She came close to the point where it was difficult for her to spend five minutes in a room with herself, but she kept right on pushing.

The night before the operation, she stood in her office, studying the image of the ballroom on-screen once again while the cat ribboned affectionately between her legs. Calculating the angles she'd already calculated, she arranged, re-arranged the proposed movements of the men who were assigned to the floor.

When the screen went blank, she thought she'd finally blown her eyes.

"That's enough." Roarke stepped up behind her. "You could build a bloody replica of the hotel with your bare hands by now." "There's always a way to slide through a crack, and she's good at it. I want another pass at it."

"No. No," he repeated as he massaged her shoulders. "It's time we both put it aside until tomorrow. Take a pass at each other." He nuzzled her neck. "Happy anniversary."

"I didn't forget." She said it quickly, guiltily. "I just thought maybe we could... I don't know, save it for after tomorrow. Until after everything's clear." She cursed softly. "And when the hell is everything really clear, so that's stupid. But I didn't forget."

"That's good, as neither did I. Ah. Come along then, I've something to show you."

"I'm sort of surprised you're talking to me. I haven't been a bundle of joy to be around the last couple of days." "Darling, you're such a master of understatement."

She stepped into the elevator with him. "Yeah, fine, but you haven't been Mr. Smooth yourself, pal."

"Undoubtedly true. I don't care for anyone questioning or countermanding my orders and arrangements any more than you.

Let's have a truce, shall we?"

"I guess I could use one. Where are we going here?" "Back," he said, and when the doors opened led her out.

The holo-room was a large clean space of mirrored black. When the elevator closed behind them, he drew her into its center. "Begin designated program, dual settings."

And the black shimmered, wavered with color and shape. She felt the change in the air-a soft and fragrant warmth that had the faint hint of rain. She heard that rain patter softly against the windows that formed, on the floor of a balcony where the doors were open to welcome it.

And in front of her, the sumptuous beauty spilled around her and took shape.

"It's the place in Paris," she murmured. "Where we spent our wedding night. It was raining." She stepped to the open doors, held her hand out, and felt the wet kiss her palm. "Steamy with summer, but I wanted the doors open. I wanted to hear the rain. I stood here, just here, and I... I was so in love with you."

Her voice shook as she turned back, looked at him. "I didn't know I could stand here a year later and love you more." She scrubbed the heels of her hands over her damp cheeks. "You knew this would get me all sloppy."

"You stood there, just there." He walked to her. "And I thought, She's everything I want. Everything there is. And now, a year later, you're somehow even more than that."

She leaped into his embrace, locking her arms around his neck, making them both laugh as he was forced to take two backward steps to maintain balance.

"Should've been ready," he chuckled against her lips. "I believe you did that a year ago as well."

"Yeah, and I did this." She tore her mouth from his to sink her teeth lightly into his throat. "Then I'm pretty sure we started ripping each other's clothes off on the way to the bedroom."

"Then in the interest of tradition." He got two fistfuls of the back of her shirt, yanked hard in opposite direction and ripped the fabric.

She went after his by the front, tugging until buttons flew, until she had her hands on flesh. "Then we-" '

"It's all coming back to me." He pivoted, bracing her back against a wall, ravishing her mouth while he ripped at her trousers. "Boots."

Her breath caught, her hands kept busy. "I wasn't wearing boots."

"We'll ad-lib."

She fought to toe them off as her clothes, pieces of them, hung here and there like rags.

She stopped hearing the rain. The sound was too subtle to compete with the pounding of her blood. His hands were rough, demanding, rushing over her in a kind of feral possession until she could all but feel her skin screaming.

He drove her to peak where they stood, a brutal blinding peak that jellied her knees. His mouth was on hers, swallowing her cries as if he could feed on them.

Washed in the heat, she fell against him. And dragged him to the floor.

They went wild together, rolling over the delicate floral pattern of the rug, whipping all the needs to aching then pushing for more.

