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Book: This Stream of Dreams (Mirella, Rashid and Adam Book 2) by Roberta Latow
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Authors: Roberta Latow
Tags: Mirella, Rashid and Adam
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the emir, the sultan had thanked him for the gift, which had made the emir look very unhappy, and Adam concerned for the courageous, foolish adventuress, whose beauty and style had instantly touched his heart. Then the sultan had ordered the start of his procession.
Adam hadn’t thought about that first meeting for years. It surprised him that time had not diminished the sensuous impression made by his first meeting with Marlo. How lovely she had been — a wild beauty, a mysterious woman with a reckless past as the mistress of a famous painter, and the main character in a love triangle that caused the death of a poet laureate when she left him for a beautiful woman. A war photographer with every news agency in the world after her work, Marlo had enough friends in high places to ensure her safety wherever she went.
In all their years together she had been a bewitching, sensual creature whom men and women alike fell hopelessly in love with. Theirs had been a volatile relationship because Marlo insisted she wanted a domestic life with Adam, which was not at all true. They both understood her restless energy,but in her perversity she both loved and hated Adam for his understanding.
In the end Adam had given her the most wonderful domestic life, one that suited her perfectly. A home of her own shared with his other mistresses and his children, which he visited whenever he chose. It suited the lesbian side of her nature as well as her infinitesimal maternal yearnings. When she wanted a child, Adam’s child, she was thrilled for a month and then resented every further minute of her pregnancy; she despised the pain, messiness, and loss of dignity she experienced giving birth. Yet, when Alice was born, delivered, at her insistance, by Adam and a midwife in the yali, on the Bosporus, she loved her.
Marlo loved her child and all Adam’s other children, all the women in his life, and the yali where they all lived, because they shared the burden of being a mother, domesticity, and Adam their lover and man of the house. Her capricious behavior was never tamed: everyone loved her too much to try. Her many affairs were accepted and enjoyed by them all. Only war, that fast-moving and unpredictable adventure of pain and destruction, thoroughly excited her. She used Adam, Alice, and domesticity as others would use aspirin, for the relief of the pain as a soldier would use R and R — rest and recreation. And then her questing nature would drive her on to the next experience, and the next.
She was one of the mainstays in the Corey clan. Adam had no doubts that she would love Mirella just as much as the rest of the clan did, but thought it very mischievous of her not to be at Oceanside for the wedding festivities. And Marlo could be very mischievous.
Standing naked and alone in the swirls of fog now drifting past him into the bedroom, he enjoyed his cigar and had to admit to himself that, love women as he might have, might still, he had never loved them as he did Mirella. He had never delivered himself up to any of them demand-free and asking for nothing more than their company, as he now did with her, and indeed as she did with him.
He could see now that both he and the women of his past had always asked questions of love. There had always been some degree of measuring, testing, probing, and saving it. And those were always the reasons it was cut short. Nomatter how subtle, there had always been the demand of love from one’s partner.
Lost in memories, Adam had allowed his cigar to die. He snapped open the old faithful Zippo and relit it. He thought about that — the demands that kill love — and Beverley came to mind.
Beverley: mother of his first two children. How young, how naïve he had been when he was trapped into marriage by her. Twenty-two years old and determined to do the right thing by her, he had married her and endured the most unpleasant years of his life. That marriage was the first and last time he made a
Adam hadn’t thought about that first meeting for years. It surprised him that time had not diminished the sensuous impression made by his first meeting with Marlo. How lovely she had been — a wild beauty, a mysterious woman with a reckless past as the mistress of a famous painter, and the main character in a love triangle that caused the death of a poet laureate when she left him for a beautiful woman. A war photographer with every news agency in the world after her work, Marlo had enough friends in high places to ensure her safety wherever she went.
In all their years together she had been a bewitching, sensual creature whom men and women alike fell hopelessly in love with. Theirs had been a volatile relationship because Marlo insisted she wanted a domestic life with Adam, which was not at all true. They both understood her restless energy,but in her perversity she both loved and hated Adam for his understanding.
In the end Adam had given her the most wonderful domestic life, one that suited her perfectly. A home of her own shared with his other mistresses and his children, which he visited whenever he chose. It suited the lesbian side of her nature as well as her infinitesimal maternal yearnings. When she wanted a child, Adam’s child, she was thrilled for a month and then resented every further minute of her pregnancy; she despised the pain, messiness, and loss of dignity she experienced giving birth. Yet, when Alice was born, delivered, at her insistance, by Adam and a midwife in the yali, on the Bosporus, she loved her.
Marlo loved her child and all Adam’s other children, all the women in his life, and the yali where they all lived, because they shared the burden of being a mother, domesticity, and Adam their lover and man of the house. Her capricious behavior was never tamed: everyone loved her too much to try. Her many affairs were accepted and enjoyed by them all. Only war, that fast-moving and unpredictable adventure of pain and destruction, thoroughly excited her. She used Adam, Alice, and domesticity as others would use aspirin, for the relief of the pain as a soldier would use R and R — rest and recreation. And then her questing nature would drive her on to the next experience, and the next.
She was one of the mainstays in the Corey clan. Adam had no doubts that she would love Mirella just as much as the rest of the clan did, but thought it very mischievous of her not to be at Oceanside for the wedding festivities. And Marlo could be very mischievous.
Standing naked and alone in the swirls of fog now drifting past him into the bedroom, he enjoyed his cigar and had to admit to himself that, love women as he might have, might still, he had never loved them as he did Mirella. He had never delivered himself up to any of them demand-free and asking for nothing more than their company, as he now did with her, and indeed as she did with him.
He could see now that both he and the women of his past had always asked questions of love. There had always been some degree of measuring, testing, probing, and saving it. And those were always the reasons it was cut short. Nomatter how subtle, there had always been the demand of love from one’s partner.
Lost in memories, Adam had allowed his cigar to die. He snapped open the old faithful Zippo and relit it. He thought about that — the demands that kill love — and Beverley came to mind.
Beverley: mother of his first two children. How young, how naïve he had been when he was trapped into marriage by her. Twenty-two years old and determined to do the right thing by her, he had married her and endured the most unpleasant years of his life. That marriage was the first and last time he made a
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