“I lost my head, too, Simon.”
“We’re not a couple of kids.”
“No, we aren’t.”
He hesitated. “I’ve been wondering what it means.”
“So have I.” But she had a pretty darn good idea.
“I’m not out to seduce you.”
Sunday was momentarily taken aback. “And I’m not out to seduce you,” she assured him.
“I’m not interested in collecting lovers like trophies,” he added.
“Neither am I.”
“I’ve been celibate for some time.”
“Me, too.” Longer than he could possibly imagine.
“I’m an adult. And an adult doesn’t need to bed the first attractive member of the opposite sex he or she meets in order to satisfy any physical urges.”
Sunday could feel her cheeks growing warm. “I’m an adult, as well,” she said a little too loudly.
“I believe it’s a matter of mind over body.”
“It certainly is.” Her mind was certainly on his body.
“Which makes it all the more puzzling,” Simon said in a meaningful tone.
She was half-afraid to ask. “Makes what all the more puzzling?”
“You,” he drawled.
“Me?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you, Sunday. I can’t stop dreaming about you. And I can’t seem to keep my hands off you.”
She groaned softly. “Simon—”
“If you tell me that you don’t feel the same way, I’ll back off immediately,” he promised.
“I can’t.” She took in a tremulous breath and let it out again. “I do feel the same way.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
There was an anticipatory silence.
“Do you want me, Sunday?”
“Yes.” She had to take a chance. “Do you want me, Simon?”
“Yes, dammit.”
Sunday said rather rapidly, “At first, I assumed it was nothing more than a rush of adrenaline because armed bandits had stopped us on the road. Last night, I blamed it on the tropical rain, the fact that we were finally alone, the excitement of the marketplace, the exotic atmosphere. Then, this afternoon in the field—”
“You decided it had to be the butterflies, or the sublime feeling that comes from standing on top of the world?”
“Something like that.”
“It could still be any or all of those things,” he reminded her needlessly.
“I know,” she said in a half whisper.
“We’re a long way from home.”
“Eight or nine thousand miles, I believe you estimated.”
“There is a risk involved.”
She wet her lips. “What was it you said to me this afternoon just before we crossed the bridge on the river Pai?”
She heard a heavy masculine sigh from Simon’s side of the hut. “If you dare to take a chance, you will be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams.” Then he spoke kindly, reasonably, measurably. “That’s a pretty tall order, Sunday.”
“No guts, no glory.”
He laughed softly. “I know. I know. And nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
She licked her lips again. “I wish—” She stopped herself before she completed the sentence.
“What do you wish?”
This time she said it. “I wish you would kiss me.”
Simon froze. “Once I start, I won’t want to stop,” he warned her.
“Neither will I.”
“If I kiss you, I’ll want to touch you.”
“I’ll want to touch you, too.”
“If I touch you, I can damn well guarantee I’m going to want to make love to you.”
“That makes two of us.”
There was silence for a heartbeat. Then he said, “Does it seem warm in here to you, or is it me?”
Sunday surprised herself by laughing out loud. “I think it’s us.”
Simon stood up and crossed to one of the windows. He pushed open the bamboo shade, and silvery moonlight poured into the hut. Sunday could see him clearly now. He was wearing only a pair of shorts. His body had obviously already reacted to their conversation and the promise of what was to come. She had caught just a glimpse of him, but a glimpse was enough.
Simon leaned his elbow on the primitive windowsill and inhaled the cool, clear night air. He exhaled slowly and turned his head. “I want you to understand that if you change your mind at any time, all you have to do is speak up and tell me.”
“I will.” But she wasn’t going to change her mind. She wanted to make love with him and to him. She wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.
“There’s a first-aid kit in my knapsack, so you don’t have to worry about the necessary precautions,” he said.
They weren’t irresponsible. They were going into this with their eyes open.
“Now, what was it you were wishing for?” he said in a voice filled with sensual promise as he walked toward her.
“I was wishing you would kiss me,” she reiterated as he came down beside her on the sleeping mat.
For an instant, Sunday could see past him to the window; it encased the large, round moon like a picture frame. Then Simon bent over her and the moon was blocked from view. She could feel his breath on her face. She could see his features in the silvery light. Her heart was suddenly pounding in her ears. She wanted to kiss him, to taste him, to touch him. God, she wanted him.
“Just one thing,” she said.
“Shoot.”
“Are you certain it isn’t the cover girl in the purple bikini you’re interested in kissing?”
“I’m sure the cover girl was stunning, but it’s the woman who intrigues me,” Simon murmured as he brushed his lips across hers. “I’m not interested in the past, Sunday, only in the present, only in the here and now.”
“The here and now. Yes, that’s what I’m interested in, too.” Not his past. Not who he’d been. Not what he’d been. Only who and what he was at this moment.
Simon kissed her and, dear God, it happened all over again. First, she seemed to have a heightened awareness of her surroundings: the play of moonlight and shadows on the walls of the bamboo hut, the breadth of his shoulders, the faint scent of the oil lamp on the table, of exotic incense, of fresh fruit and wildflowers. Then these things receded somewhere into the background and soon vanished altogether, and what was left...was Simon.
