Amnesia: a psychological thriller

by Kylie Hillman

  “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-Rose 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-Rose 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.

  FOUR

  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 are subdued, my laughter dies, and desire returns 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. Tightening 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 on 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 out. “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.

  FIVE

  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 until 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 is apparent that Jax is only ignoring me. His easy conversation with the frosty blonde woman walking on my other side a dead giveaway.

  Belinda. My nurse. That’s how Jax described her to me. As far as I could see, there was absolutely nothing nurse-like about the woman. She’d greeted me with a curt nod, and a frank inspection whereby she’d run her eyes from the top of my head to my feet with obvious condescension. She was good-looking in that well-preserved way that women who dabble with Botox have, I’d give her that much, but her entire demeanour was cold. She needed a good fuck. It might melt the icicles surrounding her pompous ass.

  My musing brings the visual of Belinda getting banged to mind, her frozen face blank, unable to emote, as she literally melts. I can’t help the laugh that escapes me, making my escorts turn to look at me.

  “What’s so funny?” Jax asks, his grip on my hand tightening.

  Knowing after his reaction this morning that he won’t appreciate my “crass” sense of humour, I shrug with as much innocence I can muster. “Nothing.”

  He doesn’t believe me, that much is evident, but he doesn’t have time to question me further. We’re interrupted by an older man in a white coat, who pushes between Belinda and I without preamble and wraps his arms around my shoulders.

  “Amber. Darling girl. Look at you.” He smiles down at me, expectation shining from his eyes, but I haven’t the slightest clue who he is. “I can’t believe how well you look. Not when you were so close to—”

  Jax clears his t
hroat. He pulls himself to his full height and moves me into his side, away from the kind man in the white coat. “Charles, Amber doesn’t understand the full extent of what happened to her. She’s still having memory problems.”

  Charles appears puzzled. “Still? She wasn’t having any when she was discharged.”

  Jax grunts rudely, and Belinda steps closer to us. Charles looks at our odd threesome, speculation vying with worry in his expression. Belinda and Jax are crowding me as if I’m Beyoncé, and they’re trying to keep masses of crazy fans away from me.

  Charles’ eyes light up with questions. “Is Amber with you, Dr. Ray? Where’s Xander?”

  Jax’s frame stiffens before he pushes me toward Belinda.

  “Take Amber to my office. I’ll have her psychologist meet us there, instead. It’s obviously going to be too confusing for her to go elsewhere.” His last sentence is directed at Charles, who’s staring at Jax as if he’s grown a second head.

  “Amber, stay.” Charles holds a hand out to me and I move toward him.

  “Belinda,” Jax barks.

  She grabs me by the top of my arm, before squeezing my bicep painfully, and dragging me away. I’m so confused that I don’t mount a protest. Looking over my shoulder as Belinda manhandles me down the corridor, I’m shocked to see Jax seizing Charles by the lapels of his coat and pushing him into the wall. Charles isn’t a small man, but he’s older and doesn’t appear to be as strong as Jax.

  My fiancé leans into Charles’ face, his lips moving with angry speed. So many questions crowd my mind, all them fighting to be answered first, overwhelming me and making my head spin.

  What the hell is going on?

  Why is Jax behaving this way?

  Who is Xander?

  The last thing I see before I’m dragged around a sharp corner is Charles’ face drain of colour and his expression turn stricken. He watches me turn the corner, his shoulders slumping in defeat and something that looks to me like grief.