She sighed, feeling stupid. She hadn’t felt stupid in a long time. She’d vowed no man would ever make her feel like this. So why was she letting Gavin?
“It’s just been a long few days.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
He played with the ends of her hair. “Elizabeth, if we’re going to have any kind of relationship, you’re going to have to start opening up to me.”
She stilled, held her breath, afraid to move.
He’s playing you. Don’t trust him.
“Is that what we’re doing, Gavin? Having a relationship?”
“I don’t know. I missed you while you were gone. So maybe we are. Maybe I want to.”
He’d missed her? The giant hole in her heart filled up with longing and need. Part of her wanted to crawl up next to him, throw her arms around him, and tell him she loved him, that she’d been in love with him for years. The other part of her wanted to close off her heart and run like hell. “Don’t say things you don’t mean. This is just sex.”
He caressed her arm, letting his fingers trail up her neck. “I don’t say things I don’t mean. Not about this, anyway. I don’t really know what this is between us. I don’t have relationships with women, but I did miss you, so I’m pretty sure whatever it is that’s between us has become more than just sex. I kind of thought you had left for good.”
He sounded so sincere. She leaned back and studied his face, wished they weren’t shrouded in total darkness so she could read him better. “You did?”
“Yeah. I figured I pissed you off tying you up and asking you to talk about your past.”
“Oh. That. No. The sex was really good.”
He laughed. “Yeah, the sex between us is really good. But there has to be more.”
She looked out over the water, barely making out the whitecapped tips rushing toward the shore. “More sex?”
He made a low growl in his throat. “You’re trying to kill me. No, not more sex. If we’re going to take this any further, then there has to be more than sex.”
She wrinkled her nose. “More talking.”
“Yeah.”
“Talking’s overrated.”
“Now you sound like a guy.”
“That’s why you like me.”
“Because you’re a guy?”
She laughed. “No, because I’m not like your average woman.”
“You’re not at all like an average woman, Elizabeth. You’re not like any other woman I’ve ever known. That’s why I like you. You’re complicated. A giant pain in my ass most of the time. You frustrate the hell out of me. And I like that about you. But I don’t know anything about you, and that just doesn’t work for me.”
She swept her fingers across his goatee. “Mysterious is sexy, you know.”
He cupped her chin between his fingers and brushed his lips across hers. Everything inside her tightened as he took her mouth in a deeper kiss that lasted long enough that she thought he might forget about the talking part. She leaned into him, rested her palm on his chest, felt his heart rate quicken. But then he pulled back.
“Yeah, mysterious is sexy if it’s a one night stand. You’re not a one-night stand. You’re someone I want to get to know. Which means you’re going to have to open up and start talking to me.”
Once again he was heading down a track she didn’t want to follow. “You already know me, Gavin. It’s not like we’re strangers. You got a whole packet of information about me when you signed with me.”
He looked at her as if she’d just fed him bullshit. Which she had.
“Are you fucking serious? How dumb do I look?”
“What?”
“Your business portfolio is supposed to pass as getting to know you? I’m not talking about your bio, Elizabeth. I know where you graduated college and did your marketing internship. I know which sports agency gave you your start. But you didn’t start to exist in college. I want to know who you were before then. And if you don’t trust me enough to tell me—”
“Okay. Fine.” She pulled the blanket over her shoulders, wrapped her hair around itself, and pulled it into a makeshift ponytail. The wind had picked up, but the moody atmosphere outside matched her own. “What do you want to know?”
He tugged her closer and pulled the blanket over her legs. “Might as well start at the beginning. I want to know everything about you. You know everything about me.”
She did know everything about him. His family had become her family over the past five years because she had no family of her own.
“Well, let’s see. I was born and raised in Harrison, Arkansas. No brothers or sisters. My dad worked as a laborer, so he was in and out of work. My mom was a secretary, so she held down the full-time job. She was always working. I went to school, got decent grades. I was very lucky to get the scholarship to Brown—”
“Wait. We’re already on college? You skipped everything.”
“My childhood’s pretty boring, Gavin. I went to school. Not much to tell.”
“Did you have friends?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about them.”