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For many long moments she didn’t speak, but then at last she slowly raised her eyes to meet his. When she did, he knew that this was no joke or teasing on her part: Anna had always remembered that day.
    â€œYou came at night,” she began softly, “in your transport. It was compact…and fast. All the Madjin whispered about it, buzzing that you had the latest model. I agreed to sneak out with them. Marco took the lead. He was older than me, about a year, and I liked to follow him around. He had a good sense of adventure, about the interesting things. So I went with him. We went around the side yard, through the garden.” Her voice grew more reflective and she looked up at the darkening sky. “The night was so clear, I could have read a book in that garden. I took Marco’s hand when he extended it behind him, and then…there you were. Standing by your black, shiny transport, instructing the security patrol as to the proper way to dock it. You had such a beautiful face; I’d never seen anyone quite so handsome before. The way your eyes were slightly slanted—just like now,” she said, gesturing toward his face, “your long black hair, tied at your nape with a silver chord. You seemed the most exotic man I’d ever seen.”
    â€œI did wear my hair just that way,” he agreed. “And I had that new model transport.”
    â€œYou came from money, that’s what they all whispered.” Guiltily, he nodded it to be the truth. In the old time, he’d had more money than any young man should have ever been given, and had always enjoyed spending it beyond measure. That had been before.
    â€œSo, when the others snuck back to our compound, I stayed behind. They never realized they’d lost me. I shapeshifted and made myself a lady of the court. You paused and stared at me for at least ten seconds, I think, before asking me directions to the king’s assembly hall.”
    â€œI have no memory of that.” But he did. Gods help him, he surely did. The lady had seemed to personify the life he would live at the palace. He’d been star-struck, as taken with her beauty as he was with the other finery at the court. In every possible way, he’d been a fool. Valued all the wrong things. Never realized how fragile and tentative life was—that it was a gift.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” she told him frankly. “I just wanted you to know that even then, so many years ago, I thought you as beautiful as I do now. Only you’ve grown more seasoned and handsome.”
    â€œAnd older,” he whispered, reminding her again of the chasm that separated them—she with her breathy youth, he his settled maturity.
    She shrugged. “Thirty-eight isn’t old, not to the humans and certainly not to our species. You know that. It’s just a flimsy argument because I frighten you,” she told him self-confidently.
    â€œHow did you gain all this control?” he hissed. “When did it happen? At what point did it cease being about your mistakes and about my lust? Please, school me, Anna, for I missed the moment.”
    She laughed in his face, reaching a sure hand to cup his cheek. “Do you feel controlled, Lieutenant?”
    â€œCompletely,” he confessed as she sidled up against him once again. With perfect accuracy she molded her much more compact body against his imposing one. She cupped his hips, taking hold of him. All at once he found himself falling into a thrusting motion with her, mimicking the act itself. He went harder inside his pants, his cock infused with blood and need before he could take a breath. The woman had him on a leash. It would not do. It would not do at all.
    Like a bull let loose, he charged her. Swung her up onto the bank and plowed her to the ground, tumbling her body beneath his, unable to quash his pulsating need for another moment. She squirmed beneath him, trying to catch her breath, but