He dropped his eyes to the sheets wrapping his waist and dragged the back of his hand across his brow. His shoulders straightened, but he still would not meet her gaze. “No,” he said, sounding as though he’d scraped the dignity for that one word from the dried-out bottom of his soul.
She let her arms fall to her sides and just stared at him, feeling helpless. “I can bring dry sheets in,” she said. “And you can change them.”
His jaw ticced. Long minutes crawled by.
He sighed. “Very well. Then leave me.”
Daria retreated to the linen closet and returned to find him sitting up and drinking straight from the pitcher. Most of the ice had melted.
“Leave them,” he gasped, letting the pitcher rest against his stomach. “And go.”
“Are you sure you don’t need help?”
He laughed. It was a singularly harsh and humorless sound. “Help?” Out came another stream of his own language and when it ended, he was sagging forward and out of breath.
Daria set the sheets at the foot of his bed.
“Go,” Tagen said quietly. “I do not require your help.”
“I’m really worried about you.”
“Yes,” he said, and only that. It was the most passive answer she could have imagined, and the most ominous, but there was no way to counter it.
“Okay then,” she said lamely. She backed toward the door. “I’ll…bring up more water in a few hours. And if you need anything…”
He shut his eyes.
Daria let her voice trail away, her eyes burning. All this because of the weather. All this because he’d had the dumb luck to hook up with someone who didn’t have an air conditioner or a swimming pool or the goddamn nerve to just sleep with him already.
So do it. Strip down. She probably wouldn’t have to do more than unbutton her fly before he got the idea. The thought of having sex with an alien was probably abhorrent to a straight-laced military man like Tagen, but she didn’t think he had it in him to object for long. And then…and then it would be done. It wouldn’t be that bad. She was no vestal virgin, for Christ’s sake. She knew where all the parts went. She’d thought about it. Why couldn’t she do it?
The silence seemed to register with him at last. He looked up at her wearily and tried to smile. The effect was heart-rending and he must have known it because he stopped after only a few seconds.
“I have endured Heat before,” he said with a sigh. “I think this is no worse. It only seems so because I am on Earth.” He scowled briefly and then composed himself again. “I know you are concerned for me and I do appreciate it, but I do not wish you to see me like this.” He paused, searching her face, and then added, “And you must never touch me, Daria. Never.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I know you’d never hurt me.”
“Yes,” he said softly. His eyes never wavered. “I would.”
Eyes welling, Daria stepped into the hall and shut the door. She said nothing more.
There was nothing left to say.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Turn us in, ichuta’a.”
“What, here?”
Raven dragged herself out of the bored doze that kept her occupied for the long car ride. She rubbed at her eyes, pushing herself out of the fetal curl that fit her into the backseat and looked around, blinking until the sunlight no longer blurred her vision. Not that there was a lot to see. There were trees on every side of them, and only a few other vehicles in sight, most of them long-haul trucks. Back in the boonies. And Kane wanted to pull over.
“There.” Kane extended a claw, pointing to a pair of parallel ruts leading away from the road.
Sue-Eye slowed and turned in, but she just couldn’t leave it at that. Some people were like that. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, Kane,” the blonde said now, her tones faintly tinged with exasperation. “What do you expect to find?”
Kane aimed a dark glare at her and Raven had the distinct feeling that if Sue-Eye weren’t driving, she’d be catching one upside the head right now. “I expect,” he said sharply, “to find the riders in the two cars that turned up that way. I’ve been watching the road, ichuta’a. What the fuck have you been doing?”
“Watching the moving cars on the road,” Sue-Eye said, mildly enough, but with a certain hard set to her jaw. At times like these, Raven had real trouble understanding how she could have lived so long with a gang as nasty as the one Kane had killed back at that bar.
Although she wasn’t sure whether she’d be defusing the situation or exacerbating it, Raven cleared her throat and said, “There’s probably a boat launch out there or something.”
“Yeah? Then they’ll all be out on the water and not up where we can get at them.” Sue-Eye winced as the car bounced over the uneven ground. Kane must have hit her someplace pretty bad. And he was going to hit her someplace even worse if she didn’t shut up, couldn’t she see that?
“So?” Raven asked in her best peace-making voice. “We’ll go swimming until they come out.”
Kane sent an amused glance back at her, but his faint smile vanished when he saw her hand at her belly. She took it away fast, but she knew the damage was done.
“I’m feeling a little better,” she said quickly, hoping to avert a total disaster.
“Then why are you sleeping so much?” he countered, baring his teeth at her. “Don’t lie to me, Raven, I’ll know it every time.”
She supposed she ought to let it be. He had to be hungry. Thirsty. Tired of riding around in cramped cars with nothing to do but listen to Sue-Eye’s passive-aggressive complaining and think about how hot it was outside. He was in an itchy mood and well past ready to start smacking, so it was just safer to sit still and leave him alone.
Of course, all that being true, he wasn’t likely to calm down on his own. He’d just sit there, simmering his way up to a full boil, and when he got there, well, Raven was the only one in reach he could hit without crashing the car.
She leaned forward and slid her hand down his chest in a gesture she hoped was a placating one. Or at least, distracting. “I’m not lying,” she said in his ear. “A little better means just that. Better. A little.”
He growled, but the hard muscles under her palm relaxed. “I want you well.”
“So do I.” She curled her fingers to scratch at him ever so slightly, watching his face intently in the rearview mirror to see how he received it.
His expression never changed, but he closed his hand over hers and guided it down to his crotch. He rubbed her on him, growling low in his throat, and then let go suddenly and pushed her back into her seat. “No, leave me alone,” he said, but not in a mean way. “I need my head on straight. Stop us, ichuta’a. We’ll walk from here.”
“We can’t stop here, we’re blocking the path.”
Raven winced preemptively (all that calming-down wasted) and Kane roared out at full voice, “Stop the fucking car!”
Sue-Eye stopped, and in the same instant as the engines died, Kane’s fist flew out, socking the blonde a damned good one in the ear and knocking her into the driver’s door.
“If I have to cut out your tongue to get you to stop arguing with me, then that’s what I’ll do,” he snarled. “I want to block the path because I don’t want to be interrupted. I’m going to be killing people and unless you want to be one of them, you’d better confine your words to me to ‘yes, Kane’ until I’m goddamn well done! Do we have an understanding, ichuta’a?”