Her heart picked up even more speed. She was damp all the way down her back. She shook like a terrier, and a fire burned in her chest that threatened to melt her.

Oh, God. She was going to try.

With Danny James. Her lover.

Well, there was no better way to spit in Xan’s face. If both of them survived, anyway.

‘The mountain,’ she blurted out.

Danny took a second to consider. ‘I like it. Dancing up with the witches. It’s just about Beltane, isn’t it? I know the moon’s almost full. Doesn’t sex play a big part in the celebration?’

‘How did you know?’

‘Researcher, remember? We’re all frustrated Jeopardy champs. I say we go right now. After all, my policy is to never put off something you want to do. Only the things you have to do.’

She giggled like a nervous virgin. ‘It’s only five. A bit of discretion from the local personal banker is always a good idea.’

‘On the other hand, if you shatter your reputation like cheap ceramic, it’ll give you the excuse to take up painting full-time.’

‘I don’t want to traumatize the girls.’

‘Are you kidding? The girls are going to throw a parade in my honor’

‘I beg your pardon.’

Reaching over, he pulled off her current rubber band and sent her hair flying. ‘You,’ he said, dangling the limp oval before her, ‘need to let your hair down more.’

She wanted to giggle again, but she was too breathless. He was smiling, but his eyes gleamed hot. His eyes took the stuffing out of her knees.

‘Also, when we’re traveling the world, being sybaritic and feckless, I absolutely forbid you to wear cardigans. Math teachers wear cardigans. You will wear silk and linen and the odd feather in your hair.’

‘On a researcher’s salary?’

He kissed her nose. ‘I’m going to live on your art. Clever, don’t you think?’

She nodded again. She was beyond fear. Somewhere between anticipation and terror, she thought. And before she’d even so much as shed her shirt.

He pulled her against him. ‘Kiss me to seal the deal?’

Dee took another anxious look around. ‘Right here?’

‘It’s part of proving how brave you are.’ He blew gently in her ear. And how feckless.’

Dee was glad he had a hold on her. Her knees failed again. Her nipples snapped to attention and showers of sparks washed down her neck. He was smiling down at her as if she were the last drink on a desert. She couldn’t have looked away if Xan had tapped her on the shoulder.

She managed to lift her face and smile back. It was all the invitation Danny needed. Dee thought she heard a sigh of relief from him as he bent to her.

Dee had been kissed before. Good kisses, bad kisses, kisses that curled her toes. In all the history of kisses, though, none was more perfect. His lips were so soft she wanted to lick them. His whiskers chafed her skin. His eyes, open so she couldn’t mistake him, darkened to midnight.

He didn’t just kiss her. He claimed her, his mouth ravenous, his hand curled behind her head, his other arm wrapped so tightly around her she had no room for escape. He branded her with his lips and his tongue and his breath, and Dee couldn’t bear the idea of stopping. She raised her arms and wrapped her hands around his neck, and oh, yes, his hair was just as silky as she’d hoped. And fun to winnow her fingers through. Just another color of sensuality; damson maybe, rich and deep and delicious.

For the kiss she’d use vermilion. Hot and sweet and impossible to turn from. Dee dined on that kiss. She let Danny plunder her lips and then returned the favor. She traced the tiny scar she hadn’t noticed at the edge of his mouth, and nibbled at his lower lip like a forbidden sweet. And his tongue. Oh, she couldn’t think of a thing that could give proper homage to his clever tongue. He sought out every part of her mouth, tracing ridge and hollow and the sweeping slope of her tongue. And then he returned to engage it in an unbearably erotic dance.

Dee lost track of time and place and propriety in that kiss. She felt him harden against her and envisioned them skin to skin. She didn’t ever want to stop. She wanted to wallow in the sudden glow of her own body. She was nothing but liquid and light, and only one thing could have brought her up short.

Her body warned her. It wasn’t insistent yet, but it was obvious. A hot ember that lodged right behind her breastbone and flared to life. It kept expanding until she thought it would consume her, a pulsing, living lucency that seemed to coalesce in her belly. Her very cells began to hum. She jerked back, pushing at his chest. ‘No…’

Danny was panting like a long distance runner. ‘Oh, yes.’ He was smiling, the rat.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said instinctively, giving him another little push.

He let her go without hesitation. ‘You’re not allowed to apologize. Official Feckless rules.’

