Still he did not look at me, but he reached out and brushed a fingertip over my hand. It was a tiny thing, that gesture, but the whole world was contained within it—gratitude, partnership, understanding. I had taken lovers around the world, more than a score of them at last count, but Stoker was the nearest thing I had ever known to an actual partner. And I knew better than to ask him for what he could not give.
