Rodney smiled. "Doesn't that happen to most women every month?"

"DesirЋe's never been one to let PMS get her down," Tanya said.

Liz nodded. "Dez is one of those perfect women. Never did anything wrong, just as sweet inside as she was outside. She's still down at the church every Sunday singing her arias for the congregation and waiting dutifully for her politician husband at home on every other day. Never put a foot wrong as far as I know."

"I'd love to go on deifying DesirЋe Denning all afternoon, I'm sure," Rodney said, "but there are some other things you might be able to help me with."

Liz smiled and raised her eyebrows. "If I possibly can."

Perhaps DesirЋe's ears would have burned had she had her intuitions tuned and ready as her closest friends praised her virtues, but she was not in a psychic mood right now. There in the Denning home, where they had lived so short a time since their wedding less than a month before, a pall of resentment and shame hung over the occupants. DesirЋe's heart was breaking, for she could see her dreamland marriage of less than two months falling apart around her.

Things between her and Mark hadn't improved since that fateful night a week ago when the wild dog Lobo had bounded through their open bedroom window in the middle of their lovemaking and taken the newlywed bride for himself. Finding themselves in mortal danger after Lobo's savage killing of the rapist Johnny Canning, DesirЋe had unselfishly sacrificed her body to the lusts of the animal, right before the unbelieving eyes of her beloved Mark, and then found herself swept up in the wildly erotic scene, coming to climax after shattering climax beneath the hammering loins of the dog, while Mark, strangely excited by the lurid sight, had jerked his own fulfilment out on the sheets from just two feet away.

And Mark's resentment had not ceased to manifest itself for a moment during the last week.