"Where did you go?" she finally asked.

"Away," he murmured. "Before I killed you."

Zarai let the name fall as if it were her last breath. "Janton." On the old pirate's death her entire life had turned. She'd lost Indolent Climax because of that killing, traded in a life among women for the strange world of stranger men, and in time, Mannix. Then she'd lost 'nix.

Was the dead man somehow going to have his revenge a third time now?

The more difficult question. "Why did you come back?"

Now his voice was muffled by his mouth against her skin, as if he sought to inject the words directly into her body instead of risking them in open air and upon the doors of her ears. Still, she understood him well enough. "Rather love a living woman than a dead man." He broke his lips away from her breast and tilted his neck back to look into her eyes. "I tried it the other way around. That was not so good."