by Joan Hohl
Sunny’s laugh was soft and completely enchanting. “Sally Lunn is a bread.”
“Oh.”
“There’s also a drink specialty,” she went on, laughter dancing at the edges of her voice. “A wine, somewhat like sangria, flavored with fruit and...”
“I’ll pass,” Adam interjected, lifting his shoulders in a half shrug. “I prefer a burgundy,” he said, mentally asking himself, since when?
“Of course.” Her voice was serene with acceptance. “While I, as you know, prefer a white wine.”
The damn thing was, Adam did know, and it was a knowing much deeper and more intricately involved than her choice of white wine the night before.
Sunny never drank any form of spirits other than a light, dry white wine.
Dammit. How had he known that?
The certainty of the knowledge was disconcerting at best and unnerving at worst.
“Adam?”
“Hmm?” he murmured, collecting his wits—or whatever was left of them. “What?”
“Don’t.”
He frowned. “Don’t what?”
She smiled. “Don’t torment yourself. Later, after dinner, we’ll discuss it.”
Adam didn’t require an explanation of what it she referred to: he knew full well, too well.
He heaved a sigh and tried to avoid the issue by bringing up another one. “I distinctly recall you saying you would treat me to the second one of your stories this evening.”
“And I will.” Her eyes, those intelligent, so expressive green eyes gleamed with teasing intent. “But that was a rather dull, unexciting go-round, so I’ll be brief.” A tremor of amusement shivered on her tone. “Then we’ll discuss this dilemma you’re experiencing.”
The peanut soup, the game pie and the Sally Lunn all lived up to Sunny’s recommendations; the burgundy was excellent, rich and full-bodied.
Surprisingly, Adam enjoyed the meal, despite his feelings of trepidation in regard to Sunny’s stated intention to discuss his dilemma.
The only dilemma he wanted to discuss happened to be of a more earthy, sensual nature. He longed to tell her to forget all the silliness about memories and images, previous lives lived and a love for eternity.
Adam considered himself a realist; his interest was focused on the here and the now. And for him, the here and the now was centered on the need, quickly expanding into near obsession, to lose himself within her.
The taste he had had of Sunny the night before had merely whetted his appetite. By the time they had finished dinner and returned to his suite in the motel, Adam was past ready for the entrée of pure Sunshine.
“What was it that bothered you about the gunsmith shop?” she asked, mirroring her actions of the night before by draping her cape over a chair on her way to the window.
Damn, Adam grumbled to himself; he had convinced himself he had succeeded in concealing his involuntary shiver at the sight of the shop as they drove past.
Sunny turned to give him a quizzical look, when he didn’t immediately respond.
“Adam?”
Oh, hell, he thought, raking a hand through his rain-dampened hair. Now what? There was no way in hell he could admit to Sunny—of all people—that he had experienced a déjà vu moment. So, then, how to respond?
The rain.
The old inspiration born of desperation, Adam reflected, offering her a benign smile.
“I didn’t want to say anything, but in my desire to protect you from the rain in our dash from the inn to the parking lot, I gave the lion’s share of the umbrella to you,” he explained in gentle, if slightly smug terms. “The shiver you noticed was in reaction to a trickle of cold rain that found its way under my collar and down my spine.”
Adam felt rather proud of his hastily concocted excuse; but his moment of pride was short-lived.
“Oh. I see.” Sunny’s tone was bland, unrevealing. Not so her smile. As it had the night before, her smile gave clear indication she certainly did see, right through him and his fabricated tale.
“Ahh...yeah,” he said, frowning in counterpoint to her all-knowing smile. “Would you like a drink?”
“Not right now,” she replied, her smile taking on a mocking cast. “Would you like to change your shirt?”
Damn, he thought.
“No,” he answered, asking himself if this smiling, silently mocking woman could possibly be the same woman he had supported to his car the previous night, the very same woman who had seemed so very fragile and vulnerable.
