Serpent's Kiss

TWO

Market Street in San Francisco slashed diagonally through the city from the Ferry Building at the northeast shore to Twin Peaks in the southwest. The street was one of the city’s major thoroughfares and had been compared to the Champs-Élysées in Paris or Fifth Avenue in New York.

Now dusk was approaching on a Friday evening in the heart of the Nightkind demesne. That made Market Street a hip and happening place. The tall skyscraper surroundings provided an effective shield from the last of the day’s sunshine. Tourists and shoppers crowded the sidewalks.

A pair of white-skinned, beautiful and elegantly clothed female Vampyres strolled arm in arm toward him. They bent their heads and whispered together as he approached, looking at him sidelong with kohl-lined eyes and pale smiles. When he smiled back, the nearest Vampyre’s eyes widened and her ivory skin washed with a delicate blush of color. Rune considered it quite a compliment, coming from the undead.

The crowd grew denser as he approached his destination. It was the thickest just outside the sleek tall skyscraper that was 500 Market Street. Rune studied the throng curiously as he threaded his way to the front doors. The members of the crowd were all human.

One frail-looking woman pushed in front of him pulling a portable tank in a cart, a thin oxygen tube threaded under her nostrils, and he paused to let her past. As she brushed against him, he caught the scent of serious illness underneath her lilac perfume. The sour, medicinal smell lingered in his nostrils, evoking images of pain and decay, until he turned his head and emitted a polite cough that cleared his lungs. Another pale, thin man was in a wheelchair, accompanied by his wife and a younger man who looked to be his son.

Rune stripped off his earbuds and put away his iPod, then he pushed through the revolving doors and surveyed the main lobby. It was dominated by uniformed security guards, metal detectors, and lines of people that led up to bulletproof glass-plated windows. He rubbed the back of his neck and was about to step outside and check the number on the building again when he heard his name called from the bank of elevators across the lobby. He swiveled back around.

Duncan the Vampyre strode toward him. Dressed in a black Ralph Lauren suit with matching shoes, the male stood around five-foot-eleven. Razor-cut dark hair lay sleek against his well-formed head, and he had pleasant features and intelligent eyes. Duncan gestured to a security guard, who opened a side gate and invited Rune to step through.

“I just arrived, myself,” said Duncan. The Vampyre held out his hand.

Rune shook it. The Vampyre’s grasp was strong and cool. “I was going to step outside to make sure I had the right address. What is going on here in the lobby?”

Duncan turned back to the elevators. Rune fell into step beside him, shortening his longer stride to accommodate the other male. Duncan told him, “The Bureau of Nightkind Immigration occupies the first three floors of the building. This is where humans apply for visas to become Vampyres—”

Shouting at one of the plateglass windows interrupted him. “Don’t tell me it’s going to be another four fucking months! My father has stage four cancer—he doesn’t have another four months to wait!”

Rune glanced at the man who was shouting then back at Duncan, who gave him a slight wince. They reached the elevator bank where Duncan punched the top button on the panel for the fifty-fifth floor. As they stepped into an elevator, Duncan continued, “Understandably enough, the visa process can get emotional, which is why there is such a strong security presence in the lobby.”

Two security guards were walking toward the altercation as the elevator doors closed. Rune said, “Just out of curiosity, what happens to visa applications for people who are terminally ill? Is that guy going to be able to get his father’s case expedited?”

“Probably not,” said Duncan. “There are always sad cases, and there are too many desperate dying people.”

“Dude,” said Rune. “Ouch.”

The Vampyre glanced at him. “I do not mean to be unsym-pathetic. But to put this into perspective, the United States received an estimated fourteen million applications for the Diversity Green Card Visa in 2009. The North American Nightkind demesne gets close to ten million visa applications in a year, and our screening process must not only be more rigorous than the federal government’s, but we can grant far fewer visas than the 2.5 million visas the United States granted.”

“Holy shit,” said Rune.

“We’re the only demesne that must regulate itself in such a fashion,” said Duncan. “The long-lived Elder Races have correspondingly low birthrates. Even for the human witches, nature regulates those who are born with sparks of Power, and not all of those born with the inherent ability choose to study the Power crafts. Vampyrism is a dangerous infectious disease, not just physically but socially. It used to be the purview of the rich, the beautiful, and the Powerful, or anyone who caught a Vampyre’s fancy for whatever reason. We can no longer afford to be so capricious. I helped to coauthor the original visa application process in the early 1900s, which goes through updates and improvements every ten years. Each year we also coordinate with the CDC in Atlanta to arrive at a total for the number of applications we are allowed to approve.”