There was nothing else. Nothing for him now but her. The way her skin sprang damp as passions ruled her. The way her body lifted, writhed, slithered. The taste of her filled his mouth, pumped into his blood like some violent drug that promised the razor's edge of madness.

He savaged her breasts while her heart galloped under his hungry lips. Mine, he thought now as he had then. Mine. He yanked her to her knees, his breath as ragged as their clothes. His muscles, primed to spring, quivered for her. She fisted her hands in his hair. "More,"

she said, and dragged him back against her.

She fell on him, seeking to plunder. Her body was a morass of aches and glory, too battered by sensations to separate pain from pleasure. Clashed together, they equalled greed.

She feasted on him, on the hard, disciplined body, on the poet's mouth, the warrior's shoulders. Her hands streaked over him. Mine, she thought now as she had then. Mine.

He rolled, pinning her. He shoved her hips high and drove in, hard.

Hard and deep. And held there, buried in her, while she came.

"There's more." His lungs screamed, and the dark pleasure all but blinded him as she fisted around him. "We'll both have more."

She rose to him, wrapped around him, matching him thrust for desperate thrust. When the need lanced through him, through heart, through head, through loins, he gave himself to it, and to her.

He rested his head between her breasts. The most perfect of pillows for a man, in his current opinion. Her heart was still thundering, or perhaps it was his. He felt a raging thirst and hoped he'd find the energy to quench it in the next year or two.

"I remembered something else," she told him. "Hmm."

"We didn't make it to the bed the first time back then either."

"Eventually we did. But I think I had you on the dinner table first." "I had you on the dinner table. Then you had me in the tub."

"I believe you're right about that. Then we managed to find the bed, where we proceeded to have each other. We had some dinner and some champagne before the table was so hastily cleared."

"I could eat." She combed her fingers lazily through his hair. "But maybe we can eat right here on the floor so we don't have to move very much. I think my legs are paralyzed."

He chuckled, nuzzled, then lifted his head. "It's been a fine and remarkable year. Come then, I'll help you up." "Can we get food in here?"

"Absolutely. It's all arranged for." He got to his feet, hauled her to hers. "Give me a minute." "Roarke? This is a really nice present."

He smiled at her, then went to the wall and keyed in something on a panel. "Night's young yet."

A droid that looked remarkably French wheeled a cart in as the elevator opened. Instinctively Eve tossed an arm over her breasts, the other below her waist. And made Roarke laugh.

"You have the oddest sense of modesty. I'll fetch you a robe." "I never see droids around here."

"I assumed you'd object to Summerset bringing in the dinner. Here you are."

He handed her a robe. Or she supposed you could call it a robe-if you didn't define one as actually covering anything. This was long and black and completely transparent. His grin flashed when she frowned at it.

"It's my anniversary, too, you know." He shrugged into a robe of his own, one, she noted, that wasn't so skimpy on the layers.

He poured the champagne the droid had opened, then offered her a glass. "To the first year, and all that follow." He touched his glass to hers.

He dismissed the droid, and she saw he hadn't missed a detail with the meal, either. There was the same succulent lobster, the tender medallions of beef in the delicate sauce, the same glossy hills of caviar they'd shared on their wedding night.

Candlelight shimmered and the music of the rain was joined by something that soared with strings and flutes. "I really didn't forget."

"I know."

"I'm sorry I tried to push it aside. Roarke." She reached over, closed her hand over his. "I want you to know that I wouldn't change anything, not one thing that's happened since the first time I saw you. No matter how often you've pissed me off."

He shook his head. "You are the most fascinating woman I've ever known." "Get out."

When she laughed, started to pull back, he tightened his grip on her hand. "Brave, brilliant, irritating, funny, exasperating, driven. Full of complications and compassion. Sexy, surprisingly sweet, mean as a snake. Disarmingly lacking in self-awareness, and stubborn as a mule. I adore every part and parcel of you, Eve.

Everything you are is a maddening joy to me."