Simon with his smooth, demanding, cajoling, intoxicating mouth. Simon with his strong, nimble, caressing fingers. Simon with hands that knew exactly where to touch her and how to touch her. Simon with his hard, muscular, incredibly masculine body.
“Are we crazy?” she whispered against his lips.
“Yes,” he declared, delving into her mouth with his tongue. “Crazy about each other.”
“Is this infatuation?”
“Possibly,” he allowed, trailing his lips along her bare shoulder, nudging aside the strap of her bra.
“Is it sex?”
“I certainly hope so,” he muttered, nibbling on her ear.
“Is it love?”
Simon’s head lifted, and Sunday could see the dark intensity in his eyes, the frown on his handsome features, the set of his jaw. She reached up and threaded her fingers through the slightly mussed curls at his nape. She ran her hands along the smooth muscles of his upper arms, his chest, his torso, his back.
“Is it love?” he pondered out loud.
“I shouldn’t have asked,” she quickly rescinded in a small voice.
“Why not?” he said. “I’ve asked myself the same thing.”
The beating of her heart was a painful throb in her chest. The depth of her emotions made her voice quiver, her hands tremble, her pulse pound. “Do you have the answer?”
Simon shook his head from side to side. “I wish I did.” He cupped her chin in his palm and gazed intently into her eyes. “I haven’t had much experience with real, true love,
the everlasting kind of love, Sunday.”
“Neither have I.”
“We’ll have to wing it, then.”
She found herself nodding her assent. “Play it by ear.”
“Take it one step at a time.” He touched his lips to her mouth, to her shoulder, to her earlobe. “Where were we?” He moved lower to her breast, pushing the soft material of her bra away. He located her nipple and flicked the tip of his tongue back and forth across the sensitive nub. “Were we here?” he muttered thickly.
“Yes,” she said on a ragged sigh.
Very quickly, Sunday was a mindless, witless, speechless mass of sensitive nerve endings and thrilling sensations. She was aware of being caressed, of strong hands clasping her by the buttocks and lifting her hips off the sleeping mat. She knew the moment she was naked, and realized Simon was, too.
She felt as free as the winged butterflies in the field. She flew. She soared. She hovered, suspended in midair.
Touching Simon with a butterfly-light caress, she heard him groan and felt him shiver. She smiled with satisfaction when he told her how much she pleased him, how much she pleasured him.
She felt his hand on her, his fingers slipping in and out of her, and then the hard probing of his body, the demanding thrust of his hips. She took all of him in and he filled her. His name became a litany of desire, of need, of fulfillment.
It began slowly, gradually, in the center of her body, somewhere deep inside her, a kind of singing sensation, followed by ripples of pleasure that radiated down to the tips of her toes and up to the last hair on the top of her head, covering her with goose bumps, setting even her teeth on edge.
Then that elusive something Sunday was seeking overtook her, and she cried out his name one more time as she felt herself hurled into space. “Simon!”
* * *
“I think we’re going to have to redefine sublime,” Simon proposed when he felt like talking again.
Hell, who did he think he was kidding? When he was able to talk again.
Sunday made a soft, cooing sound in the back of her throat that came out, “Hmmm.”
He went up on his elbows and took the brunt of his considerable weight off her. He was still inside her, still partially hard and getting harder again by the second. He’d never felt like this before. Sex had never felt like this. Simon corrected himself: making love had never been like this. It was a damn paradox. He was weaker than a kitten; he felt as if he could conquer whole worlds single-handedly. He was satiated, and yet he wanted Sunday again immediately.
It didn’t make sense.
Maybe love didn’t make sense.
On the one hand, he loved the sound of Sunday’s voice, the scent of her skin, the surprisingly full breasts, the long legs that went on forever. On the other hand, what he loved about her had nothing to do with any of those things. It was her laughter, her natural sweetness, her kindness to people, her sense of humor.
He was thinking too much.
Sunday wiggled beneath him and a sharp sensation—God, it was pure physical pleasure—shot through Simon. He couldn’t stop the groan that issued forth from his lips.
Sunday’s eyes blinked open. “Are you all right?”
He moved a fraction of an inch first this way and then that way, reminding himself all the while to breathe. “That depends on what you mean by all right,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Are you in pain?”
Beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead and upper lip. “Not exactly.”
“Then what are you?” she inquired in a puzzled tone.
“Aroused,” he replied bluntly.
Her mouth opened and closed on a soundless O. “I see,” she said at last.
He wondered if she did. “Are you all right?”
“That depends on what you mean by all right,” she said, smiling a Mona Lisa smile and rotating her hips against his.
Simon sucked in his breath. Sunday was playing with fire. So much as another twinge by either of them and he would go up in flames.
“Are you sleepy?” she asked, lightly raking her nails down his back until a shudder passed through him.
“No.” Hell, he was wide-awake. “Are you?”
She shook her head. “I’m not the least bit sleepy.”
He tried his best to hold still, but his pelvis began to thrust forward as if of its own volition. “Do you want to talk?”
