Heat (93 page)

“Go back to sleep,” she said again, and tossed onto her side. “I’ll be quiet, promise.”

The bed creaked as he lay back down, but his not-quite-snoring breaths did not resume. His hand found her hip again. She could feel all three of his fingers lightly splayed, covering her nicely. His claws, filed efficiently short but still sharp, were tiny dots of sensation that could never be mistaken for anything but claws. And she…she couldn’t imagine never feeling them again.

And that was one more road that was never going to lead to a night’s sleep. She sighed, started to wriggle, and forced herself to lie still.

“Is there something in particular on your mind?” he asked.

“Just nerves. Sorry.”

“Mm. I know an ancient Jotan cure for nervous energy.”

“Really?” She rolled over hopefully. “What?”

He leaned in to nip at her jaw and his hand slipped down over her hip to cup her through her panties. He stroked once, deliciously slow, growling suggestively against her ear.

Her smile forged itself by reluctant degrees. “Ancient Jotan cure, huh?”

“Trust me, it works.” His caressing hand gently eased her back against him before renewing his measured, circular touches.

Daria arched her neck for his nuzzling and careful bites, but she soon shook her head. “Oh, come on, stop,” she said reluctantly. “I know you’re too tired for this.”

“Mm-hm.” His lips played at her shoulders, and then brushed down to close around her sensitive nipple. His fingers continued their deliberate movements, whispering on the silk that separated them.

She made a token effort to stop him, but somehow, the hand she meant to have push him away ended up twining in his hair. She lay, drowsing in his tender attentions, but when he slipped at last beneath her thin panty to touch her intimately, she rolled away from him onto her side. “You’re tired,” she said.

She heard a soft rustle of fabric on flesh, and then his body was pressed against her back. His hand was again low on her belly, pulling her back to feel the proof of his nakedness, his desire.

“You see,” she said unsteadily, as his fingers gently began to draw her panties away, “this is exactly why I’m such a horrible person.” She felt the pulling of the thin silk all the way down her legs to her ankles, where Tagen teased them off one foot at a time. “If you think I’m going to roll over and encourage you, you’re wrong,” she warned him.

“Then stay thus,” he said, his hand still enclosing the heel of one foot. He caressed what he held, his fingers traveling leisurely back to her thigh as his strong legs insinuated themselves between hers. His other hand pulled her hair away from her neck, baring her to a kiss before the heat of his manhood slipped up from behind to press at her. “This body will always admit me,” he whispered, and proved it.

She clutched at the sheets, groaning with pleasure as he stroked deeply up inside her. The sensation was so unique; she didn’t know how to move with him and he would not allow her to move now that she’d declared she wouldn’t. His chest brushed rapturously along her back with each unhurried, sidelong thrust. His hands smoothed across her bared flesh, he kissed every part of her his hungry mouth could reach, and he let her do nothing but feel.

Whimpers first, and then soft cries scratched out of her. She began to writhe in place, her hands fluttering back to pull at him in helpless need.

“Ah,” he murmured. “Now you would encourage me. So.” He turned her onto her stomach and covered her with his heat, sinking his shaft so deeply, so completely, that she had to bury a scream in the mattress. His legs between hers began slowly to open, pushing hers apart. He swept back onto his knees, pulling her with him, and resumed his languorous movements.

She groped behind her, gasping and horribly aware of how thin the walls must be. Her fingers caught at his cheek, his hair, then his arm, his hip, anything she could reach, but there was nothing for her to truly hold on to. The only sound she was capable of making, the only word she could coherently form, was his name and it came in strained puffs from her lips.

“Greatly wise, were the ancient Jotan.” Tagen’s fingers dipped suddenly to tease at the sensitive bud crowning her sex, and his strong arms cradled her as she came alive in orgasm.

He would not let it end. His fingers at her tender cleft, the steady rolling of his hips, his sensual growls against her ear, all kept her afloat in a spreading ocean of warmth through which she ultimately sensed something even greater building.

