You are almost twenty-five, girlfriend, and I am right there with you. You can't afford to give up a single rerun of a feminine thrill, not even in your dreams. And ain't Ric's Latin lover act so way better than dodging half-vamp bully boys or alien probes from Hell? Let him at me! Play it again, Samantha. And again and again.

I ignored Irma's irritation, letting myself drift back into the moment when nightmare had segued into wet dream. My nightmares had never had a happy ending before. Ric had awakened pleasure in me where I'd been conditioned to feel panic.

The deep gratitude I felt for that might have been love. I didn't know. An unwanted orphan doesn't much feel the love. I knew my body loved him. I knew the joint psychic link we'd felt when we dowsed together for an innocent cache of water in Sunset Park and found that the dead supernatural had sealed our sensual connection.

Umm. I'd forgotten the rocking motion of his hips against mine in that dim nightclub hallway. The slick liquid glide of his lips against mine. The glint of his gold wristwatch on his olive-skinned wrist. The luminous whites of his eyes against the swollen-pupil black of desire in his eyes. That narrow gold belt snaking around his hips.

I snuggled in the smooth sheets, opening my mind and heart to the possibility of Ric. Irma purred in the back of my mind. I was just more up front about it.

Chapter Five

DREAM OF THE DREAMBOAT…

Ric called me the next morning for a date.

"At the county morgue?" I asked. "You have something kinky in mind?"

"Always, but this is business. Grady Bahr, the coroner, called me yesterday with info about the Sunset Park corpse couple. I mentioned I might bring a colleague. They'll make you a visitor's badge, so I gave him your name. He said you'd already met."

"Someone suggested I check with him earlier, so I did."

I didn't mention that the "someone" was Snow, who seemed to consider me his house detective at times. I doubt Ric would want me consulting, or consorting, with a guy whose hobby was addicting infatuated women to devouring onstage kisses.

"Anyway," Ric went on, "he likes you enough that he'll put you on the consultants' list like me. When can you meet me there?"

I liked it that Ric wasn't offering to pick me up. My independence seemed as important to him as it was to me. Damn, that man just wasn't making one wrong off-putting move.

"Ten?" I suggested.

"Fine. Maybe we can catch an early lunch afterward."

I laughed. "The law enforcement pro. Making a lunch date after a visit to the morgue."

"Shouldn't be gruesome. This pair has decayed down to the bones, remember?"

How could I forget? Yet those bones had communicated intimately enough with him and me, even before we'd guessed Ric's dead-dowsing abilities had hit a double jackpot in tranquil Sunset Park.

I was dying to hear what Grady "Grisly" Bahr had for us, but needed to grab an energy bar and take Quicksilver for a forty-minute run in the park across the street, then shower before leaving for the morgue.

Usually the desert air-dried sweat before it could form drops, but I did have to slather sun screen on my pale skin. And slather it on again after a shower. If I went out early enough, I could let Quick run off his leash to take great galloping loops around the far bounds of the park before coming back to me.

I knew a responsible pet owner would have him "fixed," but he'd already demonstrated one important paranormal gift. Did I want to eliminate a genetic line that could heal in this often-hurtful world? Besides, Quicksilver is smart and strong and a survivor; his offspring would be too. I'd adopted him at Sunset Park pet adoption event when I overheard he was scheduled to be put down, but one thing was clear from the first soulful gaze of his baby blues: He had "picked" me. He not only survived, but now did his considerable darnedest to ensure that I did too.

Quick's gait was loose and powerful, as beautiful as a thoroughbred's to behold. It made me wonder who had let this magnificent specimen get away from them.

I'd probably never know, like I'd never know who had dropped my infant self off on some Delilah Street somewhere twenty-four years ago. Or whatever exact day was my birthday, give or take a few. Me and Lilith? Abandoned together or apart? I needed to look into my options for tracing my "roots" as an abandoned baby, if any bureaucratic system would let me.

Not that I didn't have enough on my "To Do" list.

Right now I needed to find out more about who-what vampire, that is-had died with mob boss-hotelier Cesar Cicereau's lovely teenage daughter in Sunset Park almost seventy years ago.

Was he her prince charming or not?

RIC was waiting for me by his vintage bronze Corvette at the bland, boxy coroner's building-waiting for me and my 1956 black Cadillac, Dolly.

Dolly could have crushed the Sting Ray and maybe even outraced it. She would be worth plenty on the collectible car market, but she was my fortress, my mobile home, my soul sister, and no one was getting her and her chrome bumper bullets except over my dead body.

Which body, by the way, was feeling very lively as I took in Ric's usual business outfit: expensive vanilla-colored tropical weight suit, silky shirt and tie. The look was great for corporate consulting work. No one would ever take him for an FBI agent, already legendary in his late twenties as the "Cadaver Kid" for his knack of finding corpses.

Now he is ex-FBI and we were heading into Corpse Central to find out more about bodies we'd already found.

I say "we" because I'd contributed to this particular find. Ricardo Montoya could dowse for the dead since childhood, but walking skeptical me through the dowsing process had raised more than a pair of buried corpses. It had put us into close proximity, my back to his front, creating a sensual overload (okay, it was a mutual zipless orgasm) and my scary new psychic visions of the dead amplified Ric's inborn corpse-finding ability.

Ric opened Dolly's heavy driver side door for me, mainly to eye the pristine red leather upholstery. I knew he'd love to take Dolly out on a lonely highway outside Vegas and run her up to full speed, but he knew I wouldn't like that. He'd just have to settle for taking me out on lonely highways at full speed.

"Jeez," Ric said, slamming the door shut with the sound of a meat freezer locking, "the troops could use these in the Middle East."

When I stood up in my going-to-meeting high heels, we were nicely parallel in all the right places. We just stood there, silent, savoring the heat between us.

Ric took my elbow. "So you went out and seduced the coroner on your own. It took me a year to get an in with the old goat."

"You don't have my advantages."

"Definitely not," he agreed, grinning. Without the grin, he continued, "I want to nail the identity of the dead guy fast. You'll get the Cicereau syndicate on your tail any day now for knowing his daughter is one of the two corpses. Once the police can announce both identities, it's out in the open and you won't be worth going after." He paused. "At least you won't be worth going after in that way."

We stopped, gazed, smiled.

I'd never felt that odd combination of lust, love and looniness. Ric was much more sexually experienced than I, but I doubted he'd ever felt this way either. Me twenty-four, he twenty-eight, both orphans in the thrall of first love, like the bodies we'd found. Or had they found us and passed on the fatal infection?

Why did I think love was a lethal disease?

He shook my elbow a little to pull me out of my trance. "Come on, but don't lose the dewy look, Del. Bahr likes lovely young women, especially if they're alive. We want to play on our source's weaknesses."