*He waited fifteen years to feel her skin against his again.*
---
Windsor in bloody June. Hotel rooms with stark white linens and air con that clicked and hummed but never quite managed the job properly. That's where this begins.
I was drowning in tender documents in Cambridge when Helen's message lit up my LinkedIn. Fifteen sodding years since that weekend in her hotel room, and now she was back in England, just a 90-minute drive down the M11. The wife was at home with the kids, planning another tedious barbecue for the weekend. I hadn't touched her, not really touched her, in years, not since the children came along. Intimacy had become another chore on the family to-do list.
"In Windsor for a sales conference. Leaving tomorrow evening. Tea for old times' sake?"
Just eight words and my body remembered everything. Helen Wei. Five foot nothing in her stockinged feet, with those deep brown eyes that missed nothing and that pristine Singapore business-woman exterior that had crumbled so spectacularly in my hands all those years ago. Christ, I remembered how her skin tasted, how she'd bitten into the pillow to keep from screaming, how the hotel neighbors had complained anyway.
"I can drive down from Cambridge. Breakfast at your hotel? 9:30am?" I typed back, my fingers slightly unsteady.
Her reply came instantly. "See you there."
I told Sarah I had a client meeting, and took the M11 towards Windsor. Greater Anglia trains clattered past, packed with commuters staring at their phones, their lives ticking forward one identical day at a time. Rain started halfway down, proper English summer that, but by the time I reached Windsor, sun broke through, making the castle's stone facade luminous against the darkened clouds, each battlement sharply defined as if newly carved.
Helen was waiting in the hotel breakfast room, looking as composed as she had in Singapore all those years ago. She'd let the silver streak through her black hair now, no dye job for her, that was never Helen's style. She wore a perfectly tailored navy suit that probably cost more than my monthly mortgage payment, sipping tea with her back straight. A proper professional. But I knew better. I remembered what happened when that suit came off.
"You drove 90 miles for breakfast?" she asked, that precise Singlish accent still in her voice after decades away. I'd always found it mesmerizing, alien to the Cambridge academics' practiced drawls.
I sat down across from her. My body had changed since she'd last seen it. Marathons and triathlons had stripped away the softness of fifteen years ago. Back then, I'd been just another slightly paunchy project manager. Now her eyes lingered on my shoulders, my forearms as I picked up the menu.
"Took the day off," I said, aiming for casual but landing somewhere else entirely. "Personal matters to attend to."
The waitress brought me Earl Grey, strong and black. I noticed Helen cross her legs under the table, the whisper of sheer stockings against skin. My mouth went dry. I'd always had a thing for her legs, especially in stockings. Memories flooded back: how I'd bound her wrists with them, while I'd taken her against the hotel window, her breath fogging the glass as she came.
"You're flying back tonight, then?" I asked, finding myself turning my wedding band, a nervous habit I couldn't shake.
"Six o'clock from Heathrow," she confirmed. "Back to the Lion City."
The breakfast conversation was unbearably civilized. Her work as Sales Director at Powertrunk Engineering. My consulting gigs. The bloody tech scene. All that pretense. But underneath ran something so potent I could hardly focus. Our eyes locked for too long. Fifteen years collapsed in an instant.
"I saw that article you posted about tech integration," she said, buttering her toast with surgical precision.
I laughed. "Corporate obligation, that. Publish or perish." My eyes found hers. "I've noticed you always like my holiday messages. Fifteen years of Happy Chinese New Year."
"The only messages we've exchanged," she said quietly. "Hardly the continuation I once imagined."
After breakfast, I looked at my watch. 10:45. Hours stretched before us, possibilities boundless.
"Rather lovely day, actually. Have you seen Dorney Lake? It's not far."
Helen paused, weighing the invitation and all its unspoken implications. "I haven't," she finally said, her voice giving away nothing.
"We could go over. Just to continue our conversation," I added, knowing we both understood what I was really suggesting. "It's where they held the Olympic rowing in 2012."
The drive to Dorney was brief, ten minutes through Berkshire countryside that was almost offensively picturesque after Cambridge's flat landscape. We discussed our children, my two increasingly distant teenagers, her Mei applying to Russell Group universities. I tried to ignore how her perfume filled the car's interior, how close her hand was to mine on the gear stick.
"Just here," I said, turning onto the tree-lined approach to the lake.
We walked along the water's edge, watching rowers glide past with mechanical precision. A few coaches shouted instructions through megaphones, their voices carrying across the water.
"They make it look so bloody easy," Helen commented, watching a four-person boat slice through the water.
Our arms brushed as we walked, neither of us acknowledging the contact. The conversation drifted into increasingly dangerous territory with each step.
