Sue-Eye concentrated on taking even breaths, letting tears of pain well and fall without restriction. She hated him. It didn’t stop her from wanting him. If anything, it made that sick lust even brighter. And she hated him for that, too.
“I’ll tell you what I want,” he said drowsily. “I want this fucking heat to end. Can you do that for me, ichuta’a?”
“No.”
“Too bad. I’ll have to keep fucking you, then. And you’d better hope I excite you more tomorrow than I did today.” He rubbed her belly briefly and then dug at her with his claws. “Because I’m likely to get my feelings hurt if I don’t.”
Chapter Twenty
Tagen sat on the edge of his bed and watched shadows dance on his wall. It was finally morning, and although it was stuffy and unpleasant, he thought it might be just cool enough that he would escape Heat, or at least, avoid it until much later in the day.
The device Daria had procured for him waited by his hip. It had been an embarrassment to use, but he would be a liar to say it had not been helpful. It had done the work of many hours in only one, and it had not chafed or wearied his arm. All the same, he could not look at it. He intended to take it back with him to Jota. It was a damned useful item, and doubly amazing for the fact that humans had come up with the design without Heat to inspire them. So he would keep it, but he could not help the sting to his pride that he had used it at all.
His thoughts had a way of moving back to the shop where Daria had taken him. A sexplay supply shop, easily and immediately recognizable despite the disparity of their two races. Porn, as it was called here. Such a small word, so dismissive. And yet, such a vast world it encompassed. He could not get over seeing that great wall of synthetic phalli. The sizes. The colors. The shapes. There had been prongs, for the gods’ sakes, and this on a world where any human could easily find a mate merely by asking.
Tagen smiled faintly, still staring unseeingly at the wall.
The proprietor had flirted with him. And in gratifyingly direct fashion, so similar to the manner in which a Jotan might approach. Her gaze had been hungry and aggressive. Her musk had been so full. She had demanded him. She had threatened to have him right there on the shop’s floor.
In the growing grip of Heat, Tagen had been tempted. It was unfeasible, of course. The proprietor had surely not realized he was alien to this world, but she would as soon as she’d felt his hands on her body. Mating with her would mean keeping an eye on her afterwards and he could not simply walk away from Daria to take up with another human. Daria may or may not be delighted to see the back of him, but he did not have the energy to ingratiate himself to a new host, to run all the risks all over again just for the convenience of easy sex.
Besides, although it had appealed greatly to his ego to know that he was an attractive male by human standards and as alluring as it had been to hear a female’s command for mating, he had felt no real urge to be with her. He had not even been interested enough to ask the female’s name. And for all that he had been receptive to her at the time, when he had been alone with Heat, it had been Daria again in his imaginings.
Daria.
He supposed he should go downstairs now. He wasn’t hungry, but he knew clinically that he should eat, or at the very least, drink. And he would have to talk to Daria. About anything, so long as she saw he was alive and well and not liable to leap on her in lustful frenzy.
Not that the thought had never crossed his mind, gods knew, but that was done now, he thought. She had caught him out, and now that the secrecy of Heat was destroyed, so went much of his fury and frustration. And he had forced her hand as well, ripped the dressing from her old wound and pulled all the poison out into light. He could live with the way things were, even if he could not deny the longing for things to be different between them.
Gods, what she had lived through.
He had known it would be bad, had suspected there to have been some attack, but he would never have guessed at the whole truth. Small wonder she had feared him so. Knowing what he did now, he was astonished that all she had done thus far was indulge in tears and mindless panic. She might easily and understandably have been compelled to do one or both of them an injury. Instead, she slept just down the hall from him.
She was so much stronger than she knew. Tagen realized he wanted to impress her, and it was not the same as wanting to impress a Jotan female. Jotan females had been handed respect all their lives for merely the accident of their gender, but Daria had earned his high opinion against every odd, and he knew that if she found him worthy of her esteem, than it would be sincere as well. Perhaps now that there was honesty between them, friendship would follow. He could content himself with that.
The light spilling in through his window lost the thin glow unique to early morning and began to strengthen with full day. He really had to go downstairs. He still believed it was cooler than it had been, but that was no guarantee that it would remain so. Much as he may desire to, he could not stay in his room forever.
Tagen grimaced. If nothing else, he would have to clean his… acquisition…before he needed it again. Preferably while Daria was below him and could not know what he was doing. Yes, it had been her idea and yes, she had bought the thing, but still.
He stood up, spurred at last to reluctant action, and dressed. He opened his door and listened until he heard Daria moving downstairs. She was in the kitchen, by the sound of it, and that was as good as Tagen supposed he could expect. Thus assured he would not be interrupted, Tagen washed his stimulator and returned it to his room, tossing a pillow over it to mask it from sight. Not that Daria was in the habit of wandering into his room—she avoided this place with a vigilance nearly equal to her cleanliness—but he didn’t want to look at it, either.
He went downstairs, passing the tee-vee with only an idle glance. The media feeds were on, broadcasting more news of Earth’s civil war. Grendel watched it from the sofa, its ears cocked forward and long tail twitching. Violence and death and murder by the hundreds. The cat looked disturbingly smug.
In the kitchen, Daria was just sitting down before her computer, but she stood again when he walked in. She twisted her hands together in her shirtfront, exposing a pale strip of belly-flesh. Her cheeks were pink and she wasn’t meeting his eyes. She looked more uncomfortable than even he felt.
“May I have a drink?” he asked at last, just to prompt her to movement.
She sprang away with an expression of profound relief and Tagen seated himself at the table. She brought him a tall glass of the iced tea she made, and he accepted it with a nod of thanks. How very formal they were.
Daria hovered at his side, watching him drink and looking miserably like she wished to speak.
She was going to ask him how he liked his stimulator, he just knew it. And he’d have to answer her, damn it all.
Hell. He might as well give her the opening and get it out of the way.
“So now you know,” he said.