His deep voice flowed through her every nerve end as his eyes caressed her features. The barrier seemed to be crumbling between them but April was too shaken to notice. “What about for my sake, April? What if I told you that I feel good here, safe, sane? What if I said that I never wanted to leave? What if … what if …” He struggled with the words, strangely at a loss. April’s senses were frozen in anticipation. “What if I told you that I wanted you, more than anything else?”
With his face mere inches now from hers, April felt herself drawn into his being. He had this power over her, a power she couldn’t fight. Yet some remnant of reason forced her to speak. “If it’s physical need, there is always Jane. She’s very beautiful and obviously willing—”
“I don’t want Jane!” he boomed, seizing her by both arms and nearly lifting her off her feet. “It’s you I want, damn it! You!”
Short of a declaration of love, April knew that Heath had come as far as he could in expressing his feelings. He held her before him, suspended in time, demanding something—a word, a smile, a commitment—she didn’t know. There was something holding back the words that bubbled from her heart; the time was still not right. The feeling was there, however, surging through her, sending directional signals to her limbs as she let her body relax slowly against his. Her arms crept to his shoulders and around his neck, drawing her mouth close to his. It was against his lips that her breath came in a sweet-whispered plea.
“Love me, Heath. Please … now!” Her kiss was an offering of the love unspoken, the love that sent her to him in entirety. There would be neither protest nor guilt but, rather, joy at his possession and ecstasy at the joy with which his body would caress her.
His lips were still at first, unresponsive, unsure. April’s love was boundless though, her persistence gentle. For there was pleasure even in kissing him without that response she would, in time, crave. There was nothing she would not, at that moment, do for him, with neither hope nor promise of anything in return. If that was the meaning of true love, April knew she had found it. Never had she delighted so in the giving of her body; never had she done it so aggressively. Yet, this was her only means of expressing her deeper emotion; perhaps time might solve that problem, too.
The tremor that passed through Heath’s long limbs as his arms wound around her and his back bowed to curve his firm lines to hers, was evidence of his arousal. “Oh, darlin’,” he drawled in a low murmur, “are you sure this time? You don’t have to—”
But she did. There was no other way, as yet, for her to express her love. Her lips silenced his words with their warmth, moving with growing hunger over his until he could no more remain still than he could deny his need. Even as his hands roamed the slimness of her back, he let her take the lead, sensing her determination and reveling in its very strength.
It was April whose patience waned first; her frenzied fingers that fumbled with the buttons of his shirt; her itching palms that slid over the rock-hard warmth of his skin, savoring the muscled terrain of his chest, his arms, his shoulders, as the shirt fell to the floor. They were her lips that explored every inch of his bared torso, drawing groans of torment from his throat.
“My God, April! Hurry! You’re driving me wild!” he rasped, tugging impatiently at her sweater, greedily attacking the zipper of her slacks, as her hands worked at his belt and his jeans.
April had no time to marvel at the beauty of this untethered passion, so heated had the moment grown. What had started as love-sparked seduction on her part had miraculously spawned a two-sided hunger that screamed for satisfaction, in voices both male and female.
Clothing strewn to either side, they collapsed onto the soft rug before the fireplace. It seemed a duel as to whose need was the greatest, whose lips could demand more, whose hands could range farther and deeper. April thrilled to every inch of his masculinity even as she opened herself to him. Side by side, they strained against each other until, finally, the strength of his arms pulled her over to straddle his lean hips.
“Love me, Heath,” she repeated against his lips, then into his mouth as he devoured her. “Love me …”
High on a passion she had never dreamed possible, April quivered as her breasts skimmed his chest. His hands caressed her hips in firm command, then lifted them in silent urging. She took him in with the warmth and joy that tremored through her, crying out again and again at his fullness, now her fullness. It was a whirl of pure frenzy lifting them, together, higher, higher, to a summit of explosive satisfaction and, at last, to a pulsingly rapturous descent.
April’s sweat-dotted body collapsed against him, holding him as long as possible before sliding to his side. His breath came in harsh pants, cooling her forehead, blowing at moist strands of her chestnut hair.
“It keeps getting better,” she whispered, when finally her heartbeat slowed enough to permit speech. The rise and fall of his chest by her ear spoke of his own slow calming.
“Ummm. You’re quite something, you know that?”
“Haven’t ever been attacked like that before?” Her smile tickled his skin, causing him to shift and settle her more comfortably against him.
“No, ma’am.”
“Now how would you ever remember that?”
His own smug grin sounded in his voice. “That I’m sure I’d remember,” he said. “This, I’ll always remember.” He kissed her gently now, and April felt she had never been as happy.
“You know what I’d like to do?” She propped her chin pertly on his chest.
“Uh-oh, my greedy sex goddess, not quite yet …”
“No, Heath. That’s not what I had in mind … yet,” she teased back. Then she grew quieter. “I’d like to preserve this moment, this very moment, to relive it again and again, to have it with me always.”
“We can’t make time stand still, April,” he chided quietly.
“I know. But I can still wish it.”
He eyed her dubiously. “And, suppose, just for the sake of argument, you could bottle the moment. What would you do with it?”
