Sinclair was waiting in my room when we got back from shopping. I greeted him with a screeched, "Don't look, don't look!" as I hustled my bulging bags over to my closet, threw them in, and leaned on the door.

"Dare I guess you bought me a gift after my dreadful trespass last night?"

"If you're admitting you were an asshole, I'm not going to argue, but I felt better about you after you throttled my sister into semiconsciousness. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the old-fashioned stuff." I realized I hadn't exactly answered his question, because I added, "The thing I had on layaway was finally paid off, that's all. Don't go reading anything into it."

"You've been with Jon, then?"

I groaned miserably and sat down on the bed to pull off my shoes. "Come on, Eric! Don't start up with that tired shit again, willya? I was also with Laura, but that doesn't mean I was the menage in their trots."

"I think you mean you were not the trois," he corrected. "And I was not starting up that tired shit again. My irritation with Jon now extends far beyond his romantic intentions."

"Oh yeah? God, the mind reels. What's he done now, start up with his tired old shit? The Bees active again?"

"No. But his current activities are almost as dangerous to you. Your life story is not appropriate for publication, in any forum."

"But it's a joke! He's passing it off as fiction, a cute idea for a classroom project. The gag is that it's supposed to be about a real person, and some of us know it is, but everybody else thinks-"

"I'm aware of the purpose of the 'gag.' Which is what he makes me want to do, by the way."

"Why, Sinclair! That was... dare I think the word... a joke? A yarn, a tale, a comical story? Are you feverish, nauseous, cramping?"

"Furthermore, I suspect he has engineered this entire thing as an excuse to stay close to you."

I sighed and stuck my shoes in my closet, fast, so Sinclair wouldn't see inside the bags.

"Elizabeth? I breathlessly await your commentary."

"What can I say? Maybe it is. Maybe it's a little weird that out of all the projects he could have thunk up, the one he picked is the one that lets him follow me around and ask questions."

"Ah." He looked at me approvingly.

"Jeez, Sinclair, I'm not a genius, but I'm not in a coma, either! I've had guys like me before; I can recognize the symptoms, poor bastards."

"Yes," he said. "We are poor bastards."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I just continued my train of thought. "I don't know. Maybe I feel sorry for him. Maybe I thought I owed him a break. He came all this way and basically got his heart stomped. And the whole reason he quit staking vampires was because he liked me. I felt like I had to be... I dunno..."

"Magnanimous in victory?"

I shuddered. "Of course that just came tripping off the end of your tongue, Sink Lair, what a surprise."

I noticed he was in his usual spot when we chatted: arms crossed, leaning against my door (people did have a tendency to run in after just a brief knock or worse, no knock), head tipped to one side as he listened to every word that came out of my mouth. I pulled my frog socks off and tossed them in the hamper, but at least he didn't try to move farther away when I did it. I didn't think I could take that again.

"I would almost prefer that you disliked him," he commented. "Men have been able to cajole women into bed using nothing more than their pity."

"Oh, right!" I snapped. "Like there was ever a woman in the universe who fucked you because she felt sorry for you."

"I am hoping," he said, pushing away from the door and coming toward me, "there will be at least one. I behaved abominably."

"Yeah, you were a real dick." I was watching him warily. This was too good to be true! Not to mention a) nothing had changed, and b) I wasn't a faucet. "I'm glad you're sorry, but I can't just get over being upset"-I snapped my fingers-"just like that. I can't turn it on and off."

"I must beg your forgiveness," he said soberly. I realized for the first time that his hair-his hair-was messy, like he hadn't combed it in hours. It was as startling as if he'd gone outside without pants. "I know during love-making-it's the nature of vampires, I think-we have been... rough... at times, but that was no excuse for assaulting you."

"Damn right!"

"My only excuse-"

"Hey, I thought you said there was no excuse."

"-is that I was driven by fear, which is a new experience for me." He frowned. "An unpleasant one."

"Well." I sulked and allowed him to hug me. He did it carefully, like he was hugging a barrel of snakes. One open at both ends. "I did surprise you. And not in a good way. I really didn't mean to keep it a secret for so long, and I didn't mean to blurt it out that way."

"And you apologized, repeatedly, for that."

"Yeah, I did! What, so, you're not worried about that anymore?"

" 'That' being the frightening and unmanning way you can get into my head during our most intimate moments, while you yourself remain a locked door to me?"

"Well," I grumped, "when you have that attitude, anything's going to sound bad." Then I loosened up and kissed him on the chin. "Aw, come on. I wasn't a virgin when I met you, and I kind of liked that this was a 'first' with you. It helped me-it helped me decide a lot of things. A big thing, this October. I mean, you were aware I was going to stay with you forever, or leave forever, right?"

"Ummmm," he said, because he was nuzzling my throat. I flinched back a little, and he kissed me reassuringly in the same spot he had chomped me the night before. It had, of course, healed perfectly, but I couldn't help being twitchy.

"And part of the reason I decided to stay was because, in my head at least, you weren't sneaky and weird."

"It will take me some time," he said, working his way into my cleavage, which was as wonderful as it sounded.

"Time?" I laughed and clutched his head. "Sweetie, you're so quick to check the Book for every little thing, you forgot we're stuck with each for a thousand years."

"Anything's going to sound bad," he said, picking me up and tossing me on the bed, "when you put it like that."