Man, he really wasn't psyched about how much she had on him. "Why don't you tell me your name first."

"Tonight you can call me Sympathy. How 'bout that."

He eyed her from bangs to boots. She was wearing leather pants. No surprise. "You happen to have two heads there, Sympathy?"

She laughed, a low, rich sound. "No, and I'm not a she-male, either. Yours isn't the only sex that can be strong."

He stared hard into her cast-iron eyes. Then looked back at the private bathrooms. God… this was so familiar. A quickie with a stranger, a meaningless crash between two bodies. This shit had been the cash-and-carry of his sex life since he could remember—except he didn't recall ever feeling this kind of sick despair before.

Whatever. Was he really going to stay celibate until he kicked it when his liver corroded? Just because a female he didn't deserve didn't want him?

He glanced down at his pants. His body was willing. At least that part of the math added up.

Butch slid out of the booth, his chest as cold as winter pavement. "Let's go."

On a lovely tremble of violins, the chamber orchestra glided into a waltz and Marissa watched the glittering crowd coalesce in the ballroom. All around her, males and females came together, hands linking, bodies meeting, stares locking. The mingling of dozens of different variations on the bonding scent filled the air with a rich spice.

She breathed in through her lips, trying not to smell so much of it.

Escape proved futile, however, which was the way things worked. Though the aristocracy prided itself on its manners and style, the glymera was, after all, still subject to the race's biological truths: When males bonded, their possessiveness carried a scent. When females accepted their mates, they bore that dark fragrance on their skin with pride.