"No!" I gasped in surprise.
"I traded cars with him, stocks and bonds, horse tips—he had a full tank of gas and a ripe portfolio, and I didn't want to stop for either. I didn't dare to go home, to face Esme. She wouldn't have let me go without a scene. She would have tried to convince me that it wasn't necessary...
"By the next morning I was in Alaska." He sounded ashamed, as if admitting a great cowardice. "I spent two days there, with some old acquaintances... but I was nauseous, homesick. I hated knowing I'd upset poor old Esme, and the rest of them, my adopted family. In the pure air of the mountains of Alaska, it was hard to believe you were so irresistible. I convinced myself it was weak to run away. I'd dealt with temptation before—although not of this magnitude, not even close—but I was strong, not weak. Who were you, an insignificant little girl that gave every rural male a ten-foot erection"—he grinned suddenly—"to chase me from my home? So I suddenly came back..." He stared off into the empty scaffolding of space, his bared soul the bare bones of a ladder to the heavens.
I couldn't speak.
"I took precautions, cautions before further cautions, hunting and feeding more than usual before seeing you again. I was sure that I was strong enough to treat you like any other human. I was arrogant about it.
"It was unquestionably a complication that I couldn't simply read your 'little' thoughts," he cringed at the slight, at how he used to think, but I nodded, urging him to go on. "To know what your reaction was to me. I wasn't used to having to go to such circuitous measures, listening to your words in Jessica's mind... her mind isn't very original, and it was annoying to have to stoop to that, to sully your words with her brain. And then I couldn't know if you really meant what you said. It was all extremely agitating." He frowned at the memory of how annoying it all was.
"I wanted you to forget my behavior that first day, if

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Chapter 13

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