’t quite read. “I wonder where we could find one?”

  Dropping my head to his chest, I break into a fit of giggles. My mind is scrambled this morning for some unknown reason, but I do know my fiancé is a doctor. “I don’t know. Where on earth could we find one another doctor...”

  Trailing off when he pokes me with wicked intent in the ribs with his fingertips, I snort with laughter. I’m ridiculously ticklish, a fact of which Jax is obviously well aware.

  “Stop it. Jax, stop it,” I squirm away from him, laughing as I lose my breath from his attack. I don’t get far when he holds me tight to him with constricting arms. My movements subdued, my laughter dies, desire returning to the forefront of my thoughts when I feel his hard cock twitch against my stomach.

  “One day isn’t going to hurt, is it?” I question, hope filling my voice.

  “Going by your behaviour this morning, baby, I don’t think so,” he muses.

  “Sit up,” he orders. His tone has changed from breathless desire to bossiness. My body responds to the change in him immediately, and a strange, almost robotic need to please him overcomes me. I push myself upright like he said. Without prompting, I straddle his hips, his cock resting against my aching pussy, and my hands laying on his hard pecs. I look down at him, waiting for his next command.

  Regarding me with smug approval, his lips twitch as if he’s trying not to laugh. Why would he find my acquiescence amusing? I’m still wrestling with the question when he speaks again.

  “Lift yourself and slide down over me. Take me all the way into your perfect body.” He leaves no room for argument with his demand, not that I want to resist him.

  This is what I want. What I need, right now.

  Is it, really? The question pops unbidden into my head followed by the image of a sad-looking, sandy haired man. Guilt grips me, loosening Jax’s bizarre hold over me, and worry that I’m forgetting something important overwhelms me.

  “Amber.” Jax snarls my name a moment before he curls his arm behind me and slaps my ass. “Snap out of it.”

  Jolted, my thoughts return to the here and now. Staring down at him in bewilderment, he morphs from the fiancé I thought I knew fifteen seconds ago into a stranger. In an effort to ignore the sick feeling taking hold in my stomach, I shake my head to clear it.

  Something’s wrong here. No sooner does the thought enter my head than it’s forced aside, Jax lifts me by the waist and angles me over his straining length when it springs to attention. With one swift motion, he impales me on his cock, driving all the way home as he lowers me onto him.

  “Fuck,” I scream as he fills me. It hurts, not badly, but enough. A riot of sensation—pain, pleasure, potent power—overcomes me. I’m still lost in the surprise of his entrance into my body when he scares me by seizing me by the throat and pulling my face toward his.

  “Don’t speak like that.” His gaze is hard—his words harder. “You’re not that type of woman. I won’t stand for it.”

  Fury fills his features, my heartbeat quickening exponentially as the full extent of my predicament sinks in. He’s balls deep within me, holding me by the throat, and shaking with rage. Our size difference is magnified when I wrap both of my hands around the huge hand he has around my neck. If he snaps, I’m screwed.

  “I’m sorry. You surprised me, that’s all.” I pry his fingers, one by one, from my throat. He lets go without a word and without further resistance, running his palm down my cheek once I’ve pulled the final digit free. This touch is in direct contrast to his previous. A confusing contradiction that sums up the man beneath me in a nutshell.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you, but you know I hate it when you’re crass.”

  Jax trails a finger down my neck, then down my cleavage, before he swirls a circle around my navel and makes his way to my clit. Pressing firmly with the pad of his thumb, he works the sensitive nub in a clock-wise motion that has my lower belly filling with a delicious warmth and my core throbbing.

  “Now, where were we?” He breathes against my bare breast after he pulls my torso to him. The arm he wraps around the small of my back hampers my ability to move, leaving me at his mercy.

  Slowly, agonisingly slowly, Jax pumps within me. My ardour heads toward boiling point after a few minutes of his precise thrusting; however, what he’s currently doing is not quite enough to send me over the precipice. I need him to drive into me harder and faster—with more intent.

  I need clitoral stimulation in addition to his cock. Shifting against him, trying to make my needs known, I’m forced to a stop when Jax squeezes me against him tighter.

  “Not yet, Amber. I want to memorise how you feel gripping me. I’ve waited so long for this. This is my dream come true. You feel like home.” His words are earnest; sounding heartfelt and awestruck as he speaks. “Please. Let me have this first time without—”

  Abruptly, he stops speaking, then he stops moving inside me. Shock fills his face. Loosening his hold, he doesn’t protest when I lift myself upright. With my palms flat on his chest, I question his final sentence.

  “First time without?”

  My wits are addled as I attempt to make sense of what he said.

  “Since. Since your accident. First time since your accident.” Jax mumbles, his normal assurance missing. “I meant, I’ve been waiting so long to have you again.”

  The emphasis he places on the word “since” sends a shard of suspicion splintering through my subconscious. It sounds hollow, like he’s trying to make it the truth. I don’t have time to explore my misgivings because Jax places a hand on each hip and urges me to move.

  “Come on, baby. That’s it. Up and down,” he coaxes. I move as he wishes, some invisible thread making his word the be-all and end-all in my world. It’s an unconscious thing, this talent he has for making me do what he wants, and I need to put some distance between us so I can examine it.

  Imitating my previous pleasure, I grit my teeth and ride him, following the pace set by his incessant hold on me. Tigh
tening my inner walls around his cock—all desire I was feeling earlier lost—I fake my way through my version of an orgasm.

  My phony enthusiasm must be enough for Jax. He increases his pace in response to my acting, squeezing me tighter, his face creasing with delight as he spasms beneath me. He comes with short, sharp jerks of his pelvis, panting and groaning as he fills me with his release.

  “Goddamn it, Amber. You kill me.”

  Pulling me until I’m lying of his heaving chest, he cradles me against him. Running his hand up and down my back, he appears to be having an emotional response to our joining. I know, deep down, that I should be as well. According to Jax, this is the first time we’ve made love since my accident—the details of which are determined to stay hidden in the recesses of my mind like shadowy memories that refuse to materialise into anything of substance. Instead of feeling connected to him, I feel used and dirty, as if I’ve just made a massive mistake.

  Unable to shake my feelings, I climb off Jax. He protests, but is stopped by a knock on our bedroom door.

  “Jax. Amber,” a feminine voice calls. “We’re going to be late if you don’t get a move on.”

  My brow furrows. The woman sounds familiar; her voice causing tentacles of resentment to wrap around my already dampened mood. I don’t think I like the owner.

  “Who’s that?” In an attempt to keep my question sounding benign, I run my index finger down the side of Jax’s neck.

  One black eyebrow lifts as he regards me steadily, his answer terse. “Belinda. Your nurse. We need to get ready to leave for your specialist appointment. Come on.”

  Pushing me out of his way, he rolls to his feet and ambles into the walk-in robe. I am dismissed. The waves of annoyance I can sense flowing from him make me scramble from the bed and follow.

  I swear the man is bi-polar.

  Pausing so the automatic doors leading into the hospital can open, I’m startled when Jax grabs my hand. Linking our fingers, he tugs me so I fall in step with him.

  I smooth down my shirt and make sure my skirt is straight with my free hand as I follow him. He hasn’t said a word to me since we got out of bed. We dressed in silence, drove to the hospital in silence, and were now making our way to an appointment I had zero idea about in silence. It was apparent that Jax was only ignoring me, his easy conversation with the frosty blonde woman walking on my other side a dead giveaway.