Only Human

arras quivered with strain, but he bent and kissed her gently. "You can't catch anything from me, or vice versa. Bugs don't stick around in my system."
    In spite of everything, indignation pricked her. "Does that mean you've never even had a cold?"
    His' lips twitched. A drop of sweat drifted down the side of his face. "Afraid so. Lily ... now?"
    He needed her. As any man needs a woman—in a purely human way—he needed her. Something softened and opened inside her, and she answered without words, cupping his face in her hands and lifting up gently with her hips. He pushed inside.
    Full. Throbbing. Complete. Sensation pin wheeled through her, a thousand little sparks like colors spun into feeling. Her eyes squeezed closed, and the colors were there in the darkness with her.
    "Ahh," he said. "Ah, Lily." And he stroked her face with his hand while he stroked her, deep inside, with his cock. "Look at me, Lily. Look at me while I'm inside you."
    She opened her eyes and his were right there above her, waiting to catch her as she emerged from her private darkness. His pupils were huge. Growing. Darkness bled through his irises and beyond, pooling where white should be, a black, alien rainbow overtaking the colors she knew.
    The shock of fear hit instantly, an electric tremor. But it was too late to pull back, too late to reserve any portion of herself—he was already inside her, deep inside in a way beyond the physical. Fear was only another sensation, giving claws to the need in her belly.
    "Now," she panted, digging her fingers into his buttocks. "Now, Rule."
    He shuddered. As if some inner chain had snapped, he dug his hands into her buttocks, lifting her, putting her where he needed so he could pound into her. She cried out. Need surged—his, hers, the two swirled together in complex patterns disturbing the lines that were supposed to divide them.
    Fingers gripped, bruised. Flesh smacked into flesh as sweat dripped, running over heated bodies as the great, greedy beast of passion took them both by the throat, shook them—then flung them out into a clear, crisp darkness.

    "SOMEDAY I WANT to see you in colors. Green, maybe." Lily's head was pillowed on Rule's chest. It was damp and warm, stirring slightly with his breath. The aftershocks had faded into drowsy bliss. Later, she knew, she would question, wonder, try to understand. That business with his eyes ... but not now. Not yet.
    He opened his eyes. "I must have done something wrong. You have enough breath left to talk.”
    Her laugh was husky and delighted. "Blue. You'd look good in blue."
    He ran a hand over her hair. His voice was quiet, almost sad. "I wear colors sometimes at Clanhome. Tomorrow I'll wear blue for you."
    Reality seeped back in, about as welcome as a cold trickle of rain leaking beneath a raincoat collar. And just as impossible to ignore. She propped herself up on one elbow. "You never did tell me why you had to see me so urgently, did you? It's because you're finally taking me to Clanhome. Your father is back."
    "I'm taking you to Clanhome, yes. I believe my father will see you, though he hasn't said. He ..." Rule sighed. "He's been back for several days."
    He'd lied to her. Though she'd warned herself all along not to believe everything he told her, learning that he had lied stripped her of something warm and important.
    "I couldn't tell you." He touched her cheek. "He directly forbade me to tell you until..."
    "Until what?" Hurt throbbed inside her. Honor bound Rule to obey his Lupois, whose decisions he was pledged to uphold with his own body. She knew that. And still it hurt. "Until I went to bed with you?"
    "He didn't want his condition known."
    "What do you mean?"
    "Four days ago, on his way home from meeting with another Lupois, my father was attacked by other lupi. He was badly mauled. He nearly died."

Chapter 10
    THE RAIN OF last night had vanished as if it had never been. The sky was clear and cloudless, the land around them seriously rumpled, studded with live oak, juniper, and pines. Wind blew in the open windows of Rule's Explorer, smelling of dust and living things.
    Lily wondered what it smelled like to him. She would never really know what his world was like, would she?
    Returning to the real world was a bitch. She'd been mostly silent ever since they left her apartment, where she'd changed into clean clothes. But the doubts and the questions—and a few uneasy answers—hadn't waited until morning to hit. They'd plagued her