"If I asked you to come here again," he said, "and let me be with you, would you?" There was no hesitation. "Yes." "Even if things couldn't be...normal...between us? Sexually speaking." "Yes." He frowned. "This is going to come out wrong...." "Which is fine, because I've already put my foot in it with you back at the clinic. We'll just be even." Rehv had to smile, but the expression didn't stick. "I have to know...why. Why would you come back." Ehlena lay back down against the pillows and, in a slow sweep, moved her hand up over the satin sheet that covered her stomach. "I have only one answer to that, but I don't think it's going to be what you want to hear." The cold numbness, which was returning as the remnants of those orgasms he'd had dissipated, sped up its reclamation of his body. Please let it not be pity, he thought. "Tell me." She was quiet for a long while, her stare shifting out toward the blinking, glowing view of Caldwell's two halves. "You ask me why I would come back?" she said softly. "And the only answer I have is...how could I not." Her eyes flipped to his. "It doesn't make sense to me on some level, but then, feelings don't make sense, do they? And they don't have to. Tonight...you gave me things I not only haven't had for a long time, but I don't think I've ever felt." She shook her head. "I wrapped up a body yesterday...a body of someone my own age, a body of someone who likely as not had headed out of his house the evening he was killed with no clue that it was his last night. I don't know where this"--she gestured back and forth between them--"thing with us is going. Maybe it's just a night or two. Maybe it's a month. Maybe it's longer than can be measured by a decade. All I know is, life is too short not to come back here and be with you like this again. Life is just too short, and I like being with you too much for me to give a crap about anything other than having another moment like this." Rehvenge's chest swelled as he stared at her. "Ehlena?" "Yeah?" "Don't take this the wrong way." She drew in a deep breath and he saw her bare shoulders tighten. "Okay. I'll try not to." "You keep showing up here? Being who you are?" There was a pause. "I'm going to fall in love with you." -Rehv & Ehlena"