in on a more leisurely basis. After all, he told himself, people
ought to spend more time getting to know each other.

But he remembered, just in time, that he was Dionysus. He conquered his
first impulse and put his arms around her. As he did so, he discovered
that his face was being covered with kisses. Kathy was murmuring little
indistinct terms of endearment into his ear every time she reached it en
route from one side of his face to the other.

Forrester swallowed hard, tightened his grip and planted his lips firmly
on Kathy's. A blaze of startling heat shot through him.

In a small corner at the back of his mind, a scroll unrolled. On it was
written what Vulcan had told him about his mental attitude changing
after Investiture. When he had been plain William Forrester, an attack
like the one Kathy was making on him had pretty much chilled him for a
while. But now he found himself definitely rising to the occasion.

There was a passion to her kiss that he had never felt before, a rising
tide of flame that threatened to char him. The movement of her mouth on
his sent new fires burning throughout his body, and as her hands moved
on him he was awakened to a new world, a world of consuming desires.

He wished his own clothing away, and fumbled for a second at the two
fastenings that held Kathy's _chiton_ in place. Then it was gone and
there was nothing between them. They met, flesh to flesh, in a fiery
embrace that grew as he forced her down and she responded eagerly,
wildly, to his every motion. His lips traveled over her; her entire
body was drowning him once and for all in an unbelievable red haze,
unlike anything he had ever before experienced ... a great wave of
passion that went on and on, rising to a peak he had never dreamed of
until his body shivered with the sensations, and he pressed on, rising
still higher in an ecstasy beyond measure....

His last spasm of tension turned out the God-light.

* * * * *

She lay in his arms on the grass, holding him almost as tightly as he
held her. He felt exhausted, but he knew perfectly well that he wasn't.
A God was a God, after all, and Kathy was only the hors d'oeuvres of a
seven-course dinner.

"You're wonderful," Kathy said in a soft whisper at his ear. "Absolutely
wonderful. More wonderful than I could ever dream. I--"

She was interrupted by a strange, harsh voice that bellowed from
somewhere nearby.

"All right, bitch!" it