Keely started off in the direction she’d just looked.  Not far was a cove and inside the brown-gray cliffs a cave, the most treasured of her secret places.  Often she’d escaped the castle to relax in a place totally her own.  She’d shed a few tears there as well, most often over an intense loneliness.  How many times had she wished the man who’d been her lover in countless daydreams would be her companion, understand her work, would be real?  She shook her head.  After years of counseling and the sentence of a lifetime of medication, she’d reluctantly let the image go.

The surf roared into the cliffs and beaches with the power of the heavens and lashed white foam against the protective coating the World Government decreed placed on endangered sea coasts to prevent erosion.  The cove though, not considered at risk, had an unprotected entrance to her grotto.
 
Some days the water was placid, a gentle undulation of lulling waves.  Today the waves struck with more force but not enough to worry her.  She’d be back at her desk long before the coming tempest struck.

Keely rounded a corner and gasped.  Something lay on the pale beach in a lifeless lump.  She picked up her scope and stared at the mass through the lens.  “A person?”

This stranger could need her assistance!  She hurried her steps and then broke into a run, her feet pounding into the gritty sand.  Once she arrived, she knelt and placed her forefinger against his neck feeling for life signs.  He had a pulse.

How do you know this is a “he”?  She didn’t.  With sure hands she turned the large body over and gazed into the most handsome face she’d ever seen.  The man, she was positive of his sex now, was pallid beneath his heavily tanned skin.  Wavy, collar length blond hair, shot through with gold, framed his sharp, angular face.  He looked familiar.

She placed her hand against his lips.  The moist warm breath she expected didn’t touch her skin.  She leaned closer trying to feel or hear anything to indicate he lived and breathed on his own.

Years of living near the sea honed her water rescue skills.  Pinching his nose, she covered his lips with hers.  She breathed into his mouth.  Her heartbeat quickened into a cadence she was unfamiliar with.

Keely lifted her head from his lips and frowned.  Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was not supposed to engage her libido.

Around her, the tide licked at her feet, touching the soles with each encroaching wave.  The water advanced on the sand and reached cold, wet fingers further toward her and the unconscious man.  The continual sound of the surf grew louder.  The storm moved faster than she’d anticipated.

She turned him onto his side and rapped him between the shoulder blades.  “How’d you get here ol’ boy?”

As if in response, the man coughed.

“There you go,” she said, watching water spew out of his mouth.

He coughed again and this time opened his eyes.  No blue accurately described the color she saw there.  When he finally focused and looked into her face, Keely was mesmerized.

It wasn’t until a particularly strong, chilling wave struck that she was able to tear her gaze from his.  “Here,” she managed to get out between gusts.  “We need to get off you off this beach.  Between your wet clothes and this wind you’ll catch pneumonia or something.”  She glanced over her shoulder at the sky.  “We’re in for a nasty one.”

The man pushed up to his elbows and straightened out.  Loose Egyptian cotton clung to his legs as though the trousers were a body suit meant to reveal the strong muscles beneath the material.  A sprinkling of light hair curled on his defined chest marred by scar-like markings beneath his latissimus dorsi, just above his ribs.  His feet were devoid of shoes.

Adonis.  It was the only name that came to mind.  Adonis, the mythological god from the ancient Mediterranean history she’d studied so long ago.  Here on this beach, though, antiquated annals didn’t apply. 

Another wave slapped her feet and splashed water, cold from the wind, up her calf.  Keely shook her head.  “Can you walk?”

The man didn’t speak, just nodded his head.

“Fine.  There is a cave a few meters from here.  We’ll shelter there until the storm subsides.”  She slipped an arm behind his back and wrapped his other arm around her neck and over her shoulder.  A sense of familiarity stole over her, as if she’d held this man hundreds of times before.
 
With deliberate steps, Keely brought the stranger to the dim cove and sat him on a worn rock ledge, his long legs dangling in the shallow tidal water.  She slipped her sandals back on her feet.  “Wait right here.  I’m going further back to get you a thermal sheet.”

“Thank you.”

The dark timbre of his words flowed over her like the expensive, delicious hot fudge her father had given her five years ago for her twenty-sixth birthday.  She grabbed a finger hold in the porous cavern wall and hoisted herself up to an outcropping.  From within she seized the lightweight blanket she kept there for other outings, and then hurried back to the stranger.

She handed him the covering and watched him wrap the blanket imperfectly around himself.  “You’re welcome.”

He stood in ankle deep water and peeled off his wet clothing.

Keely swallowed back the lump in her throat that formed when she glimpsed the man’s strong calves, thighs, and…oh for Domnu’s sake!
 
She needed to get hold of herself straight away.  His erection was enough to set any woman’s thoughts to the most primitive of bedding activities.  “Do I know you?” she managed to get out.

He took two large steps toward her, dropping the thermal mantle.

His physique was glorious.  The strands of curled hair on his chest arrowed downward and enticed her to look lower.  If anything, his erection was larger.  Larger?  How was that even possible standing naked in the chill?

“Yes.  I’m Zion.  Don’t you remember me?”