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excitement at her implied threat spread his lips. “I can’t wait.”
    Her eyes swept him with now blue-cold disdain. “So you have an extreme form of masochism among your perversions, huh? Figures.”
    â€œNot to me, it doesn’t. At least, it didn’t. But I am discovering I’d welcome anything from you.”
    She snorted. He shook his head as he huffed another chuckle. He couldn’t believe it himself, how fully he meant that.
    Sighing, admitting that for the first time in his life, he was experiencing something beyond his control, he reached for what had survived of his bloody clothes. And though she aimed more detestation at him, he felt her unwilling coveting spread over every inch of his cold flesh, heating it from the inside out. He shuddered at the caress of her eyes over every bulge and stretch of his muscles as he carefully pulled his clothes back on.
    His satisfaction rose. Her reactions to him had not only alternated between delightful and brutal honesty, they were as overpowering as his. Her mind might be telling her to slash him open, but everything else was clamoring for his nearness, delighting in his every detail. And of course that was making her madder. At him.
    He’d finished dressing before it occurred to him to try the heater. It was still working.
    He turned his gaze back to her with a smile, and she slammed him with a disapproving scowl.
    â€œ Now you turn on the heater. Were you trying to see how long you can last before you succumb to hypothermia? Or were you hoping I’d offer you the best remedy for it?”
    â€œFlesh-on-flesh warming.” He almost shivered with imagining the mind-melting sensuality of such an act with her. “And now you’ve cornered me. I must admit either that I was such a remiss male that I didn’t think of it, or such an inefficient field officer that I didn’t remember the onboard heater. Will I get leniency points if I cite my reason for failing to think of it to be preoccupation with your golden self?”
    â€œNah. I have another explanation. You didn’t think of it because you’re cold-blooded like all your species. Snakes.”
    A laugh overpowered him and sent another bolt of pain through him. “Ah, I’ve never been so inventively insulted before. I can’t get enough of whatever spills from your mouth.”
    Her smile was one of condescension and disgust. “I’m such a refreshing acid bath after all the slimy, simpering sweetness you usually marinate in, huh, you jaded jerk?”
    He put a protective hand to his side as he laughed again and groaned in pain simultaneously. “What you are is literally sidesplitting. It is positively intoxicating what an irreverent, fearless wildcat you are, ya nadda jannati .”
    â€œDon’t you dare call me that again!” she growled.
    â€œTalia…”
    She slammed her fist on her thigh in chagrin. “And don’t call me that, either. I’m T.J.—no, Dr. Burke to you. No—I’m nothing to you. So don’t call me anything at all!” He began to say her name again but she bulldozed over his insistence. “And now I take back everything I called you.You’re not monqethi or buttuli . You’re just one of those self-serving, criminal dictators. Or wait—since you were sent to retrieve me, you’re probably one of their lower ranks, maybe even disposable. Not that it makes you any better than the higher-ups.”
    Everything inside him stilled.
    Then he slowly asked, “You don’t know who I am?”
    â€œYou’re an Aal Shalaan,” she spat the name. “That’s all I need to know.”
    Would knowing exactly who he was change her attitude? For the better? By now, he was hoping it would. Her antagonism, now that it seemed there to stay, was fast losing its exciting edge.
    Then he inhaled. “I’m not just an Aal Shalaan. I’m