It was well after midnight before any of them started getting sleepy. They had been sneaking around the cellars, trying to find a secret passage that everyone said a building as old as the Tower had to have, just to see if they could manage to do it, when Dar yawned widely. "I think it's about time to turn in," he said. "We can always try again tomorrow, and I'm starting to get sore feet."

"Me too. Let's call it a night. You can show me where your rooms are, so I can find you easier from now on," Auli agreed.

They took her back to the hallway on the fifth level, where their rooms were, and Dar pointed at the doors. "That one's mine, and this one is Tarrin's," he announced. "I'll see you two tomorrow. Night," he yawned.

"Night Dar," Tarrin said as Auli gave him a kiss on the cheek by way of farewell, and he shuffled to his door and went in.

"Well," Auli said, leaning against the wall opposite him and looking at him. "I'm really not that tired. I just wanted to make sure Dar didn't think he was holding us up. "Want to play some chess?"

Tarrin remembered what happened the last time, when she offered to teach him to play… and part of him wanted to see if it would happen again. But the rest of him discounted that. Auli was his friend, he doubted he flirting had been anything more than what it was with Dar. Just a way she played with them. "I hate to say it, but I'm a little tired myself. I don't think we have time for chess, but you can come in and sit for a little if you want," he told her.

"Sure," she said with a smile. "I want to see if your room is better than mine."

She followed him into the room and looked around as he went across and opened the drapes that hid the door leading out onto the balcony. "Good Goddess, did I get raped over the rooms," Auli complained. "My room is like a closet. This one is bigger than mine, and it has better furniture." She plopped down to sit on the bed, and bounced up and down on it a few times. "This is a nice bed," she noted. "Not as soft as mine, but on the other hand, I don't like sinking into my bed like it was quicksand." She looked over at him and patted the bed beside her. "Come sit down," she invited.

"Are you going to blow in my ear?" he asked bluntly.

She looked at him, then laughed. "Only if you want me to," she said with a sly smile.

"Well, I don't," he said to her, and he sat down on the bed by her. "What are you going to do tomorrow?"

"I'm not sure yet," she replied. "Probably more talking."

"What are the Sha'Kar going to do after the talking is over?"

"Teach," she replied. "The humans here are woefully undertrained, and none of them can speak Sha'Kar. We're going to teach them up to our level. I think that's going to take a few decades," she grunted sourly.

"If anything, we have time," Tarrin said.

"It's going to be boring," she complained, flopping down onto her back. "Day after day after day of nothing but teach, teach, teach."

"Before, it was nothing but day after day of party, party, party," he pointed out.

"But parties are fun," she said with a sour look at him.

"Then make teaching fun," he said simply.

"If only it was as easy as saying it," she huffed, looking up at him. "Besides, before I was doing what I wanted to do. Now I have to do things I don't want to do."

"Welcome to the world of growing up," he teased with a chuckle.

"I'd rather be back on the island," she admitted. "I liked it there."

"It was a gilded cage, Auli."

"Maybe, but what a gild," she grinned. She propped herself up on her hands and looked at him in a slightly different way. "I have a question."

"What?"

"Do you remember anything at all from when you were a Were-cat?"

"Not really," he replied. "Sometimes I get these flashes, but they're more like images, pictures, or feelings. Nothing really solid."

"So you don't remember your girlfriends or your daughter at all?"

He shook his head with a sigh. "I feel sorry for them," he told her. "I know it kills them to see me like this, and it must hurt that I don't remember them. I know it would hurt me if my sister suddenly couldn't remember me."

"I can understand that," Auli nodded, sitting all the way up and turning a little towards him. "I have another question."

"What?"

"What would you say if I did this?"

And then she leaned forward, put an arm around his shoulders, and kissed him.

It was not a chaste, friendly kiss. There was a passion in it that curled Tarrin's toes in their boots, and he suddenly couldn't remember how to make his arms work. Auli pressed herself against his side more and more as she kept kissing him, pushing at him until she was literally in his lap with her hands on either side of his face to keep him still, continuing to kiss with with that same unbridled passion. Tarrin had never kissed a girl like that, or been kissed like that, at least not that he could remember, and she effectively paralyzed him with her sensual lips. The only way he could seem to move was to put his hands on Auli's shoulders, but he couldn't find the strength to push her away. He didn't want to push her away. He began to kiss her back as the passion in her kiss started working its magic on him, and all his careful plans to not get involved with Auli went up in smoke as soon as the passion of her kiss told him that she had no intention of stopping.

Depending on how one looked at it, what happened next was either good luck or bad luck. Tarrin had no idea the door had been opened, but Jesmind's rather angry shout startled Tarrin so badly that he nearly fell off the bed. Auli whipped her head towards the door so fast her hair smacked Tarrin in the back of the head, and was about to stand up. She did manage to shout in a rather unpleasant voice. "This is a private room!" she said angrily. "Excuse yourself!"

"Just as soon as you take your hooks out of my mate," she said in a vicious tone.

"He can't be your mate," Auli said in a hot tone. "I asked. That means he's available."

"Not for you, Sha'Kar," Jesmind hissed, extending the claws on both her hands meaningfully. "You have a choice. Walk out that door now, or they'll carry you out in six seperate buckets. Decide."

It hung there for a very long moment, and Tarrin used it to try to regather his wits. He'd never kissed a girl before-at least not that he could remember-and he never knew that it could have so much power in it. All he could think of was how nice it felt, and a part of him was furious with Jesmind for barging in and ruining the moment. But that other part of his mind that told him that getting involved with Auli would probably be a bad idea managed to resurface, at least now that Auli hadn't clubbed it into silence with her powerful presence, and he felt a little abashed at having been so easily wooed. He thought that he had a little more self control than that, but then again, he'd never met a girl quite like Auli. Tarrin didn't think many men at all could say no to her, not if they were kissed like that.

With all the grace of a queen, Auli stood up and smoothed her skirt. "I'll see you later, Tarrin," she promised with an inviting smile. "Count on it."

Jesmind glared at the Sha'Kar woman as she swept past her, not even bothering to look at her, then glided out of the open door. Jesmind slammed the door behind her, then stood before it giving him a withering look. "And just what do you think you're doing?" she demanded.

"Well, I certainly didn't plan that," Tarrin told her.

" She did," Jesmind snapped. "You should know better than to get mixed up with a girl like that, Tarrin. She doesn't care about you. She just wants to conquer you."

"Isn't that what you did to me when we met?" he asked pointedly.

Jesmind spluttered slightly, looking a little embarassed, then she cleared her throat. "That was different," she said waspishly.