“You just took all the fun out of the Vampyre movies,” said Rune. “How many applicants could you approve last year?”

“Two thousand.”

He whistled between his teeth. “Those numbers are killer.”

“Yes,” said Duncan. “That is why visa applications are almost never expedited.”

“What would it take to get a rush on one?” Rune asked, curious.

Duncan shook his head. “A personal request from Julian or Carling could drop-kick it through, of course, or an edict from the Elder tribunal. Frankly, not much else could do it. And now applicants must not only prove they have sound financial investments and prospects—such as they have the capacity to be gainfully employed—but they must also undergo a psychological evaluation. They must also provide documentation to prove they have a Vampyre willing to host them, or in other words provide stability, discipline and training for the first five years after they’re turned. That is when most of the ten million applications hit the trash can. Metaphorically speaking, anyway. Nowadays the application process is online. We have developed a sophisticated software program that automatically rejects applications that have not been filled out properly, or have failed to meet all the initial paperwork requirements.”

Rune said, “So what you’re actually saying is that in order to become a Vampyre, you have to prove you have money or can make money, and you have to be computer literate, which knocks out a good portion of the country that lives on the wrong side of the growing digital divide. I hate to burst your bubble, but I think you might be headed back to the place where Vampyrism is the purview of the rich, the beautiful and the Powerful.”

Duncan laughed. They arrived at the fifty-fifth floor. When the elevator doors opened, they stepped into corporate luxury. Opposite the bank of elevators, Turner & Braeburn, Attorneys at Law was spelled out in gleaming slim gold letters on the dark marble wall.

Duncan led the way in a swift stride down tastefully decorated, busy halls to a corner office. Rune sent a curious glance around as he ambled along behind. The Attorneys at Law were having their version of a busy Friday morning.

“The system isn’t perfect,” Duncan said. “The bottom line is the Nightkind demesne is trying to avoid letting poor, crazy, blood-sucking immortals loose on the streets to become a burden on the more normal tax-paying society. But here’s the kicker.”

Duncan paused talking and stopped at open double doors. With a polite gesture he invited Rune to precede him. Rune strode into an office with a floor space that was a thousand square feet if it was an inch. Metallic shutters had been pulled back from the two walls of windows, and outside the entire Bay Area, including bridges, was ablaze with electric light. The sun had set and all that was left of its memory was a bloodred glow on the ocean’s darkening horizon.

Rune swiveled back to face Duncan, who had closed the doors. The Vampyre turned to face him.

Duncan said, “Everything I just told you is the official Nightkind demesne procedure. We’re required by federal law to follow it, but it’s like the U. S. war on drugs, or worse, the HIV epidemic. How do you really regulate something that is just a living heartbeat, a heated moment, and a blood exchange away?”

“I’m guessing I know the answer to that,” Rune said. “You can’t.”

“Exactly,” Duncan replied. “Of course we can’t. We can set regulations, issue visas, and work to enforce consequences, but we still have our illegals and crazies, and our non-registereds. Do we possibly know what a Vampyre is doing in your demesne in New York, or the Demonkind demesne in Houston? Of course not, just as you have no idea what individual Wyr might be doing in Chicago. Our police force is effective so we can keep a tight lid on what is visible to the public here in our demesne, but we can only do so much. Also, many of the older Vampyres resent the new restrictions, and they still follow the old ways in regulating their family trees—through secrecy, domination and violence.”

“Oh good,” said Rune. “All the fun from the Vampyre movies just came back.”

Spanned by its famous bridge, the Golden Gate is actually the name of the strait that was discovered in 1769 by Spanish explorers. In 1846, the American military officer John C. Fremont named the passageway “Chrysopylae,” or “Golden Gate,” before the Californian gold rush. The strait had been compared to ancient Byzantium’s Golden Horn.

As Rune looked out, the Golden Gate Bridge towered shining over the darkened waters of the strait. The symbolism of standing before a gateway was not lost on him. He dropped his duffle on the floor near a black Italian leather chair in front of a spotless glass desk that had some serious acreage. He hooked his thumbs into the empty belt loops on his faded jeans and stood at his ease as he regarded the Vampyre.

Duncan did not sit behind the desk, nor did he invite Rune to sit. Instead he moved to the window and looked toward the west. He put his hands in the pockets of his twenty-five-hundred-dollar suit and, for a moment, he went completely still as only Vampyres could. He looked like the airbrushed front cover of a GQ magazine.

