AN: wow, this is a really long chapter! Thanks to everyone who reviewed (I'm looking at you, SenceLess, Trisha, onedaytoday, McCora, and Ma—er, SynethesiaTastesGrey).

For anyone who looked for the Sookie Stackhouse reference in the last chapter but couldn't find it, it's the names: Antoine, Basil, and Lagnford. Check the scene in Dead Until Dark when Bill introduced himself to Sookie after she rescues him from the Rattrays.

I promise I'll get back to "Kiss to Savor" right away!

Disclaimer: however much I may wish I am, I am not Karen Chance, and all the recognizable characters belong to her.

A frantic gagging sound reminded me that Pritkin was still tied up. Feeling shaky and tired now that the adrenaline was wearing off, I staggered over to him and cut the rope connecting his neck and wrists. He slumped all the way to the floor, gulping down air. I tried to untie the knots, but they were too tight and my fingers kept trembling, so I used the knife to cut away the rope. He held very still while I worked, probably afraid that if he moved my shaking fingers would slip and cut his throat. He was probably right; the knife was slippery with Jack's blood, and I'm pretty sure that I nicked him a few times.

I dropped the knife as soon as I was done and turned away, showing Pritkin as little of myself as I could. My corset, bra, and thong were all ruined, but the tiny satin shorts were still in one piece. I pulled them on and immediately felt a little better. I was now decent enough for a topless beach. I started scrubbing at my bloody skin with the remains of the corset.

"Here," Pritkin said roughly. I half-turned, holding the corset against my chest, and found him thrusting his coat at me. It was ridiculously large on me, covering my hands and reaching almost to my knees, but I was extremely grateful.

"Are you alright?" I asked, zipping up the coat with nerveless fingers.

"Yes." His voice sounded terrible. I turned around and saw the ugly crease the rope had left in neck, purple and swollen and painful-looking. "And you?"

"I'm fine," I lied, because I didn't want to talk about it.

He looked doubtful, but didn't press. I was thankful for that. In fact, I was pretty thankful for him in general. He'd tried to save me from the dark mages in the parking lot, sacrificed his coat for a pillow while I was unconscious, half-strangled himself trying to save me from Bob and Jack, and then sacrificed his coat again. He'd also been rude, offensive, insulting, and had tried to kill me, but when it counted he'd been pretty decent. And to be fair, I'd sort of tried to kill him first.

I sat down on the floor with my back against the wall. With my knees drawn up to my chest, Pritkin's coat reached all the way to the floor, leaving only my toes exposed.

"What did you do?" I asked him.

Pritkin mirror my position against the opposite wall. The room was so small our ankles would cross if we stretched out our legs. "What do you mean?"

"What you did to Jack. What was it?"

He looked surprised. "I didn't do anything. Your geis drove him off."

I stared at him in shock. "The geis did that?"

"The spell was protecting you from an unauthorized... partner."

"But... why didn't it do something earlier?" Like when Bob was—I pushed the thought away. The way Casanova had explained it, the geis kept me chaste by altering my and Mircea's behavior, causing us to resent the attentions of an "unauthorized partner", as Pritkin had put it. I hadn't realized it could directly affect the unauthorized partner himself.

"I would guess the spell responds to the level of interest," Pritkin said, obviously thinking out loud. "Since you naturally evidenced no interest at all, the geis was confused and did not immediately consider the dark mages to be a threat."

From the little I knew about magic that made sense. "So would it do what it did to him if I showed interest in someone besides Mircea?"

"I believe so, yes. The response from the geis would be proportional to the perceived threat."

In other words, the greater the attraction, the greater the pain. I wasn't going to complain about what the geis had done to Jack, but it infuriated me that Mircea had complete control over my sex life, especially when that control was about to get me killed.

"We're screwed," I said, more to the room than to Pritkin.

"Not... necessarily."

I gave Pritkin a skeptical look. "Did you think of a new plan? Because last time I checked, the only way out of here is for me to shift, which I can't do until I complete the Pythian Rites—and I can't do that because of the geis. So the way I see it, we're screwed."

"There may be a way around the geis," Pritkin said cautiously. If it had been anyone else, I would have said he looked nervous.

"What? How?"

"I may be able to... override it temporarily."

I was doubtful. "Without any magic?"

Pritkin rubbed his hands distractedly against the bracelets. They looked incongruous on his otherwise bare arms, thick black lines harsh against his barely-tanned skin. "These are made with human magic, and so block human magic," he explained.

