"He's not that kind of wolf. He's a wolfhound. Unless you're a closet werewolf, let him at you."

Ric, shocked, stared into my eyes. In that strange, mesmerizing moment, Quicksilver slipped my grip on his transformed collar and strained forward to lick a swath up Ric's raised right hand.

Somehow moonlight had entered the room, maybe when Quicksilver had busted through his usual window. A silver aura blossomed in the air. The unearthly light made Ric's bloodied white shirt fabric gleam again like chain mail. It made my bracelet of many chains lightning-bolt bright. It made the off-round metal moons on Quicksilver's collar glow in the semi-dark.

I heard a ghastly searing sound of flesh melting. No! What have I done? What have I permitted to be done?

Ric's hands burned white-hot under the passage of Quicksilver's fire-red tongue…He screamed, despite himself and probably a lot of training.

My tears must have looked silver as they sizzled down my face. I screamed too.

The only one who didn't scream was Quicksilver. He was busy licking Ric's hand, as dogs will.

Even shouts of pain and dismay were not enough to express our human anguish at this ignorant assault. The gruesome dog-lapping sound stopped as the silver effusion of moonlight faded. I gazed at Ric's mutilated hands, cringing. One palm gleamed with saliva where Quicksilver had licked. The skin was…fresh, unbloodied. Whole.

Ric saw where I was looking, at what I had seen.

He eyed Quicksilver's muzzle, as big as a young bear's, all white fangs and overheated red tongue, all grin that can be either canine friendliness or canine threat.

Ric bit down hard on his lower lip and nodded.

The moments of uncertainty were over. Time was moving again. The minute frozen in a net of quicksilver slipped into a new minute.

I sat back on my heels, exhausted by fear and wonder, to watch Quicksilver lick Ric's wounds clean, stroke by stroke, banishing bloody silk and shredded flesh, leaving healed skin behind.

"Dogs lick their wounds," I told Ric, I told me, told the damn dog who knew better than both of us combined what had happened here. Maybe it wasn’t any of us, but the enchanted cottage. Then there was the rational explanation, and I'm sticking to it. "There's a bacteria-banishing element in dog saliva. It works in the wild."

"On dogs and wolves," Ric pointed out.

The skepticism told me his hands were feeling better.

"Maybe you've got some canine DNA."

"No." Ric sat up, pushing Quicksilver back on his haunches. Dogs always overdo it. Ric wiped his hands on his shirttails. They came away clean, whole, perfect.

"Ick! Poison dog lips!" I said, quoting Lucy from the Charlie Brown strip for comic relief. Charles Schulz was with us again. The Kennedy Center Awards now reanimated a "national cultural treasure" each year as well as honoring those in their first lives.

"Right." Ric was watching Quicksilver wash his own hairy body with an amazingly large, supple tongue, especially the private area.

I moved to help Ric up. Instead, he pulled me down against him on the floor for a long, penetrating kiss. He wasn’t too shabby in the tongue department either.

I heard a faint, muffled growl.

"Ric. The dog might be…um, you know. Jealous."

Ric's hands on me were strong and certain. "He doesn’t like this, I don't like his public grooming habits. He'll just have to get used to it."

"Maybe you'll have to get used to each other."

"Yeah. Maybe." Ric's voice had become a soft, possessive growl.

I heard the click of Quicksilver's nails fade and then thump as he leaped out of his doggie door. This scene was obviously way too mushy for a wolfhound to witness.

Ric ran his hands down my arms, relishing their flexibility and strength as much as the feel of me. That had to stop. Right here, right now. I took hold of his wrists.

"You need to rest those hands. Recover."

"They're fine now. I'm fine."

I didn't answer, just pushed his wrists to the floor above his head and held them there.

He stilled beneath me, his eyes questioning.

"Rest," I said. It was an order. I must have developed this irresistibly firm bedside manner since my brief stint as a nurse.

"I'm fine, Del. No one laid a finger on me when I showed up with the reinforcements. My hands only caught it from holding onto a whirligig of barbed wire for so long."

"Are you sure you're fine? Everywhere? I'll have to see. Just don't move."

I felt a triumphant surge of life restored in every cell. I felt strong and alive. I felt…very hot. I had to have something right now, and I knew what it was. And according to Ric, it was fine.

I rolled over to wriggle out of my black stretch leggings and pull out the precious Cicereau photo saved on the small flash drive, which had stayed put and come through everything without any visible damage. Spandex rocks!

I rolled back over to straddle Ric's hips and unclasped his belt, unhooked his pants, ripped down the zipper, pushed all that aside, and pulled what I wanted through the slit in his silken shorts. It was still in that delicious state of becoming all that it could be, but I was far from through.

I lay atop him and stopped whatever he'd been about to say or do with a fingertip to his lips. Despite all he'd been through, only his top shirt button was undone. I undid another two and put my left hand over his heart. My right hand pushed the shirt collar aside until I could see the faint blue bruise at the side of his throat. When I'd exposed it, his heart rate quickened.

"Tell me about this." I whispered, stroking it with my forefinger.

"It's a love bite. You ought to know. You did it the first day you met me, mi tigre hembra"

Calling me "tigress" was only inciting me tooth and nail. "Why is it such a turn-on for you, mi hombre?”

"Lord, Del, you were there, in the park when that bolt of sheer sex coursed through us. You didn't even remember turning your head into me and biting my throat. That made me come. No woman's ever done that, given me an orgasm that way."

"I must be pretty potent." I ran a fingernail over the mark and felt his heart leap against the palm of my hand. Something else leapt against me.

"Del – " His voice and breath were ragged.

My own pulses thundered to feel him ready but pinned beneath me. But he kept his arms and hands still, giving me the lead I'd asked for. Demanded.

"We know now it was earth magic," he said, "borrowed lust, but it worked to bond us."

"No woman has ever bitten you in passion before? Anybody or anything else I should know about?"

He smiled slowly, flirting in foreplay. "I said no woman had ever bitten me there before."

I let my fingernail trail hard over "there." His heart rate doubled again, fluttering like a caged hawk in my hand.

"Who has then?"

"Are you jealous?"

"Madly. I want to know why you want what you do, so I can give it to you better."

His face sobered. No more teasing evasion. I took my finger from his throat, my hand from his heart, kissed the flutter, and laid my head on his chest to hear the deeper hollow thud of his heart through his body.

"I was a boy," Ric whispered finally, though we were alone and Nightwine's devices were disabled and no one else could overhear. He was speaking from a place he'd never wanted to go back to. I knew that place well.

"In Mexico. Dirt-poor Mexican desert. Still, there were cattle, burros, goats, and peasants to try to live off the bitter land. I was…an orphan, like you. I slept with the burros at night. I used to see visions of Our Lady of Guadalupe sometimes. I could even smell the roses that are her sign. She comforted me like a mother come to give her son a goodnight kiss.

"I never could remember such a…legendary thing as a kiss. I grew up among evil men and brutalized animals. But I was on the fringe of manhood, maybe twelve. One night the burros were restless. I slept and dreamed and something came to me and kissed me on the neck. My first kiss. It was long and sweet and I sensed it in my sleep and didn't ever want to wake up. When I did, my neck and throat ached. I was glad to feel that, to prolong the mother's kiss I longed for. I touched the place, the site of the miracle, of the Virgin's compassion, smelling roses. My fingers came away wet with my own blood."