Nights like these he cannot understand why he is without her.

There had always existed a feral spark in the dark quality of her seeming tranquility. Spareness of light against the dusky expanse of her eyes, like a flicker caught between the horizon and the earth. Beneath her smiles (always closed-mouthed) there seemed to be the possibility of consequence.

What if I seduce you? Or if I allow myself to be seduced?

A questioning look in her haughty eyes. Or was it suggestion he saw there? He never could tell.

She was like a sphinx to him, that mysterious. Accessible and inaccessible at once. Her pitch-black eyes, that midnight stream of hair cascading down her back. Her lips from which he had drank as if a man living within drought. Her prim, dark loveliness. An icicle on fire. He used to think he knew her entire body by heart, but the truth was that he knew little else about her.