If he didn't get to the point, I was going to strangle him. "So?"

"I'm half demon."

It took me a second to understand, mostly because my brain was having trouble wrapping itself around the concept of Pritkin being half demon. He'd shown a few unusual traits—super-fast healing for one—but he seemed so perfectly human, not to mention he hunted demons. A thousand questions popped into my head, none of them especially helpful in our situation. With an effort of will I made myself focus. The bracelets blocked human magic, but Pritkin didn't have just human magic—he had demon magic as well.

When he saw my "oh" of surprise, Pritkin continued. "I can render the geis harmless while feeding."

I held up my hand, the too-long sleeve flopping absurdly. "Hold on. 'Feeding'? What kind of feeding are we talking about here?" I'd been fed on by vampires before and was pretty blasé about it, but I didn't know what kind of "feeding" demons engaged in. It might be something as potentially harmless as a vampire feeding, or it might involve tearing off chunks of my flesh and eating them raw.

"I can feed on life force through emotions—through sex."

I was a little slow, but I got there eventually. "You're half incubus? How is that even possible? I thought incubi are incorporeal! Unless there's some other kind of demon that does that."

"There are a few," Pritkin said tightly. "But you are correct. I am half incubus."

"And you can use your incubus powers to solve our little dilemma." I wanted to be really clear on that, because the very thought of getting out of this alive made my heart race, but I didn't want to get my hopes up. He also hadn't answered my question, but I had more important things to think about than his conception.

"There are risks—" Pritkin began.

"Risks!" I almost screamed the word. "Less than five minutes ago I was almost raped! Less than five minutes from now I could be dead! Risks are not what I—"

"Miss Palmer!" I think it was the first time he had ever addressed me directly by name. I was so startled I closed my mouth and listened. "The last woman who had sex with me died."

I stared at him seriously. His hands clenched and unclenched rhythmically, and his face was red with strain. He looked like he was fighting the urge to get up and pace, or maybe punch something. His eyes were dark with pain. I didn't even want to know what terrible memories he was reliving inside his head.

"My control over my incubus powers is... inconsistent," he continued, his voice tight and harsh. "If I am unable to stop feeding, I may kill you."

"I don't think I have a lot of choice," I said quietly. "At least this way I have a chance of survival. My only other option is to wait for the Black Circle to kill me."

"You powers might manifest between now and then," Pritkin argued.

"Those are long odds. Besides, where does that leave you?"

"If you are Pythia, your life is worth more than mine."

I stared at him in shock. First he thought I was a child-killing demon, then he thought I was a morally corrupt, vampire-controlled Pythia wannabe, and now he suddenly decides that I'm the read deal. I shook my head. "That's crap. My life's worth the same as everyone else's. But if we don't get out of here soon, I'm not going to have a life, and neither will you!"

His face was deadly serious. "You're sure?"

"Yes!"

And then we just stared at each other. I suddenly realized the depth of what I'd done: I'd cold-heartedly decided to lose my virginity to a man I barely knew, not for love or even lust, but simply for survival. I felt oddly dirty, like I was selling myself on the streets, with Pritkin as the client and our lives as the coin. I pushed the thought aside, but I still felt awkward. I desperately wished, instead of Pritkin, I was looking at Mircea, or even Tomas. It wasn't that Pritkin was unattractive—though he certainly wasn't in Mircea's league. I was just that he was unfamiliar, a near-stranger, and I was about to engage in a deeply intimate act with him.

Pritkin looked as awkward as I felt. He cleared his throat nervously. "Miss Palmer..."

"You may as well call me Cassie," I said, and then my eyes widened in mortification. "I don't even know your first name!"

He looked startled, then his lips twitched in something that might almost have been a smile. "John," he said.

"John?" I repeated incredulously.

He bristled, suddenly hostile for no reason I could see. "It's a good, honest, English name!"

I held up my hands placatingly. "Sorry, you just don't seem like a John."

"Then call me Pritkin," he said irritably. "It makes no difference to me."

It didn't seem fair to ask him to call me Cassie while calling him Pritkin, but he really didn't seem like a John. "Pritkin, then," I said. I stood up, discovering that I had become stiff while sitting. "Let's, uh, get this—done." I almost said "over with", but caught myself at the last minute. He might be just as attracted to me as I was to him—which is to say, not at all—but I didn't have to be rude about my lack of interest.

He stood up as well, and we had another long moment of mutual awkwardness. Finally he muttered something that sounded like a swearword—though it wasn't one I'd ever heard—crossed the tiny room, and kissed me.