All consideration for the thinness of the walls and the other sleeping patrons of this fine establishment flew in tatters from her mind like a swarm of butterflies. She cried his name aloud, sinking her nails into his restraining arms, and let herself go to him. His thrusts slowed even further, but the power in them increased, pushing her up and out into the open air in waves. Flying, she was flying in every sense and the pleasure was so complete she couldn’t even feel him anymore, only the molten ecstasy that filled her. And then it struck.

Daria slapped her shaking hands over her mouth as she screamed, her body slamming back against him in the extremity of her climax. Shivers lit all through her; she started to drift back to Earth, and then felt Tagen’s final thrust, the flood of his passion, and she came back to crying life and rode out another blossoming of helpless rapture.

He guided her gently back to bed as he withdrew, arranging her on her stomach with her hands curled beside her head. The sheet was resettled at her shoulders and she mumbled sleepy sounds that might have been praise or gratitude or anything at all.

“You see?” Tagen stretched out beside her and draped his arm around her waist. “The ancient Jotan were masters of the curing arts.”

“Wise beyond compare,” Daria mumbled. She was asleep in seconds.

M
orning could not come soon enough for Kane. From the moment his eyes opened on sunlight, he was ready to move, impatient to be gone. He shoved Sue-Eye onto the floor and sat up as her first dumbfounded cry came cawing up at him. “Get dressed,” he ordered, and turned to wake Raven.

She was already struggling up from sleep, swiping at her eyes and throwing back the sheet that wrapped her. Her hair was mussed, strands of purple and white all thrown together, and for a brief moment, the faceless urgency that scratched at him faded and he could remember only the pleasures of the day before. He slipped an arm around her, pulled her tightly to him, and grazed his teeth lingeringly along the full curve of her throat before biting at her jaw.

Her hand groped at his chest, found the home of his heart, and then only rested there. Her weak little claws flexed on his flesh as he nibbled carefully. He could smell her sweat and the musk they had made with all their matings, and it was a fine thing to lose himself in so early. He felt himself beginning to relax, to savor.

No, damn it all, it was time to go. Kane drew back with a snarl and gave Raven a hard push to the edge of the bed. He swung out over Sue-Eye and stood, pacing restlessly out to peer behind the curtains, and then back again. “Get dressed!” he snapped at the stubbornly-naked
ichuta’a
crouching by the bed, and gave her a kick to the ribs to send her on her way. “And you,” he added, throwing a dark glance Raven’s way. “We need to get gone. Now.”

She was on her feet and stepping into her skirt in an instant. “What’s the matter?” she asked, looking tense.

“Nothing.” Kane went back to study the world outside the curtains, and then returned to the bed. He bent to fetch his clothes, threw them down again, and went in to the bathroom where his
ichuta’a
had disappeared.

She was dressing, obedient enough and certainly speedily, but he hit her anyway. She fell into the shower and landed hard, her arms askew and one leg slung over the side of the bathtub. She stared at him, her eyes satisfyingly wide, and a little trickle of blood painting the side of her mouth. Kane felt better.

He went back out to the main room and suited up. It was going to be another hot day. He couldn’t feel it yet, but he knew it down in his bones. More of that sick yellow sun cooking the crust off the whole damn Earth, more Heat itching and churning up his guts, more humans stinking up his claws with blood and piss and fear, and he had to dress for it in a heavy coat. His feet had to bake out the day in footcovers. His hair had to crawl with sweat under a hat. He couldn’t even wait out the day riding in the climate-controlled groundcar because he’d pissed away so much time yesterday fucking Raven.

Kane scowled at the lacings of his footcovers as he cinched them tight. He’d piss away today fucking Raven, too, if he could. Raven was a fuckable little thing. But time was scratching at him for some reason, and he couldn’t fight his instincts. They’d saved him too many times in the past. ‘When your gut tells you to run, you run,’ as Urak used to say. ‘Intuition is nothing but long stripes of perception squeezed into small spaces.’

Kane grunted amusement at the thought, and then slumped over with only one foot covered and put his head in his hands.

His father’s voice, warning him. He’d heard it a thousand times in his life. And now there was something…something…

Raven’s fingertips brushed at his shoulder. Kane dropped his hands and looked up at her. The mood he was in, and she’d come and touched him. His fearless Raven.

