It took me a moment to comprehend what he was saying, so caught up was I in what I was feeling. My hand flew up to the cross I wore always around my neck, covering it. "I'm sorry. Does it hurt you?"

"Why would it hurt me? It lies against your skin, not mine."

"Does the holy cross bother you in any way?" I undid the clasp, walked away from him and dropped it into the drawer of a credenza set against the wall. Then I turned back to him. With the distance of the room between us, I felt that peculiar possession leave me and felt myself reverting back to my old self, filled with trepidation and self-consciousness, remembering once again that pain, not pleasure, was all that I usually harvested when I tangled men upon my bedding sheets.

"We can touch and look at the holy cross and enter churches without impunity. It is only the silver content that irritates us. Does not the feel of silver against your flesh disturb you in any manner?"

I shook my head in denial and crossed my arms over my bosom, coldly naked, coldly aware that I inhabited a body men would never consider voluptuous. That awareness prompted me to venture the conclusion: "Perhaps you are not pleased with my body."

"No," Gryphon said gravely. "Your body is most pleasing to me."

But in the sudden chaos of my emotions, I could not discern the truth of his words. I did not believe him. The pull between us was there and strong, but that seemed to be instinctive, something he couldn't control. His willful choice, however, was clear. He hadn't moved. He did not want me.

"I'm sorry." I laughed brittlely. "I don't seem to be too good of a seductress. Men are attracted to me at first but afterward they say I'm cold. And I am. Frozen inside."

"We are not attracted to humans," he explained again, quietly, patiently. "We do not feel with them what we would feel with another of our kind."