“Talk?” Simon could hear the bemusement in Sunday’s voice. “Is that what you call it? Well, I suppose it is a form of communication. Silent communication.”
Enough talk.
Simon bent his head and covered Sunday’s mouth with his. He could tell when he had her complete attention, when every rational thought had fled her mind; she moaned and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist and her legs around his hips.
He began to move inside her. He gave in to the temptation to nip at her ear, to delve into her mouth with his tongue, to suckle her breast, all the while driving his flesh deeper and deeper into the seductive sweetness of hers.
The blood was pounding in Simon’s veins. He felt as if he were on a collision course with a runaway freight train. He couldn’t stop now even if he wanted to...and he didn’t. He’d simply have to hold on for dear life and see it through to the end.
The moment was nearly upon him. He heard his own approaching shout of triumph. Her name was on his lips. It echoed in his head. “Sunday! Sunday!”
Those lovely inner female muscles tightened around him, squeezed him, caressed him, and he went flying over the edge.
It was much later—he had lost all track of time—that Simon became aware of the moonlight and the starlight flooding the room of the primitive hut.
He rolled onto his side and gathered Sunday in his arms. A strand of her hair—it was like red silk—caught on the stubble of his beard. He gently brushed it away and nuzzled her neck for a moment. She smelled of the night and lovemaking and wildflowers.
It was then and there that Simon made a vow. He would give this woman whatever her heart desired: the sun, the moon, the stars in the heavens. He would bestow upon her anything and everything it was in his power to give.
What had the stranger said that first day in the garden outside the Temple of the Reclining Buddha?
“Only a few men see the world that can be theirs for the asking. You are one of these men, are you not?”
Then the small wiry man in the dark trousers and the white shirt had offered to sell him the precious piece of paper.
“What is it?”
“It is a riddle. It is a map.”
“Where will this map lead me?”
“It will lead you to happiness and riches.”
Simon stroked Sunday’s hair. The slow, even rhythm of her breathing told him that she’d fallen asleep. His own eyes were growing heavy, but a last thought occurred to him as he drifted off.
Maybe the Thai gentleman had been right. Maybe on this journey to the north, he would find happiness and the kind of riches he knew money could never buy.
Twelve
“Are you sure this is the path that leads to happiness and riches?” Sunday muttered as she trudged along behind Simon. It looked suspiciously like another hike through the woods to her.
“Tget studied your map and then spoke to the elders of the village,” Simon said, setting a brisk pace. “One of them seemed to remember hearing a childhood story about a hidden Buddha. Tget and I think it may be your Hidden Buddha of the Heavenly Mist.”
“Sounds like a long shot to me,” Sunday grumbled. “I’d rather be in bed,” she said loud enough for him to hear.
Simon turned and glanced back over his shoulder at her. “In bed?”
“Sleeping.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” he said with a husky laugh. “If we were still in bed, we wouldn’t be sleeping.”
He was right.
The last thing she remembered after they’d made love a second time the previous night was the s
ight of Simon’s face, the sound of Simon’s voice and Simon’s arms wrapped securely around her. She had fallen asleep with his name on her lips and his indelible imprint on her heart, her body, her soul.
She had awakened at dawn to find him whistling happily, moving around the bamboo hut, then talking and laughing with the other villagers as they prepared for their day.
When he’d kissed her good-morning, she had seen the sensual hunger in his eyes, tasted it on his lips, and Sunday had known that sleeping was the last thing on both their minds.
“What about the riddle and the symbols?” she finally said, harkening back to what he’d told her on the drive from Chiang Mai several days before.
“The hill-tribe people don’t have maps, as we know them, but one of the elders drew the mountains and the traditional elephant tracks in the dirt at my feet.”
“I suppose you memorized all of it.”
“Yes, I did.” Simon walked on. “According to Buddhist legend, all elephants were once white and flew through the heavens. Indeed, it was a white elephant who one day entered the sleeping Queen’s side. From this virgin birth, some five hundred years before Christ, was born Prince Siddhartha, who would later renounce all worldly possessions and become Lord Gautama Buddha.”
“No wonder the elephant is a revered symbol in this part of the world,” Sunday said as they made their way through the forest.
“Don’t forget,” Simon called to her over his shoulder. “Walk exactly where I walk. We wouldn’t want to accidentally disturb a nesting cobra.”
“Not disturbing a nesting cobra is real high on my list of priorities,” Sunday said, making sure she stepped where Simon stepped. Frankly, she didn’t see any evidence of cobras or elephants. “Are you sure this is an ancient elephant trail?”
“Yup.”
A half hour later, she asked, “Are you sure this is the right ancient elephant trail?”
“I’m sure.”
Without a word of warning, Simon came to a halt directly in front of her. Sunday ran smack-dab into him; it was like hitting a brick wall. She opened her mouth to speak.
“Shh.” He held a finger up to his lips.
She clamped her mouth shut.
Simon cocked his head to one side and listened intently. Then he silently backtracked, retracing his own steps some twenty or thirty paces along the trail. He stood motionless and stared at the forest behind them. Finally, he returned to where she waited.
The Maddening Model (Hazards, Inc.) Page 10