He was still inside me, against me, behind and in front, fingers and one long, hard thick finger, so I felt deliriously surrounded. I let myself sag against him, held up by his invasive prongs like a paper doll on pushpins.

The shadow at his throat, his collarbone, teased my eyes.

My head lolled on his shoulder. "What's this?"

His face was close, focused down on me, eyes slit. I touched his skin under the slightly open collar.

"What do you think you feel, what do you see?" he asked.

I brushed his collar aside. Frowned. "You're…wounded."

He made a humming sound like a purring cat. My fingers pressed against the shadow. Puffy flesh, darkening as I touched it.

"Ric! Did…I do that?"

"Yeah. When you zoned out over the dead zone in the park. You…spasmed. All over. I felt every tremor. Then you turned your head into my neck and shoulder. And bit. You did that."

I stared at his bruised skin just peeking beyond the white starched corner of his shirt.

"I bit you?"

"Yeah."

"No! I'm not a vampire! I hate those bloodsuckers. I'd never do that."

He touched my lips, pushed his forefinger onto the ticklish top of my mouth until I panted with a strange sort of lassitude.

"Maybe you're a werewolf. I don't care. It's okay. It's a totally human thing, called a love bite, a passion mark, a hickey."

What was I?

"A deliciously passionate woman," he told me in the kitchen, where he applied an ice pack and antibiotic ointment to his neck on my insistence.

What I regarded as a scary untreated wound he seemed to consider a sensual trophy. Weird. But what did I know about any of this?

"But I need a little R &R until our next round. Waiting makes all the difference," he added, his eyes hot-fudge warm.

Not me! I resisted, not insisted. I feared, not dared. I was a…nice person.

Not hot.

Ric came close again, pulled me hip to hip. "We could…share a shower. A bed. Sleep. Or we could do what I really, really want to do."

"And that is?"

"I want to drive…you…home again."

Oh. The very thought of that low, leather-lined car with major vibrating road feel undid me. Ric's hands on the stick shift. Right. Drive me home. The reins were back in his hands. Drive me.

By now the semi-reclining passenger seat, sans seatbelt, would have been tolerable, but Ric didn't lower it. Instead, he pulled me down sideways once we were on the road, across the central compartment, my head pillowed on his iron-muscled thigh that any woman would have killed to have.

I was strangely out of it, dreamy. His fingers teased my skirt up over my bare hip, and then caressed my uppermost breast under the camisole. Again I was lulled by that easy, fringes sort of lovemaking, what pleased him as he steered the car and trifled with my body swaying to the drone of the engine, the motion, the fondling.

We made the same dreamy approach to my cottage door; only Ric stopped us at the bottom of the shallow steps to the front door.

"I hate to say this, believe me, but I've got to leave town again."

I didn't will it, but my fingers curled hard into his jacket lapels.

"Just a quick trip to D.C. to report on the Juarez situation. I'll be back in a couple of days."

"What'll I do for a couple of days?"

"Keep checking out the Sunset Park killings. That ought to keep you in the libraries and out of trouble. Besides, you'll be tender."

"So you want me on the shelf while you're gone?"

"I want you somewhere safe, Del, and thinking about when I come back."

"You got it," I said. Promised. I ran my hands along the smooth, silken edges of his lapels.

I was so besotted at that instant that I wanted to make love to his clothes, but I stopped myself from asking that he leave me the jacket. Now I understood why the public high school girls had coveted and worn their boyfriends' letter jackets. Or leather jackets, depending on what crowd they ran with. I had been so retarded! But Ric was catching me up fast. Hickeys. Letter jackets. Lust.

Quicksilver had given me the doggie third degree when I returned from my rendezvous with Ric. He'd not only sniffed my crotch and growled, but he sniffed my discarded clothes and growled even more. Then he curled up in the corner of my bedroom and regarded me accusingly while I began preparing for bed. At least I was home alone. Sort of.

That intent pale-blue gaze was enough to make me take my underwear off behind the closed bathroom door. Jeez! I escape having overprotective parents to answer to by being born an orphan and then I get a dog that thinks he's a duenna, which means chaperone in Spanish.

All I, or anybody reasonable, would say about a twenty-four-year-old fallen woman was…high time, honey! as Irma put it.

The shower water reminded me of the many fountains in Ric's house. I adjusted the temperature until it fell like flowing warm satin on my body. I really wouldn’t have felt comfortable sleeping in Ric's bed yet. One stage at a time. I donned my long granny nightgown and slunk back into the bedroom in the dark, easing under the covers.

I heard a long, disappointed, canine sigh from the corner. I'd call Quicksilver a bluestocking, except that he didn't wear any.

Morning was the usual bright and sunny. I decided to take Quick for a nice long run in the park to make up for my absence last night, and the absence of my supposed innocence, which his wolfhound nose could apparently detect.

Halfway through it, I let Quick off the leash to run far and wide, and sat out the rest of the marathon on a bench.

"Tender?" Irma asked me. "¡Ai, carumba, chica!"

Ric had warned me, but tender was a way too nice word for it. I was as sore as hell. On the other hand, the abiding discomfort reminded me of the excellent adventure we'd shared last night. I couldn't wait to do it again, probably much sooner than advisable, like today.

I must have been giving off super-satisfied pheromones because two strange guys immediately plopped down on the bench on either side of me.

They wore those bright-colored knit golf shirts with the itty-bitty alligator embroidered on the chest, one pink, one green, and plaid pants to match. Serious muscles filled out the Florida duds on all fronts. Their faces were hawk-nosed and bleak-eyed.

"Our employer wants to see you," Mr. Flamingo Pink said.

"Here I am."

"On his turf."

Oops. "Turf" was not a respectable corporate byword unless it was part of a Surf and Turf lobster and rib eye dinner at the local Stake and Ale.

"I can't right now. I'm walking my dog."

"You're not walking and I don't see a dog," Mr. Chartreuse answered. "Let's go, doll."

Each had taken me politely but firmly by the elbow. Together they lifted me almost off the ground. I spotted a white van idling by the curb.

Elbows, as I may have mentioned before, are the strongest offensive part of the human body. I was about to smash mine into colorful kidneys on either side and sprint to freedom.

Then the name on the side of the van registered.

Who sends a labeled van to kidnap an unwilling woman? The Magnus-Gehenna-Megalith Hotel and Casino Consortium, that's who.

"It's to your advantage," Flamingo Pink growled. "The head man is interested in you. You know how rare that is?"

Yeah, very rare, which was probably just the way he wanted me cooked, the freaking werewolf.

"He wishes to talk to you about a job," Mr. Chartreuse chimed in.

With these guys, "a job" was probably dangerous, illegal, and maybe even fattening. But I'd been itching to get on the inside of the M-G-M operation. Voila! as Christophe might say, if he was really French.