I'd learned a lot about this man in the last few hours. I'd learned he was half demon, that his first name was John, and that he knew how to kiss very, very well.

Maybe it was because he was part incubus, or maybe he'd just had a lot of practice—he had said he'd lived through Victorian England, which made him a lot older than he looked—but within a few seconds I'd completely forgotten my previous nervousness. The kiss was gentle, even tender, but I sensed he was holding back, and suddenly I didn't want him to hold back at all.

I ran my fingers through his crazy, messed-up hair, and found to my surprise that it was deliciously smooth and soft. I would have been happy to just stand there and pet him for a while, but he responded to the encouragement and deepened the kiss. His tongue slid between my parted lips and twined with mine. When we broke apart we were both gasping for breath, and his pupils were dilated.

Somehow I wound up with my back against the wall. His hands moved from my shoulders to my back and slid down, but the thick, bulky coat got in the way. I let go of his hair long enough to undo the zipper, then let my hands do some exploring of their own. He had wonderful shoulders, broad and strong, with a muscular chest and abs I could feel through the fabric of his t-shirt. I pulled the shirt over his head while he pushed the coat off my shoulders. I hadn't realized just how hot it was inside the coat until I felt the relatively cooler air against my skin.

Then his hands were on my skin, and they weren't cool at all. His fingers smoothed across my shoulder blades, down my spine, then back to my shoulders so he could trace the outline of my breasts. I pressed my mouth against him, feeling the stubble along his jaw, licking away the sweat on his neck, marking his shoulder with my teeth. He moaned as I bit him, tightening his hands around my arms until I felt his blunt fingernails digging into my skin. Then his hands slid lower, grasping my waist and lifting me.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and my legs above his hips, feeling his growing hardness press against me in a very sensitive spot. In this new position his head was level with my chest, and he nuzzled his face between my breasts, licking and kissing. My skin felt hypersensitive, every scrape of stubble, stroke of tongue, and graze of teeth magnified until I whimpered and trembled at the sensations. A deep, insistent warmth radiated from below my navel, and I rocked my hips, trying to gain some small relief by rubbing myself against the bulge beneath his jeans. Pritkin moaned again and moved to my nipples, flicking his tongue gently and repeatedly over one, then the other. My breasts were badly bruised from Jack—no! I would not think about that—but the light, fluttering caress brought nothing but pleasure.

Suddenly I couldn't take it any longer. I wanted more so badly my head swam. I let go of his shoulders—with my back against the wall and my legs around him I wasn't going to fall—and slid my hands across his chest and back. His skin felt hot, burning hot, and my fingers tingled wherever they touched him. I found an intriguing set of scars above one shoulder blade, slick white ridges like claw marks. I wondered what could have caused permanent damage to him, since he seemed to heal so well, but I couldn't concentrate on the thought and quickly forgot about it. His chest was lightly covered with dark gold hair, gloriously soft against his hard muscles, and I dragged my fingers through it, finding a nipple to rub.

He moaned again, and I felt a cool breeze move through the hot, stuffy room. It wrapped around my body like a living robe, sliding against my skin in a silky caress. Pritkin's voice deepened, became husky, and he let his head rest against my breast for a moment, his eyes closed in bliss. Then he stiffened and leaned away.

"I'm sorry," he gasped. "Just give me a minute."

So that was what an incubus feeding felt like. He stood motionless except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest. Where my hands rested against his pecs I felt the movement of each breath, the frantic beating of his heart. He was clearly struggling to regain control, and while ending up as his lunch wasn't high on my agenda, suddenly death by sex didn't seem so terrible. I wanted him so badly I didn't care if he fed from me; I wasn't sure I cared if he drained me.

Then he lifted his head and I reconsidered. His green eyes had gone dark jade, but only the thinnest ring of color remained, burning around dilated pupils. His gaze was fevered and a little unfocused, and filled with barely-contained violence. I felt like I was standing just out of reach of a very angry tiger in a too-small cage. It was beautiful—and absolutely terrifying. More than a little frightened, I held still and watched him struggle to regain control—for about thirty seconds. Completely against my brain's commands, my hands started stroking over his chest and sliding lower, to the waistband of his jeans.

He started, causing me to slide a few inches down the rough wall. Splinters stabbed at my back and I yelped in pain. A few very confused moments followed as I tried to scramble out of his arms and he tried to get a better grip on me. When I finally I managed to get my feet under me, his pupils had shrunk to a more reasonable size and he looked calmer.

