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legs held me in place, and I couldn't pull back, because the leverage was hers. Even my intimate connection to her body facilitated that lock; my loin could not rotate. What a position!
    “Kiss me,” she said, drawing me lower. Instead I reached for her face, for my own hands were free. In a desperate situation like this, I was prepared to strike or gouge; anything to make her grip on my throat break. But immediately her hold tightened, and I grew faint. She had had a choke on me, which cut off my air, but it can take some time for that to deprive a person of consciousness. The tightening put pressure against the buried carotid arteries, cutting off the supply of blood to my brain, and that could put me out in five seconds. My hands fluttered helplessly.
    She eased up, and the blood and a little air returned. There was no question: she knew the potential of this lock, and was toying with me. She could render me unconscious or dead at any time, despite my experience in combat.
    “Finish it, lover,” she repeated, nudging my ribs with her thighs. “I would not wish you to die unfulfilled.”
    Some finish! I remembered the notorious historical woman of a death camp who had taken lovers from the condemned, then had their skins fashioned into lampshades. Such romance loses its appeal quite rapidly.
    But what could I do? If I did not make some show of obliging her, she would simply kill me immediately.
    So I used what very limited freedom remained to my body, and I thrust, finding little pleasure in it despite the original delight of the connection, and thrust again, going through the motions. I was really stalling for time, yet I could not see what use I would have for a few more minutes. Spirit would not return for another hour, at least, and no one else would intrude on our privacy. Tasha had plenty of time to play with me before she dispatched me. “You can do better than that, Tyrant,” she said. “What would all your prior conquests think, if you had plumbed them no more efficiently than this? Move it!”
    Brother! She was like a cat with a mouse, first trapping or crippling it, then playing with it, having no intent to let it survive. But how could even the smartest of mice survive that game?
    Then I had a notion. I had lived a good deal longer than she had, and had had advanced training in specialized combat techniques. It had been decades since I had practiced them, but I had not forgotten.
    There had been one line of nerve attack that had at one time fascinated me. A choke can take minutes for full effect, and a strangle seconds, as I explained, but the right pressure on the right nerve can be instantaneous. Furthermore, a nerve attack is more versatile than a neck lock, because it can be applied to any part of the body, and does not require that body to be anchored in place. If Tasha was ignorant of this system of techniques—
    I increased the vigor of my thrusting, obliging my captor, who evidently got her satisfaction from forcing a climax in the victim she was about to kill. No doubt her own climax would be set off, not by mine, but by her perception of my body stiffening in the rigor of termination. Some people are like that.
    Meanwhile, I slid my hands around behind me. She might have been aware of this, but unconcerned; her legs were far stronger than my arms, and I could not force them apart that way. Perhaps, again catlike, she relished the futility of my attempt. I took hold of her left ankle with my left hand and her right with my right. Then I slid my left hand onto her right ankle, though this was a difficult stretch, and held it in place.
    My achievement of this grip was facilitated by the slight leeway she was giving me to enable me to thrust into her.
    Now I had her right foot precisely placed. This was important, for I could not see it, and the nerve I required was not readily accessible. I stroked that foot with the fingers of my right hand, searching out the precise spot.
    “Forget it,