She pushed past him into the kitchen and made a pitcher of lemonade with ice and fruit slices floating on top. Filling two glasses, she handed one to him and said, "Come on. Let's go out on the deck and you can regale me with all your deep dark secrets."

His you-know-what shot out, like the back end of a bird dog on point, not just at her mention of his dark secrets, which were darkly sexual, but at the appearance of her rear end as she walked before him. Up, down, up down, up, down. God bless spandex! Is that a blasphemy? He hoped not.

The sky was still a clear blue, and even though there were distant, dark clouds and an electricity in the air portending the coming storm, it was a beautiful tropical setting anyone would appreciate. The lush plants about the property with their fragrant flowers only added to the allure.

Sitting in side-by-side teak loungers, which Trond had deliberately placed under the porch overhang for shade, he told her stories about St. Michael the Archangel. First of all, how they called him Mike with irreverence, just to annoy the hoity-toity archangel. How Mike always called them Viking, with equal irreverence. Usually it was, "Can't you do anything right, Viking?" or "Did you really think near-sex didn't count as a sin, Viking?"

Then he told her how Mike had talked Harek into setting up an archangel website, still a work in progress, so that the celestial beings could get in tune with the twenty-first century. When some of the VIK had resisted, Mike had replied, "God doesn't care if his followers come to him via a palm-waving crowd on a Jerusalem roadway, or via some palatial cathedral, or via the Internet superhighway. Just so they come."

Nicole was wiping tears of laughter from her eyes when he told her about some of the jobs he'd had over the years, including his days as a gladiator fighting lions in the Colosseum. "You do not want to get up close and personal with lion breath," he assured her.

Her eyes went wide with interest when he told her about the run-down, long-abandoned castle in Transylvania, Pennsylvania, built a hundred years ago by an eccentric lumber baron, that his brother Vikar had been sent to renovate, and was still renovating, and would be renovating for centuries to come. She giggled when he described the antics of the strange town that used vampirism as a tourist attraction. And he told her about the extended family of vangels, aside from his six brothers, hundreds of them, who inhabited the castle from time to time, including Lizzie Borden, their cook, and a witch who was always threatening to put a curse on the male vangels' favorite body parts when they misbehaved, and even the young teenage vampire angel Armod, who fashioned himself a reincarnated Michael Jackson. "You do not want to see a vangel moonwalk," Trond assured her.

When he took a break in his long-winded blathering, she smiled at him. "You really are one of those . . . things. Aren't you?"

"If you mean a vangel, for my sins, yes, I am."

Then, she homed in on the least important thing he had said, or maybe not so unimportant, "What is near-sex?"

"I'll tell you later," he choked out. He didn't think Zeb's thong-yes, he was wearing a new pair of Zeb's thongs-could stand the strain. It was the only new underwear he could find in the drawers. It was either that or go commando, as many of the Navy SEALs did. He hoped his brothers never found out; he would never live it down.

"No, seriously, sex is sex, right?"

He rolled his eyes. "Let's just say when you belong to a society that proclaims sex outside of marriage as a mortal sin, a man must be inventive. I have the distinction of being the master of near-sex."

She smiled.

He loved when she smiled at him. She did it so rarely.

She tapped her forefinger on her closed lips as she pondered his words of nonwisdom.

He loved her lips, closed or otherwise. But the subject they were discussing was a dangerous one for him. A temptation.

"I imagine chastity itself would be a sort of punishment," she continued. "For some people, anyhow."

"Oh, it is. Believe you me, it is."

"So, sex with penetration is a big sin, but near-sex isn't?"

He almost swallowed the lemon in his glass at her explicit word and the image it brought forth. Oh damn! Can I really engage in such graphic talk without giving her a demonstration? Down, boy, down! He wasn't about to look at his lap. He didn't have to. "No, I didn't say that near-sex is permitted. I'm just hoping the penance is not so great. Of course, I told my brother Vikar about near-sex, and his experiments landed him in a marriage for life."

"Vangels can marry?"

"No. Vikar is the exception. Besides, there are too many complications." Like the VIK staying the same age and his wife aging and eventually dying. Like vangels being unable to have children. Like centuries with the same partner, if they could both live the same life span, would be a penance in itself.

"And you can get off with near-sex?"

I should go take a cold shower. No, I can't stand. Please, don't let me disgrace myself like an untried, overeager boyling with his first tup. Think about something else. Stinky gammelost. Cold Norse winters. Fish guts. When he was under control, he said in as calm a voice as possible, "Yes."

Luckily she changed the subject. "Your family sounds wonderful . . . eerily weird, but wonderful. And the castle, I would love to see it sometime."

