"Touching you, like this, I can feel it-feel your hunger. I never suspected-you feelhollow."

"You can actually pick up my sensations?" Why should he be surprised? Her empathic talent had increased steadily over the past several weeks.

"Inhere." She laid a hand over her diaphragm. "Hunger-thirst-oh, Lord, it feels like you're dying."

"Far from that! I'm used to the craving," he said. "It hits you harder because it's new to you."

"Forgive me, colleague, I've been too hard on you."

Roger relaxed slightly, letting out the breath he hadn't been aware of holding. "Indeed? I came to precisely the opposite conclusion."

"When I yelled at you for not waiting a single week, I didn't understand. I thought it was like-oh, going on a diet, or giving up chocolate for Lent." Her nails dug into his skin. "I never suspected it was like this."

"It wasn't, most of the time. Not until I became used to having you near, basking in your-affection." His head pounded with tension. He didn't know how much longer he could restrain himself from pouncing on her. He disentangled his hand from hers.

"Then I suddenly had to do without seeing you every day, touching you, if only for a minute at a time."

"I've missed you, too, physically as well as emotionally. Withdrawal symptoms-you warned me, but I didn't think it would be so literally true. I've been jumpy, couldn't sleep, had no appet.i.te-had to explain it to Darlene as a new variety of PMS." Britt relaxed into a teasing grin that made Roger dizzy with the sudden release of anxiety. "And that's on top of the ordinary, nonpathological symptoms of missing you. First time I've used the vibrator in over two months."

He felt himself flushing at her boldness, even as it delighted him. He wondered-not that it was any of his business-d.a.m.n, he had to ask. "Did you purchase one on impulse or take it with you?"

"I packed it deliberately. I had a feeling I was going to miss you. A lot. My point is," she continued, "if I felt that bad, how much worse must it be for you? I never came close to understanding that before. No wonder you couldn't resist when that girl practically fell into your lap. I always swore I wouldn't blame you for being what you are, and that's what I was doing."

"A generous att.i.tude, colleague, but you were right. If ordinary men can conform their biological drives to social constraints, I should be able to do the same."

"Nevertheless, I overreacted-and you know why?" She blushed a faint pink. "Because for a few minutes I actually thought you'd been using me all this time-just a convenient food source, and any casual replacement would do as well."

"Britt-" His chest constricted. Any protest would sound hollow. That he could have hurt her so, even briefly-!

"I know that isn't true. I really was jealous, can you believe it?" Again she flashed him a smile. "How does that make you feel?"

"Ashamed," he said. She held out her hands, palms upward in a tentative beckoning gesture. "You look terrible. I prescribe a hug."

She melted into his arms. The next minute was a blur. His universe contracted to the pressure of her warm body against his, her breath on his neck, the pounding of her heart, her fingers in his hair. He embraced her as tightly as if he could merge his flesh with hers, cell to cell. "Dear G.o.d, Britt, I thought I'd lost you!"

"And I was afraid, when I said those horrible things, that you'd think I meant them." Her voice shook. He tasted the salt of tears on her cheek.

"For G.o.d's sake, don't cry," he groaned, kissing her neck. He'd been afraid that he wouldn't be able to touch her without ripping into her throat, but within the circle of her aura his hunger receded into the background. Her affection in itself refreshed him.

After a moment he regained enough control to speak without breaking into tears himself. "How long can you stay?" He loosened his hold to draw back and brush a hand over her erect nipples through the clinging shirt. The tiny heat-sensitive hairs in his palm tingled at the touch.

"All night," she said, grazing the back of his neck with her tapered fingernails. "I don't care if tomorrow is Monday; I've missed you too much. You should have heard the way Darlene snickered about my getting a cross-country phone call from a man. She was actually relieved, though-she'd started to think you were a figment of my frustrated imagination. At least now she'll stop worrying that I might be a lesbian."

Roger stared incredulously into her eyes. "She couldn't think that!"

"Not seriously, I guess, but what other reason could a pa.s.sably attractive woman pushing forty have for staying unmarried?"

Their shared laughter at the absurd notion was short-lived. Within seconds a more urgent emotion overruled it. His intent gaze captured hers. He felt as if he were drowning in her eyes, instead of the reverse. She breathed rapidly through parted lips. "Roger, don't look at me that way-you make me feel faint."

"I can't stop," he murmured. "You intoxicate me. G.o.d, you smell delicious!"

"Oh, d.a.m.n, Roger-I hate to admit it, but I want you so much I hurt."

"Youhurt?"

Their open mouths met, her tongue darting at his as if she, too, were ravenous. His thirst revived, so fierce his head reeled with it.

Terrified of treating her too roughly, Roger broke off the kiss and made himself slow down. He insinuated a hand under her shirt, savoring the heat of her skin. Her desire was so palpable that he didn't need her gasp of pleasure to confirm it. He felt drunk with the fragrance of her arousal.

