A Memorable Man

by Joan Hohl

  “You seduced me.”

  “Would I do that?” Adam was uncomfortably aware of having assumed the character of Magnus; he was even more uncomfortably aware of how well the role fit him.

  “Eagerly, avidly, repeatedly,” she said, flashing a grin at him. “You absolutely wallowed in it.”

  Yes, he had, and he ached to wallow again.

  The mental response rattled Adam, even as the desire to repeat the performance set fire to his senses.

  “I loved it.”

  Adam burst into laughter at the note of smug complacency in her tone. “So,” he said, controlling his laughter, “we’re back to the assumed position again.”

  “Why not?” Sunny executed a shrug that was both elegant and careless. “We shared many delightful hours, during many lifetimes, in that position.”

  “Temptress,” he muttered, gritting his teeth against the growing urge to throw control and caution to the wind.

  “I do my best,” she admitted, taunting his reticence. “But I must confess,” she went on, sighing, “you always possessed the stronger character.”

  “A prince among men, hmm?” he asked with wry amusement, marveling at himself for accepting first person, center stage in her imaginary play.

  “A god,” she simpered, mining the effect with her flashing smile and sparkling eyes.

  “Oh, get on with the story,” he groaned, certain that if he didn’t distract her—and himself—he’d give in to the temptation to toss her over his shoulder and carry her to bed...in exactly the same manner of Magnus the Head Hunter.

  “Oh, there’s not much more,” Sunny said, shrugging. “If you recall, I did tell you there were only flashes of memories, little very detailed.”

  “How could I forget?” he shot back at her. “The word flashes is etched in stone in my mind.”

  “Good.” Sunny compressed her twitching lips. “At any rate, my noble father arrived on the scene with a full compliment of men prepared to, in his exact words, which came through loud and clear in the flashes, ”Wipe out this thieving nest of vipers and jackals.” The twitch won, she grinned.

  “And he succeeded?” Adam asked, although he knew, deep down, that he hadn’t.

  She shook her head. “No, the clash of swords never occurred, because you had checkmated him.”

  “How?” Adam was fully aware of holding his breath.

  “By making me your bride, of course.”

  “Why would I do that?” Adam gave an impatient shake of his head. “Why would the ruthless Magnus the Head Hunter do that? I mean...why buy the cow when you’ve had the milk for nothing, and from an enemy English, at that?”

  Sunny’s expression was superior. “He—you—loved me above all else. That’s why.”

  And he...I still do.

  The sudden thought, the certainty of it, shook Adam, undermining his core beliefs.

  Dammit, he railed in silent frustration. This woman, this Scheherazade of story telling, had him mentally running in circles. And, damn it to hell, he didn’t believe in the concept of reincarnation.

  “You must be fantastic in bed,” he drawled, defending his position with crude sarcasm.

  Sunny went rigid for an instant. Then she smiled, as if comprehending his motivation.

  Watching her, Adam cringed inside for slinging the insult at her; she had done nothing to earn his contempt.

  She was quiet for long seconds, her eyes distant, with a faraway look.

  Adam instinctively knew that Sunny was looking through her avowed memories, not unlike the way in which one would look through a lifetime of snapshots in a photo album. He was about to speak, to break her trance, when her changing expression stole his breath.

  Her features softened. A flush pinked her cheeks. Her lips, suddenly appearing fuller, slightly parted. The distant, faraway look in her eyes fled before the gathering clouds of smoky-green sensuousness.

  “We were fantastic in bed together,” she murmured, her heated gaze caressing his form and face before rising to impact on his riveted stare.

  That did it. His resistance vanquished by the expanding power of his libido, Adam consigned control, caution and common sense to hell and gone.

  “Sunny.” Whispering her name, he moved across the settee to her...and into the arms she lifted to enfold him.

  “Yes.” Her answering whisper added fuel to the flames licking his system into a blaze. “Anything, everything you want, my love. I’ve waited so long, needed you so badly. It seems like forever.”

