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sitting on the edge of her big bed in his shirtsleeves looking pale and grim, his hair pulling free of the strip of leather tied around it at his nape.
    “How do you know I didn’t?” she asked.
    “I don’t smell him on you. I thought you were going to use your
mashmashu
and take him. Don’t tell me you’ve lost your desire for him.”
    “No.” Her passion for the Englishman was like a fever; it made her skin prickle with heat, her heart quiver in her chest. She had wanted to go to him, wanted to whisper her Akkadian incantation and devour him, to slake her terrible hunger. Instead, she’d lain awake half the night envisioning his body laid bare to her eyes, her hands, her mouth, her savage, ungovernable lust.
    Many times during the night, she’d tried to sweep such thoughts away, to pacify her mind so that she could sleep, but she couldn’t stop imagining David Beckett stripped of that reserve he wore like armor, groaning and shuddering as she coaxed him into one ferocious climax after another. The fever had consumed her, seething through her to pool wet and pulsing between her legs. She’d whimpered in frustration with her breath coming fast, hips straining. How dearly she’d wished, not for the first time, that she had the ability to bring herself to orgasm. Of the few human traits that she envied, that one was foremost.
    It had taken a grueling effort of will to keep from stealing into Beckett’s chamber and relieving that agony of arousal, as Elic had expected. But she had a different plan altogether for this
gabru.
    “Why don’t you just fuck him and get it over with?” Elic asked.
    “Is that what you want me to do?”
    Grimacing, he said, “Yes, goddammit, if that will get you to stop mooning over the bastard.” It was a reflection of what she’d told him last night in the bathhouse.
Once I’ve had this
gabru,
and my cravings have been fed, my ardor will diminish—you’ll see.
    Sitting up with the bedcovers tucked around her, for she did not care to be naked for this conversation, she said, “I have decided not to use the
mashmashu
with the Englishman. It’s been some time since I’ve attempted to seduce a
gabru au naturale
.It takes a bit longer, to be sure, and there can be complications, but the anticipation adds a piquant dimension, and I do so love a challenge.”
    “What challenge is there in running prey to ground if that prey so clearly wants to be caught?”
    “I’ve been bored. It’s a diversion.”
    “Or perhaps it’s just a way to hurt me,” he said. “Is that it, Lili? You want to punish me for last night, so you set about
wooing
this fucking gardener instead of just—”
    “I’m not wooing him,” she said, “just . . . enticing him, as human women do.”
    “No incantatory assistance?” he asked skeptically. “None at all?”
    She thought about it. “I might expose him to the
magnétisme hallucinatoire
if my unalloyed charms prove insufficient. It would be more entertaining, however, to rely solely on the dance of flirtation and possession.”
    “Humans cannot perform that dance cold-bloodedly—you know that. You should be discouraging any feelings he may be harboring for you, not nurturing them—and your own, in the bargain. But that’s really the point, isn’t it? To make me watch the two of you become more and more enamored of each other as you conduct this
dance
of yours, all the while knowing it’s my fault you’ve chosen this route instead of just taking him like you take all the others.”
    “Elic—”
    “What do you want of me, Lili?” he demanded, that vein distending on his flushed forehead as it did whenever he was agitated—or climaxing. “I would take back what I did last night in a heartbeat if I could. You must know how sorry I am. When will you stop giving me the cold shoulder and let things go back to where they were before?”
    Lili looked away from his bleak, searing eyes so that she could sort through her thoughts. She could chide