"You seem so real," she said. "You touched me."

"Oh." Again a look of candor, and that stifled amusement. "Am I overstepping bounds to do that?"

"Don't you know? I've never been haunted before.” How strong and beautiful he was, the fierceness of his Gypsy features softened by the mystic moonlight. "I just assumed you'd be a more traditional ghost--wraith-like and transparent."

"This is a novel experience for me as well." His dark, lustrous eyes gazed off into the distance. "I've been dreaming away the years, waiting in that house." He looked at her, a faint smile curving his wicked mouth. "Then you appeared, and for the first time I had interest in assuming my worldly shape."

Marissa felt a shiver of pleasure run up her spine at the tender expression in his eyes. "I asked you before--why me?"

His face turned solemn, though his eyes sparked with intensity. "We're somehow bound together, you and I. Don't you feel it?"