She grinned in delight at the thought, her teeth sinking into her lower lip as she contemplated it. “I would carry it with me wherever I went,” she burst out. “It would be my amulet, my peace, the eye of my storm.”
“Hmmm, sounds familiar.”
“Doesn’t it!”
“Would it give you the courage to return to New York?”
She smiled still, filled with confidence. “With it, I could go anywhere. New York, Washington, Siberia, Antarctica—”
“Antarctica?”
“Well, no. Strike that!”
“Why?”
“Too cold. We’d never be able to take our clothes off … .”
Her hand took its freedom to slide over his flesh, reacquainting itself with the span of his lightly furred chest and the plane of his flat stomach.
“And just what do you think you’re doing?” He sucked his breath in sharply.
“Exploring. Not quite to Antarctica …”
April was hopelessly addicted to the trail. Her fingers sampled the textures of his hips and thighs, then closed around him. His heat was just reward for her liberty.
“My God!” he growled softly. “I’ve found myself an insatiable one.”
His words struck a moment’s pensive chord. “I’ve never felt this way before.” She frowned, puzzled, then understanding the urging of her heart. “I think I’d rather,” she said brightly, as her whole body tingled with pleasure, “be in the tropics, where we would never have to wear clothes.”
As she moved against him with abandon, Heath turned quickly and pinned her to the rug, blanketing her body with his, a knee thrust intimately between her legs, holding her hips momentarily still.
“Shall I give you a taste of your own medicine?” he teased.
The flames of desire had risen once more. April struggled to move under him, but his body’s weight held her still. “You wouldn’t …”
“Oh, yes, I would.”
And he did, clamping his lips over hers to stifle her protest as his hands wreaked havoc with her senses, playing, taunting, brushing, coaxing, then holding back again and again until her fevered pitch had her begging for release. When it came, it was sweet and rich, filled with a love she knew he had to share. No man could make such magnificently gentle, coaxing, caring love to a woman without loving her in the bargain. It just didn’t happen. It was impossible!
Such were her thoughts as slowly, slowly their shared glimpse of ecstasy faded to a beautiful memory. Nestled against his warmth once more, she could hold back no longer. “I love you,” she whispered against the beat of his heart, then raised her head. “I love you, Heath.”
For an instant of time, all was suspended. Heath looked at her; she returned his gaze. When she mouthed the words a third time, the limbo snapped. The chill that slowly filled his body with its tension seeped inexorably to her bones. Lifting herself higher above him, her stunned gaze watched the sobering of his features, which had been so gentle, so loving moments before. Had she been wrong, after all? Had she misinterpreted the intensity of this man’s passion?
“No, April. You don’t!” His lips finally moved, but not to say the words for which she had hoped. It was as though he had issued a command, one she couldn’t obey.
The midday’s light fell through the window to cast a pearly sheen to her breasts as she sat fully up. “I love you, Heath. I won’t take it back. I mean every word.”
April had never seen a form as dark and brooding as Heath’s now, sitting up to face her. His body, too, was lit more fully, as breathtaking to the eye as it was tempting to the fingertips. But she curled her fingers into tight fists.
“How can you say you love me, when you don’t know who I am?”
“I know you—”
“You know Heath, a man who has lived on this earth for a mere three days. What about the other man, April? What about Evan? He’s been the one who has lived within this body for nearly forty years—”
“Thirty-nine—”
“Ach! Which does it matter!” His eyes were dark; before them, she was paralyzed. “You’ve fallen in love with a vision. Oh, yes, a very solid body. That’s here. But how can you love a person whose mind is … gone …” As she shook her head in mute denial, he raged on, his anger snowballing quickly. “You don’t know me; I don’t know me! Jane was right; you are infatuated!”
“No! No, Heath! I think I’m experienced enough to know the difference.” Her anger and frustration suddenly vied with his. “I don’t need to know about the trappings of your life—the job you have, the place you live in, the car you drive, the restaurants you eat at—to love you. Don’t you see?” She verbalized her thoughts as they suddenly crystallized. “I see you, the man. Totally aside from those other things, you are warm and intelligent, gentle and capable. And,” she said, her eyes narrowing with a courage that had never been called from her depths before, “I think you love me! That”—she pointed to the rug on which they had so recently lain—“was not just a physical thing. Or,” she whispered, her voice lowering in fear, “was it?”
Avoiding the challenge, he stood and began to reach for his clothes. As each part of his body was taken from her view, she grew more and more apprehensive. When his hands whipped the shirttails into his jeans, and zipped and snapped them with awful finality, she could take no more.
“Was it?” she screamed, her eyes filling with tears.
He stood before her then, hands on hips, feet spread apart. He was her master, looking down at her from his awesome height. She suddenly felt as naked as she was, and crossed her hands over her breasts as she knelt on the floor, so far below.
“I think we’ve both been carried away … with the time, the weather, the seclusion of this house, the fact of my mental isolation. I think … I think …” He faltered, oddly vulnerable. April’s hopes lifted; was he about to confess his feelings? “I think … that …” His voice was controlled once more, and quiet. “That you’d better get dressed.”
