"I have heard your words. I know you mean them." He was suddenly standing in front of me. I hadn't seen him move, hadn't felt him in my head. He was just suddenly inches in front of me. I think I gasped.

"Could you truly kill me?" His voice was like silk on a wound, gentle with an edge of pain. Like sex. It was like velvet rubbing inside my skull. It felt good, even with fear tearing through my body. Shit. He could still have me. Still take me down. No way.

I looked up into his so-blue eyes and said, "Yes."

I meant it. He blinked once, gracefully, and stepped back. "You are the most stubborn woman I have ever met," he said. There was no play in his voice this time. It was a flat statement.

"That's the nicest compliment you've ever paid me."

He stood in front of me, hands at his sides. He stood very still. Snakes or birds can stand utterly still but even a snake has a sense of aliveness, of action waiting to resume. Jean-Claude stood there with no sense of anything, as if despite what my eyes told me, he had vanished. He was not there at all. The dead make no noise.

"What happened to your face?"

I touched the swollen cheek before I could stop myself. "Nothing," I lied.

"Who hit you?"

"Why, so you can go beat him up?"

"One of the fringe benefits of being my servant is my protection."

"I don't need your protection, Jean-Claude."

"He hurt you."

"And I shoved a gun into his groin and made him tell me everything he knew," I said.

Jean-Claude smiled. "You did what?"

"I shoved a gun into his balls, alright?"

His eyes started to sparkle. Laughter spread across his face and burst out between his lips. He laughed full-throated.

The laugh was like candy: sweet, and infectious. If you could bottle Jean-Claude's laugh, I know it would be fattening. Or orgasmic.

"Ma petite, ma petite, you are absolutely marvelous."

I stared at him, letting that wonderful, touchable laugh roll around me. It was time to go. It is very hard to be dignified when someone is laughing uproariously at you. But I managed.

My parting shot made him laugh harder. "Stop calling me ma petite."