Then he saw her.

She had a woman's glow. Women didn't glow in the way men did. They didn't glow for the sake of fame: they glowed in response to others. He'd come to know them as practical, single-minded. There was a perfunctory quality to the signals they sent up from their posts on leaves, stems, blossoms. As if they had watched his antics long enough, and now they were saying: Very well. If that's what it takes to make you happy, here I am.

But this dazzling, feminine glow … It was very bright, and there was some piquant quality about it … A teasing lag, a kind of ironic awareness … He circled and sent a response. A query.

Her answer came, a bit too quickly. Bold, assertive. As if he were being a little foolish not to already know who she was, what she was, what their game was. An implicit challenge there. No coyness needed, no quarter taken or given.

He sent a long reply, a rising note, sustained.

Her answer was the very soul of allure. It was rich, self-conscious, and burningly voluptuous. It astounded him. He could no more have resisted that siren flash than a moth could resist a flame. His airborne body reoriented itself almost against his will.

She was on the broad leaf of a nettle. Vinnie wasn't crazy about nettle plants; the gummy, stinging barbs weren't likely to hurt a creature of his size, but they were inconvenient. The leaf was sticky, and his left midleg was wonky, so it wasn't the elegant, poised landing a man come courting would have hoped for.

Then she pounced on him. She came running from the base of the nettle leaf, and for all her great bulk—she seemed three times his size—she was lethally fast.