“All right,” Kane said mildly. “I’ll ask. What are you doing?”
“Standing.” She couldn’t quite erase all the bitterness from her voice. She supposed if that pissed him off enough, he’d get up and sock her. That was fine. At least he’d be paying attention to her.
But he didn’t. He merely sat up and scooted himself back against the headboard of the bed, saying, “Bring me my pack, ichuta’a. I want a new look at you.”
She tried to ignore the uplifting swoop that tried to go through her at these words. Of course he’d want a look at her before he fucked her again. The man was damned careful when it came to dipping his wick. He’d probably even checked out that scrawny bitch in the woods.
Yeah, and don’t think she hadn’t noticed that little action. Just one more pony he’d ride instead of her. She’d more than half expected him to add the little bitch to the party. Kane’s Traveling Harem, come one, cum all.
Sue-Eye put the heavy pack in his waiting hands and he gestured for her to sit at his side. He drew blood from Sue-Eye’s arm and injected it into his computer, pressing his thumb over the slight incision he left and then licking at the smear it left on him while he waited for the results. It didn’t take long for the all-done chime, and Kane smiled.
“Still clean, ichuta’a.” He gave her arm a pat, his gaze going to the little bottles still in his pack, already distracted. “Ease your mind.”
“I couldn’t care less,” she said. She faced the wall ahead of her instead of him, feigning indifference but her emotional antennae tuned to the slightest shift of his mood. Sulking was a risky move, but at least she could do it with sincerity. “I wasn’t clean when you met me and it didn’t keep me up at nights.”
Kane grunted and settled back to tap at the keys of his computer. “You claimed to be grateful at the time,” he remarked. His voice was silk.
“I was. Fat lot of good it did me.”
He raised his eyes from the screen and stared at her for a long time without expression. Finally, a faint smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Poor ichuta’a,” he said softly. “Are you angry because Kane whored you out?”
Here were the first cracks in the ice under her feet. Sue-Eye walked with caution.
“No,” she said. “You can do whatever the hell you want with me.” She got up and reseated herself on Raven’s bed, now facing him but still looking away.
He watched her go, nothing but his eyes moving. “True.”
She wanted to go on from there, maybe point out that it had been her plan that netted him all the brain juice he was so damn pleased about, but the ice was too damned thin for that. She lay down and curled on her side, turning her back to him, and said nothing.
The A/C ground and rattled. The shower in the next room spattered on the tiles. Kane’s computer was perfectly silent. There was no other sound. Sue-Eye could feel the itch of his gaze between her shoulderblades.
Raven stepped naked and wet around the corner and called Kane’s name. “Are we leaving today?” she asked, presumably once she had his attention.
“I hadn’t planned to. Why?”
“Thought I’d wash my clothes if we were going to stay long enough to dry them.”
Kane’s answer was to stand up, shuck out of his pants, and toss them at her. “Ichuta’a,” he said, lying back down. “Yours, too.”
Scowling, Sue-Eye crawled out of her t-shirt and skirt and threw them at Raven. “No starch,” she said sullenly.
Raven snickered. “I’ll see what I can do.” She went back into the bathroom and closed the door.
God, she hated that bitch. Easy for the pony to be Little Miss Sunshine this morning. She hadn’t been the meat in a Drunken Bastard sandwich the night before. And yeah, sure, Kane had passed Raven out at Charlie’s, but just her mouth. Big fucking deal. Sue-Eye still felt like she had a piano leg up her ass.
Kane finally started typing again. “I should warn you that you’re starting to piss me off, ichuta’a,” he said evenly.
“I’m so sorry to hear that. What do you want me to do?” she asked, her tone just as cool as his.
“Go to sleep. Watch TV. Take a shower. Anything but what you’re doing, which is aiming your ugly mood right at me.” He took the sleeve out of the side of his computer, replaced it with a fresh one from his pack, and started emptying brain juice into it. “You seem to think you can do that and make me feel bad. Why in hell you’d want me in a bad mood, I couldn’t begin to guess, but I don’t think it’ll work, and even if it does, I’ll probably express that bad mood by carving an eye out of you.”
Sue-Eye stiffened and curled up a little tighter.
Raven reappeared wrapped in a towel, but only took a step toward the bed before Kane said, “Practice your letters, Raven.” Sue-Eye was left alone.
In all this time (and it felt like forever, even though Sue-Eye knew it had only been a few days), Kane had never once said that he would let her go when he was done using her. He’d said it to Cammy, and he’d done good by his promise, but he hadn’t said it to Sue-Eye. The most he’d done was tell her how temporary her place at his side really was, that he’d only need her for as long as he couldn’t have Raven. After that…
She really thought she’d have him by now. He was a killer, and while it was not necessarily true that killers have no loyalty, what loyalty they had was damned little. And Raven, well, Raven was a lousy bitch, pure and simple. She was mouthy and she got freaked out too easy. Sure, she was cute, but cute didn’t last. It should be Sue-Eye who had the man’s mark on her arm, damn it!
These thoughts had a way of circling, and anger (always the easiest emotion for Sue-Eye to nurture) was soothing to her heart. She’d actually started to doze off when Kane suddenly said, “All right, come over here.”
Sue-Eye rolled toward him, her eyes narrowed, but it really was her he was looking at as he set his computer aside and not Raven. She stood up and moved warily from her bed to his, more than half-expecting a fist as soon as she came into his reach. But he crooked a claw at her instead, an invitation to join him. She sat down on the edge of the mattress, her spirits rising, waiting for his command.
“You said something the other day.” Kane pillowed his head with one arm and let the other rest on his stomach, seemingly relaxed and unconcerned with her as he watched Raven write. “You said you’d been a bitch longer than my Raven. You knew how to do it better. That’s not a use for that word that I’m familiar with, but I think I take your meaning. We have a word for that, too. Thal. I think of you as my thal…when I don’t think of you as my ichuta’a.” He smiled thinly and moved his eyes to her. They were utterly without humor.
Sue-Eye resisted the urge to shift. She held his gaze and waited.
“Do you know what I can do with thalan?” he asked.
“Anything you want,” she said.
“That’s right. I can feed them. I can eat them. I can fix them. I can break them. I can do anything I want.” His voice never raised. His words remained calm and evenly modulated. His black-fathomed gaze never dimmed. “I can even humor them. Put your mouth on me, thal.”