Yeah, fragile and vulnerable, he ridiculed, scanning her glowingly beautiful face, her bright expressive eyes, her elegantly erect posture. She appeared, this night, about as fragile and vulnerable as the fearless warrior she had claimed him to be in her story.
“You’re looking stormier than the weather,” Sunny observed, raising delicately arched eyebrows over her watchful green eyes. “What are you thinking?”
“That it’s time to get down to business,” he prevaricated, indicating the settee with a flick of a hand. “I’m waiting with bated breath for your second past-life story.”
“Sure you are,” she drawled, laughing openly at him. “I submit that you are about as eager to hear my story as you would be to have a root canal.”
Nevertheless, to his grateful relief, she didn’t pursue his motives. Slipping out of her shoes, she strolled to the settee and curled up in one corner, in precisely the same position as the night before.
Adam did not follow suit. Instead, he strolled to the drinks cabinet and broke the seal. “Sure you don’t want a drink?” he asked, in precisely the same manner as he had before. “To keep your throat moist during the relating of your... memories?”
“No, thank you.” She gave a quick shake of her head, drawing his glance to the light shimmering in the gold strands of her hair. “As I mentioned, I won’t require much time or emotional effort in the telling.”
“Your choice.” Adam shrugged. “But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll have one...just in case I suddenly find myself in need of fortification.”
“I don’t mind at all,” she assured him, smiling as she settled more comfortably into the settee.
Without conscious direction, he reached into the cabinet and withdrew a small bottle of cabernet—the only red wine available—and poured it into one of the stemmed glasses set atop the cabinet. He took a sip of the ruby wine before ambling to the settee...and damned if he wasn’t really beginning to appreciate the flavor.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he invited her to begin as he seated himself opposite her.
“It’s really a rather dull story,” she said, as if compelled to give warning.
“You mean, there was no reveling, a lot, in a certain intimate position?” Adam asked, wincing inside at the offensiveness of his drawling voice, the content of his query.
To his surprise, Sunny didn’t take offense. Quite the contrary. Her sudden burst of easy laughter gave evidence of genuine amusement.
“No, that isn’t what I mean,” she said when her laughter subsided. “The existence itself was dull and uninteresting, not the intimate part of it.”
Adam heaved a sigh of defeat. “I suppose I had better hear the entire story.”
“Right,” she agreed, her eyes dancing, her lips twitching. “Well, once upon a time, long, long ago...oh, two or so hundred years after our first life together...”
Adam halted her narrative by groaning aloud.
Sunny arched one elegant eyebrow. “I thought you wanted to hear this story?”
“I do, I do,” he muttered, taking a bracing swallow of his wine. “Flourishes and all.”
“Then please refrain from interrupting,” she chided, scowling, in conflict to her laughing eyes. “Now, I don’t know if you’re at all familiar with that historical period, but it was pretty grim...not a fun time for peasants.”
“We were peasants?” Adam sounded offended, simply because he felt offended. He headed up a fairly sizable family corporation. Consi
dering his position and extremely generous income, if he had to be labeled, it would have to be upper, upper middle class. Peasants indeed.
“Primarily, there were the rulers and the serfs, Adam,” she pointed out, her taunting voice snaring his wandering attention. “Other than the inbetween merchants, there weren’t a whole lot of upper, middle or lower-middle income groups littering the landscape.”
“Hmm,” he murmured, lacking the brass to admit he preferred to fancy himself as one of the rulers. “And where did this charming existence take place?”
“Britain.” Though her voice held conviction, Sunny frowned. “I don’t know exactly where in Britain, but I feel certain it was Britain.”
He looked skeptical.
She shrugged and continued. “We mated young... life expectancy was still very short,” she added, anticipating his objection.
He objected anyway, strongly. “You again have me cast in the role of defiler of young girls?”
“Honestly, Adam.” Sunny rolled her eyes. “It was not only accepted, it was necessary. A couple started young... in hopes of seeing their offspring grow to maturity.”