"Wait." Fighting for breath, he forced himself to stop caressing her. "Britt, before we go any further, there's something I must ask you." Claude's advice sounded better all the time; Roger knew it was the only way to make Britt absolutely sure of his sincerity.

"Uh-oh, you sound serious again. That always means trouble."

The tinge of anxiety in her voice pained him. "It doesn't have to. Feel perfectly free to refuse. I just want to suggest something that will increase the depth of our intimacy, our-openness." He'd discovered that his fear of vulnerability was far less than his terror of any future estrangement. "I'd like you to drink my blood."

"Sounds interesting. Why?"

"Two-way blood-sharing creates a telepathic bond. You'd never have to be afraid of my betraying you again, because you wouldknow ."

"You mean we could read each other's minds, like inDracula ? What Stoker calls the Baptism of Blood?" She sounded enthusiastic rather than frightened.

"Better than that, or so I've heard. The closeness is supposed to be unimaginable." He hesitated to mention the other factor, knowing how she would react. "And also for your own protection."

She frowned. "That again? How so?"

"You need to develop your psychic skills as fully as possible. I realize I can't stay with you twenty-four hours a day, and I see now that it would suffocate you if I did. With your paranormal powers enhanced by that bond, you'd be better able to protect yourself."

Her joy washed over him like a stream of cool water in mid-summer heat. "Colleague, I thought you'd never ask!"

He pulled back to stare at her. "Youwant this?"

"I've been wondering about it for weeks. Ihadread Stoker, after all. I just had no idea whether it was really possible."

"Then why didn't you ask?"

Britt snuggled up to him, her head on his shoulder. "What, and scare you away? Think I don't know how afraid you are of revealing yourself to anyone?"

Flushing, he said, "I didn't know it was that obvious-and I shouldn't have reacted that way with you."

"What do we tell our patients? There are no 'shoulds' with emotions. Well? What are you waiting for?"

Her eagerness stirred his pa.s.sion, which, however, did little to relieve his nervousness. "I'm not sure how to go about it." He raised his left hand to his mouth, preparing to bite the wrist.

Britt clasped his hand. "Not there; it's too impersonal."

"Well, I'm not going to try slitting my own throat with a pocketknife. In my present condition, I'd probably sever an artery. And I keep my nails trimmed too short for self-laceration like Dracula in the novel."

After thinking for a second, Britt said, "Here?" and kissed him on the shoulder.

Roger unb.u.t.toned his shirt and pushed it back from his shoulders, then turned his head to slash the skin where her lips had touched.

Though he was immune to the mild anesthetic in his own saliva, the razor-edge of his incisors was too keen to hurt. Britt pressed her open mouth to the trickle of blood.

His first reaction was an indrawn breath of astonishment at the rapture produced by her hot tongue. All his nerve endings vibrated with the electricity of her kiss. The blood seemed to bubble like champagne in his veins.

At the first brush of her naked mind on his, fear drowned his excitement. Memories of Sylvia's devouring emptiness and Volnar's cold probe overwhelmed him. For a moment he struck out blindly, unconscious of Britt as anything but an invading parasite.

Then pain speared him. Not his own pain, but hers. Dimly realizing that he was hurting Britt, he stopped fighting. Instead he slammed shut the door of his mind.

Britt vanished. He found himself in a gray void, falling endlessly. His own silent scream reverberated in his skull.

A gentle caress brushed his icy barrier, like the warmth of her hand. He locked onto that sensation and stopped falling.

"Let me in, Roger. It won't hurt. We can't hurt each other." Thrusting his panic away like a poisonous insect, he opened to her.

He felt an echo of his own fear in her, immediately submerged by a flood of desire. Letting it sweep him away, he tasted a piercing sweetness even she had never given him before.Gradually he became aware of tasting his own blood through her senses. With his own eyes shut in drugged enchantment, he saw himself through Britt's heavy-lidded gaze. The reversed vision made his head spin; sensing that, she closed her eyes. He felt her mounting pa.s.sion, the hypersensitivity of her nipples, the tightening in her loins. He couldn't wait any longer; he bent to the sweet- scented curve of her neck and drank.

As their excitement grew, they fed the sensations back and forth to each other in a rising spiral, until Britt reached her peak, crying aloud. Strangely, linked with her, he felt a phantom tension and release in his own genitals-one small part of his pleasure. He shared her fulfillment to a soul-shaking depth he had never dreamed possible. She picked up that ecstasy, and it spurred her to another climax. They continued reinforcing each other, swept away in mutual delirium, until he made himself break away.

When he regained the capacity for coherent thought, Roger "heard" Britt's voice in his head: "So we don't have to see through each other's senses all the time. That's a relief; too much of it could make me dizzy."

