Sue-Eye blinked. This was the victory she’d wanted, but she didn’t trust the way in which he acceded. Hesitantly, she reached for him.
He lifted his fist and punched her in the side of her head, not hard, but hard enough. “Did I say use your hand?” he asked. “Put your mouth on me, thal. Raven, your letters.”
Sue-Eye glanced up in time to see Raven turn back to the table. She felt herself blush, newly uncomfortable. Her ear throbbing and hot from the blow, she bent, bracing her hands on either side of his hips, and licked at his flaccid cock, sucking him awkwardly up into her mouth. She tongued until he hardened, and triumph bloomed in her heart. She took him into her throat, bobbing up and down, slicking the full length of him as he grew.
“That’s enough. On your belly, thal.”
She lay flat as he got up, waiting tensely as he crossed behind her. His hands gripped her ankles. With one yank, he pulled her legs off the bed and let them drop. Her knees burned on the carpet. He put a hand on her ass and pushed her full against the mattress, then kept it there, stretching her cheek aside.
Oh Jesus, no.
“W-Wait!” Sue-Eye gasped.
He punched her in the other ear. It was his only answer. He fit the head of his massive cock to her ass and pushed, splitting her open one brutal inch after another. He went slow, drawing out every second of agony, and she screamed into the mattress and tore at the sheets.
“A thal,” Kane said, timing his words to his steady, crushing thrusts, “takes…what she’s…given…and is…grateful…it isn’t…death.”
“Th-thank you, Kane!” she choked, tears streaming from her eyes. He was killing her! He was killing her!
“A thal…seeks…to please…because…she knows…her place. Move, thal.”
Sue-Eye grit her teeth and pushed back at him, braying with pain.
“That’s it.” Kane stopped thrusting but left his hand on her back. “Steady now. Slow and steady. And stop making that noise.”
Sue-Eye pushed her face into the bedding to muffle herself and Kane’s huge hand cracked like iron on the sensitive small of her back.
“I said stop!” he snarled. “Not cover, but stop! Thalan who can’t follow simple commands are cut open and fed their own guts as they die!”
Sue-Eye bit down on her lips until blood spat out with every sobbing breath. She yanked and twisted at the blankets, all her instinctive movements for escape confined to her helpless hands as she made herself to move on him.
“That’s better.” Kane leaned back, bracing his weight on his hands. It forced her to sit him, to actually bounce and roll instead of just push a little back and forth, but she did it. Her jaw was locked so tight against screams that she was afraid every second of hearing bones crack. She fucked him through a red mist of pain, and when he growled at her to go faster, she obeyed without hesitation.
“Up, thal,” he said suddenly, and shoved her forward and off him. She sprawled facedown on the floor and Kane rose over her on his knees. She felt the hot rain of his cum falling on her back, but it was a distant thing. Every nerve in her entire body was an echo of the titanic agony in her bowels. She clawed at the carpet, trying to will her jaw to relax, and suddenly retched, spitting frothy bile between her grit teeth.
Kane laughed, stepping over her on his way to the bathroom. “That,” he said dryly, “isn’t very flattering at all, ichuta’a. Work on that. And Raven, mind your writing. Your leth is crooked.”
The door shut. The shower came on. Raven dropped her pen and jumped up, kneeling down to grip Sue-Eye’s shoulders.
“Fuck off!” Sue-Eye spat, swiping at her eyes.
Raven dropped her hands but didn’t retreat. “Come on,” she whispered. “We don’t have to fight all the time, do we? I know what he—”
“I said, fuck off!” Sue-Eye swung blindly, smacking the pony a pathetic if gratifyingly loud blow on the arm. “I’m not your fucking girlfriend!”
Raven stood up again, looking down at her. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“What way?” Sue-Eye challenged. “He’s fucking me while you’re doing homework. What way is that, huh?” She climbed to her feet, advancing angrily on Kane’s pony. “You think you’re such hot shit. Well, you’re not. You’re just the bitch he met first. But I’m the one who says she wants him. I’m the one he’s fucking even when he’s not in Heat. And I’m the one he’s spooning with at night. So don’t come all over playing so concerned. I see right through you, bitch. You’re on the way out!”
She flicked her fingers along her neck to her chin and out toward Raven’s face, a slow and contemptuous physical curse, and Raven backed up a step. “Go practice your penmanship,” she snarled, and turned her back.
She hobbled into the bathroom. Kane was in the shower. He glanced at her as she entered, but didn’t speak, not even when she stepped into the tub behind him. That was all right. He let her stay and that must mean something.
Every little thing meant something.
*
Coming down the long dirt path to Daria’s house had felt absurdly like homecoming to Tagen and he knew Daria was relieved as well. They’d been up all night, they should have gone directly to their own rooms to sleep. Instead, he had come in here to stare at his map and comfort the distressed and starving cat, and Daria had disappeared into the fathoms of the house to clean something. He didn’t stop her. She needed the comfort of her routine, of action. He understood that. More than anything, he’d like to take his weapon out to a shooting range and blow a few thousand targets into vapor.
At least the itch was purely mental. The day was cool, even overcast. The door had been open all night and the front room was nicely freshened for it. The cat had missed him. Deeply. It was soothing to Tagen’s soul to be greeted in so enthusiastic a manner. He solemnly offered up his body to be the cushion for Grendel’s enormous bulk, and massaged happy growls from the creature while he studied his map. He could comfortably sit thus, with cat under hand and the gentle noise of Daria at work somewhere in the background, until sleep claimed him.
But there was work to do and the words of the human lawman kept running through Tagen’s mind. E’Var and his two human females, responsible for fifty-eight deaths at a single hunt.
Two females. Why two?
One for Heat and one for…for what? Could not both females pilot the groundcar? And if not, why keep the human who could not pilot? If one listened to Daria, it was because he liked her. Tagen found that difficult to take seriously, but then, even the very worst men could have unanticipated moments of sentimentality. Uraktus, for example, had adopted a son. And died for him.
Enough. Regardless of E’Var’s reasons, what mattered now was not who he traveled with, but where he traveled to.
Tagen sat before the map of killings, staring down at indications of trees, rivers and mountains until the colors lost their meaning and all that remained were Daria’s markings. His eyes tracked restlessly along the path of his prisoner, up and down the roadways from murder to murder. There were gaps, he was sure of it . Bodies the humans had not found, killings attributed to other causes, but E’Var was here. He and his two human companions, sweeping back and forth across the hunting grounds of Earth, taking what they needed as often as they could.