“Point taken,” he conceded, reluctantly.
“We were farmers...”
“Wonderful.”
“Adam!”
He held up his hand. “I’ll shut up.”
“Good.” She gave a long-suffering sigh. “We lived in a small cottage...actually little more than a hut, located outside a tiny village. Tilling the fields was rudimentary, the farm implements crude. The work was backbreakingly hard. The days were endlessly long. Life was pitifully short”
“Okay, I’ve got the picture,” he said, with more truth than he was willing to admit, for in truth, his imagination conjured the scene and it wasn’t pretty. “Go on.”
“We died.”
“Huh?” Adam jolted, slopping the wine over the edge of the glass and onto his expensive pants. He barely noticed. “You mean, that’s all?”
Sunny took a moment to frown at the red stain spreading into the material covering his taut thigh. “You really should remove those pants and soak them in cold water before the stain sets,” she advised.
He ignored her and the stain. “That’s all?” he repeated, his tone incredulous.
“Well, although we lost several—” she frowned “—I think it was three babies...”
“We lost them?” he dared to interrupt again, shocked by the very idea of losing a child “How?”
“Well, not in the woods,” she retorted in obvious exasperation. “We lost them in the way common to the period, of course, to childhood diseases.”
“Oh...well...in that case...” He shrugged.
“But we did produce four children who lived to adulthood,” she said in consoling tones. “Three handsome, tall and stalwart sons and one beautiful daughter.”
“Then we did assume the intimate position quite a lot,” he murmured, his voice a little rough, husky.
“Oh, yes.” The brightness in Sunny’s eyes darkened, as if shadowed by sensuous memories. “Other than the joy of watching the fruit of your seed grow strong and healthy, my happiest moments occurred when your hard body lay between my thighs, your shaft buried to the hilt inside me.”
A flash fire of desire roared through Adam, and he was forced to apply every ounce of control he possessed to remain still, keep from closing the small space between them to throw his swiftly hardening body atop hers, reenact the erotic scene she had described.
“The physical loving and the laughing we shared, as a couple, then a family, kept the existence from seeming one of unremitting toil.” Her soft voice again corralled his thoughts—his inflamed thoughts. She sighed, and a small, pleasurable smile curved her lips. “Though the day-byday living of it was dull,” she went on in a quiet, faraway sounding tone. “The loving was ever exciting and wonderful.”
Adam could barely breathe for the tightness in his chest, the thudding of his heart. The die was cast, and Sunny herself had cast it. He had to have her, experience for himself the joy of loving she so vividly recounted.
Moving slowly, so as not to startle her from her reverie, he set his glass aside, then briefly paused, surprised to note the tremor in his fingers.
“Sunny.” His voice was slightly unsteady, low, little more than a whisper.
“Hmm?” She raised slumberous eyes to his.
“Come to me.” He held out his arms in invitation. “Please. Come love with me.”
Without question or hesitation, Sunny slid over the settee to him, into his embrace like a pigeon at long last coming home to roost.
Eight
Their first kiss was gentle, sweet and not nearly enough to satisfy.
Still, not wanting to introduce a jarring note, Adam tested and tasted Sunny’s mouth with tentative care, tamping down the urge to crush her lips with his own, plunge his tongue into the honeyed depths of her mouth.
He was on fire, burning with an unprecedented need to be one with her, quench the blaze inside her.
His grasp on control slipped, and even as he silently condemned himself, Adam fastened his mouth to hers, deepening the kiss, filling himself with the delicate wine-scented breath of her life, her unique essence.
Sunny’s response was immediate and electrifying. With a soft moan, she speared her fingers into his hair to draw him closer and eagerly parted her lips to receive the piercing stab of his tongue.
Heat, bright and glittery, shimmered inside Adam. He moved his hands, needing to touch her, know her.
But he did know her.
