"Lilith is so popular everyone wants her image or the person they think is behind it-me."

"They'd kidnap you?"

"That's what Cicereau did. He wanted to make me a celebrity magician's assistant in his house act."

"Make you' being the operative issue. So he wasn't just out to stop you from investigating his daughter's murder? And you didn't tell me? Chica, we're not just lovers; we're partners."

"I know, but it's hard for me to think like I'm not alone anymore. Anyway, I got away the first time, but while I was at the Gehenna I was able to snoop in his personal computer-"

"Delilah! He surely had safeguards that would reveal what you did and where you went in his system."

"No. Cicereau is a technophobe. He never noticed a thing."

I didn't mention that Cicereau's right-hand muscle, Sansouci, had. Ric would want to put me in purdah if he knew how many big, bad werewolves I had aggravated in this town. His concern for me was welcome after my years of being institutionally ignored, but his protectiveness had an Old World fierceness that I couldn't let hamper my freedom.

"He noticed enough to catch you and ship you to his hobby hunting range in the mountains," he pointed out.

"Yeah, well, I had to go back to the Gehenna for proof and Haskell was looking to work for Cicereau and trapped me."

"Is that why Haskell is still stalking you? You escaped the bastard at the Gehenna?" Ric was indignant.

"Not completely, but sufficiently. Anyway, even the werewolves despise Haskell. Me, they wanted to use and then they wanted to kill when they decided I wasn't docile. That's when you rode to the rescue up in the mountains."

"Indirectly, you can thank or blame Hector for that too," Ric said. "I was astounded to find Hector's CinSim butler waiting at your cottage door when I got worried that full-moon night and came to find you. He told me about Starlight Lodge. I never dreamed CinSims had that kind of smarts or freedom."

"Hector knew nothing about it," I told Ric. "I don't know how the Invisible Man manages to slip his Inferno leash and get around town, but he saw me kidnapped and tipped off Hector's man Godfrey."

"So Godfrey was acting on his own too," Ric mused. "Fascinating. Was that the Invisible Man in the washed-out Ace bandages at Wrathbone's tonight? Or were your male companions all CinSymbiants?"

"Hey, good question. I took them for the real unreal thing. IM taking off his bandages for the fight proved it in his case."

As usual, though, Ric's skeptical ex-FBI agent instincts made me reconsider what had happened at Wrathbone's. It could be hard to tell CinSims from their CinSymbs.

"The police go undercover at Wrathbone's, for your information," Ric added.

"Great, so some of the CinSims and CinSymbs present could have been narcs. And then there was Haskell, not exactly undercover. Or even on active duty, come to think.

"That bastard! I didn't know he'd messed with you earlier at the Gehenna too. I wish I'd really hurt him."

His partisanship made me smile. I saw and heard the racist cop dismiss Ric as a "Meskin" in public and Ric kept his FBI-agent cool. The same cop laid a few fingers on me and Ric was ready to skin Haskell alive.

"I'm serious, Del. Kennedy Malloy told me she'd love to bust him off the force, but the police association would have to defend the sonovabitch."

"Captain Malloy," I said, invoking her title. "No wonder she's such a good police source for you, amigo. You have a thing for blond authority figures, as you just proved when you disarmed and strip-searched me in my Madonna wig. I bet she has a thing for you."

"You'd be wrong," Ric said, "and she'd be wrong. I have a thing for raven-haired reporters-turned-private-eyes."

He teased the bobby pins out of my platinum blond wig and threw it aside, releasing my hair to my shoulders. "I need to feel those midnight Rapunzel tresses of yours brushing my thighs and your lips brushing something else."

He slid down level on the sofa, pulling me down with him. I'd recently learned that I have no problem lying horizontal if I'm on top, and I set to work demonstrating exactly that.

"HOW do you sleep?" Ric asked much later when it was obvious we'd be spending what was left of the night on his red leather sofa.

"You don't want to get too close. I get ex-orphanage nightmares, so I might kick you."

"Kick away, you won't hurt me. No, I mean given your hatred of being on your back?"

"On my stomach," I answered, stretching face down to demonstrate.

Ric whistled something sexy in Spanish under his breath that I needed my Street Spanish dictionary at home to translate. He thoughtfully explained in English, "Nude, white-skinned, black-haired woman face down on red leather-would be quite the Maxim cover layout. I can work with that."

And so he went to work. His fingers teased the bottom of my butt and then strummed between my thighs. I burrowed deeper into the smooth leather, lifting my pelvis in lazy, content trust, all three of those conditions utterly alien to me before I'd encountered Ric. I loved being his sex object and making him mine, and was finally discovering what all the hooting and hollering about sex was for.

Ric hmmed his pleasure at finding me receptive for more, which only made my core heat flare along my nerves like liquid mercury. Not being able to see what he was doing ramped up my excitement.

He stopped doing anything for a moment and I lay there throbbing with sweet anticipation. I couldn't imagine not welcoming anything he wanted.

His voice came closer as he pushed higher along my side until his face was buried in my hair, his lips at my ear.

"Were you raped, Delilah?" he asked in a whisper. "Is that what's kept you unplumbed for so long? It's all right. You can tell me."

"But it's not all right! I don't think so. I don't think that's what happened."

"Something happened."

"Yes! No! I don't remember."

"And you feared it and it caused you pain?"

"Yes!"

"Does our having sex cause you pain?"

I tried to sort my tumultuous feelings, not wanting to hurt his. "Yes. But only a… little."

"You're virgin-tight, Delilah," he said tenderly. "Intercourse may be painful at times."

"Yes, I know. Muy delicado!' I tried to diagnose my feelings, the sensation I welcomed yet feared. "This, right now, it's just the pain of wanting so badly. I know it precedes pleasure. That old… other was only… pain. A lot of pain. And fear."

Ric sighed. I could feel his lips drizzling kisses on my neck and ear through the veil of my hair.

"Was anyone there?"

"From my nightmares, little gray men."

"Like ETs?"

He sounded so startled I had to stifle a laugh. Here I was, half-fucked, and we were discussing my very personal alien invasion nightmares. It occurred to me that Ric knew exactly how and when to draw out my most-buried fears and secrets: FBI man in bed.

"Were any of them women?" he asked.

"Women? No!" My reaction was visceral. Even I recognized that. I reconsidered. He was right to ask. "I suppose some of them could have been. I never thought of that. Why do you ask?"

"You went to an all-girls' high school and say you don't remember a lot of those four years. Girls can be vicious bullies."

"No! Some of them were snobby bitches, but the nuns would never have allowed it and they had eyes in the back of their habits."

"And what about the child abuse scandals in the Church?"

I was growing impatient with the interrogation. "That was mostly priests. Besides, what does it matter now, when you're holding me on the aching edge of an orgasm? Fuck me or forget it. You know you want to."

The relentless interrogator turned silk-voiced seducer. "You like me needing so bad to get inside you."