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She averted her gaze and moved into the thundering dark of the club. She didn't have to turn to see if he was following her. She could feel his presence, as if she were joined to him by an invisible cord.

The club was close and smoky, the walls painted flat black in an attempt to create the illusion of space. The band was thrashing away on the stage, surrounded by a knot of wildly pogoing dancers. She wound her way to the bar and was startled to see him already lounging there. The only open space was at his elbow. Setting her jaw, she moved next to him and ordered a beer.

She had to fight to keep from gasping aloud when he shifted his stance. His hip rubbed against her like a tomcat. The beer bottle shook as she lifted it to her lips.

She had found him. It had to be him! The sexual arousal she experienced was so powerful it was almost unpleasant. Her crotch ached just looking at him. But what could she do about it? She wasn't drunk enough to simply swagger up and tell him to take her home and make her like it. She'd been out of circulation too long. She'd forgotten the anxiety and paranoia inherent in the mating ritual. What if he didn't want her? What if he was gay? The stainless-steel death's head leering at her from his earlobe didn't help matters either. As much as she loathed frustration, she feared rejection even more.

"I noticed you looking. See anything you like?"

For a moment she didn't realize he'd actually spoken to her. She blinked rapidly, as if startled from a daze. His face was inches from hers and she inhaled his musk, pleasantly redolent of masculine sweat. Her brain froze like a rabbit pinned by the headlights of an oncoming car.

He's bad news. You can tell by looking at him. No. On second thought, don't look at him. Don't do it. Don't say anything. Finish your beer and go home. That was the last she heard from her common sense.

All attempts at witty remarks and sly come-ons fled. Her prepared speech died in her throat. All she could do was answer with the truth.

"Everything."

His name was Feral. He smiled when he said it. He pulled her onto the dance floor, his personality sinking its fingers into her will. Had he asked her to cut off her right hand, she would have gladly done it.

Every time he touched her she felt her skin tighten, as if a mild electric current had passed between them. She'd forgotten the exhilaration that comes with a sensual high. When Feral wearied of dancing, he suggested they go outside. The night breeze rapidly cooled the sweat on her body, making her shiver.

As she leaned her back against the wall, Feral tucked his left leg between her thighs and ground himself against her hips. It was an incredibly juvenile, but deeply gratifying, public display.

He kissed her, his tongue probing with expert thrusts. His arms encircled her, locking around the small of her back. She felt like she was in a vise and, for a few brief moments, he lifted her on tiptoe. She could not control her breathing or pulse. Her fingertips vibrated against his skin.

He disengaged himself from their embrace and motioned for her to follow. Feral ducked into the alley that flanked the club, negotiating the garbage-strewn passageway with the grace of a panther. Sina wasn't quite as certain.

"Feral?"

He turned, his eyes glowing in the darkness. He reached out, quick as a snake, and drew her to him, capturing her left wrist and pinning her arm behind her. There was no violence, no struggle; just the sound of their mouths meshing. Feral's free hand explored her body under her blouse, his fingers tracing the curve of her rib cage, squeezing her nipples and rubbing them with the ball of his thumb. She gasped aloud, writhing against him like a cat in heat. His mouth covered hers and she had to remind herself to breathe.

Feral backed her against the wall, plucking at the snaps on her jeans. His erection, lumped in his pants, was nestled against her hip. Feral reached down to pull on his belt buckle, and for the first time since she'd entered the alley, she was afraid.

"No!" She freed her left arm and placed her hand atop his own.

Feral stopped, his blue eyes questioning her. What could she say? That she was scared of fucking? He'd think she was some kind of neurotic cocktease.

"No, Feral. Not here. Not like this." She nodded to the heaps of reeking garbage that decorated the alley.

He stood there for a second, then nodded. His hand dipped into his pants pocket and handed her a motel key.

"When you're ready, just come on over. I'll be there."

Sina sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the man she'd once imagined she would spend the rest of her life with. She knew she should feel guilty there was so little remorse to be scavenged from the death of a five-year-old relationship.

She studied Mike's familiar features, now rendered alien by the hollowness inside her. She tried to remember what it had been like, before the tedium and resentment leeched the passion from their lives. Her head began to throb.

She closed her eyes, trying to summon pleasant memories of their life together, but all she could feel was the longing, roiling like a storm cloud inside her.

The years they'd spent together had not been perfect, but they had been good. At first she didn't mind the long evenings at home; after the numerous chaotic affairs she'd suffered through, it was somewhat novel not to party every weekend.

Yet, although her previous lovers proved to be highly unstable, sex with them had been like walking on live coals and swimming the Arctic Ocean at the same time. She was dismayed to find sex with Mike lacked the delightful friction she'd grown accustomed to. She hoped that as they grew together, their sex drives would adapt accordingly — his increasing while hers decelerated, until they reached a suitable, mutually satisfying compromise.

At the end of two years Sina marveled over how they'd succeeded in reaching a level of stagnation it had taken her parents two decades to attain.

After their fourth anniversary passed without comment or celebration, Sina knew she'd been deluding herself.

It was then that the longing began. At first it was shadowy, ill-formed post-coital dissatisfaction. She no longer made advances toward Mike, preferring to accommodate him whenever he felt the urge, which, thankfully, proved to be infrequently. Sex, once her drug of choice, had become housework.

She knew she was being silly. So what if sex with Mike didn't sparkle? He loved and respected her. He offered her shelter and stability. She forced herself to recall her earlier relationships; the ones that had left her — emotionally bruised and physically battered — on his doorstep in the first place. The memories were sordid, tinged with self-disgust and more than a little sexual excitement. The hunger grew.

It was sheer accident she'd come across the poem.

When she read of the nameless woman, wailing for her demon lover, her face burned with the heat of recognition.

She realized she was mourning the lover she'd gone so long without. The lover she'd pursued in all his varied, imperfect guises for close to a decade.

She knew that the only love her demon was capable of was self-destructive, cruel, vampiric, parasitic, and all the other words her best friends had used to describe Jerry, Alec, Christian, Matt, and the others whose names, faces and genitalia had now blurred together in her memories. They were men incapable of love yet able to inspire suicide threats.

There was something about the love they offered her that friends could never understand, and it was beyond her ability to explain. Despite the unhealthiness of the attraction, Sina had experienced ecstasy with her would-be demon lovers. In order to taste the kind of love the poets rhapsodized about, Sina knew she had to suffer. To love as the immortals do is to know damnation.