They talked more as they strolled down the beach together, the sky above them turning a darker and darker blue, until finally they walked beneath a midnight dome sprayed with countless stars.
“But don’t you think it’s a little unlikely, that you can actually separate out your past from your present?” she asked him hesitantly after a while. “I mean isn’t it a little . . .”
“What?”
“Well . . . creepy, that I look like someone you used to care about?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe. But doesn’t history come into play to some degree in every case of attraction we experience our whole life?”
“What do you mean?”
She stared at his stark profile as they walked. For several moments, he didn’t reply.
“You don’t find that there are certain things about me, for instance, that remind you of something from your past?”
She gave a small laugh. “No.”
“You’re sure?” he asked quietly.
“You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met. But I get your point,” she mused after a moment. “We’re all a product of our histories. I just want to make it clear that even if I look a little like this other woman, I’m not her.”
“You actually don’t look all that much like her. It’s just you remind me of her.”
“How do I remind you of her?”
Only the soft surf penetrated the thick silence for a moment.
“I don’t know. In some kind of . . . deeper sense. Not that I’m very spiritual. And not to shortchange the physical aspect of things, by any means,” he added dryly under his breath. “It’s a feeling of connection.” He shrugged uneasily. “Who knows where something like that comes from? Maybe you don’t feel it, but—”
“I feel it.”
His stark, startling honesty had yanked the bewildering truth right out of her throat. “Still . . . I want to be appreciated for who I am. Even if—”
She cut herself off abruptly.
“What?” he asked.
“Even if this is only a sexual thing. That’s not too unfair to ask, is it?”
He stopped and reached for her hand. She halted, looking up at the star-filled sky behind the blackness of his outline. Why was it that he always seemed so mysterious to her, so cloaked? And yet, at other times, he seemed achingly familiar. The paradox of him pulled at her. It was making her do things she shouldn’t.
“Of course it’s not unfair. It’s a given. You’re a unique, beautiful woman. You deserve to be more than appreciated. You should expect it.”
“Thanks,” she said breathlessly.
“Let me take you home so I can appreciate you more.”
A laugh popped out of her throat. He’d said it deadpan. Her smile widened when she heard his warm, low chuckle above the surf, twining with hers.
“Seriously. I want to talk to you about something else. Something important.” He touched her cheek. “Let’s do it back at my place. I want to be able to see your face.”
Her amusement faded. She stepped closer to his body, drawn irrevocably despite her doubts.
“I understand you saying you want a no-strings-attached relationship, and I think I can do that,” she murmured. She hoped she could, anyway. “But it makes things complicated, what you just told me. What I just admitted. I’m not going to be okay with it, if you go into silent stealth mode about it again.”
“I told you,” he said, cradling her jaw with one hand. He stepped closer, his groin brushing against her belly, the tips of her breasts coming into contact with his rib cage. Arousal flickered through her like heat lightning fluttering across the night sky . . . the promise of a coming storm. “It’s in the past,” he breathed.
“I’m not saying you have to talk about this other person or your history with her ad nauseam,” she said, highly aware that his head had lowered over her uplifted face. Their mouths were only inches apart. She could smell his clean, spicy man-scent. Arousal curled in her lower belly and tingled her sex. “I’m saying that if I think you’re going aloof and cold because you’re thinking of this other woman, I reserve the right to call you out on it. And I don’t want to be shut out if I do.”