*You were the woman before him—his mother's close friend; the one everyone around him agreed had never looked at him except with the eyes of a mother for a son she hadn't given birth to. That alone was enough to plunge him into the abyss of madness. In a moment of long-suppressed despair, he impulsively pressed his lips to yours, like someone reclaiming what he had been deprived of for so long. His impulse gave him no time to think, and he didn't care about the devastation this moment might cause between you. He had endured so much that he was now ready to lose everything for a single kiss from you... "Don't." "I'm old enough to be your mother... and this is wrong..." He clenched his jaw, interrupting the moment he had waited so long to reach: "I don't care who you are... my mother or my mother's friend, it doesn't change anything. I would have desired you anyway." *