Harlequin Nocturne May 2016 Box Set by Susan Krinard Page B

with which she might claim it.
    â€œI did not take your blood!” she said, eyes flashing. “I know your past. I would never force you to relive it.” Her lips thinned. “But it is more than that which troubles you, is it not? Perhaps if I were human, it would be different. How long has it been for you , Daniel?”
    There was no mockery in her words, but Daniel flinched anyway. He should lie and tell her that this was simply a casual thing with him, as it seemed to be with her; that he took lovers as easily as he breathed.
    â€œI think it has been a long time,” she said. She sat on the couch, her robes settling about her. “Even before the Nine came to Tanis, it had been many years for me.” She gathered up one of the hand-woven throws and bunched it into a ball. “Until you came, I was not even tempted. I am not like Ishtar, Daniel. It has never been so simple for me, even in my days as a goddess.”
    â€œHow could it be anything but simple for someone with virtually unlimited power?”
    â€œAnd again the cynicism,” she said, a note of sadness in her voice. “You have hardened your heart.”
    â€œI am what I am.”
    â€œWhat your time as a serf made you,” she said. “Again and again you test yourself, to prove...what? That nothing can make you surrender even a little of yourself to another?” She rose and drew very close; he could smell the clean fragrance of her air and the undertone of sexual desire. “What did they do to you in Vikos, Daniel? Why do you feel such shame?”
    â€œI am not asha—”
    â€œI saw the scars on your back. I know you suffered great brutality. But that is not all, is it?” She touched his face. “I want to help. I want to understand, and do what I can to show you that—”
    Blind with unreasoning anger, Daniel walked out of the apartment. He strode back to the Center and went to his room, where he washed his face and stared at himself in the mirror.
    Again and again you test yourself, to prove...what? she had said. That nothing can make you surrender even a little of yourself to another?
    She saw into him so easily, Daniel thought. There had been a few lovers since his escape from Erebus, brief affairs with human women that had never lasted. His desires had always been under rigid control. Twice, Isis had punched through those barriers, and the second time hadn’t been a seduction. He’d begun it.
    Daniel glanced at the clock. It was late afternoon, and he needed somewhere to go...away from Isis and her soft, sympathetic reassurances, the murmured promises of a woman who was still Opiri. He made certain that he was presentable and walked out into the reception area. Nobody took any notice of him as he left the building and crossed the plaza. He turned immediately for the first human neighborhood Isis had shown him, Bes’s ward. He thought of the people protesting at the depository, wondering if he might find them and speak to them.
    Keeping his eyes and ears open, Daniel moved casually past the idle Lawkeepers at the border of the neighborhood. Men and women were coming home from their daytime employment, some dusty from the fields or stained with grease from maintenance work, others in trim clothes suitable to office jobs. Daniel leaned against the wall of an apartment block and watched without paying any particular attention, blending in as best he could.
    He loitered as the workers entered their buildings, some greeting children who had been anticipating their return. They behaved like anyone glad to be home after a long day’s work, without sullenness or resentment. But after night fell, Daniel noted some of the men and a few women leaving their apartments and moving in one direction, singly or in pairs. He followed one man along several well-lit streets to a building set apart from the others, the double doors flung open and the sound of music emanating from