Mentally groping, Roger realized that the total union had indeed faded, but that he could reawaken it, or fragments of it, at will.

"Yes, being close this way doesn't mean we'll never want privacy inside our own skulls."

"Did you know what it would be like?"

"Dear colleague, I had no idea! If I'd known, I'd have done it weeks ago."

After a moment of amorphous content, Britt said aloud, "We can experiment with telepathy later. It's more tiring than I expected."

"True-forming articulate sentences isn't like that spontaneous-" He could find no words for it. The memory alone fired his ardor anew. "I don't believe this. I don't want to behave like a greedy monster, but-"

"You're still thirsty," she said. "Remember, you can't hide a thing from me now." She was almost purring.

"You did say 'all night.' We've barely started." He longed to enjoy her at leisure, with a clear head. Or as clear as it could ever be, with the flavor of her life on his lips.

Britt's fingers fumbled with his shirtsleeves while he eased off her pullover. She paused to unbind her hair, a red-gold cascade that flowed through his caressing hands. Britt tugged at the one sleeve he hadn't removed yet.

He took over the task. "You know, it would be more efficient if we'd each undress ourselves."

"But not nearly as much fun."

A minute later, both naked, they tumbled onto the carpet. Stroking the silky hair on his chest, Britt said, "Your skin feels even cooler than normal."

"Because I'm famished." He hugged her close, delighting in the fit of her firm curves against him. He wished he could enjoy her with every square inch of exposed skin simultaneously. It seemed that her pulse and his, her breathing and his, kept precise rhythm with the throb of her aura. As a doctor he knew that was impossible, since heartbeat was always faster than respiration, but that was how it felt.

She raked her nails down his spine, making his stomach cramp with hunger. Her fingers then crept between their bodies to fondle him intimately. In return, his hand slipped between her thighs. He found her hot and ready. When she reached climax, he licked the smooth arch of her neck in slow, swirling strokes, without piercing the skin.

After she caught her breath, Britt said, "Why didn't you drink? I hope it isn't something ridiculous like penance."

Something like that, perhaps. "I simply wanted to-give, once, without taking."

"Oh, Roger!" She hugged him, her head on his shoulder. "I don't think of it as taking. I can't stand to feel your hunger. Let me give you what you need."

"We don't have to stay on the floor, you know. The bed is freshly made."

Britt scanned his face with feigned concern. "Are you sure you can hold out long enough to get there?"

With a growl he swept her up in his arms and carried her to his room, pausing only to fling back the satin sheets on the king-size bed before laying her down. When he stretched on top of her, and she wrapped her long legs around his, he sensed her trembling on the verge of another o.r.g.a.s.m. The nip of his teeth sent her over the edge. The rich elixir in her veins flowed into him, its healing warmth renewing every cell of his body. With their thoughts entwined as tightly as their bodies, he felt her astonishment at how piercingly sweet her blood tasted to him.

At last, satisfied, he stopped lapping at the tiny incision and laid his head on her breast. "Good?" she murmured.

He stirred to kiss a still-erect nipple. "Need you ask? But too fast-I'm sorry."

Her fingers tightened in his hair. "Will you quit apologizing! You've got hours to do it over until you get it right."

"Mmm," he agreed with a drowsy smile. "Though I'm not sure that's good for you."

"I've had a week away from you to build up my reserves, and I couldn't stand to hold back."

He ached with grat.i.tude for her ardor. How could he ever have risked such a treasure?

Britt's next remark startled him out of a near-doze. "Roger-you love me."

He opened his eyes. "I do? Are you quite certain?"

"Absolutely," she said, laughing softly. "I know love when I feel it."

"Interesting." After pondering her statement for a minute, he said hesitantly, afraid of the answer, yet longing for it, "And do you love me?"

She buried her face in his neck and giggled weakly until she could collect herself to answer. "I've loved you for ages-I think since the first night we went to bed together."

"Then why didn't you say anything?

"Without being sure of how you felt? Even we liberated women have our pride."

After a moment's contented silence, he said, "Do you want to get married?"

Britt understood at once that he was asking for information, not making a request. "No, we have no reason to. You don't need a live-in cook and housekeeper, and I don't need financial support. We're both used to living on our own, so why fix what isn't broken? And think of the ghastly things marriage would do to our tax bracket!"

"I agree," said Roger, "primarily because if we lived together, my self-control would be strained too severely. With that constant temptation, I couldn't keep away from you."

She nestled against his side, one arm draped over his chest. "Anyway, we're united at a deeper level than any ritual could accomplish, aren't we? In the sense that matters most, weare married."

He held her close, utterly fulfilled and secure for the first time in his life. And yet, recalling the anguish that had torn him less than an hour before- "So this is love," he said thoughtfully. "This is what the poets and novelists glorify, what the sappy popular songs go on about?" "This is it."

His arms tightened around her. "Ithurts."