Here it comes, Rune thought. Mow the lawn for the next thousand years. One single favor, stated in quite a simple sentence. Yeah Dragos, I know quite fucking well what I gave away.

“It’s disappeared again,” Duncan murmured.

“What?” Rune said.

“The island. It’s disappeared again.”

Rune looked out the window as well. The residual blood-red sunset glow was all but gone, but his sharp predator’s eyes could pick out the details in the night as well as the Vampyre’s could. The island had indeed faded from sight.

He shrugged and said, “Okay.”

“That is where you are supposed to go,” Duncan said.

Rune sighed. “When I got your email, I thought you would be giving me the instructions for this favor.”

Duncan turned away from the window to face him. “From what little I understand, any instructions I might give you would not release you from your magical obligation. Your contract is with Carling, and she must order you in person. She is currently at her home on the Other island, and of course time flows differently there. I am merely supposed to verify you made it here by the stated deadline, and to give you directions on how to get there.”

“So Carling lives on Blood Alley, huh?” Rune shook his head. Way to build an all-over fearsome reputation, Carling. Much like the feudal Wyr society, in the Nightkind demesne, might often equaled right, and Carling had ruled as Queen for a long time before she gave the crown to Julian. She had abdicated to take advantage of a loophole that had then existed in inter-demesne law, which allowed her to become the Nightkind Councillor for the Elder tribunal. The legal loophole had since been closed. Former demesne rulers were now barred from sitting on the tribunal, but Carling maintained her unique position. She was not just a Councillor on the Elder tribunal. Since Julian was Carling’s progeny, he might rule the demesne, but Carling ruled Julian.

Duncan shook his head. “Blood Alley is a very unfortunate label and not at all accurate. The crossover passage and the island were discovered around 1836, and as soon as she had become aware of its existence, Carling laid claim to it. There were a few times when she was Queen that she had to take action against warring Vampyre families. Her response had to be severe enough to quell the upsurge in violence.”

“Oh-kay,” he muttered. “Been there, done that. I’m sure I’ve got a T-shirt somewhere to prove it. Why don’t you hit me with those directions?”

“You must fly westward for a mile or so and circle around to fly back. As you return toward the Bay, keep the Golden Gate ahead of you, to your right about ten degrees, and fly low over the water. At that point you should feel the crossover passage down below. It follows a fissure in the ocean bed, so you’ll have to dive and swim it. For those of us who no longer need to breathe, the swim is not an uncomfortable one. I have an oxygen tank ready for you to use should you need it. The technology is passive enough that it works.”

What Duncan referred to was how the concentrated magic in Other lands suppressed certain technologies, especially those that acted on some principle of combustion. Among other things, electricity, guns and other modern weaponry did not work in Other lands, or if they worked, they did so only briefly and with chaotic and destructive consequences, which was why Niniane’s friend Cameron had died when she shot Naida Riordan.

Passive technologies, like composting toilets, hypocaust systems, Melitta coffee filters, modern crossbow and compound bow designs, or designs that utilized solar heat worked just fine in Other lands. An oxygen tank was simply a vessel of compressed air that was released through a tube in a slow, controlled fashion. Filling an oxygen tank required a compressor, which would not work in an Other land, but the tank itself would be safe to use throughout the passage until it ran out of its supply.

Rune considered. “How long is the underwater passageway?”

Duncan told him, “I can swim it in just over ten minutes.”

“I don’t need the tank,” said Rune. “I’ll be fine.” He bent to pick up his duffle. “I could use something watertight to put this in, though. It isn’t much, a couple of changes of clothes, toothbrush and razor, Stephen King novel, yadda yadda.” Along with an iPod, iPhone, a few more PowerBars, Glock and ammo, knives, a garotte, some throwing stars. Yadda yadda. The Glock, phone and iPod would travel fine as long as he didn’t try to use them until he got back.

“We’ve got something you can use,” Duncan said.

Rune took a half turn toward the door and regarded the Vampyre with an expectant expression. Moving along, here. Next phase. Gotta show up for my first day of work on time. I’ll be trimming the lawn with a pair of manicure scissors. Trimming the whole island with a pair of manicure scissors? That’s a thousand years right there, baby.

Duncan was staring at the tips of his polished shoes and frowning.