I, on the other hand, didn't feel calmer at all. I thought that if things didn't go a lot faster very quickly I would go insane. Sweat glued my hair to the back of my neck and my breath came in quick gasps. I fumbled with the fly of Pritkin's jeans, but my fingers couldn't seem to manage the button. I gave a frustrated growl and he pushed my hands aside, undoing the button and zipper himself. As the denim fell the floor in stiff folds, I learned something else about Pritkin: he went commando. There was nothing between me and the long length of his sex—and boy, was it long. I didn't have a tape measure handy, but I guessed he had to be at least as big as Mircea, maybe even a little bigger. I licked my lips involuntarily.

Pritkin's breath hitched and he toed off his boots, along with his socks, which I thought was nice; I'd always found the thought of a man leaving his socks on during sex rude, like he would put his shoes back on and leave as soon as he was done. I was glad Pritkin wasn't that type. Part of me wanted to take it slow, to savor his body while I could, but most of me just wanted. I wrapped my hand around him, savoring the hardness, the heat, and velvety softness of him. His breath hitched again, and I marveled at how much control I had, that I could make him gasp and moan just by touching him.

I stroked my hand up and down his length, traced my finger around the ridge exposed by his uncut foreskin, scraped a nail gently across the very tip of him. He shuddered, and then I was on the ground, lying on his coat, without any real idea of how I had got there. Pritkin knelt between my bent knees and stared up the length of my body, his hands on the edge of my tiny red shorts, his eyes asking a silent question.

"Yes," I gasped. "Yes!"

He stripped away the shorts, and my certainty flagged. Pritkin was about to know me better than my gynecologist, and I barely knew his first name. I wished we could go slower, way slower—like maybe so slow we put some clothes back on. The doubts warred with the insistent heat between my legs that demanded more, more, more. And then his blonde head lowered to meet my body and the doubts vanished.

His tongue moved over me, soft and wet and warm, and I thrilled at both the pleasure and the novelty of the sensation. As his hands smoothed across my thighs and stomach his mouth teased my center, licking and stroking and kissing as passionately and skillfully as he had kissed my mouth. I knotted my fingers in his stupid, stupid hair and willed him to go faster, harder, but he took his sweet time. Sweat slicked my neck and breasts, and I gasped at the hot air, my vision blurry with I need. I was certain I would go insane, or die, but finally he picked up the pace. One of his hands joined his mouth, and a single finger slid into me.

I jumped a little, not in pain, but in surprise at the unfamiliar sensation. He hesitated, and looked up the length of my body, waiting for permission to continue. His pupils were dilated again, but the expression that had frightened me before seemed incredibly sexy now. I tried to remember how to speak, failed, and managed a ragged nod instead. That was all the encouragement he needed, and soon a second finger joined the first. The pressure and friction felt amazing, but it wasn't nearly enough.

He moved the his fingers in and out, slowly at first, then faster, while his tongue continued to move. I closed my eyes, feeling pleasure build inside me. My hips rocked in time with his movements, without any conscious thought. At some point he'd started feeding again, and the cool, sensual breeze wrapped around me, stroking places he could no longer reach. The combined sensations pushed me closer and closer to the edge, until colors exploded behind my eyelids and my body arched helplessly under hands.

Before I had recovered from the wave of pleasure, Pritkin was kneeling over me. He claimed my mouth in a hard, hungry kiss that left me gasping for breath. When he lifted his head, the effort it took to restrain himself was visible in his sweat-streaked face and trembling muscles.

"Are you ready?" he asked, his voice hoarse with need.

"Yes," I gasped, and my voice was just as hoarse.

He didn't warn me that it would hurt, and I felt confident that was not an omission on his part. He knew I knew it would hurt, and that I was adult enough to accept that and deal with it. My opinion of his slid up a notch—and then he slid into me and I forgot all about it.

It did hurt as he slowly entered me, forcing my body to expand to accommodate his width. I bit my lip at the burning, aching pain, but it wasn't very bad and the pleasure more than made up for it. It was the friction of slick skin against slick skin and the heat of him filling me that made me gasp, not the pain.

Pritkin somehow knew he wasn't hurting me, because the next stroke came faster, and the next faster still, until his steady rhythm had me whimpering and moaning under him. The pleasure was so intense I felt like I was drugged; I writhed and cried out without any control at all, every stroke, ever kiss, every caress igniting hypersensitive nerves. His eyes were completely black now, with no green at all, and he was still feeding. A tiny part of me wondered how much he could take safely, and if he would be able to stop, but I couldn't hold on to the thought, or any thought at all. I felt the pressure building inside me again, gathering beneath my navel and growing until I thought I simply couldn't take it, that no one could survive such pleasure.