With that, he turned and walked toward her Apple. “April, would you mind if I use your machine for a while? I’d like to plug into your Source again.”
It was as though, given his cordial tone, none of the past passion and dissent had ever been. Stunned, April stared at him open-mouthed. He looked at her then, seeing past her.
“I think it’s about time we try to verify something about this Harley Evan Addison.”
She took a deep, deep breath. “That’s fine.” It came out as a feeble croak. “Do you remember how to—”
“Yes. I can do it.”
April turned away from him to dress, the process slowed by the strange weakness that permeated her body. With her back to Heath and her mind in utter turmoil, she was oblivious to the tall form, standing immobile before the machine, head bowed, in his own private torment. When he straightened and walked back to her, there was an element of sadness in his step. Hair rumpled, hands in pockets, face dark and pained, he was the image of the man to whom April’s compassion would always go. Just as she had rescued him from Ivan’s wrath, so she would have harbored him now, had she known of his inner storm. But her back was to him. And the words he had to speak evoked not compassion, but a deep, searing pain.
He cleared his throat to get her attention. “April, I have to ask you.” He paused, raking his fingers through the thickness of his hair. “We’ve made love too many times for me not to … worry.” She avoided his gaze, merely listened to his struggles as she fought her own churning stomach. “Are you … is it …”
He didn’t have to finish the thought for her to understand. Eyes of hollow brown lashed toward his, as she bolted upright to button her slacks and pull the sweater over her head. “If you’re asking me,” she got out, managing to override the knot in her throat, “whether I’m protected, Heath, the answer is yes. But, I’ll have you know,” she said softly, looking the distance up at him, defiant in her resolve even as she was intimidated by his stature, “that I’d just as soon forget it. I don’t care if I—”
His hands shook her shoulders once, leaving the words unspoken for the moment. “Then, I’ll have to make sure you don’t get pregnant. And there’s only one truly safe way …” His hands fell from her shoulders with reluctance, and he took a step back, as though burned.
The void within April was suddenly riddled with ricocheting darts of anguish. Doubling over, she sank back onto the sofa, burying her face in her hands, as her gasps reverberated through the room. “Is it that distasteful,” she winced, eyes brimming with tears, “the thought of my carrying your child?” To her it was a glorious idea, second only to the hope that Heath might, in fact, love her.
With the dark groan at the back of his throat, they were back where they had started earlier when he had returned to the room, to find her in tears. Used to her strength, he was vulnerable to her tears. After a moment’s hesitancy, he sat down beside her. His hand stroked the silken mane of her hair; his voice was mercifully gentle.
“God, no, April. That wasn’t what I meant at all. In another time and place, had we met with none of this mystery haunting us, I would have wanted nothing more than that.” He reached to cover the hands that now subconsciously protected her stomach. “The thought of your being pregnant by me is almost as beautiful as … as what we shared a little while ago.” Without quite acknowledging that extra special something, he had given it credence in April’s seeking heart. For the moment, it was all he could give; she had to accept that. “But, darlin’, don’t you see? Living as we are, right now, with my life a giant puzzle, I’m not free. Until I find out—and remember—who I am, I’m not free to love either you or a child that might be.” He paused to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. With his thumb, he took her chin and turned her face to his. “Does that make any sense?”
At that moment, April had never felt as close to a human being as she felt to Heath. Looking into his eyes, so dark and bottomless, feeling the intensity of him as it
reached out to corral her senses, she understood. “I don’t like it,” she whispered, “but it does make sense.” Her eyes traced the structure of his face, adoring its every line. “It’s ironic …”
“What is?” His voice was as low as hers, as quietly personal.
“When you first woke up here and I … and we …” She blushed self-consciously. “And there was this attraction between us, I thought that everything would be fine once we learned who you were.” She frowned. “It’s not as simple as that, is it?”
His answer was a reluctant headshake. “I’m afraid not.” He tucked his hand around her neck. “The only thing that’s simple is this …” He kissed her gently. “ … And the times I hold you in my arms.” Noticeably, he did not do so now. “But I can make no promises. Not yet, April. Can you accept that?”
So there was hope, after all! With hope, she could live. A budding light rekindled the amber flames in her eyes. “I can … for now. But … I make no promises, either.”
Puzzlement drew his dark eyebrows together. “What promises?”
“To borrow your lines,” she explained, emboldened by his openness and fully serious, “when I want to touch you, I intend to. If I want to kiss you, I will.”
The corner of his firm lips quirked as Heath recalled his erstwhile declaration, plus another. Pulling himself up straight, he mirrored her sober intent. “Then I’ll have to be a conscience for us both.” He shook his head. “I don’t know, April. Are you always this forward with men, or do you save it for the shipwrecked ones?”
Stopping to examine her behavior of the entire day, April was shocked herself. “You must have brought a strange virus with you from the sea. It seems to be affecting my better judgment. Certainly my sense of propriety!” She grinned sheepishly, color slowly returning to her cheeks in a healthy pink tinge.
“You look pretty …” he murmured, eyeing her clothes as well as her face.
“Well, Harley Evan Addison, I couldn’t very well let some blond-haired professor make me look like the castaway, could I?”
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