Perhaps a human might have seen a man deep in thought. Rune was a predator and far older than the human race. His focus narrowed. He watched how the Vampyre took a deep breath in an old habit he had not needed in over a hundred and twenty years. He noted the miniscule tightening around Duncan’s pleasant, dark eyes, and the shift in the near invisible sheen on Duncan’s silk tie as he swallowed.

Rune had earned his place as Dragos’s First many centuries ago for a host of Powerful reasons. But there were other reasons why Rune was Dragos’s First, and they had nothing to do with Power. Rune said in a quiet voice, “You got something you want to tell me, son?”

Duncan’s gaze lifted quickly. “I have many things I want to tell you. I find that, for one reason or another, I am constrained.”

“Attorney-client privilege?” Rune asked.

“That, and also there are constraints from my maker.”

“Who is your maker?” Rune asked, although he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

“Carling.” Duncan gave him a self-conscious lopsided smile that was unexpectedly endearing. “I am her youngest.”

Seriously, awww.

“Well, Duncan,” Rune said. “Is there anything you want to tell me that you actually can tell me?”

Duncan’s smile faded, and in that moment he didn’t look young at all. He looked old, grieving, and more than a little frightened.

“Please be careful,” Duncan said.

Carling unfolded a well-worn piece of paper and laid it on the polished granite countertop near the stove. She consulted the handwritten instructions that had been prepared for her by a human attendant.

Step one, make sure the wood stove has been lit and the burner is hot. Yes. Did she place the skillet on the burner for step two? She checked the list. No. Step two, spray the skillet with PAM. She did and then she set the skillet on the burner. Now add a few ounces of raw meat to the skillet. Stir with implement. She picked up the implement and considered. What is this thing called again? Ah yes, it is a spatula.

A sunny morning shone outside. The kitchen where Carling worked was a large foreign-feeling stone-walled area, with long wooden tables and granite counters, industrial-sized sinks, and a fireplace that was big enough to roast a pig in. Bright yellow sunshine spilled in from metal-paned windows. The kitchen was a peaceful quiet place without chattering sycophants populating it. She liked it much better now that it was nearly empty.

A small dog whined at Carling’s feet. Rhoswen sulked nearby, well away from the spill of sunshine. “I don’t understand why you insist on doing this,” Rhoswen grumbled. “We have cans of dog food that it loves. Quite good, expensive premium dog food. I checked personally with its vet.”

“I do not require you to understand,” murmured Carling. She peered at the organic material in the skillet. It had started to sizzle. The red flesh was turning white. “What are we cooking again?”

“Chicken,” Rhoswen said. “We are cooking chicken for incomprehensible reasons.”

“Yes,” Carling said.

She nudged the flesh around in the skillet. This is food. A warm scent filled the air. She sniffed it. Living creatures consider this scent aromatic, appetizing. They salivate, and their stomachs rumble.

The small dog barked.

Yes, and some of them yap.

The chicken must become white all the way through. It is okay if the outside becomes brown. In fact many creatures prefer it that way. With a sense of satisfaction, Carling removed the skillet from the heat. She used the implement to scrape the steaming material onto a plate for a tiny living creature.

She regarded the dog. It regarded her in return. She remembered the details from the vet’s report. The dog was a six-pound Orange Sable Pomeranian. It had an exploding puffball double coat of hair that was brown and sable, with a touch of cream in its ludicrous curl of a tail. It had bright button-black eyes and a foxy narrow muzzle with a button-black nose. When she gave it her attention, it stood on its hind legs and twirled. Such happiness and excitement over a thing called breakfast.

She checked the last step on her list of instructions. Wait until the meat is cool enough to consume safely before placing the plate on the floor.

She looked at the steaming material on the plate. She looked back at the dog. It gave her a thrilled canine grin, pink tongue lolling to one side as it hopped on hind legs and pawed at the air. She spoke a word filled with Power. For a moment the air around the chicken shimmered. When she touched a finger to the meat, it was perfectly cool. Ah, that was much better.

A bell tolled on the ocean side of the sprawling stone house.

Both she and Rhoswen lifted their heads to look toward the sound. She told Rhoswen, “Go let the sentinel in.”

The younger blonde Vampyre inclined her head and left the kitchen.

Carling twitched aside the hem of her black Egyptian cotton caftan as she crouched to set the plate of chicken in front of the dog. The next bit always puzzled her. She had witnessed many forms of greed over the centuries. But no matter how much the smell of the cooking chicken sent him into frenzy, when she set the plate of food in front of the dog, he always paused first to look at her before he fell on his meal to gobble it down.