And then it broke, washing over me in wave after wave as I convulsed under Pritkin's body and a beautiful golden glow washed over the barren room. At first I thought the light was just part of the incredible sensations coursing through me, but then a wash colors, sounds and scents crashed over me, and everything vanished. I could no longer see the room, or Pritkin, just an enormous vortex of power rushing at me.

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. I found myself sitting on a hill overlooking the sea, with a temple rising above me. The sun blazed overhead, and I squinted against the intensity of the colors after so long in the dim room. Someone sat close behind me, brushing lips against my ear.

"A poor choice, Herophile," a male voice said.

"My name's Cassandra," I corrected. "And what's a poor choice?"

"Your choice of partners. His kind and mine have been feuding for eons."

I was confused, until the setting really sank in and I realized who I was talking to. "He's only half demon," I told Apollo.

"Close enough," he said airily, waving his arm so I caught a glimpse of bright yellow hand.

I didn't like him casually tarring Pritkin with his father's brush. "This is sort of a bad time," I said. "Aside from the whole in flagrante delicto thing, I need to escape before Myra can kill me."

"Oh, I trust you can deal with your rival," Apollo said.

"Then you're crazy," I said flatly. "I don't know how to—"

Before I could finish the sentence and rush of heat and wind surrounded me and a terrible, ancient power surged through the ground and into my body. And then I was back in the hot, dark room as though nothing had happened.

Pritkin's rhythm had become ragged and uneven as his own passion overcame him. The cool breeze became a freezing wind that swept over my body, leaving my muscles weak as water. His pupils expanded until they were wider than his irises, swallowing the whites of his eyes, and he shuddered, finishing inside me in delicious, scorching rush. His pleasure washed over me and I went under again, arching my back as he arched his, crying out as he cried, and we became nothing more than five senses loosely bound by skin, and then even the skin disappeared, leaving us a single entity united by shared sensations, with no separation between one body and the other.

I slowly became aware of someone shaking me and shouting in my ear. That made me realize I was someone, with a body I shared with no one, and skin, fingers, and all the other things that went with it. When I remembered I had eyes, I opened them, not quite sure when they had closed. Pritkin's face drifted into focus, his face flushed but his eyes wide with fear. His pupils were back no normal, I noticed, before he shook me again.

"Miss Palmer! Miss Palmer!"

"Stop shaking me!" I snapped—or tried to. It came out more of whispered plea.

Pritkin stopped shaking me, but didn't release my shoulders. Instead he pulled me close to his chest, wrapping his coat around me so I was surrounded by warmth. I started to protest that the room was too hot, but I realized with a shock that I was freezing cold. I pressed myself gratefully against his bare chest, and discovered that I felt weak as well.

"What...?" I whispered.

"I lost control," Pritkin said harshly. "I took too much. You're lucky to be alive."

"Oh." I rested my head against his shoulder, noting absently that we were both still naked. Our lovemaking may have nearly killed me, but it had also left me with an amazing afterglow, and I was content to just lean against him and let myself drift. His body felt tense beneath me, but after a minute or so he began to slowly relax, and he rested his chin on the top of my head. My life had been so crazy these past few weeks that it felt wonderful to just hold someone, and be held in return.

"Pritkin?"

He turned his head slightly, so we were practically nose-to-nose. The urge to kiss him seemed so natural it took a real effort to resist. "Yes?"

Before I could speak, I heard loud voices from outside our cell. They sounded distant, but they were getting closer.

"Shit!" I scrambled out of his arms, reaching for my shorts. "We have to get out of here!"

Pritkin jumped to his feet and pulled on his jeans. "Can you shift?" he asked doubtfully.

"I don't have much choice, do I?" I thrust my arms into his too-large coat.

"Yes, you do." His head emerged from the neck of his tee-shirt. Even after undressing, sex, and redressing, his hair looked the same. What on earth did he do to it? "They won't kill you now; you could wait until later, after you've regained your strength."

"Yeah, and they could drug me, or knock me unconscious, or do any number of other things that would keep me from shifting. Plus, they might separate us." I grabbed his hand. "You may be really annoying, but I won't leave you behind to die."

There was a very odd look in his eyes as he opened his mouth to speak, but I never found out what he was going to say. The door reappeared in the wall and flew open with a crash. I reached for my power and shifted.