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some dark place that was velvet and fire, and she was lost there.
    He muttered something against her mouth and then his slanted, deepening the kiss even more with stark possession. His tongue was sinuous as it stroked hers in a touch so intimate it sent a shudder of feverish pleasure rippling through her. Her body swayed toward his, and she felt the hardness of his chest press against her breasts.
    Then his hands slid down her back to her waist, trailing new heat and the echoes of old pain, and the reminder was just enough to bring a chill of sanity to her mind and a moan of protest to her throat.
    Whether or not he heard, Cyrus raised his head, staring down at her dazed face with eyes so fierce she almost flinched away from them. "You want the same thing I want ,. Julia," he said thickly. "That's what mat ters. It's all that matters."
    She backed away from him slowly, and he let her go. She had a fatalistic certainty that next time he wouldn't... because next time she wouldn't be able to protest. It took more willpower than she thought she had to turn and walk away, but she did it. Her heart was pounding and she couldn't breathe except in shallow little gulps, but she walked with her head up and she didn't look back at him.
    Some minutes later, as Cyrus continued on his way, frowning in thought, a man stepped onto the path behind him and stood gazing after him. He was a tall man, well-dressed and obviously prosperous. His lean face was without expression, but a shaft of sunlight fell across the powerful hands that clenched into fists by his sides repeatedly in a measured rhythm.
    He turned his head and glanced back the way Julia had gone, then looked after Cyrus again. His hands continued to flex and clench steadily. A faint breeze stirred the trees, and a pattern of dappling sunlight shifted briefly over his face. His eyes reflected nothing in the light, like the windows of an empty house.
    It was late that night when Cyrus returned home from the poker game at Noel Stanton's house, and he wasn't in the best of moods. He'd been on edge since Julia had left him in the park, and his luck with cards had been so abnormally bad that Noel had chided him on his lack of concentration—cheerfully, since he'd been winning ev ery cent Cyrus lost.
    Cyrus didn't care, except that it might have been another sign of his changing luck in other ways and it made him uneasy.
    He let himself into the house and locked the door behind him, frowning when a soberly dressed man came silently into the hall. "I've told you not to wait up for me," Cyrus said.
    "Yes, sir." The butler's face was impassive as usual. "A package came for you tonight, sir. On your desk."
    "A package? From whom?"
    "I couldn't say, sir. Someone rang the bell and left the box on the doorstep. Your name was written on the box, but nothing else."
    Cyrus nodded. "All right. Go to bed, Stork."
    "Yes, sir."
    Cyrus crossed the hall to his study and went in. A lamp had been left burning for him, and in the light of it the wooden box on his desk gleamed darkly. He frowned as he stared down at it, surprised to see his name hadn't just been written on the box, it had been burned carefully into the wood.
    There was no latch on the box; the well-fitted lid simply lifted off. Cyrus set it aside, surprised again to find a gold-handled cane inside. Real gold, he realized as he held it in his hands. This was old, he could feel it. The handle was ornate, but the design was subtle and exquisitely made, and the cane itself was heavy.
    He saw the slip of paper a moment later, and laid the cane on his desk with unconscious care before reaching into the box for what he hoped would be a note explaining the curious gift. It wasn't exactly a note, however, merely a single sentence written in the same fine hand that had burned his name into the box.
    Your father wanted you to have this.
    Cyrus's first thought was that this had to be somebody's idea of a joke, because Tate Fortune had never used a cane