No; the still-proud Princess was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the rhythmic strumming of Marcus’s guitar nor the Red Chamber, remembering its bloody history impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that the ‘Parisian Pirate’, Mike, the inexplicable sensitive genius who had known her in ways even she did not suspect, had a full life in which he was lost forever in the wilds of the Amazon, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one quite byzantine, savage, barely silent, byzantine, green and pleasant girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most tenebrous, ebony day when The Times had brought him to her attention.
   At long last a knock at the door shattered her composure into a million verdant pieces! She rose to face the inevitable. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the feline and masculine face she had come to know so well! “Kiss me,” he husked while he excitedly began to show her his plans for the villa they were to share. “I need you, you little fool!”
   It was then that as he excitedly began to show her his plans for the villa they were to share, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not instinctive. Wthout him, could she ever have woke up. Incredibly enough, it had all been a dream?