Exceedingly aware of the un-wisdom of what he was doing, and yet determined to remember she was not yet clean, Kane bent. He placed one hand on either side of her and carefully positioned himself atop her. He could feel his shaft stiffening, trapped by his coverings, but clamped nicely between Raven’s thighs. He lowered himself until he rested his weight fully atop her, and yes, he could feel those firm, fleshy bumps pressed between them. It was not an unpleasant sensation.
Kane rocked once, just as an experiment, and felt all of Raven’s body rubbing against his.
‘It’s okay,’ he told himself distractedly. ‘I’m not doing anything. I know she’s not clean. I’m just…exploring.’
Raven uttered a low, breathy moan and unexpectedly moved beneath him. Not stretching or pushing, but sort of writhing. Her legs opened, upsetting Kane’s balance, and without thinking, he arched forward, bumping his cock hard against her sex. He could feel the heat of her even through his coverings. It would be such a simple thing just to reach down, unfasten himself…one quick thrust and he could be inside her. Her program was more than half-run by now…Jotan were not as susceptible to disease as humans…really, what were the odds…?
“Venk tar!” Kane spat, and rolled off her, shaking. This wasn’t just Heat, this was madness. He’d never pretended to be wise, but he refused to be this stupid. She was going to feel good, yes, but no fucking could possibly feel good enough to die for.
Kane shut his eyes tight and willed himself to sleep while he still could. Heat was coming, Heat for real, and he’d managed to put even his human’s mouth completely out of commission. He did not trust himself to lay his arm around her once more. He held her hand instead.
Chapter Four
Raven felt a pulling at her arm and rolled away from it. She could feel the muggy warmth of the air closing in all around her, but she couldn’t feel the sun itself stabbing at her, so she thought it must be night. It was night everywhere where she was now, and she liked it like that. She liked it here, all alone in the dark.
Hands closed on her, rolled her firmly onto her back, and then fingers pried her eyes insistently open.
The sky beyond the interlocked branches above still had the grayish-blue light of dusk. It was enough to see the Devil’s face by. She looked up into the twin voids of his eyes and felt nothing.
The Devil grunted, apparently satisfied with whatever he saw, and let her eyes close. “Can you talk?”
“No,” said Raven, rolling onto her side again. Her head hurt terribly and there was a bitter, metallic taste in her mouth. Her whole body ached. She felt like she’d run a thousand miles, just to end up where she’d started, sleeping with the Devil. “I can’t talk. No one can.”
She heard a sigh and then a rustle as he stood. Raven’s eyes opened of their own dulled will and she watched him pace around the clearing. Every few steps, he would reach down and give his bulging groin a hateful grope. His chest was bare and soaked with sweat. His feet were bare and tipped with talons. All he wore was a black armband on his left forearm and pants. Shiny, shiny pants.
He was looking at her again. “Can you get up?” he asked.
“No,” she said, but she was already pretty sure she could.
That sigh again. This time with a little more irritation in it. “How do you feel?” he asked.
Raven thought about it. “Sad,” she said.
He looked at her for a second, and then smiled faintly. There was absolutely no humor in the expression. He came to her very slowly and hunkered down before her. He held up one hand, showing her his three fingers tipped with great, sharp claws.
And then he slashed.
Raven shrieked, falling back as the two sleeping halves of her memory collided, bringing with it the unrelenting reality of this—of her, of him, of everything. She kicked back blindly, both hands clapped to her mouth to keep from collapsing into screams, and when she realized that there had been no pain, she risked a glance at him.
His hands were loosely clasped between his knees. The smile was gone from his face, and his eyes were furious and unblinking. “Are you here?” he asked curtly.
Raven nodded, fighting back the shivers with the very last of her resolve.
“What hurts?”
The last time Raven had admitted that anything at all hurt, she’d been living at home with two parents and still had three names, but there was no lying to the Devil.
“My head,” she said, and touched the back of her skull. “Here.”
“Nothing here?” He reached out and touched a claw, cool and slick as a razor, to her belly.
“No.”
He raised his claw to the level of her heart and cocked an eye at her.
“No.” She fished for the hanging flaps of her shirt and tied them together without any conscious thought or any memory of how it had been torn. All her attention was on his face, his eyes.
“Good. Raven.” The man leaned forward. She could see him shaking slightly, but he had no trouble at all focusing on her. “You’re going to slow me down until we find a way to work together. I can live with that. But don’t think you can slow me down forever. I have only so much patience.”
Raven nodded. She didn’t know if that was really the right answer, but thought it best to acknowledge his words.
“Are you going to make trouble for me?”
“No.”
He nodded and leaned away from her, then rose, already rubbing at his crotch. “We’re going to do a lot of walking,” he said, staring grimly down into her face. “By sun-up, I want to have another…” His eyes raised and he tapped one talon against the ground, thinking. “Car,” he finished. “You are going to pilot it.”
“Okay.” Raven steeled herself and then asked, “What’s your name?”
That threw him. He didn’t step back, but he did tip his head and give her a long, narrow stare. “Kane,” he said finally.
Raven didn’t know she’d been holding her breath until it escaped her. She looked down, her eyes going numbly to a patch of earth between her thighs. Kane. The Devil had a name and his name was Kane. It didn’t make him human, but it did remove him from the realm of the faceless and demonic. It made him something Raven thought she could cope with.
“Okay,” she whispered, and stood up. When he snapped his fingers, she came right to his side, and they set off together.
*
It was, as he warned her, a lot of walking. Raven was fit enough, or at least she’d always thought she was, but the all-over ache in her body made even the first few minutes an ordeal. Then the sun finished going down, and there wasn’t much moonlight that made its way down through the trees. It was hot, even now, and she pulled off her leather jacket and left it behind without any awareness of having done so. Her mind felt sluggish, but she knew it was just the heat and unaccustomed activity. She could feel, with piercing clarity, the absence of drugs in her system. The combination of renewed vitality and physical strain made her feel like wilted lettuce.
Kane was intent on making distance, despite the fact that there was nothing around them but trees, and they all looked alike. For the most part, he didn’t bother to keep an eye on her, but every now and then he would half-turn and run his eyes over her in a hungry, crawling way. His erection had become monstrous; when he wasn’t rubbing futilely at the front of his pants, he was clawing furiously at the air. He was the textbook picture of a very bad man coming dangerously unraveled.