She wished the rational part had kept quiet. She didn't want to think that Dalden might be one of those men. But she had to remind herself once again that she knew next to nothing about him. She'd told him practically her whole life history. He'd told her only that he was here to complete a pretty strange task and needed her help for it.

"Your uncertainty is felt," he remarked, his tone without inflection when there should have at least been some disappointment in it. "Very well, tonight we see to dating, tomorrow we see to having fun."

She started to laugh. She couldn't help it. He still didn't get it, and she just didn't feel like explaining it any further. Nor was she given a chance to. He was suddenly kissing her. For him, that was apparently allowed, part of dating. Nor could she possibly have objected in that precious moment of tasting him for the first time.

His other hand came up to cup her left check. Her face was warmly cocooned between his large palms, his lips amazingly soft. He was touching her in no other way, just holding her face while he gently kissed her, and yet she felt as if he was touching her all over. To have felt all of him just then would probably have been too much for her senses, already on a thin thread of control.

She found out she was right when a few minutes later, he sat down in the chair she'd been in and drew her onto his lap. Wearing shorts, her legs were mostly bare, and all of that bareness was now exposed to the buttery-soft leather of his pants. It was one of the most sensual sensations she'd ever felt, not even remotely similar to leather upholstery. But that wasn't even half of what she was able to feel of him, sitting sideways on his lap.

Against her hip was the power and strength of his desire, impossible to ignore. One breast was pressed hard to his side; the other rubbed against his chest as he wrapped her arm about his neck. One of his hands was then placed high on the back of her thigh to keep her from sliding, not that bare skin had much chance of sliding on leather. His other arm fully supported her back and drew her even closer to him as his mouth came down to hers again, this new kiss so different from before, deep, claiming, branding her his.

It was absolutely more than she could handle, the kiss along with touching him in so many places. The passion that overcame her was amazing. She had nothing to compare it with in her own experience. And it took her beyond thought, beyond anything except feeling and need.

She clung to him for all she was worth. She was kissing him back as if she meant to devour him. So she could hardly blame him for drawing the wrong conclusion.

"Have you changed your mind?" he asked. "You will show me where you sleep?"

She was gasping, while his tone was calmness itself. "No, no, I just… got a bit carried away."

"It was not my intention to punish you, yet does your dating seem to do that very thing."

"Huh?" Okay, so her thoughts weren't exactly coherent yet, but how could anyone equate punishment with kissing? "I thought you had the definition for 'punish' figured out. Need me to break out the dictionary?"

"Punishment may come in many forms."

Her thoughts were starting to clear, enough for her to realize he was probably talking about sexual punishment, the kind sometimes practiced when one half of a married partnership was annoyed with the other half.

"You mean like my telling you I've got a headache?" she said.

His frown was filled with sudden concern. "Your head hurts?"

She sighed. "No, that was just a comparison-never mind. And you don't have to keep petting me. I've got it under control now."

From the moment he had mentioned punishment, he'd been caressing her in a very nonsexual way, soothing her to calmness like he might a child. Not that it did much good, when any touch from him at all was stimulating. But he didn't seem to need calming down himself. If she couldn't still feel that thick bulge against her hip, she'd swear he hadn't participated at all in the heavy kissing they'd just done. His composure was-unusual, to say the least, something else beyond her experience of men.

But then she noticed his eyes, and she was completely reassured that she wasn't the only one who'd gotten hot and bothered. He'd been affected, all right. His amber eyes were liquid gold, filled with enough passion for three men, the intensity unnerving in a man his size. And yet his control seemed almost superhuman. His breathing was normal. He hadn't broken a sweat. His tone was steady, his heartbeat probably the same.

But with that passion still there under the surface, just laying in wait, she figured it might be prudent to more fully distract them both. To that end, she asked, "What was that foreign name you called me?" His questioning frown added the prompt, "Cara something?"

"Kerima? It means little one."

She burst out laughing. "I know you're big, but I am, too. It's music to my ears, really, but it's kind of ridiculous to call me little."

"For your men, perhaps. For me, you are a perfect size. Any smaller, and I would fear to break you."

She grinned. "Let me guess. You've had the same problem I have, of finding partners of an acceptable size."

He surprised her by shaking his head. "Size is of little matter. Frailty of body is of greater concern. But you are not frail, are you?"

"Wielding a hammer all day tends to build a sturdy frame, no pun intended."

"Pun-ah, you speak of house-building as well as bodybuilding. "

She blinked. "You got it without an explanation?"

"I have the proper translations now for all but what you call brand names."

"I don't get it. It just suddenly all clicked for you? A few hours ago you couldn't make head or tails out of some pretty common words, but now you can?"

"This is so."

"Then I think you'd better convince me that you haven't been pulling my leg all along, because what you're suggesting just isn't possible.

She had shot out of his lap, had her hands on her hips, was glaring down at him, so his remark wasn't really a question. "You are angry."

"Damn straight," she growled. "I don't like being made a fool of."

"Nor have you been," his calm tone continued. "The mistake was made because of the slowness of your computers. It has been corrected. I have been receiving the proper translations for several hours now."

"Language courses don't work that fast!"

"I am told you would understand 'new technology'," he offered. "The means of teaching me is not known to all the universe yet."

"World," she mumbled, somewhat mollified, though she was still incredulous that something had been invented that could speed along learning that fast. But apparently all the kinks hadn't been worked out of it yet, since he was still getting a few words wrong.

"Explain?"

"You keep using the word 'universe,' when you obviously mean world. Universe implies beyond this planet, but there's nothing out there in deep space, at least nothing alive, so 'world' is the better descriptive word for what you were talking about."

He smiled at her. "Are you certain?"

"That it's the better word?"

"That there is nothing out there?"

She made a soft snort, would have expounded on the concept that seeing is believing and so forth, but once again she got thoroughly distracted. She hadn't jumped very far away from the chair. He had sat forward, which narrowed the space between them even more, so he didn't have to even stretch his arms when his hands came to her hips to rein her back in.

"Ah… what are… you doing?" she asked a bit breathlessly.

He had circled her hips with one arm to put her in the position he wanted and keep her there. His other hand made a slow trip from the edge of her shorts down the back of her bare leg to nearly her ankle. His head was pressed squarely between her breasts.