  Yes. Forever. Adam was barely aware of his subconscious, echoing her desire-roughened voice. But his consciousness was aware, painfully aware of the passion feeding his strength, burgeoning his arousal.

  He had to have her, make her his again, reassert his claim of exclusivity to her.

  The thought was hazy, unclear in the desire-clouded cells of his brain. The only part that made sense to Adam was the relentless drive of his need to be one with her.

  Without care or gentleness, he crushed her mouth with his and speared his tongue between her parted lips.

  Moaning, Sunny curled her fingers into his hair, raked her nails against his scalp, urging him closer. Her mouth clinging to his, she slid her tongue along his, greedily stoking the fire consuming him.

  They were wearing too many clothes.

  As if simultaneously reaching the same conclusion, they began tearing at one another’s garments, the frenzy of their movements sent them toppling over the side of the settee and into a heap on the carpeted floor.

  “Dammit,” Adam growled, pulling back from her entangling arms and legs. “Are you hurt?”

  “Just my dignity,” Sunny assured him, between laughing gasps of breath.

  Adam grimaced at her as he scrambled to stand. “Settees were not built for sexual calisthenics,” he muttered, reaching down to help her up.

  With fluid grace she came off the floor and into his arms, her body molding to his like water to an angular shoreline. A tiny section of Adam’s mangled mind that had begun to function immediately shut down again.

  His mouth sought hers, then holding her captive with his lips and tongue, he moved unerringly toward the bedroom. Their hands busy, they discarded articles of each other’s clothing along the way.

  When they came to a halt beside the bed, they were both as nature had made them, free of the trappings of civilization and all inhibition.

  As one, they tossed back the covers and fell onto the bed, immediately reaching, one for the other.

  Slowly, drawing out their pleasure of tactile exploration to an excruciating, near painful arousal, they stroked, licked, caressed, probed each other and the depths of their desire and endurance.

  “Do you like that?” Adam murmured, savoring the thrill of sensation as his lips again drew on the hard tip of her small but beautiful breast.

  “Does this please you?” she countered in a throaty whisper, stopping his breath with the feather-light glide of her fingers along the throbbing length of his manhood.

  Please him? Adam thought in a haze of desire, shivering in reaction to her caress. He wasn’t sure how long he could stand, or survive the pleasure. And yet he held back from the final intimacy, his muscles clenched to impose control. There were a few pleasures yet to be derived before attaining the ultimate reward of joining with her.

  Nipping, licking, then suckling at her breasts, Adam skimmed his hand up the silky length of her inner thigh to the nest of curls guarding her femininity. He dipped a finger, testing the waters of her readiness. His stomach muscles clenched when she gasped and arched into his caress.

  His heart racing, his breaths shallow, he continued to pleasure her while, bestowing a final kiss on her breast, he slid his passion-slick body down hers, gliding his tongue over her midriff, her belly, the springy curls covering her mound before offering the ultimate kiss of intimacy and tasting the honey of her desire.

  Sunny’s body jerked and she cried out, begging him to stop, begging him for more, be
gging him to end the unbearable tension of her pleasure.

  Her hands gripped his head and she arched into him, into the torturing pleasure of his hungry mouth. And then she went wild, rigid, sobbing with the ecstasy of the release he could feel and taste cascading through her.

  Before the tremors stopped, Adam was rising to his knees, positioning himself between her thighs and then plunging into the moist depths of her climax.

  He was home.

  The thought didn’t register.

  Every muscle in his body taut with readiness, Adam took his own pleasure, driving into the slick, satiny sheath with single-minded purpose. He felt, thrilled, to her quickening response. And then they were moving together, one being seeking the apex of mutual fulfilment.

  Teeth clenched, he held on, to Sunny and to his control, until he felt the first faint tremors move through her. Casting off restraint, he increased his effort, plunging once, twice more into her. He heard her cry out his name an instant before he exploded into an ecstatic release, his echoing cry bursting from his tight throat.

  “Sunny.”

