When he eased her onto her back, she was flushed and beautiful, hypnotized by her inward sensations. But she touched his arousal, feeling his moist tremors as he fought his body. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

That she would be so mystified nearly tore his heart in half. “Because you’ve earned the glory due a woman.”

She pulled him down. “But I’m ready.”

“No you’re not. Not by half. I don’t enjoy taking a woman before she’s ready.” Never mind that his human body wanted it and no more nonsense.

She kissed a line up his abdomen, threatening to drive him over the edge. Her whispered words tickled his flesh. “Let’s just see how ready I am.”

She moved and his sensitive organ was almost enveloped before he realized he couldn’t endure much of that and still bring her to a higher pitch. He pushed her away with a gasp.

“Titus, what is the matter with you!”

Her sharp frustration bit into him, and nothing but whole truth would do. “I want this to be perfect for you. Everything between us is real-and I’ll never lie to you. Never. I said what you gave me would cost you nothing-and so it shall be. If you let me do this for you properly, all I took when you let me drink will be restored and more. Otherwise, if you give to me repeatedly, you’ll grow weak and depressed, and I’ll hate myself. Even with just this once, you’d feel a drain on your vitality.

Her features, wiped clean of the years by her rapture, froze as a new reality intruded. “You really are a vampire.”

He kissed the base of her neck and traced a line up to her lips. “Yes. I live in your love and wither without it. Let me show you the gift I have for you, if only you’ll be patient enough to receive it. Please. Let me.”

“If you don’t hurry, you’ll have to start over.”

He let his kiss tell her how much further they could go together. He took his time, following the body currents, stimulating each and every bit of skin and deep muscle, until the currents of orgasm would move unobstructed by tension. As he worked his last devotions, he felt the intense surge of ectoplasm, as if energy had come into her from nowhere and she had made it living substance for him to feed on.

It was magic. He dared think no further than that. “Now, you’re ready!”

In that deep penetration and matching of even deeper rhythms, his body soaked up the excess substance she poured forth, and the liberating joy of it drove him over the top and into the headlong plunge of release.

It was the greatest perfection he had ever achieved.

“Titus?”

“Hmm?”

“I think it’s morning.”

“What?” He sat up, disoriented. The clock said he’d slept ten hours without even rigging his wires around the bed. His clothes were strewn across the floor. On the sink, the glasses and pitcher sat, dry and crusted.

Inea had one arm flung carelessly over her face, her eyes buried in the crook of her elbow. The ends of her fingers brushed his shoulder. They were shaking. He kissed her palm but his touch didn’t trigger the expected response. It wasn’t just his sated condition, either. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just a nightmare. I hate watching the news before bedtime. Damn Abramovitch, anyway.”

Abmmovitch? It was an incredible effort to dredge up the association, but then he had it: the Russian who wanted to prove Earth was vulnerable to attack from outer space aliens. Her xenophobia! Cold sweat broke out all over him. Had he misjudged her? If she hadn’t changed her attitude, though, why was she on the Project at all?

Inea turned to sprawl over the edge of the bed examining the apartment’s master controls on the bedstand.

“Do I use the shower first?” she asked. “And how do I charge the water bill to my apartment?”

Alarm lanced through him. Abbot could trace her to him through bills. All Abbot knew for sure right now was that Titus would like to feed on Inea. He had no idea how very much Inea meant to Titus, and so if casual checking turned up no other connection, Abbot would have no reason to look closer at Inea, no reason to consider using her as a weapon against Titus, and thus no reason to discover that Titus had broken the Law of Blood by not silencing her with Influence.

Striving to seem casual, he palmed sleep out of his eyes. “Never mind, my water allotment is generous. Go ahead and shower. The boss can be late.”

She rolled off the bed gathering her neatly piled clothing. “Actually, the boss is too zonked to move.”

“The boss is replete for the first time since leaving Earth. Maybe for the first time ever.” He lay back and flung his elbow over his eyes as she dialed the lights up. “Just let me enjoy it another five minutes.”

She passed the mess on the sink without a glance. Squinting under his elbow, he watched her, fascinated by the effect lunar gravity had on her buttocks and breasts, lazily toying with the idea of writing the equations to describe that tantalizing motion: a Song of Songs written in physics, celebrating the similarity between the surging foment of stellar plasma and the incendiary effect of semifluid flesh.

He drifted into the abstracted state in which he did physics, letting the delicious relaxation steal over him.

It seemed only moments later when Inea emerged, dressed, combing her sleek wet hair and carrying something in one hand.

I borrowed your comb. I’ll bring my things up here tonight-“

She saw the mess on the sink. “And when I move in, we’ll have to do something about this sort of thing.”

Abbot. How can I warn her about Abbot? If Abbot ever did investigate her mind, he’d find that Titus had endangered not just himself, but his own father and all luren, by letting her go unsilenced. Worse yet, if he so much as hinted that Abbot was any sort of danger to him or to her, she’d immediately take steps to investigate Abbot and so attract his attention. But if Titus threw enough of a scare into her to keep her from deviling Abbot, then she’d betray herself through sheer nervousness. No, he didn’t dare say anything to her if he valued her life-and his own.

When he didn’t answer, she turned, her expression mirroring Titus’s consternation. With wild alarm edging her voice, she said, “I can’t believe this is just another one-night stand!”

Before he knew it, he was off the bed and hugging her. “No! This is forever. Permanent. Exclusive. I’ll marry you-any vows you want-as soon as we get back to Earth.”

She stiffened. “Why wait? Or at least, why not live together if we’re sleeping together?”

Searching frantically for a way to say it, he led her to the table and sat her down. “Wherever I am, there’s always danger. Always. If people notice I’m-odd-I might not know until it’s gone too far. It happens to those of my blood, and most often in small communities. If it happens to me here, I don’t want you hurt.”

Absently, she put a small brown vial down on the table, his blood pressure medication. “What makes you think I wouldn’t stand up for you now that I know the truth?”

“I wouldn’t want you to. When things get that bad, anyone who defends one of us gets burned too. I don’t want to risk you.”

“You don’t want to risk me? If you think I’m going to wait until Earth to do this again, you’re very-”

“Just until tonight. Your place. Okay? Nobody will know I’m there except you. And you’ll know. I promise.”

He kissed her, but as he got involved, she pulled back, studying him. “I’ll be late for work. What’ll my boss say?”

“He won’t say a thing,” he teased. “But your boss’s boss may scream at us all.”

“Carol? She never screams.” She extricated herself and moved to the door. “But Shimon will yell at us if we don’t finish tomorrow. Besides, what would Abbot say if we blew it now? He’ll go down in history as a genius for reconstructing this system in record time.”