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laughed as if she’d said something charming. “It’s good to know yourself. You say this is what your mother wants. Is it what you want?”
    She took a sip of her drink, and thought he was very smart, too—or at least astute. “No, not really.”
    “Then what kind of doctor do you want to be?”
    “I don’t want to be a doctor at all.”
    “No? What, then?”
    “I want to work in cyber crimes for the FBI.”
    “FBI?” His dark eyes widened.
    “Yes. I want to investigate high-tech crimes, computer fraud—terrorism, sexual exploitation. It’s an important field that changes every day as technology advances. The more people use and depend on computers and electronics, the more the criminal element will exploit that dependence. Thieves, scam artists, pedophiles, even terrorists.”
    “This is your passion.”
    “I … I guess.”
    “Then you must follow. We must always follow our passions, yes?” When his hand brushed over her knee, a slow, liquid warmth spread in her belly.
    “I never have.” Was this passion? she wondered. This slow, liquid warmth? “But I want to start.”
    “You must respect your mother, but she must also respect you. A woman grown. And a mother wants her child to be happy.”
    “She doesn’t want me to waste my intellect.”
    “But the intellect is yours.”
    “I’m starting to believe that. Are you in college?”
    “I am finished with this. Now I work in the family business. This makes me happy.” He signaled the waitress for another round before Elizabeth realized her glass was nearly empty.
    “Because it’s your passion.”
    “This is so. I follow my passions—like this.”
    He was going to kiss her. She might not have been kissed before, but she’d imagined it often enough. She discovered imagination wasn’t her strong suit.
    She knew kissing imparted biological information through pheromones, that the act stimulated all the nerve endings packed in the lips, in the tongue. It triggered a chemical reaction—a pleasurable one that explained why, with few exceptions, kissing was part of human culture.
    But to
be
kissed, she realized, was an entirely different matter than theorizing about it.
    His lips were soft and smooth, and rubbed gently over hers, with the pressure slowly, gradually increasing as his hand slid up from her hip to her rib cage. Her heart tripped above the span of his hand as his tongue slipped through her lips, lazily glided over hers.
    Her breath caught, then released with an involuntary sound, almost of pain—and the world revolved.
    “Sweet,” he murmured, and the vibration of the words against her lips, the warmth of his breath inside her mouth, triggered a shiver down her spine.
    “Very sweet.” His teeth grazed over her bottom lip as he eased back, studied her. “I like you.”
    “I like you, too. I liked kissing you.”
    “Then we must do it again, while we dance.” He brought her to her feet, brushed his lips to hers again. “You aren’t—the word, the word … jaded. This is the word. Not like so many women who come in to dance and drink and flirt with men.”
    “I don’t have a lot of experience with any of that.”
    Those black eyes sparkled in the pulsing lights. “Then the other men aren’t so lucky as me.”
    Elizabeth glanced back toward Julie as Ilya drew her to the dance floor and saw that her friend was also being kissed. Not gently, not slowly, but Julie seemed to like it—in fact, was fully participating, so—
    Then Ilya drew her into his arms, swaying with her unlike all theothers who rushed and shook and spun. Just swaying while his mouth came to hers again.
    She stopped thinking about chemical reactions and nerve endings. Instead, she did her best to participate fully. Instinct brought her arms up to lock around his neck. When she felt the change in him, the hardening pressing against her, she knew it was a normal, even involuntary, physical reaction.
    But she knew the wonder of it all the same. She’d