  Ten

  Adam lay on his back, Sunny held tightly to his still quivering body; one hand idly stroking over her hip and thigh, Adam’s mind in a state of stunned shock in response to the most unbelievably beautiful experience he had ever lived through and survived.

  Or had he survived? he mused fancifully; maybe he had died and gone to heaven. For being with Sunny, inside her, one with her, had been as close to heaven as he dared hope to get...at least in this lifetime.

  This lifetime? Now where had that idea sprung from? Adam asked himself. Shifting position in reaction to a sudden chill along his spine, he absently tightened his arms around Sunny’s soft sleeping form.

  Sunny. His body quickened at the mere thought of her name. She was magnificent while in the throes of unleashed passion; wild in response to his every caress.

  He had been lying quiet while his racing heartbeat decreased to a more normal level and his harsh, shallow breaths grew less labored, but recalling their spectacular union reignited his senses, rearoused his libido.

  He wanted her again, that quickly he felt desperate to be sheathed within her, experience that shattering, multicolored moment of sheer bliss.

  But Sunny slept and he didn’t have the heart to...

  She stirred, innocently sliding one silky thigh between his legs, tearing a ragged breath from his chest with an unconscious brush of her knee against his sex.

  Adam’s teeth snapped together while his hormones fell apart. He held his breath, pitting his will against the rioting demands of his hardening body.

  Sunny sighed, and wedged her knee into the juncture of his thighs. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and above his upper lip. His will betrayed him, surrendering to his body’s raging need to possess her, own her, literally stake his claim to this woman...his woman.

  The compelling desire was so all-consuming it was near frightening. Never, never had Adam lusted so completely, so atavistically for a woman, any woman. Never before had he been motivated by the force of his sexual appetite.

  But this woman, Sunny, was different. Being with her, one with her, was like being reunited with a missing part of himself, making him feel whole, complete.

  Adam was trembling from the inner battle he was waging against an invasion of her sleeping body, when Sunny woke up and saved him from self-degradation.

  “I want you again,” she murmured with guileless honesty, leaving a trail of fire on his collarbone with the brush of her lips. “Is it too soon for you?”

  Too soon? She offered to save his sanity and asks if it’s too soon? Adam marveled, unsure whether to laugh exultantly or cry in abject relief.

  “Er, no, it’s not too...” He broke off, sucking in a breath at the feel of her fingers curling around him.

  “So I can feel,” she purred, intensifying the thrill with a quick stab of her tongue into the hollow at the base of his taut throat.

  Adam wanted to go slow with her this time, draw out each new and exciting sensation; he wanted to, but he couldn’t. Not only would his body not cooperate, Sunny would not allow him to proceed at a more leisurely pace.

  She was like a tigress, voracious in her hunger for him. Seizing the initiative, she made love to him, driving him mad with her biting kisses, her playful tongue and her busy, skillful hands.

  Adam was a goner. He knew it and he loved it, every erotic, mind-blowing minute of it.

  She mounted him. Thrilling to her possession of him, he arched into her in willing surrender. Caressing him, murmuring words of enticement, she rode him into an explosive shower of shimmering ecstasy.

  Completely undone by the intensity of their union, Adam fell into a deep sleep, Sunny’s spent body sprawled atop his, his body still joined to hers.

  “Cold.”

  Sunny’s sleep-furred voice woke Adam a few hours before dawn. She was still asleep, and trembling. Chagrined by his precipitous capitulation to slumber, he gently disengaged from her and lifted her from him.

  The movement, or absence of warmth, or both, woke her. Blinking, she gazed at him in puzzlement.

  “I want to put us under the covers,” he explained, sitting up and reaching for the bed covers they had somehow managed to kick to the floor during their exertions.

  “What time is it?”

  Adam shot a glance at the clock on the nightstand. “Almost four.” Grasping the edge of the bedclothes, he dragged them up and over her shivering form. “What time must you get back to your place to get ready for work?”

  “By seven-thirty,” she answered, raising a hand to her mouth to smother a yawn. “Oh, this feels better,” she murmured, snuggling under the covers.

