"No." She pressed his fingers briefly. "I had no right to-" She let the sentence hang. "I'll try to be more understanding."

For a moment her gaze rested on the white skinned patch where his wedding ring had been. Then, with a sigh, she rose.

"I'll get ready for bed," she said.

He watched her walk across the room and disappear into the hallway. He heard her footsteps, then the clicking of the lock on the bathroom door. With slow-motion actions he got on his feet and went into the bedroom.

He lay there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling.

Poets and philosophers could talk all they wanted about a man's being more than fleshly form, about his essential worth, about the immeasurable stature of his soul. It was rubbish.

Had they ever tried to hold a woman with arms that couldn't reach around her? Had they ever told another man they were as good as he, and said it to his belt buckle?

She came into the bedroom, and in the darkness he heard the crisp rustle of her robe as she took it off and put it across the foot of the bed. Then the mattress gave on her side as she sat down. She drew her legs up and he heard her head thump back softly on her pillow. He lay there tensely, waiting for something.

After a moment there was a whispering of silk and he felt her reaching hand touch his chest.

"What's that?" she asked softly.

He didn't say.

She pushed up on her elbow. "Scott, it's your ring," she said. He felt the thin chain cutting slightly into the back of his neck as she fingered the ring. "How long have you been wearing it?" she said.

"Since I took it off," he said.

There was a moment's silence. Then her love-filled voice broke over him.

"Oh, darling!" Her arms slipped demandingly around him, and suddenly he felt the silk-filmed heat of her body pressing against him. Her lips fell searchingly on his, and her fingertips drew in like cat claws on his back, sending spicy tingles along the flesh.

And suddenly it was back, all the forced-down hunger in him exploding with a soundless, body-seizing violence. His hands fled across her burning skin, clutching and caressing. His mouth was an open shiver under hers. The darkness came alive, a sabled aura of heat crawling on their twining limbs. Words were gone; communication had become a thing of groping pressures, a thing felt in their blood, in the liquid torments rising, sweetly fierce. Words were needless. Their bodies spoke a surer language.

And when, too soon, it had ended and the night had fallen black and heavy on his mind, he slept, content, in the warm encirclement of her arms. And for the measure of a night there was peace, there was forgetfulness. For him.

Chapter Six

He clung to the edge of the open cracker box, looking in with dazed, unbelieving eyes.