Time and Again

guileless smile that no woman should have trusted. "I must have been busy when it came out."
    She laughed again, with a quick shake of her head, a brightening of her eyes, "Sure. Both of us must have had pretty full schedules in the forties."
    He let that pass. "What was the story?" He didn't care about the plot. He only wanted to hear her talk, to watch her as she did.
    To humor him, and because it was easy to sit by the water and daydream, she began. He listened, enjoying the way she told the tale of lost love, heroism and sacrifice. Even more, he enjoyed the way she gestured with her hands, the way her voice ebbed and flowed with her feelings. And the way her eyes mirrored them, darkening, softening, when she spoke of lovers reunited, then pulled apart, by destiny.
    "No happy ending," Cal murmured.
    "No, but I always felt that Rick found her again, years later, after the war."
    "Why?"
    She had settled back, pillowing her head on her folded arms. "Because they belonged together. When people do, they find each other, no matter what." She was smiling when she turned her head, but the smile faded slowly when she saw the way he was looking at her. As if they were alone, she thought. Not just alone in the mountains, but totally, completely alone, as Adam and Eve had been.
    She yearned. For the first time in her life, she yearned-body, mind and heart.
    "Don't." He said the word quietly as she started to scramble to her feet. The lightest touch of his hand on her shoulder kept her still. "I wish you weren't afraid of me."
    "I'm not." But she was breathless, as if she'd already been running.
    "Of what, then?"
    "Of nothing." His voice could be so gentle, she thought. So terrifyingly gentle.
    "But you're tense." With his long, limber fingers, he began to rub at the tight muscles of her shoulders. He shifted, and his lips skimmed over her temple, as cool and stirring as the breeze. "Tell me what you're afraid of."
    "Of this." She lifted her hands to push against his chest. "I don't know how to fight what I'm feeling."
    "Why do you have to?" He skimmed a hand down the side of her body, astonished by the grinding need in his own.
    "It's too soon." But she was no longer pushing him away. Her resolve was melting in a flood of hot, hammering need.
    "Soon?" His laugh was strained as he buried his face against her throat. "It's already been centuries."
    "Caleb, please." There was an urgency in her voice, a plea that was at once weak and unarguable. He knew as he felt her body vibrate beneath his that he could have her. Just as he knew as he looked down at the clouded confusion in her eyes that once he had she might not forgive him.
    Need jerked inside him. It was a new and frustrating sensation. He rolled to one side and stood, and with his back to her he watched the water ripple.
    "Do you drive all men crazy?"
    She brought her knees up tight against her breasts. "No, of course not."
    "Then I'm just lucky, I guess." He lifted his eyes to the sky. He wanted to be back there, spearing through space. Alone. Free. He heard the grass rustle as she stood and wondered if he would ever truly be free again. "I want you, Libby."
    She didn't speak. She couldn't. No man had ever said those three simple words to her before. If thousands had, it wouldn't have mattered. No one would ever have spoken them in just that way.
    Pushed to the brink by her silence, he whirled around. He wasn't her amiable, slightly odd patient now, but a furious, healthy and obviously dangerous man.
    "Damn it, Libby, am I supposed to say nothing, to feel nothing? Are those the rules here? Well, the hell with it. I want you, and if I stay near you much longer, I'm going to have you."
    "Have me?" She'd been certain her system was too weak and warm for anger. But it filled her with a flash that had her body straightening like an arrow. "What? Like a shiny car on a showroom floor? You can want anything you like, Cal, but when those wants concern me I've got some say in it."
    She was magnificent- unbearably vivid, with fury in her eyes and flowers clinging to her hair. He would remember her like this, always. He knew it, and he knew the memory would be bittersweet, and yet his temper pushed him forward.
    "You can have all the say you like." Taking both her arms, he pulled her against him. "But I'll have something before I go."
    This time she struggled. It was pride, pride and anger, that had her jerking free. Then his arms came around her, twin vises that clamped her body