She didn’t say anything, but she stepped around before him and went to her knees. Kane leaned back, thinking indistinctly that a quick blowjob was probably just the thing to calm his rattled nerves, but she merely picked up his second footcover and started loosening the laces. Her hand slid around to cup his calf; she fit his foot inside the human cover and gently brought it home around his heel.

Kane pulled in a breath and let it out slow. His fingers combed at her bent head, sorting out the colors of her amazing hair. It was growing in dark at her scalp. When he got home, he was going to have to find out how to color hair and let her fix it.

She finished with his footcover and sat back, looking at him in that wonderfully solemn way she had. “Are you okay?” she asked quietly.

“Bad night,” he said, and smiled crookedly as he added, “Great day. But a bad night.”

She nodded, accepting this.

“I’ve been here too long.” Kane glanced toward the window, and then rubbed at his eyes again. “Too long and too long and too fucking long. And I’m not done yet.”

“What can I do?”

“You’re doing it,” he muttered, and then straightened up and waved her off. “Let’s get moving. Where’s my
ichuta’a
?”

“I’m here.”

She was eyeing him warily, just out of arm’s reach, which in itself made him feel briefly like stepping out and slapping her down again. This time, he restrained himself.

“We’re going,” he said, and headed for the door.

Raven ran in to do whatever it was that she did when they left these places, and Sue-Eye came with him into the back seat of the groundcar. Kane pulled his pack onto his lap, one claw takking now and then on the solid surface of its lid. It was heavier now. He hadn’t noticed before, but the difference was there and as soothing in its own way as the feel of Raven as she knelt to cover his feet. Less quieting to him was the weight of Sue-Eye’s stare as she sat beside him. From the corner of his eyes, he could glimpse one of her hands rising, as though she were daring herself to touch him. He didn’t think he cared whether she did or not, but this back-and-forth business was scratching at him.

Finally, “Do you want me to do anything?”

“Yes,” he said, watching Raven through the hotel’s windows. “I want you to shut up unless I talk to you.”

Sue-Eye silenced herself and looked away. Her hands stayed together in her lap after that.

Raven returned to the groundcar and Kane held out the keys for her to take. The engines fired, and his guts unknotted slightly.

“Where are we going?” Raven asked, pulling out onto the highway.

“I don’t know.” Kane scanned the road restlessly, his hand running back and forth over the top of his chemist’s pack. “West, for now.” Nine more vials remained empty. At five humans per vial, more or less, that meant another big hunt or thirty to forty small ones. Thirty to forty more stops. He bared his teeth. The urge to go home grew stronger. “West,” he said again.

He would go back through to the So-Quaal Gate. He’d send out a coded message as soon as he came through and there’d be only a few gigameters of neutral space where he might potentially run into trouble before someone came for him. He could probably trade the prison ship with its pre-programmed Gate codes for passage for him and his females to wherever he wanted to go. The So-Quaal who were building his father’s Gate would take him in long enough for him to sell his Vahst. He’d see somewhere around forty thousand
crona
for a full load of the concentrate, and then there was Sue-Eye.

Fifty
crona
, he’d told Raven, and that was just if he sold her to the So-Quaal for dissection. She was too old to interest breeders. A sex-house slaver would take her, but the only way Kane would see a decent price would be if he farmed her out first and let the buyer really feel what she was capable of. He rather doubted she’d be able to hold even her ample enthusiasm for fucking after the first few days.

Kane gave her an assessing eye now, and as always, she sat up a little straighter and looked receptive. He wondered if there were female stimulators out on the market somewhere. He was aware only of those made for males, used by breeders to force them to mate. Since human females didn’t require any special inducements to be bred, he wasn’t sure such a device even existed, but if it did, the Kevrian would know about it. And if it didn’t, the So-Quaal could probably make one, but the expense would far outstrip the profit.

Drugs? Vahst didn’t work on humans except as a mild euphoric. D’Gren oil did work, but it killed them more than half the time, and had a tendency to blind survivors. There was always the painkiller he’d made for Raven, but the first Kevrian she bit would kill that deal. Besides, he’d just cleaned her out. Drugs would only deflate her price.