"Put it back on."

But she had tossed the shirt aside, and if she'd been wearing a bra, it too was gone.

Her breasts were high and full, fresh in the way of a young woman approaching the height of her physical appeal. She might have been eighteen, twenty-one, or twenty-five. But she was a patient, a student at the school of which he was the doctor of record, and trouble.

Peter deliberately threaded the camera over his shoulder. ill won't take pictures of you nude."

"I'm not nude," she said, coming closer still. "I'm wearing pants."

"Get dressed, Julie. Let me walk you back to your friends."

She shook her head. With the confidence of one who knew her power, she held his eyes.

"Touch me," she whispered from inches away.

"Un-uh," Peter said with a slow shake of his head.

"Don't you find me attractive?"

"Very, but you're my patient, for one thing, and for another, you're a child."

"I'm not a child. I'm eighteen. And I'm Dr. Pfeiffer's patient, now that Dr. O'Neill is dead."

Now that Dr. O'Neill is dead. Mara would be shrieking if she could see him then. Focusing on that thought, he moved aside and reached for Julie's shirt, but she moved with him.

"You are," she said, "the most attractive man in this town."

He stretched the shirt over her shoulders, only to find that the sleeves were inside out.

He took it back off and set about righting them.

"Half the girls at school are in love with you." She put her lips to his jaw.

He tugged harder at the sleeves of the shirt, fixing one and attacking the other.

"I'm not a virgin, if that's what's bothering you. I've done this before."

"Spare me, Julie," he warned as he pulled the second sleeve through.

He hurried the shirt to her shoulders, only to find that he had hemmed her to him. Her hands went to his belt. One slipped lower.

"You do want me," she said with a victorious grin.

"No," he shouted, and stepped back. "No," he said more quietly, holding up his hands in token surrender. "I'm flattered. You're a beautiful girl. But anything between you and me is impossible." ill felt it," she taunted.

"What you felt," he said with a sigh, "was the difference between a boy's body and a man's. And what you did," he added with gravity "was an invasion of my privacy." He put his hands on his hips.

Now, I can easily walk you back through town with your shirt off, so that everyone can see the goods but if that isn't what you had in mind, I'd suggest you button your shirt." She buttoned the shirt, but her eyes said that she didn't believe he hadn't been aroused. The occasion al smirk she shot him as they walked back to Reels said the same thing.

He was relieved when she ran off to join her friends. She had begun to make him feel like a eunuch, but he wasn't that by a long shot.

He had a normal, healthy appetite for attractive womenan appetite that would have been well satisfied even then, had it not been for Lacey's trying to tell him how to run his life. He could tell her a thing or two right back. It struck him that he ought to He crossed the street, walked back the way he had originally come, turned the corner to the Tavern parking lot, and slid into his car.

Minutes later he was on his way to the Weeble estate.

He pulled up in front of the garage, climbed the narrow stairs to the apartment above, and knocked on the door. He could hear the sound of Tucker's own rock band, Henderson Wheel, which had hit it l big to the tune of three successive platinum albums He knocked again, louder.

"Yes?" Lacey called over the music.

"It's me. Peter," he tacked on, because he wasn't sure what his reception would be. He hadn't talked with her since the night he had walked out of the Tavern and left her behind.

She was a long time in opening the door, and then she wore a long robe and a sober expression. "You should have called first. I'm very tired."

I won't stay long," he said, and went past her into the apartment. He waited to hear the door close.

When it didn't, he turned to find her standing with her back to him and her hand on the knob. Her blond hair spilled down her back to the point where the robe cinched in her waist, just above the gentle flare of her hips. He felt a sharp tightening at his groin He returned to her and buried his face in her hair pushing the door closed as he pressed into her.

"Peter, don't," she protested, and tried to move away, but his arms hemmed her in. I ill know I'm a bastard," he said before she could 'but we have unfinished business, you and me." He began to knead her breasts. I She squirmed. "Don't do that."

He let her turn herself around before he pinned her to the door, and while he moved against her, he held her face with one hand and lowered the other "You like it. I know you do."

"Peter" ill know just what places feel the best"his hand found its markUespecially when you aren't wearing underwear. Did you do this for me?"

"How could I have?" she cried, exerting a steady pressure against his chest. ill didn't know you were coming Peter, I don't want" He stoppered further words with his mouth and devoured her lips while he stroked her, but even as he felt her body begin to move to his rhythm, she tore her mouth away.

"You have no right to walk in here like this " she tPOanptuetdt ptU"shing against him weakly "But you love it," he said, opening her robe, then his pants. He felt powerful and male, hard as a rock, ready to explode. I "Damn it, I don't want" "You do, yes, you do," he said, holding her gently. He ground his mouth against hers at the same time that he drove into her. He didn't know whether her cry was of pain or pleasure and didn't care, because the need inside him was too great, too male, too total.

The door behind her rattled under the force of his thrusts, but it, like the band of her legs around him, was something far removed from the tension building, building, building inside him. He ground his teeth together, bit out a guttural cry, and reached a climax that seemed to go on and on. In its midst he was aware of nothing but the extraordinary pleasure that had taken him over.

Very, very slowly, he regained an awareness of where he was, of the boneless slump of his body against Lacey and the raggedness of his breath against her neck. It was another minute before he felt her rigidity.

Drawing back, he met eyes that were cold as ice. After slipping from beneath him, she tied her robe as she crossed the floor, closed her hand around a stone obelisk that stood on the coffee table, and faced him again. ill think you'd better leave. Now."

The way she was holding the obelisk kept him where he was at the door.

He rezipped his pants. "What are you upset about?"

"I don't want you here. I didn't want you here in the first place, but you barged your way in.

You're a rude man, Peter."

"Ahhh. You're pissed at me because I left you with the bill the other night." F "The bill was nothing. I could afford to pay it. But you walked out when I dared to criticize you.

I hadn't realized how insecure you are."

"There you go, psychoanalyzing again."

She was shaking her head even before he stopped speaking. "Not psychoanalyzing.