Carling was a succubus, a Vampyre who could sense and feed off of emotions from living creatures. The little dog had emotions. They were bright colorful sparks that winked like fireflies. She knew what he felt when he gave her that look.

It was passionate gratitude.

Rhoswen returned after a few minutes. Carling looked up from the dog. He had finished his meal and draped himself across her bare feet. Rhoswen told her, “The Wyr is awaiting an audience with you in the great hall.”

Carling nodded. She nudged the sleepy animal off her feet and pushed through the kitchen’s double-swing doors before the dog could follow. Ignoring its complaining bark, she walked along the large silent flagstone-floored corridor to the great hall, the only sound a whisper of cloth as her caftan swirled around her ankles.

The house followed the general pattern of a medieval manor, with the kitchen, buttery and pantry off to one side, the two-story great hall with a massive six-foot-tall fireplace and its carved stone overmantel and more private apartments and rooms branching off the other side. Unlike a medieval manor, the great hall and the other oceanside rooms had floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the bluff upon which the house sat.

The house was bordered with a waist-high fieldstone wall that followed the furthermost periphery along the edge of the bluff. The land within the walls was cultivated with a dense profusion of flowers, yellow goldenstars, scarlet mariposa lilies, coast sunflowers, stream orchids, seaside daisies and island snapdragons. Climbing roses swarmed up a trellis that framed the front doors, their immense blooms drenched in fragrance.

The island itself was kidney-shaped and over four miles long. The house on the bluff was located in the inner curve of the kidney. A narrow path zigzagged down the side of the bluff to a wide beach where a couple of sailboats were moored. There were several other, smaller houses that dotted the area around the large stone manor house, but currently those stood empty. A redwood forest towered on the farthest end of the island, the gigantic trees thousands of years old, their upper heights fed from the mists that rolled in off the ocean. Shy, secretive winged creatures lived in the uppermost branches of those ancient redwoods. They hid whenever other creatures came near.

Carling felt the Wyr before she stepped into the hall and laid eyes on him. She paused at the kitchen entrance to the hall to absorb the shock of his presence.

He stood hipshot in front of the windows, with the kind of ease that came from someone who had everything going for him and nothing to prove. His back was to her, his hands in the rear pockets of torn faded jeans as he looked out toward the ocean. His hair tumbled damp and tousled to broad shoulders. She caught the smell of brine and the warm virile scent of a healthy Wyr male. Thousands of years ago he had towered over humans, a strange gigantic, fierce god. Even now he stood taller than most men, the long strong lines of his body epitomizing masculine strength and grace.

More than just the impact of the physical, however, was the punch of the aetheric force around him. Even standing at rest, he radiated a ferocious vitality. Energy and Power boiled off of him in a corona of rippling waves that were invisible to most people, but she could see them pouring off of him like heat waves rising from a sun-baked highway in the desert. All of the immortal Wyr that had come into being at the time the earth was formed had this same primal life force. They carried within them sparks of creation’s first fire.

Carling took a deep breath, an anachronistic throwback to an ancient time. She took note of her body’s involuntary response to the onslaught of Rune’s presence, even as his head cocked to one side at the small telltale sound. He turned to face her.

Then there was the other shock to the system as she looked upon the strong, bold clean lines of his face. His facial bone structure had a refinement that was echoed in the frame of his body, a masculine elegance that caught at the eye and tugged at the heart. He had a beautiful mouth, with sensually carved, mobile lips, but his capstone feature was his worldly, knowledgeable lion’s gaze.

Those breathtaking eyes were smiling at her now. They pulled her across the room toward him.

“You’ve got an awesome crib here,” said Rune. “Way to be all-over gothic, Carling. What happens if you sail away from the island?”

“Eventually after you lose sight of the island, you end up sailing back toward land. This is just a small pocket of Other land with only the one underwater crossover point. There is nothing else here but the island and ocean.”

“Sweet.”

She prowled toward him, this male who radiated like a sun. The Power of his presence prickled along her skin. Each step she took brought her closer to him and made her feel more alive. Compared to his full-blown Technicolor-rich emotions, all the many other creatures she had sensed and fed from were weak and pastel, like watered milk. Rune was a rich and fluid fountain of nourishment like the deepest ruby claret. She felt a ghost of something that must have once been hunger. His blood would taste spectacular, as burning and as intense as the rarest liqueur.

