I cannot focus. I feel a need for you that aches and burns inside me. I plague myself with memories of the beautiful, sensual times we have shared. Th... way you look at me when we are in bed. That hungry look in your eye that makes me feel like the prey of a masterful predator. It makes me want to give myself to you, to offer myself as a sacrifice at the altar of your passion. I know that I will see you again. I will drive to you when the time for us to be apart is over. I think of that day. I want to give myself up to you, knowing in advance that I won't have that safety net to fall back on. All I'll have is my trusting in you. Nothing else. If I use it, and I'm sure I will, it won't count. You are to ignore it, as if we had never agreed to a safe word before." Tommy was quiet still, while my heart was racing. I felt his hand slowly slide down from my breast, across my belly, over my hip and into the small of my back, where it rested for a moment. His hand started moving again,. .." Aricia spoke softly. "It would take pressure off the High Coven because the Kavalian forces would be split."Martin nodded once more. "Yes ... that is also true."They all looked at him now, questions in their eyes. He never kept anything from them, not since that one time almost twenty years ago, and that had been only because he wanted to protect them. None of them understood why it had angered them so much; Anja had known some of it, but not the entire story and she had tried to lessen the. Fluorescent light is unforgiving. It magnifies every pore and gives the healthiest complexion a sickly hue; not her face. I couldn't find a pore or line or imperfection in her flesh, and her skin still seemed to glow. And her hair was even paler than it had seemed under the Halogen street lamps in the snow.The elevator shuddered to a halt, and the door wheezed open. I led her down the short hallway to my door. It took a few seconds for me to find my keys and fumble the locks open. I pushed the.