"Maybe you can," he offered before he had a chance to check himself, "when we get out of here."

"I like your confidence."

"Now, you tell me about yourself," he said, "but hold that thought. I'll be right back." He went inside to Zeb's fully-stocked fridge and came back with a plate of assorted cheeses, olives, a peeled and sectioned orange, several clumps of succulent red and green grapes, and crackers, placing it on a small table between them with little cocktail napkins that said a lot about Zeb. He also refilled their glasses of lemonade.

"This is nice," she said. "If it weren't for my worry over Zeb, and our failure to report back to headquarters, and my sister, I could almost relax and enjoy this brief respite. I can't remember the last time I took a vacation."

He wasn't surprised. "I noticed you're not jumping up and down with constant-"

"-peppiness?" she finished for him, repeating back his criticism of her in the past.

"Now tell me about your life. It can't all have been bad."

"It wasn't." She told him about her childhood when her paternal grandparents, immigrants from Greece, had been alive and lived down the street from them. Their Old World values had been implanted in her early and deeply and were what eventually had her joining the WEALS.

"Were you always so . . . peppy?" he teased.

"I was, actually, and I confess, I was even a high school cheerleader. I lost it for those few years with Billy."

Trond teased her about her energetic attitude, but deep down he had to admit that inside his slothful, nonenergetic self was not peace and calm, but dead chaos. If a person didn't care, he didn't get hurt. Could it be that apathy was a defense mechanism? Could it be that subconsciously, all those years ago, that's what he'd been doing? Seemed rather preposterous to him, but an interesting idea to ponder on a long, lonely night, which this was not.

" . . . but I won't apologize for my personality. Uh-uh!" Nicole had continued talking while his mind had wandered. "It's too easy to be a pessimist and depressed. Even if I have to force myself to be bubbly with all my motivational tapes and stuff, I'd rather that than the opposite."

He put up his hands in mock surrender. "Hey, your personality is growing on me."

"Is it?" she asked, suddenly serious.

He reached over and linked one hand with hers. Their gazes held. "Yeah, it is."

They both felt the erotic shock between their clasped hands.

"Do you think it's some demon dust Zeb sprinkled around?" she asked huskily, puzzled by this strong attraction between them. "Oh, I admit, it was there before, but not so powerful, or compelling."

"I hope this is Zeb's doing," he said, because if it wasn't that, it was something more. Something bigger that he couldn't begin to contemplate or handle.

Sweet surrender! . . .

Nicole was strung tighter than a sexual Slinky, and she didn't know how much longer she could hold the coils of her control together.

As they ate leftover paella and reheated bread for dinner, she watched Trond eat, fascinated by his lips.

When he steepled his fingers and pinioned her with his take-no-mercy eyes, she whispered, "Mercy!"

When he walked outside to check the shutters in preparation for the hurricane that was expected to sweep the Caribbean, according to the TV, which had just gone on the blink due to the storm, his wide shoulders, slim waist, and hard butt drew her eyes. In fact, the backs of his knees, of all things, attracted particular notice. And, yes, she was developing a toe thing, too.

He had pulled on a T-shirt with the message: "Heaven: The Best Gated Community Ever" on the front, and on the back, "Hell: The Worst Gated Community Ever." You had to appreciate a man with a sense of humor, even it had been borrowed from Zeb.

He brushed past her to get a screwdriver from the kitchen utility drawer, and she barely stifled a groan at the sexual zing. How could she have such a powerful reaction to someone who was dead?

When he looked at her with his intense blue eyes, turning strangely, hue by hue, to a silvery grayish blue, she knew he shared her growing arousal.

She was even turned on by the slight presence of his fangs, a sign of the testosterone raging inside his body.

The question was: What would they do about it?

The answer came that evening when the lights went out, the candles were lit, and they drank not one, or two, but three glasses of Zeb's fine red wine. The house shook, the shutters rattled, lightning struck, and it was nothing compared to the storm brewing between them.

She headed toward the closed glass doors to stare at the stormy sea, and he came up behind her.

"I surrender," he said, rubbing himself against her behind, his hands braced on the glass on either side of her head.

"Me too," she groaned. "Won't you get in trouble for this?"

"Oh yeah. You play, you pay." He nibbled at her neck, exposed by her hair being piled atop her head with a rubber band. "You have no idea how much I want to bite you."

"Maybe later."

His body jerked reflexively against her. Then he did in fact nip at the sweet curve where her throat and shoulder met. "Tease!"

"I haven't begun to tease you yet," she promised, and tried to turn within the bracket of his arms.