She shook her head, trying to get her breathing and heart rate back under control. She wanted nothing more than to grab him by the ears and pull him back into that kiss. She wanted to go down on him like a hooker. She wanted. She sucked in a series of calming breaths, and inevitably the glow faded to safety. It made her want to cry again. She wanted to go up the mountain so badly.

Danny tucked a couple of curls behind her ear. ‘You want to go to Bicksburg now?’

She blinked, still trying to pull her senses together. ‘Just like that?’

‘Are you kidding? I’m going to spend every second we’re there fantasizing about what crimes we’re going to commit on that mountain tonight.’

He didn’t just fantasize. He aided and abetted. In Bicksburg he bought her a red feather boa. In Martinsville it was scented warm body oil. Citrus. An odd choice, Dee thought until Danny told her he liked his pleasures tangy and tart. Like her.

While Dee was checking out the Burns Bridge B and B, Danny was at the Sweet Tooth confectioner getting liqueur truffles. And next door to the Motor 8, he found a string of pop beads.

‘Okay, I wanted pearls,’ he told her as they sat in Miss Mamie’s Tea Parlor for dinner. ‘But we’ll have to settle for these.’

Dee pulled the beads apart and then reattached them with a lovely, well, popping noise. ‘You want me to wear a necklace of hot-pink pop beads when we make love?’

Danny’s grin was purely salacious. ‘Honey, they’re not going to be anywhere near your neck.’

Dee was sure she was a fluorescent shade of crimson. ‘Oh.’

But oddly enough, it was Xan who furnished the best accessory. After a long day of not even coming close to finding her, Dee gave up and asked Danny to run by the house. It was sundown, and the storm still threatened. The temperatures ahead of it had risen unnaturally, so that she’d even ditched her cardigan by about four. But it was almost dark now, and Dee had plans.

She was so hungry. So anxious. So damned ready. No matter what, she was going to walk up that mountain and see this through. She might have a spectacular flameout, but she might actually succeed. The only way she’d know for sure was by taking the chance.

So, Danny’s saddlebags loaded with everything from whiskey to a lovely suede French tickler, just in case one of them got spunky, he pulled up to the gate and shut off the motor. Dee swung off the bike and almost stumbled. Something hit her from behind. Something soft, like a wash of air from an open oven. She spun around, wondering what Danny had done now, but he was checking something on his front wheel.

Suddenly there was a rustle in the bushes, and Py let out the most incredibly soulful yowl Dee had ever heard. His call set up a veritable glee club from hell all up and down the block.

‘Pywackt?’ Dee called, shoving open the gate.

‘Seems to have quite a following,’ Danny said, looking up the street. ‘Must be all that Edith Piaf.’

It wasn’t just the cats, though. Dogs howled. Birds chattered and trilled. A veritable squadron of rabbits was suddenly doing maneuvers on the Ortballs’ yard, and the Coxes’ Chihuahua could be seen nuzzling the Nelsons’ Saint Bernard. Dee kept turning in circles, wondering at the sudden heat that was crawling down her spine, at the softening of the stormy air so that it seemed the sun shone anyway. Damn, her flowers were multiplying again, and it was almost dark out.

Her first thought was that Lizzie had had another experiment go wrong. She checked the chimney, but there wasn’t any new smoke. She couldn’t blame Mare. She certainly couldn’t blame herself. She didn’t do that kind of stuff.

‘Is that Frank Sinatra?’ Danny asked.

Dee cocked an ear to hear the vague tunes above the caterwauling. And Michael Bolton and Andrea Bocelli and Liza Minnelli. And, wait for it… yes. Barry White. Every neighbor on the block must be getting in the mood.’

And the Foleys next door were well into their eighties. But that was definitely their silhouette in their front window.

‘I’m impressed,’ Danny marveled.

‘Me, too. Mr Foley’s been in a wheelchair for a month.’

Her own senses were heightened. She could hear Danny breathing as if he were whispering in her ear again. She could smell that wonderful soap and man musk on him, and his power signature had strengthened. Not just an approaching storm, but one about to break. She could see the pale glow of his eyes, and couldn’t bear to turn away.

She was suddenly aching and hot and hungry. She took a look at the oak tree next door and thought how delicious it would be to scrape her back against that bark as Danny took her against it, driving hard into her until her skin was raw and everybody on the block heard her screaming.