His words excited me. "Yes."

He swept the hair off of my sweat-damp neck, then strung a necklace of kisses around it as far as his lips could reach. I was melting with the need to have him inside me.

"I've always felt you flinch a little at first penetration. If you were abusively invaded, Delilah," Ric whispered, "you need to get past it. Sick people hurt others sexually because it mis-wires the lines between pain and pleasure. Whoever, whatever hurt you inside, it can be all pleasure now. Feel it. Feel how good what I want makes you feel."

Ric's voice was as soothing as a lullaby. "Don't worry, Delilah. We'll solve the mystery of your nightmares. We'll go back to Kansas. Investigate. This night, you're not dreaming. We're not dreaming. We're having sex. Does it still hurt a little? Or does it just hurt so good?"

I thought about it: his weight half on me, compressing my agitated nerves, this sudden, frank interrogation delving my lost past traumas, the throbbing tingle between my legs feeling oh-so-exciting.

"It hurts only because I want what you can give me more this instant than I ever have."

His hot fleshy tongue plunged into my bared ear as he finally pushed inside me. I was awash in salty, wet hot desire.

We murmured our litany incoherently. Our names. The word of love.

Amor.

And when I could feel him nudging the mouth of my womb, I felt completely sated, a sublime satisfaction at again accomplishing this for him, for me, every cell in the surrounding tissues touched and responding to such perfect possession, mine and his, that my panic popped like a bubble and vanished into the past.

Some dark veil in my mind dropped away.

"All right?" he asked.

I nodded and twisted my face over my shoulder as his mouth met mine and we siphoned warmth and wetness from each other until he broke the contact.

"And now-" Ric's deep voice was saying as his brushing fingers merely touched my clitoris.

I erupted in a Vesuvius of moans, almost fearing surviving such a seismic orgasm. Rip-roaring was the only way to describe the roller coaster of a climax that had me screaming and hyperventilating.

Ric's hot hands bracketed my pelvis as it shuddered, then slowly withdrew. I just wanted to lie there savoring the waning aftershocks.

He settled beside me, throwing a leg over mine, the sides of his black satin robe covering me like wings. That recalled my night flight with Bela Lugosi's Dracula, another escapade I didn't dare tell Ric about. I was beginning to feel like a compulsive liar. Intimacy was a tough exercise in trust.

Also, I'd never literally slept with anyone before and was nervous. I fought to exile my regrets and bask in the afterglow. His body was warm and comforting. I was beginning to feel drowsy. I felt safer totally exposed and plumbed on this makeshift sofa-bed with Ric than in the Enchanted Cottage. I hoped I could stay nightmare-free until morning for once.

I woke up the next morning-first and nightmare-free- and rose on one elbow. Light was filtering down from a skylight I hadn't noticed the night before. The black satin robe was wrinkled beneath us, and Ric still slept beside me, face down too.

I smiled as I admired the way his dark hair curled on his nape, the sight of his brown, black-haired forearm still around my hip, the same swarthy, very masculine leg lying between my snow-white limbs. He would make an impressive werewolf.

I didn't move, not wanting to wake him, feeling what I never had in my life, sexually sated but also vaguely maternal and tender, something I'd never show him when he was conscious.

For the first time, I felt a surge of loss for a best friend forever girl buddy, someone I could whisper with about what we'd done and compare giggling intimacies. Was it good? Was it naughty? Normal? God forbid that I shouldn't be apple-pie normal.

Hey, what am I, chopped liver? Irma demanded.

You've been AWOL, I told her.

Just knocked out and knocking back in sensual paradise. That was an awesome fuck and a mind-blowing, bitchin' orgasm, girlfriend. And you want to worry about it?

He thinks I was assaulted, I told her, and myself. He thinks it's good therapy for me to confront it.

Right. Mr. Self-sacrifice. And you don't consider a killer orgasm good therapy? I give up. I'm going back to my wet dreams.

I was glad she retreated. I wanted these rare moments alone with Ric, when he was blissfully unconscious, as I'd been last night after he'd delved the depths of my psyche and my body.

Some shadow pattern overlaid his bronze, hairless back. Maybe the skylight had built-in miniblinds for sun control.

I put my hand out, palm down, but the shadow didn't show there.

Surprised, I looked down again. The pattern was made of spokes and bars, but too random for blinds. My heart started pounding like werewolves were hot after me as my stunned brain recognized what I had seen. My body wanted to rear away, run, but I didn't dare wake him now.

He stirred under my scrutiny and rolled over on his back.

His change of position allowed me to slide out from under him as slowly and smoothly as I could, and over the back of the sofa to avoid waking him. I didn't even collect my clothes that were strewn on the floor, but crept out into the hall, then paused, leaning against the wall and shutting my eyes.

Apparently secrets, trust and intimacy issues worked both ways. Ric had lulled me into confronting the vague ugliness of my past, but I'd soothed him into revealing an even more obvious proof of his even uglier past. And he was worried that I'd been assaulted?

Even shut, my eyes saw the raw grotesque pattern radiating out to cover all of Ric's back to the shoulders and waist and sides. Welts as thick as my forefingers, seeming to tunnel under his skin like invading parasitic giant worms.

Whip welts.

What monster would do this?

Where could I go with my forbidden knowledge? What could I do with it except conceal it? How?

I snuck back into the den to retrieve my clothes, then raced to the master bathroom and dropped my clothes there, turning on the shower. The house's computer system responded to my activity by turning on a morning radio show in the kitchen.

Leaning against the shower's glass blocks, I adjusted the water until it was warm and stepped under it. The hard-rain patter of the massaging showerhead matched the flamenco-beating of my heart. I stood under the head as needles of steaming hot water pummeled the top of my head.

And then my tears came, running in rivulets to mingle with the pouring water, washing down my face and chest and all the way to my toes and down the drain that was swirling away all this noisy, rushing water, including my accompanying sobs.

I'd never been a crier, but now I understood and wished I didn't. This was the one thing he hadn't told me and, therefore, the one thing I didn't dare ask him about now. He'd been so careful, but he'd gotten carried away last night, like I'd been carried away.

No wonder he loved that we had met and connected spoon-style, my back to his front. No wonder he dressed in expensive clothes. I remembered buying a fifties Dior suit at an estate sale once and having it altered by my usual tailor. "It feels so good on," I cooed about my find.

She'd nodded and said, "Money buys comfort." As well as love buying comfort.

No wonder I could never put my arms around Ric, comfort him. My full, encompassing embrace would be scouring. Now I had one more thing, one major thing, to conceal from Ric. I wasn't good at that, lying by omission.

Stop bawling, Irma said. We've never done that, no matter what.

"We've" never been in love before.

"I'm so screwed," I wailed aloud, in the thunder of the shower.