"Not yet." He winked at her. "I have plans."

"Oh boy."

"I'm a man. Not a boy," he growled. "That you will discover before this night is over."

"Promises, promises," she taunted him playfully.

Outside the bungalow, it was black, except for the occasional lightning, but there was enough glow from the many candles they'd lit that they could see their images in the dark glass.

Because of the storm that battered the cottage, because of the danger that hovered around them outside this temporary safe harbor, the world seemed to narrow to just this room and the two of them. All her senses were on high alert. The sound of thunder and crashing waves. The scent of Trond's skin, soapy clean and all male. The feel of his warm breath on her neck and his body pressing against her back. His male essence cloaked her in an erotic fog, as dark and enticingly dangerous as the mists outside.

How can he be dead?

"Let's play a game," he suggested as he lifted her shirt over her head, leaving her bare from the waist up, her breasts pressed against the cool glass being whipped by the rain. "Do you like games, Nicole?"

"Like Monopoly?"

He laughed and put the flats of both hands inside the waistline of her cut-off biker shorts, shoving them down to the floor, where she kicked them aside. "No, dearling, nothing like Monopoly. More like tennis where the ball, so to speak, is in your court, then my court, then yours, and so on. Or a roller coaster, with all its ups and downs. No, the best comparison would be a play we are putting on, with many, many acts."

"Would there be a grand finale?"

"Definitely." He put his hands back on the glass, in fact his entire forearms on either side of her head.

She sensed, rather than saw, his smile behind her.

"But each act would have its own satisfying conclusion, if you get my meaning."

"And the rules of this game?"

"We take turns being the director. And one thing, and only one thing, can take place during each act until the last one. Kissing. Touching. Looking. Talking. We will be creative. I'll go first. My act will be called Statues. What do you think?"

She turned in the circle of his arms, stood on her tiptoes, and looped her arms around his neck so her breasts were even with his chest. The pleasure was so intense that the blood drained from her head, and she had to hold on to his shoulders for support. "How come you get to go first?" she finally managed to squeak out.

"Because I'm bigger, and I thought of it, and . . . because I say so." His hands cupped her buttocks, tugging her closer into the cradle of his hips. "That. Feels. So. Good." He seemed to be having trouble getting the words out, and he let her slip back to her feet.

Even that slipping was an erotic experience. "Okay, Mr. Director," she agreed, her words a little wobbly, too. "So, first act, Statues. I assume you've put on this particular game . . . uh, play before."

Now he was swaying from side to side, brushing his chest hairs over her already hardened nipples. "You don't play fair," she complained, halfheartedly. His grin told her loud and clear that he knew very well what he was doing to her raging libido. "If you're not careful, the finale is going to come . . . come being the key word . . . before there's ever a first act."

He let her put a little space between then, but only so he could give her a full-body survey, one that caused the corded vein in his neck to pulse. She would bet her boxed set of Mind over Matter tapes that another part of his body was pulsing, too. She'd deliberately not allowed herself to look "down there" yet, wanting to prolong the anticipation.

"No, sweetling," he finally answered her question, "I have never played this game before. Near-sex has many variations. This is one I was saving for someone special."

She was pleased by that admission, but this was a game, and she couldn't let him win so early with a mere compliment or two. So, she slanted her eyes up at him and boasted, "You have no idea how good I am at games. I was the tennis champ in high school, and I adore roller coasters."

The edge of his lips quirked into that lopsided grin she found so boyishly endearing, but there was nothing of the boy in the feral predatory gleam in his now fully silver eyes. "Game on, sweetling."

Twenty-one.

He was no gambler, but tonight he was a winner . . .

Sometimes life deals you dream cards, and Trond was looking at a royal flush.

He stepped back to get a better look at Nicole's naked body as she leaned back against the dark window. He wished he had about two dozen more candles, and a floodlight or two, to get the full effect. Still, he could see enough that his knees felt weak, and his heart started thumping against his rib cage.

Nicole Tasso in full military ruck was attractive. Nicole Tasso in the nude was sex personified. Especially when she struck a pose with her arms raised above her head after releasing the rubber band on her hair and gave him a little Mona Lisa smile. Shy she was not! Which he considered another dream card in this game they were playing.

She hadn't been lying. She was a good game player. Really good.

"Do you think I'm a slut?" she asked suddenly.

Whaat? Oh, she must mean a wanton. Modern women were so strange about their inhibitions. "Not yet. Hopefully soon."

"Don't you think we should level the playing field?" she asked in a smoky voice . . . a voice made husky by her arousal, he hoped.

"Oh?"