System Erased Her From My Memory novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Wedding Night

Wes finally tells Maia about the system; they fight and fall into bed, and the system names Delaney's first payment.

The bridal suite had a view of the lake and a bottle of champagne sweating in a bucket.

I didn't open it.

Maia sat on the edge of the bed with her shoes in her lap and said nothing for a long time.

The dress was still on.

She had a smear of mud on her hem that wasn't hers.

"I want to ask you something," she said.

"Ask."

"When she played that recording, you went quiet in a very specific way. Like you were listening to a voice in another room."

I sat down in the armchair across from her.

"There's a reason for that," I said. "I need to tell you something I should have told you in May."

She waited.

"My memory didn't just break. Something took her out of my head on purpose."

Maia didn't move.

"Something."

"A voice. Only I can hear it. I call it the system. It gave me a mission three years ago, and she was the price of failing it."

"Three years ago," she said slowly. "And you never told me. Not when you asked me to dinner. Not when I put my hands on your skull every Tuesday for three months."

"I thought you would think I was crazy."

"I thought you were a man who'd had a terrible week."

"I was afraid you'd walk out."

"So you let me find out at our wedding, in front of a hundred and twenty people, while a stranger cried on your jacket?"

"It spoke again today. Right after the vows."

That got her attention.

"What did it say?"

"There's a new mission. The target is Delaney."

Maia put her shoes on the floor very carefully.

"Do you believe it?" she asked.

"I believe the voice. It's never been wrong."

"I'm not asking about the voice. I'm asking about you."

I looked at her.

Her green eyes were steady, and her lower lip was bitten raw.

"I know what I want," I said. "I wanted it before the voice and I want it with the voice."

"Say it plainly."

"I want you. Not her. You."

She stood up and turned her back.

"Unhook me."

Her voice had gone rough.

I crossed the room and found the row of tiny hooks down her spine.

My fingers weren't steady.

"Here's the rule," she said without turning. "If you ever remember her, and you want her, you tell me to my face. In daylight. You don't pack a bag at night and disappear."

"Understood."

"Say it back."

"To your face. In daylight."

The dress dropped around her feet.

She turned around in a white slip and her hands went straight to my shirt buttons.

"You hurt me today," she said.

"I know."

"I'm still going to take it out on you."

She pushed me backward until my knees hit the bed and I sat down hard.

She straddled my lap and kissed me with her teeth.

It wasn't a gentle kiss.

I dragged the slip up over her hips and found nothing underneath but warm skin.

"You planned that," I said into her mouth.

"I'm a bride. Of course I did."

She tugged my belt open.

When her hand wrapped around my cock I made a noise I didn't recognize.

"Look at me," she said.

I looked.

She held me there, stroking slowly, watching my face.

"This is mine," she said. "Today, tomorrow, every Tuesday."

"Yours."

She lifted up and sank down on me in one long, wet slide.

We both groaned.

She was so hot and tight that I had to grip her hips to keep from coming right away.

"Don't you dare," she whispered.

She started to ride me, slow and deep, rolling her hips.

I pulled the slip over her head and put my mouth on her breast.

She gasped and her fingers locked in my hair.

"Harder," she said. "Wes. Now."

I wrapped an arm around her back and flipped her onto the mattress.

She laughed, breathless, until I drove into her.

Then she wasn't laughing.

She hooked her ankles behind me and dug her nails into my shoulders.

I fucked her hard and deep, and every time I hit the end of her she said my name like it belonged to her.

"There," she breathed. "Right there. Don't stop."

I didn't.

I slid a hand between us and found her clit, and she bucked up off the bed.

She came with her head thrown back and her pussy clenching so hard around me that I lost my rhythm.

I buried my face in her neck and followed her over, shaking, groaning her name into her skin.

We lay tangled up for a while, listening to the lake.

Her head rested on my chest.

"Okay," she said at last, very quietly. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Good."

"But you're going to tell me everything the voice says. Everything."

"Everything."

She fell asleep before I did.

I lay awake with her hair across my arm.

Then the voice came back, flat and clear in the dark.

"Payment 1: Delaney Vanstone must say, out loud, in front of the people she lied to, what she did. Memories returned: 0 of 6."

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