I smiled to myself as I unhooked my seat belt. "Not good enough. Did you miss me?"

He got out of the car, going to open the trunk.

I followed, my arms crossed over my chest as I leaned a hip against the car. "Well?"

"Let me ask you this—did you miss me?" he said, slamming the trunk closed.

"Very much," I said, waiting.

His eyes lightened another few degrees. "I see. In that case—yes, I missed you."

"Good. Are you going to spend the night this time, or are you not yet ready for such a thing?"

"That was our original agreement, but I thought perhaps you might have changed your mind."

"I don't change my mind that easily," I said as we walked to the building, waiting as he opened the door for me. The faint sound of music from Mila's sex shop was the only sound to permeate this part of the building. I started up the stairs to our apartment, but Paen stopped me, pushing me up against the wall of the stairwell, his body blocking out the dim light that hung over the stairs until all I could see was the silver gleaming brightly in his eyes.

"You're tired," he said.

"I haven't yawned once. How can you possibly imagine I'm tired?"

"You said you weren't sleeping well," he reminded me.

"I slept on the train coming home," I answered, thankful that I had dropped off for a few minutes so I could tell him that.

"You look tired," he insisted.

I smiled. I couldn't help it; he was so cute trying to deny the obvious. "I do not look tired. I checked a mirror before the train arrived. The dark circles under my eyes are hereditary, not due to lack of sleep. I am exhibiting no obvious signs of fatigue."

He leaned into me. "I can feel that you're near exhaustion."

"Nuh-uh, that won't work either, because according to you, we don't have a psychic thing. So you can't possibly know what I'm feeling," I argued softly, my body turning into one gigantic tingling erogenous zone as he pinned me against the wall.

"Then you won't mind at all if I ascertain for myself your feelings on the subject of our having sex?" His voice was likewise low, but roughened with arousal.

"Good god, no. Ascertain away," I said, gasping as his hands slid up my waist to cup my breasts, causing me to rub myself against him like a cat begging for stroking. I clutched the back of his jacket to keep myself upright, my senses overwhelmed with the scent and feel of him.

"I'm going to kiss you now," he said, as if he had to warn me. My answer was to move sinuously against him, twine one leg around his, and grab his head with both hands to pull him into a kiss that I figured would make him see stars, if not actual galaxies.

The elf in me wanted to distance myself from the situation and analyze just what it was that made Paen so attractive to me, but bless my dad's mortal genes, there was enough of him in my chromosomal makeup to let me ignore the elf part and go into a full swoon of delight when Paen's lips touched mine. That touch was brief, but I didn't mourn its loss because what followed was enough to have my shoelaces melting.

It started out like a regular kiss—our lips were there, smooshing up against each other, tongues present but not yet engaged. There was a sense of aroused excitement with the first couple of passes of lip action, followed by a tentative, questing touch with the tip of my tongue. Paen's tongue answered, and suddenly he wasn't just kissing me, he was feasting, supping on my mouth, drinking me in like I was the source of all being. His body was hard against mine, but it wasn't an unpleasant sensation—far from it. While he was busy making love to my mouth, my body curled around him, trying to get closer still.

Wanting more, I poured into him the feelings he was arousing in me, the sensations he fired up deep inside me, the desires and wants and a whole slew of complex emotions that I couldn't even begin to imagine. I flooded him with what I was feeling—and he froze.

Is something wrong? I asked as his body turned into a statue. He pulled back, looking down at me with his quicksilver eyes, now so bright I swear I could read a book by them.

"This is not really an appropriate place to continue," he said, answering, but not really answering, the question I had mind-zapped him.

"Oh." I looked around at the dimly lit stairwell. "You're right, it isn't. Shall we go up to my apartment?"

He stepped back and indicated I should precede him. Speed on stairs has never been my forte, having inherited my father's tendency to clumsiness, but I made it up this flight in record time. I hurried into the apartment with an excuse on my lips for Clare to explain why I was dragging Paen off to my bedroom, but there was no Clare to be seen. Nor Finn.

"Huh," I said, peeling off my jacket and tossing it on the coat-tree. "I wonder if she and Finn went out?"

Ethereal giggling, followed by deeper, more masculine laughter, drifted out from behind the closed door to Clare's room.

Paen cocked an eyebrow at me. "I would say they stayed in."

"Geez!" I said, looking for a moment at Clare's door. "They just met! And now they're in there going at it like bunnies?"

The other eyebrow rose.

"We're different," I told both eyebrows. "She's not conducting an experiment, she's just giving in to her libidinous faery nature."

"Elves don't have a libido?" he asked, taking off his coat.

"Of course they do. They're just not as flighty as faeries. They don't feel the need to have sex on a daily basis, as most Fae folk do. They are circumspect. They have restraint. They can wait for the proper time and place, and most importantly, the right person to come along before they… rawr!"

Paen reeled back a few steps from the impact of my body being flung onto his.

"I want another one of those kisses," I said, wrapping my legs around his waist.

"Circumspection and restraint having gone out the window?" he asked as he hoisted me a little higher, staggering ever so slightly in the direction I pointed.

"I'm also human," I mentioned, nuzzling his neck as he struggled to open my bedroom door.

"Would you mind… thank you."

"So very polite. I love the Scots," I said as I reached behind me to open the door, closing it as Paen carried me across the threshold.

"Our politeness is just one of our attributes." He stopped a foot into the room, looking around it in surprise.

"My mother's idea," I said, unhooking my legs so I could stand. "She and Dad went to Africa last spring, so for Christmas last year she hired a decorator to come in and redo my bedroom. Don't let the malacca and mosquito netting fool you—the bed is quite sturdy."

"And the elephant head?" he asked, looking at the wall above the headboard.

"Fake. Mom wanted to get the real thing, but I had to draw the line somewhere. There's a matching foot basket I use for trash around here somewhere."

"I see. And the machete is for… ?"

I picked it up and gave it a twirl before hacking at an aggressive palm that blocked the path into the bedroom. "The plants are very real, and were tended by my mother before she turned them over to me, so they grow like crazy. I'm dreading what will happen this summer, once some actual sunlight gets to them. There, I think you can get by. Mind the rhino."

"Bench?" he asked, eyeing the large wooden figure that lurked in the shrubberies my mother insisted live in my room.

"Yup." I skirted a faux-leopard rug in order to fling a few dozen accent pillows off my bed. "You can ride him, too, but he's not very comfortable. I use his horn as a backscratcher when I have an itch I can't reach. So… um… here we are. Do you want to get naked?"

Paen thought for a moment. "Do you?"

"Well…" I looked at him, really looked at him. He wasn't movie star handsome, but I liked his face. It was a typical Scottish face, kind of long, with interesting cheeks, and a jaw that made my knees go a bit melty. His eyes were unparalleled—going from dark, cloudy grey-almost-black, to a silver so bright it came close to scorching me. I was still more than a little bewildered by my instant attraction to him, but there was no denying it was there. So where was the harm in giving in to it? "I think I'd like you to be naked first, and then I'll get naked later."