  Picking up the receiver on the bedside phone, Adam placed a wake-up call for six forty-five, then slid beneath the covers next to her. Drawing her into his arms, he settled her warming body close to his own.

  “Go back to sleep,” he whispered, unnecessarily; Sunny was already out like a light.

  It quickly became evident to Adam that he wouldn’t be able to follow his own advice. Sleep eluded him. With Sunny’s head nestled into the curve of his shoulder, he inhaled the fresh, herbalshampoo scent of her hair.

  He could fall in love with her. He might even already be in love with her. Never having experienced the emotion, Adam had no yardstick with which to measure the breadth and depth of his feelings.

  Adam sighed. He had heard and been assured of the very real possibility of love at first sight. Then again, he had always heard that falling in love made people feel wonderful. He didn’t feel wonderful. Oh, physically he felt joyous, replete, utterly satisfied, at least for the moment, he conceded to himself. The loving had exceeded expectations.

  But.

  Adam grimaced. There always seemed to be a but, he thought, a but or a what-if or an if-only.

  In his case, the three combined into one overriding cautioning question.

  Sunny believed without a single doubt that they had shared previous lifetimes.

  Adam didn’t share her beliefs...despite the moment of confused uncertainty concerning the gunsmith’s shop.

  So, then, how was he to proceed? he asked himself, drawing her shampoo-female scent deep into his lungs. In love with her, or merely on the brink of loving her, Adam wanted to be with her, and not just for a brief, romantic holiday affair. He wanted her with him, by his side. He felt so attuned to her that even after their brief acquaintance of only two days, he was certain of his intentions.

  He would eventually want marriage, a joining of their lives as well as their bodies, a true partnership opposed to a now-and-then, hit-or-miss relationship.

  But could a true partnership between them endure, survive the strain of their opposing beliefs?

  And therein lay the but that bit, the what-if they couldn’t agree to disagree on, the if-only she wasn’t so adamant about, convincing him her beliefs were true.

  Adam couldn’t imag
ine himself ever accepting the concept of reincarnation, never mind Sunny’s claim that they continued to reincarnate to be together. While he would be willing to grant that the theory was romantic, it conflicted greatly with his logical, rational way of thinking.

  And where a conflict existed, a conflict not merely of different interests but a serious conflict of core beliefs, could a relationship endure?

  Adam was very much afraid that the answer was no. In his casual observation of the marriages and liaisons of friends and relatives, he could not have avoided noticing the difficulties inherent in maintaining a relationship, even when there appeared to be little conflict. By its very nature, a romantic relationship demanded compromises between two diverse and very different personalities.

  But could he compromise his core beliefs?

  Adam knew that he could not.

  So where did that leave him? he asked himself.

  Knowing the answer, yet unwilling to face it, his arms tightened convulsively around Sunny’s pliant form.

  He couldn’t stand the thought of parting from her, losing her, but...

  “What are you thinking?” Her quiet voice intruded into his troubling introspection.

  “That I’m tired.” It was the first and only response he could dredge from his weary mind. The fact that it was true was irrelevant. “I’m sorry if I woke you,” he went on, in a deliberate attempt to change the subject.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” she said, peering at the bedside clock. “It’s almost time to get up, anyway.” She shifted her expressive eyes to his; laughter lurked in their green depths. “Besides, if I’m going to be crushed, I’d as soon it be in your embrace.”

  Adam loosened his hold at once, although he didn’t release her. “I’m sorry. I...”

  “Adam,” she interrupted.

  “Yes?”

  “Shut up and kiss me good-morning.”

  Shoving his bleak outlook for their future to the back of his mind, Adam quickly complied, losing his concerns in the sweet and hot forgetfulness of her mouth.

  They shared a shower, and each other, and then he reluctantly drove her home.

  After no sleep at all the night before, and only a brief nap earlier, in addition to his physical endeavors and subsequent wearying mental activity, followed by more physical endeavor, Adam felt exhausted and it showed.