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to move, wanted him to move... but he didn't. He stayed still, buried deep, and our eyes locked together in fascinated wonder. I could feel the energy running through him, hot and wild. The same energy that had overtaken him outside of New York, in the car, but he understood how to channel it better now. How to bend it to his will.

"Let go," I whispered, and his lips parted in a gasp, and the light in his eyes brightened. "There's such a thing as too much control."

He'd made love to me so many different ways, and this was yet another--frantic, wild, tender, dangerous, sweet, and utterly open. Like the weather pounding at the window and crackling in my nerves, he was unstoppable. When the pleasure peaked, it was like a tidal wave carrying me to the sky, where I shivered into stars and fog.

I clung to him, exhausted and shining with sweat.

Panting as it passed. He collapsed with me in a tangle of arms and legs. Our hands were clasped together, still trembling from the force of the aftershocks. David's eyes were closed, and his face was--momentarily, at least--relaxed and peaceful. I studied it with the intensity of someone planning to do a portrait, the way the shadows defined his angles, the way his eyelashes feathered, the way his cheekbones demanded to be caressed.

"I need to tell you something," he said with his eyes still closed. His voice was unsteady, his breath coming quickly.

I didn't feel any steadier. "So long as it's not goodbye."

His eyes flew open. "I'm not that cruel, am I?"

"No." I kissed the point of his chin. He made a lazy sound of pleasure, so I kept on, nuzzling his neck. He smelled clean and hot, with just a hint of musk. Lovely. "Well, sometimes. But believe me, I know when a guy's getting ready to hit the door. That was not good-bye sex. That was whoa, hello! sex."

His arms went around me and rolled me on top of him. Breathtaking, the strength he had. The control. The precision. His skin was hot and damp and wonderful to touch. "Anyone who's ever said good-bye to you is a fool."

"Well, obviously. Your point?" I was playing, but some part of my brain was arguing with me. It had been shut up in the basement while the rest of me had gotten what it wanted, but now it was telling me that time continued its inexorable march, that I shouldn't be wasting this precious few seconds with banter.

I didn't care. Not now. Not with him.

David stroked my hair back from my face, but it kept sliding over my shoulders to rain down around us, a privacy curtain that made the world seem small and perfectly safe. Illusion. But a nice one.

"Most of the Djinn are gone," he said.

"What?" The illusion was thoroughly shattered. "What do you mean, gone?"

"Withdrawn from this plane. I sent them to the place where Jonathan kept his house--you remember?"

I remembered. Not precisely where it was, or how to get to it, because it wasn't exactly explicable to mortal brains, but the point was that it was sealed off from the regular plane of our reality. A pocket universe, of a sort. A retreat. A sanctuary, in a sense.

"While they're there, they'll be outside of anyone's control--mine, and hopefully, even the Mother's," he said. "It's the best way I know to keep things from escalating out of control between the Djinn and humans, if the worst should happen."

"If she decides to kill off the human race, you mean?" He didn't answer. He didn't have to. "You said most of the Djinn were withdrawing. Not all?"

"A few volunteered to stay with the Ma'at," he said. "Ten or so. Enough to help them complete their circle. The Ma'at are working to try to stabilize systems--they won't intervene directly, but they can provide a kind of ballast, settle things down." He paused for a second, and I could tell the next thing wasn't good. "About twenty Djinn are staying with Ashan. I can't stop them, not without a straight-out fight. The problem is that by withdrawing, I let him have the field of battle. But if I don't... Djinn get hurt. And humans get caught in the middle."

Not good news. Ashan was a force to be reckoned with, even by David's standards, much less by my own. And with a small army of immortal, arrogant, angry beings... twenty was more than enough to destroy everything in his path.

"I