“That’s not true at all,” he disagreed. “It’s not the face, but the expressions on it. It’s not the voice, but what you say. It’s not how you look in that body, but the things you do with it. You are beautiful.”

He moved forward as he spoke, kneeling beside the bed where I lay and taking my hand again in both of his.

“I’ve never known anyone like you.”

I sighed. “Ian, what if I’d come here in Magnolia’s body?”

He grimaced and then laughed. “Okay. That’s a good question. I don’t know.”

“Or Wes’s?”

“But you’re female—you yourself are.”

“And I always request whatever a planet’s equivalent is. It seems more… right. But I could be put into a man and I would function just fine.”

“But you’re not in a man’s body.”

“See? That’s my point. Body and soul. Two different things, in my case.”

“I wouldn’t want it without you.”

“You wouldn’t want me without it.”

He touched my cheek again and left his hand there, his thumb under my jaw. “But this body is part of you, too. It’s part of who you are. And, unless you change your mind and turn us all in, it’s who you will always be.”

Ah, the finality of it. Yes, I would die in this body. The final death.

And I will never live in it again, Melanie whispered.

It’s not how either of us planned our future, is it?

No. Neither of us planned to have no future.

“Another internal conversation?” Ian guessed.

“We’re thinking of our mortality.”

“You could live forever if you left us.”

“Yes, I could.” I sighed. “You know, humans have the shortest life span of any species I’ve ever been, except the Spiders. You have so little time.”

“Don’t you think, then…” Ian paused and leaned closer to me so that I couldn’t seem to see anything around his face, just snow and sapphire and ink. “That maybe you should make the most of what time you have? That you should live while you’re alive?”

I didn’t see it coming the way I had with Jared. Ian was not as familiar to me. Melanie realized what he was going to do before I did, just a second before his lips touched mine.

No!

It wasn’t like kissing Jared. With Jared, there was no thought, only desire. No control. A spark to gasoline—inevitable. With Ian, I didn’t even know what I felt. Everything was muddled and confused.

His lips were soft and warm. He pressed them only lightly to mine, and then brushed them back and forth across my mouth.

“Good or bad?” he whispered against my lips.

Bad! Bad, bad!

“I—I can’t think.” When I moved my mouth to speak, he moved his with it.

“That sounds… good.”