87. The Love!

Author's POV 

The ocean was about to witness their reunion again.

Egon’s lips crashed onto hers with a hunger that had been rotting in his chest for far too long. It wasn’t a kiss — it was a claim, a scream, a desperate pull of two halves that had been cut apart and finally slammed back together. Emerald clutched his shirt with trembling fingers, dragging him impossibly closer, like she wanted to pull him under her skin.

He groaned into her mouth, a raw, broken sound that betrayed every night he spent missing her. His body pressed into hers as the waves curled around them, cool on their skin, nothing compared to the heat rising between them.

Her hands cupped his jaw, fingers shaking as they memorised him again — the stubble, the sharp lines, the warmth that had once been her home.

“Egon…” she whispered against his lips, breath trembling.

He closed his eyes like her voice hurt him. “Say it again,” he murmured, forehead resting on hers. “I’ve forgotten how to breathe without it.”

She didn’t repeat — she pulled him into another kiss instead. Harder. Deeper. Full of the ache of all those days she’d been lost, all those nights he’d been dying without her.

Egon lowered her gently onto the soft sand, his body shielding hers from the world. His thumb brushed her cheek, wiping away a tear that escaped even in the middle of their heat.

“You came back to me,” he breathed, voice cracking. “You came back…”

Emerald’s fingers slipped into his hair, pulling him down to her neck, her shoulder, anywhere she needed to feel him again. His breath burned her skin, making her arch into him as her heart pounded wildly. Every part of her that had felt numb since her memory loss woke up under his touch — like her soul remembered him before her mind could.

He kissed the hollow of her throat, slow at first — reverent — then the desperation bled in, making his lips rougher, hungrier.

“I thought I lost you,” he confessed against her skin. “I thought you’d never look at me again.”

She curled her legs around him, pulling him closer, closer, until there was no space left to hide a single emotion.

“You never lost me,” she whispered into his ear, her voice breaking. “Even when I didn’t remember myself… my heart kept looking for you.”

His breath shuddered. His hands gripped her waist as though he needed the anchor.

“Emerald…” he breathed, voice gone low, dark, unsteady. “You are going to kill me.”

She shook her head, brushing her lips along his jaw. “No,” she whispered. “I’m saving you.”

The confession snapped whatever restraint was left in him.

Egon buried his face in her neck and held her like he was afraid she’d vanish the second he loosened his arms. The wind curled around them, the waves whispered at their feet, but nothing existed except the feverish warmth of their bodies pressed so tightly together that even the ocean couldn’t slip between them.

His hands traced her slowly, deliberately, rediscovering the lines of her body like a blind man memorising light. Every sigh she released, every soft gasp against his throat, drove him closer to madness.

“You feel like you’re mine again,” he whispered, voice rough as gravel.

She pulled his face back to hers, kissing him until his breath broke.

“I was always yours.”

They moved against each other with a rhythm born from memory, instinct, longing — bodies tangled in sand and shadow, hearts beating the same bruised, frantic tempo. His fingers threaded through hers, pinning their joined hands against the ground as he kissed her again, pouring every unsaid apology, every sleepless night, every ounce of devotion into her mouth.

Her lips tasted like the storm that had brought her back to him.

His forehead fell to hers. Their breaths mixed. Their bodies trembled. The world blurred around them.

“Emerald…” His voice was barely a whisper. “I need you.”

She pulled him closer until his heart pressed to hers, their chests rising and falling as one.

“Then take me back,” she breathed. “All of me.”

His lips brushed hers, soft this time — a vow disguised as a kiss.

The waves rose, the wind cried, and the two of them melted into each other — not in violence, not in possession, but in the kind of intimacy that mended every cracked piece inside them.

Two bodies.

One soul.

Lost and found again on the same shore that had witnessed their beginning.

Emerald leaned back against Egon’s chest, tired and warm, her breathing still uneven from the intensity they had just shared. He sat behind her like an unmovable pillar—solid, warm, familiar. His shirt draped loosely over her frame, sleeves falling past her hands, soft fabric carrying his scent. It felt like home, like something that had always belonged to her.

The cool breeze drifting from the ocean brushed over their skin. The faint crash of waves blended with their breaths, creating a quiet rhythm of comfort after the storm they had survived together. Everything around them felt washed clean—like the beach itself was offering them a moment of peace, a moment where the world wasn’t watching.

Egon’s fingers slipped gently through her hair, caressing strands in slow, absent motions. He was always undone by her hair—its thickness, its softness. Every time his fingers sank into it, something in him softened.

“You still haven’t told me,” he murmured, voice deep and teasing against her ear. “How the hell did Rafael manage to bring your memories back in just a few hours? That bastard is taking his doctor degree seriously or what.”

Emerald chuckled under her breath. “He has his own psychotic methods. Rafael has always been twisted… I’m sure he did it hoping we’d become enemies all over again. But ironically…” She sighed, resting more comfortably against Egon. “I should be grateful. I got my memories back because of him.”

Egon raised a brow. “Twisted isn’t even the word for him. He’s an entire category of mental instability.”

“That he is,” she agreed.

The moment she allowed herself to remember, the scene replayed clearly in her mind.