"And?"

"And." Ric took such a deep breath that my head on his shoulder heaved up and down as if riding an Atlantic swell. "The leader was ex-military, a decorated major-turned-D.C.-bureaucrat doing a final, pre-retirement field assignment. I was considered a feral child. His wife was a Georgetown University psychologist. They had no children. I was a 'fascinating case'. I went home to them, which included a couple years in behavioral labs."

"This was better?" I asked, horrified.

He nodded. "Better. My…adopted mother is a brilliant analyst. She pioneered a method of breaking through to abused or isolated or autistic children with me."

"And adopted you."

"Not officially. That's why I'm Ric Montoya, not Phillip Burnside, Jr."

"How did you get your name?"

Ric smiled nostalgically for the first time since I'd known him. "She and I sat down with a baby name book and a surname history book. We went through Latino names that didn't remind me of my keepers. That's how my father got leads on the identities of the captured coyotes, who weren't talking."

I could picture that. The sophisticated American career woman and the wary, half-wild Mexican waif poring over name books as if they were fairy tales. Although randomly named, at least Ric had a memorable moment about the occasion. He wasn't named after a street like me.

"Why didn't they formally adopt you?"

"They were a couple complete unto themselves, never wanted kids. I became a canvas on which they could paint something permanent, a tribute to their union."

"You make them sound so… cold."

"They were people of the mind, not the emotions. They gave me my mind back and let it expand a thousand times. I'll always be grateful. I'll always be ambivalent. Do I love them or do I owe them? Do they love me or do they love what they made me become?"

"Adoption is so… major."

"Maybe not being adopted is not so bad, hmm?" He kissed me softly on the neck. "I have no quarrel with them. I respect them and do anything they want as long as I don't lose any part of the self they worked so hard to find and develop."

"They don't always understand that."

"No. An understatement. They were not happy when I left the FBI to consult. But they don't know about my dowsing facility." Ric grinned. "So now I have the same family issues as any ordinary American kid."

"And I still envy that."

"Don't. You're not alone any more. You are my family, Del. " He pulled me close to him, my legs straddling his hips, our pelvic heat melding. He whispered a Spanish phrase,"Tuvestir mi consuelo" or something.

I knew most of the words. Tu. You. Mi. Me. Vestir. Dress. Clothe. Consuelo? Wasn't that a woman's name? I still didn't know much Spanish, but I did remember an Italian nun at Our Lady of the Lake -Sister Maria Consolata. Her name meant "consolation, comfort."

"You clothe me." Consuelo made it, "in comfort."

I broke our kiss to brush my lips against the faint bruise on the left side of his throat, the heart side.

"Then put me on," I whispered.

Chapter Seventeen

First he had to extract me from the skin-tight leather jeans he lusted to remove without laying me horizontal.

This became a long, inciting process involving sliding and turning along the walls, kissing and laughing and breathing hard all the way through the bedroom into a room I'd never seen. By then he could lift my bare butt atop a cold marble table top and shimmy the leather off my legs, one by one.

He was kneeling before me and his mouth was at my center. "Do you have your Lip Venom with you, amor?"

"Sí, senor, but I'm tingling enough already."

"Never too much," he murmured through kisses.

I wanted to lean my head back and howl like a… wolf, not a coyote. Instead I giggled.

"You laugh?"

"Your five o'clock shadow tickles." He pressed harder. "Oooh. Now it feels so nice and rough." I growled the last word a little.

That made him pause, pick me up, and deposit me half sitting on a circular red leather lounge. I reached up to pull down his boxers and slid onto my tailbone, still half-sitting. He braced his arms on the back of the low sofa and pressed his pelvis into mine.

The tension of not having was overpowering the tension of almost having. I recognized the taut pain of anticipation in my inner muscles. "Now," I breathed. "Now."

"Ahora?"

"Ahora!" I repeated desperately, clenching my hands on the satin lapels of his robe.

"Ahora," he repeated, finally pushing inside, moving as I did to repeat that sublime act, over and over until we tumbled together into shudders and screams, pleasure wringing us out along every simpatico nerve in our bodies.

I sat half-upright but still laid out, throbbing, clinging, even crying.

Ric was murmuring comfort, even as his lips sipped up my tears. Was I all right? Nothing hurt?

Hurt? Hell, I was quivering with gratitude, lifting my hips hard into his to protest any separation, overflowing with emotion and… love.

It wasn't just the peak of orgasm. It was the high of total human connection. I almost understood the Snow groupies at that moment.

Ric was nuzzling my face and murmuring sweet Spanish nothings. His open, verbal passion was a rare gift, I understood. And after all that he'd been through. Te amo, te amo, we murmured, each lost in vying to express our emotions. Separate but blended. Incoherent yet mentally in touch as perfectly as our bodies.

I listened for other voices, other objections. There was nothing. Even Irma had left the building. It was just Ric and me and we were utterly and completely enough.

Even great sex isn't the answer to everything, I was discovering. Mi amor was a lawman. He'd needed answers as much as a journalist did, maybe even more. Catching me in the sated backwash of climax was a great time to interrogate.

"How did an innocent émigré from Kansas become the target of Cesar Cicereau and his hit pack of werewolves?" he asked, applying the torture of constant caresses.

After teasing more details of Ric's sad and shocking childhood history from him, it was time to confess that I didn't have any.

"I wasn't his target," I admitted. "A few weeks ago my exact double was autopsied on Hector Nightwine's Crime Scene Instincts V: Las Vegas show."

That made Ric sit up and take notice and more liberties. "Double, paloma? Hard to believe there could be two as uniquely smart and sexy as you."

"Lilith," I said. The name made him frown. "Yeah, another shady lady from the Bible. She gave her last name as 'Quince'. Hector says she'd arranged to kill herself for the autopsy. I spotted her post-mortem, so he says."

"Your exact double, the hair style, everything?"

"Just like a man to not notice that I don't have much of a 'hair style'. It's just a shoulder length blunt cut. And so was hers. She even wore my tiny blue topaz nose stud, which was a creepy coincidence."

"Yeah, where is that bashful little punk touch you had in Sunset Park when we first met?" His forefinger stroked my nostril.

"I quit wearing it shortly after I got to town and found out everyone's looking to find and grab Lilith. She apparently had so much sex appeal as a corpse that her image is the heart of a growing media empire."

"For Nightwine, great. Why have you been hiding this from me?"

"Maybe I'm afraid you might catch Lilith fever and forget me and go for her?"

"Jealousy is always a good motive, but I don't buy it in your case."

"I'm that secure?"

"No. You're that solitary. Jealousy grows in a crowd. So why didn't you tell me?"