Just the idea of lying in bed pressed against her gorgeous body, with nothing between them but the thin fabric of her nightgown, turned his body to fire and his core to molten heat. And, until he had figured out how to protect her from the dangers after him, he dared not allow that barrier to crumble.
As the silence stretched between them, Mira jumped up. "Let me do the dishes," she said. "All I did for dinner was help make a salad and open cans."
Before he could object, she gathered the bowls and made a stack, then paused.
"Do you—er—do dishes in the spring at night? I don't suppose you have a light."
"Lantern."
It was a little battery-powered one. He showed her how to turn it on, and she carried it while he carried the stack of dishes.
The yard was different at night, and he saw that Mira noticed it too. At night the island felt bigger, with the vast darkness all around and the sky full of stars overhead. The spring made gentle music as it trickled over the rocks.
Neither of them spoke; it felt unnecessary and disruptive. Dane handed her dishes and she washed them and made a neat stack on top of a flat rock.
"It's so quiet here," Mira said, her voice soft. "I used to think so on the boat, too, but there was always something, the noise of the engines and the radio. I'm not sure if I've ever been anywhere this quiet before."
"In a good way?"
"Oh yes, in a good way," she reassured him. "Although I am starting to miss the sound of other people's voices. Don't you even have a radio, or a battery-powered CD player, oranything?"
Dane shook his head. He felt strangely guilty about it. He wanted to give her that; it had just never seemed to matter to him before.
"It's okay, no worries," she reassured him, evidently recognizing his concern. "It's not a complaint. I just wonder how it doesn't get to you after a while, with no one to talk to and no other sounds but the ocean and the wind in the trees."
"I don't know," he admitted. "It's just how it is."
And how it had to be. When he had first come to the island, he hadn't trusted any sort of electronic device, even something as simple as a radio. He had been too concerned that someone might use it to track him. This now seemed unreasonably paranoid.
Maybe he'd been living alone too long. He needed another person as a reality check.
He looked at Mira in the gentle light of the lantern. Her face was turned down, the light casting shadows across her cheeks as she dried the dishes with a soft, clean towel.
He yearned to lay her down on the bed and make love to her as she deserved. But not with all these secrets between them. She didn't deservethat.
"Mira," he began.
She looked up, her lashes casting long shadows across her eyes. "Yes?"
He stumbled on the words. How could he explain something that would seem insane to her? The silence between them became awkward, until finally he asked, "Want me to carry those back in?"
"Yes, that would be nice." She smiled and passed him the clean dishes, then neatly hung up the towel over a branch to dry.
She was adapting to living in his world much more readily than he would have thought most people who were accustomed to all the comforts of civilization would have done. She didn't seem to mind at all. But then, she had made her home on a boat and, before that, had lived out of a military rucksack. It was no surprise that she had little trouble adjusting to washing her dishes in a spring and sleeping in a one-room cabin.
He had never met anyone like her before—someone who fit him like the other half of a puzzle piece.
By the time they returned to the cabin, he had made a decision. He would get the crate of books for her tonight, and in the morning, he would tell her about his shift form. This way he could prove the truth of what he was saying, in case she had trouble accepting it. And after that, he would answer all of her questions with perfect honesty.
Having a plan made him feel better. It was not putting it off, it was just waiting until he had proof. In the morning, he would tell her everything.
Mira was already visibly flagging, still weary from her ordeal. "Well, if we can't share the bed, then let me take the floor, please. I can't keep kicking you out of bed in your own house."
Dane made her up the most comfortable pallet that he could, with most of the blankets and pillows. Mira looked at that with a rueful little smile. "It defeats the purpose of me giving you the bed if you sleep on a bare mattress anyway."
"There's a blanket."
"Fine, I'm too tired to argue about it." She stretched out on the pallet, still dressed in most of her clothes, and pulled a blanket over herself.