The errant thought shot a lucid strand into the unraveling skein of his mental process.
But the thought was not errant, it was true. His hands recognized the familiar terrain of her slender body, her enticing curves, the fullness of her breasts, the narrowness of her waist, the tight roundness of her derriere and the long, smooth suppleness of her legs.
The realization dropped a cooling cloud of caution over Adam’s inflamed senses.
Though he had met this woman just yesterday, he knew her, better, more intimately than he had ever known or cared to know any other woman he had ever been with.
The knowing gave Adam pause to reflect.
She was everything, no, more than he had ever yearned for in the most secret corners of his mind and heart.
She was the soul mate he had been waiting for...and had never dared hope he would find.
Another realization washed over Adam on a cresting wave of self-knowledge and understanding.
He had been waiting for Sunny.
With his mouth barely touching hers, feeling her warm breath caressing his lips, hearing the soft sounds of pleasure from deep in her throat, Adam felt elated by her precious presence and shaken by the self-realization.
Without conscious awareness he now knew that, since reaching adulthood, with every woman he had known, intimately and socially, he had been waiting for, searching for, longing for Sunny, the other half of himself.
And Sunny was subject to flights of fancy.
It was enough to make a grown man weep, and more than enough to completely bank the fire of desire raging inside him.
Adam could no more suppress a sigh, then stop breathing. He didn’t even try.
“Adam?”
Her voice was muffled by his mouth; he heard her just the same, and knew that he would always hear her.
Releasing her mouth, he drew his head back, to stare down, down, down into the emotion-swirled green depths of her incredible, heart-rendingly beautiful eyes.
“Yes?” he responded, beyond believing he would ever find the strength to say no to her, for any reason.
“Will you tell me—now—what bothered you about the gunsmith’s shop?”
On second thought, perhaps he would say no to her.
Adam settled for a halfway measure.
“It was nothing, unimportant,” he lied in desperation, lowering his head to seek again the singular sweetness of her parted lips and
to divert both her persistent question and his unsettling thoughts.
Sunny turned her head to avoid his mouth. Her lips brushed his ear. “It was something,” she murmured, sending a shiver of delight and expectation skipping through him from his ear to the suddenly tingling soles of his feet. “And it was important... to you, to me...to us.”
Another deeper shiver went skipping along his nervous system in response to her feathering breath and her whispered declaration.
Us. Adam liked the sound of it, the intimacy of it, the permanence of it.
Now, if only he could convince her to wake up to reality, abandon her dreams and imaginings of other lives shared, other loves consummated, otherworldly New Age beliefs of an eternity of togetherness.
The here and now was all he asked or hoped for. Why wasn’t that enough for her?
Employing a strength he didn’t know he owned, he gently grasped her shoulders and set her back, away from him. He immediately felt cold and lonely.
“Adam?” Sunny’s eyes mirrored the chill loneliness he was experiencing.
“I think we’d better slow down. Things are getting too hot too fast.” Had he actually said that? Adam could barely believe the cool sound of his own voice, never mind the blatant untruth of his words. Slow down? When he felt his very life might depend on being one with her?
Had he slipped a mental cog or what?
“Slow down?” Confusion clouded Sunny’s eyes, dimming their green luster. “But I thought that you wanted...” She hesitated, moistened her lips, then continued in an uncertain whisper... “What I want.”
“I do.” He grasped her hands, laced his fingers through hers, thrilling to the friction of her soft skin against his toughened, rougher skin. “But...I don’t want to rush into anything,” he said, while his mind jeered, liar.
“But...” Sunny began in protest, but determined to have his say, Adam didn’t let her finish.
“We only met yesterday.” Impossible. Adam shook his head; had it really only been one day? “We have the rest of the week to explore this physical attraction between us.” Oh, brother. He sounded like a stuffy, inexperienced jerk, he upbraided himself. Nevertheless, he stumbled on. “Let’s get to know each other first.”