The expression in his eyes changed as she approached. His smile became sharper, deeper, and showed a hint of even white teeth. His emotional palette shifted too, the ruby claret flowing with enticing and inexplicable complexities.

She came toe-to-toe with him. At five-foot-six, she had once been a tall woman. Now she was considered an average height. She had to tilt back her head to look full-bore and unblinking into that lion’s gaze. She noted how his breathing deepened and his eyes dilated. What was that emotion she sensed from him? A ghost of elusive memory drifted through the back of her mind. She had felt it once, long ago. It had made her drunken and impetuous, vivid with reckless laughter.

She turned and stalked around him, considering. He pivoted backward in a slow circle that met her pace. He angled his head to match the tilt of hers and came close so that they were nose-to-nose with each other, two predators mature in Power and engaged in a sizing-up showdown.

Unafraid? Yes, he was unafraid, but that was not the emotion she sensed that tugged at her memory. Fascination? Yes, he felt that too, but that was not what she tried so hard to remember.

This gryphon called himself Rune Ainissesthai. Rune for glyph, a sigil that was a stroke on a page, but more than that, rune for mystery, magic. Ainissesthai was old Greek for speaking in riddles. The mysterious magical riddle.

“Rune Ainissesthai,” she whispered. “What is the riddle?”

His expression flared with electric light. Oh, I’ve got your attention now, don’t I, Wyr? She smiled. Did you think everyone had forgotten the meaning of your name?

“You know better than to ask a question like that,” Rune said. His voice had dropped to a low gravelly murmur that prowled across her skin.

“Rune Ainissesthai,” she whispered a second time, and the Power she wielded made the sound of his name reverberate between them like the singing of a Chinese Buddhist bowl. “Why do you come to me?”

“I come to pay my debt,” said Rune, and the cry of the eagle echoed in his reply.

“Rune Ainissesthai,” she whispered for the third time. “Will you do my bidding for the measure of one favor to pay that debt?”

“You know I will,” the gryphon replied, and the growl of the lion was in his voice.

She struck the reverberation between them a single blow with her Power so that it rang like a gong against the stone walls of the great hall, and the magic writ was cast. She smiled. “The bargain has been struck, and answered.”

Now he was bound and he truly had no choice but to do her bidding. You are mine, she said silently to his tall strong form. Mine to do with as I wish. For this moment in time, I own you. And what shall I have you do, you easygoing, proud, insouciant alpha male? What task shall you complete before you take your leave from me and go back to your unending life?

What did someone who was dying do with a rare and extravagant gift such as this?

The smile faded from her lips. The predatory impulses in her darkened and grew invisible fangs. Her dark eyes glittered with a carapace like obsidian glass, and the line of her mouth hardened.

She said, “Kneel.”

She felt his surprise as her command jolted through him.

But then he did a thing that surprised her in return. He raised his eyebrows, gave her that easygoing insouciant grin of his and said, “Okey-dokey.”

With a flourish he went gracefully down on one knee in front of her.

What was this? He was down on the floor, his powerful broad shoulders dipped in subjugation. He even bowed his head. He gave every appearance of submission, and performed flawlessly to the letter of her order, but . . .

Deep in the axis of that fierce remarkable soul, the alpha male still reigned. She circled behind him and stepped close to his broad shoulders to put her lips near his ear. She whispered, “You’re not really kneeling inside.”

He cocked his head to look at her over one shoulder. His reckless gaze laughed at her. He whispered back, “You didn’t order me to do that. It would require an entirely different bargain for me to really kneel to you.”

Caught in the unknown riddle, she asked, “What bargain would that require?”

He gave her a slow smile. “You must give me a kiss.”

The sleek arch of her eyebrows lifted. “Just a kiss?”

“Just that.”

“The bargain is struck,” she said.

“And answered,” he growled.

Carling put a hand onto his shoulder as she prowled to stand in front of him. Then she slid her hands along the warm sun-bronzed skin of his jaw. She tilted his handsome wild face up to hers and he let her. Then she bent to place her cool lips on his hot carved lips.

Her body moved in the impulse to breathe again, and she allowed it. His masculine Power enveloped her, and it was spiced with sensuality and warmth as it caressed her like a sun-filled breeze.

She lifted her head and stared down at him. She narrowed her eyes. She said, “You’re still not really kneeling inside.”

Tap, tap, went her bare foot.

He cocked an eyebrow.

“What else did you expect, Carling?” he replied. “That wasn’t a real kiss.”