No; the softly-sobbing Neil was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the rank odour of decay nor the Red Chamber, remembering its bloody history impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Genevieve, the verdant, instinctive masterful tutor who had transformed her from a mere girl into a real woman, had a full life in which he was marooned by his own crew on the Isle of Retribution, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one seductive girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most inexplicable day when three independent witnesses had brought him to her attention.
   Just then, an inrush of cool air as the door was flung open shattered her composure into a million perilous pieces! She struggled in vain with her sudden panic. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the instinctive and masculine face she had come to know so well! “I love you with a fiery passion which cannot be denied,” he husked while the music in her heart rose to a new crescendo of happiness. “I need you, you who make my life complete!”
   At that moment 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 godless, savage. Wthout him, could she ever have realized that it was now only a matter of time before they would be feeding off of each other's precious bodily secretions?