Raven aimed them west along the highway and Kane leaned back in the seat, his hand on Sue-Eye’s thigh and a feeling of comfortable excitement nestled in his gut. He was making damned good time. Two more big hunts and he would be full and ready to find his ship. The speed with which he was moving now more than made up for the shitty beginning he’d had. Raven alone almost made up for that.
Mm, and soon he could put thoughts of Vahst aside for the night and give himself over to her. He didn’t even know the last time he’d been so keyed up about a tussle in the sheets. He wondered what she had in mind, exactly. His hand stroked a little up Sue-Eye’s thigh, although his eyes were fixed on Raven’s reflection in the little console mirror. Sue-Eye tentatively returned the gesture, bringing his attention to her.
He considered slapping her, then settled back and left her hand where it was. “Which eye is your good one?” he asked.
She locked up tight, terror etched in every inch of her.
Kane smiled, lazily running his hand higher. He loved that look on her. She’d gotten too used to him too damned fast; he liked to give her a reminder now and then that she was really not very safe with him. “I think you’d better answer me,” he said.
Slowly, she brought up her free hand and let her fingertips brush the thin skin below her left eye. He could see the pulse in her throat beating faster.
Kane leaned in, examining the right. He saw no scarring, but the pupil did not expand when he blocked her light. “What happened to this one?” he asked.
“Someone hit me.”
“Did you deserve it?”
She didn’t answer right away. Kane ran his gaze over her and saw she genuinely appeared to be thinking about it.
“No,” she said at last. “I didn’t. I didn’t even deserve to get hit and I sure didn’t deserve to lose my eye.”
“You didn’t lose it,” he pointed out. “It’s still there.” And if it was just the nerve that was damaged, he could fix it up easy when he got home. Or grow her a new eye, if it came to that. Still, the damage wasn’t visible. It wouldn’t affect her price, anyway. “What did you do that got you hit?”
“Apparently, I brought him the wrong kind of beer. It was the only kind we had, and he bought it. Asshole.”
“Your dead commander?” Kane guessed.
She started to shake her head, and then laughed and nodded. “Sure, why not? My first dead commander, only I don’t really think he’s dead, I just like to believe it.”
Kane grunted, his interest ebbing. Raven was watching them in the mirror. Her eyes were so sharp and clear. “Say your lesson,” he told her.
“Se ven garrug-ta.”
I belong to you.
Kane smiled, squeezing Sue-Eye’s thigh with the anticipation of having his Raven. “Find us a hotel,” he ordered.
“What, already?” She made a play at surprise, but her eyes shining in the mirror were teasing.
“I’m only giving you one day,” he told her, and then leaned in close to growl, “But I’m going to give you the whole day.”
“You’re too good to me.”
“I know it.” His hand slipped up Sue-Eye’s thigh unthinkingly and lightly rubbed. “What are you going to do first?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” She tossed her hair, slapping him deliberately with purple. “And I wouldn’t tell you even if I had.”
He snapped his teeth at her and leaned back with a smile on his face, stroking the flesh of the female at his side. He could smell musk in the air, Raven’s and Sue-Eye’s both, and it made a sweet perfume. He supposed he should really care more about losing a day’s work, and he knew damned well what Urak would have thought of him throwing off a chance to hunt for a little sexplay, but he didn’t care. There was nothing around here now but road and the distant blocks of human houses, but sooner or later, they would come to a hotel, and then his Raven would stop. No hunting, no Vahst, and no Heat. Just him. Just her.
He couldn’t wait.
*
When Tagen woke for the second time, it was to the sound of the door closing as Daria left. He was losing all his Fleet training. He hadn’t even felt her leave the bed, and these wayside hostels did not bankrupt themselves providing the comforts of their quarters.
And yet, here he lay, succumbing to its incommodious magnetism once again.
Tagen threw back the thin bedding and rose, teeth bared at the brutality of action when sleep yet beckoned. But Daria would be returning presently, he knew. She had gone either to fetch food or to sign them free of the room and in either case, it behooved him to make ready.
He opened the door to the privy-room (easily the smallest he had ever seen, on this world or any other), letting Grendel streak past him and out into the main chamber. The cat had spent its frustrations during the night shredding the privy-paper. It lay in drifts nearly ankle-deep. Tagen marked himself to give the animal a stern lecture at a later date on the subject of showing respect to public properties and those employed to clean same, but he did not trouble himself to gather up the mess. He stepped into the shower instead and activated the water.
The controls were greatly dissimilar from those in Daria’s house, but not complicated beyond understanding. A far greater irritation to him was the ridiculously-proportioned soaps. The bottle of hair-cleanser in particular was a nuisance; it was small enough that merely spinning off the tiny cap was difficult and shaking the thick fluid out of the inflexible bottle was a sore test for a newly-risen man. He didn’t think it was very good for his hair, either. It lathered poorly and when he added more to make up for it, the suds immediately ran into his eyes.
He was still trying to clear them when he heard Daria return. ‘Return’ was too light a word, perhaps. She banged into the main room shouting his name.
Tagen’s instinctive response was to leap naked and blinded from the shower. His talons ripped gouges from the synthetic flooring as he fought for traction and once he had it, he ran to meet her with privy-paper clinging to his wet feet.
“Tagen, they were here! They—Oh gosh, sorry.”
“Here?!” Tagen groped for the bed, scrubbed a corner of the thin blanket over his face, and peered at her through stinging tears. Gods, if this was what it did to his eyes, what in hell was it doing to his hair? “When?”
“Last night.” Daria scooped up his clothing and held them out, her eyes snapping as her anger reasserted itself. “They were here last night, they checked out just two hours ago. If that pervert at the desk hadn’t been such a son of a bitch, we’d have had them! God damn it!”
Tagen pulled his breeches on, left them half-fastened, and ran to rinse his hair and badly-abraded eyes. Here. Last night. In the next room, for all that he knew. This mission! The hands of the gods had been against him from the very start! What could E’Var have possibly done to earn his good luck?
“I should have made him tell me,” Daria was saying when he came back into the room for the rest of his uniform.
“How?” he asked. “From what I saw through the window, you could hardly have bested him in battle.”
“He only clammed up at all because I told him to get his eyes off my boobs before I slapped him,” she said darkly. “Hell, he’d have probably given me the key to their room and a box of doughnuts if I’d shown them off like he asked.”
Tagen paused in the act of fastening his gunbelt. “He…did what?”
She gave her head a short, hard shake, still with that expression of chagrined anger. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter! God, I’m such an idiot!”