“You’re a jerk,” she pouted.
He sat down beside her, panting a little, and tickled at her chin with his claw. She twisted away in a huff, then turned back and snapped for him. He let her get her teeth into his forearm, smiling as he hissed in breath.
She eyed his erection hungrily, licking her lips. “Kane,” she began.
“No.”
“God, I hate you!”
“I’m crushed.” He leaned over her, offering himself, and she surged and bit, pulling a rumbling groan from the very heart of him. He lowered himself, curling around her and over her, keeping his chest and shoulders within easy reach of her mouth.
She closed her eyes, losing herself to the pleasure of his flesh’s resistance, to the heat and solidity of him, and the occasional metallic tang of his blood. She was aware, very vaguely, of his leg slipping over hers and his hand between their bodies, stroking himself. She couldn’t really complain; it felt so good to bite and there was so much of him that needed biting. His breath in her ear became shallow and harsh, and soon he was growling louder and louder, his hips grinding against her.
Then, all at once, he stopped. He went away and when he came back, he stayed away from her mouth, wiping at her lower body with a warm, wet towel and ignoring her pleas to come back and fuck her.
After that, he returned to his computer and put his back to her. She tried cajoling, begging and even threatening, but he didn’t turn around. He laughed once or twice, but otherwise ignored her.
Raven gradually lost interest in him and became more fascinated by the ceiling. It spun around above her, taking on different colors at its center if she stared long enough. Raven quieted, gazing up until she was lost to everything else but that.
She felt good.
Chapter Eleven
Even before Raven woke up, she hurt.
Her pussy, her arms, her breasts…everything was agony. Her jaw hurt the worst; it felt like she’d blown a horse and then taken a hoof to the head for her trouble. The tendons of her jaw were so sore, she couldn’t even close her mouth fully. What had he done to her?
Raven tried to sit up and realized she was tied spread-eagled to the bed. Baffled, she tugged at the shoelaces binding her wrists, but they might as well have been handcuffs. Why in the hell had he done that? Had she tried to run? She couldn’t really remember. She could remember getting pierced and tattooed. She could even remember having to drive home afterwards, and she could sort of remember falling asleep on the floor and waking up there the next day, but everything else was blank.
Her arms were killing her. Raven pulled, trying to at least straighten out even if she couldn’t sit up all the way, and her entire pelvis went magenta as soon as her hips moved. A cry ripped out of her and Kane, working at his computer, half-turned and gave her a distracted once-over.
“Please,” she gasped, rolling her shoulders in a vain effort to stretch her arms. “Please, let me up.”
Kane pushed his chair back and stood up. He came to the bedside, his head cocked and his eyes moving intently over her. Finally, he began to untie her. As he bent to pick at the knots in the shoelaces, Raven saw red crescents all over his shoulders and chest. She’d bitten him. Hard enough to penetrate even his thick skin in places.
Served him right. She had to have given him the champion of all blowjobs to hurt her jaw this much, and then he must have fucked her in spite of her new piercings. She’d fought him like a mad bastard, clearly, but he didn’t appear to be holding a grudge. Asshole.
Kane slipped an arm behind her and helped her to sit up. The pain swallowed her the instant her pelvis took her weight. When her vision cleared, Kane was holding out the lotion he’d made her. It wasn’t a pain-reliever, but it took the heat out of the ache and that was something. Raven could see Kane’s face out of the corner of her eye as she worked the lotion into her swollen pussy. He was smiling. Bastard.
“If you need to piss, better do it now,” he said. “No shower.”
Were they leaving? He wasn’t packing up. He wasn’t even wearing his boots.
Raven hobbled into the bathroom, leaning on the wall and taking arthritic grandma-steps. It took forever to get there.
In the bathroom mirror, Raven paused long enough to look at herself. The studs in her breasts and the rings in her nipples actually looked pretty good. They were a little red, but not puffy at all. They looked as healed as her belly button ring had looked a whole week after she’d gotten it. The same went for her eyebrow rings and her stomach-hoops. Her pussy, though. God, that hurt.
Raven washed her face and dabbed under her arms with soap, trying to take off just a little of the sweat-smell fogging around her. She scrubbed up with the corner of a towel, then ran cold water over it, wrung it out good, and just touched it to her sex. Nothing down there could possibly feel good, but the cold towel made it at least less bad. A little. When she took the towel away, there were tiny spots of red here and there.
The door opened and Kane leaned in. He cocked his head at the towel in her hand. “Is that blood?” he asked.
“Are you surprised?” she asked irritably.
“No.” He laughed a little, and then came all the way in and dropped to one knee. She felt him fingering carefully at each metal setting. “Nothing looks torn.”
“Better luck next time.”
He glanced up at her with a particularly wry smile, but said nothing. He continued his inspection, and when he was finished, he stood up and washed his hands. “I’ve made you something for the pain,” he said. “Hopefully, something a little more your taste.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He gave her hip a pat and left her.
Raven finished cleaning herself up and shuffled back out to the main room. He was waiting by the table, loading his injector, and it was more than just the pain of movement that made the trip across the room a long one. What were those drugs he was putting into her? She’d done just about everything that could be done in her short street-life, but at least everything she’d popped, smoked or swallowed came from Earth. Kane didn’t even know how to open a can of pop, and he was making drugs for her?
But when he snapped his fingers, her feet took her to him without hesitation. She had misgivings, but they were all intangible. Pain was real, and as much as she hurt now, she knew he could always hurt her more.
She held out her arm, wincing away from it as though trying to physically separate herself from it. She felt his hand enclose her wrist and then the cool head of the injector pushed down on her skin and spat something into her. It stung, but only for a second. Then there was warmth, blushing out through her entire body and nestling in her brain like a bunch of happy baby snakes.
Kane was still holding onto her, staring up into her face with an expectant expression while he rubbed his thumb over the point of injection. She wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but she found herself strangely agreeable to being petted. He could be gentle when he wanted to be. It was almost enough to make her wish he wanted to be a little more often.
“How do you feel?” Kane asked.
Raven ran her hands down her body. “Like skin,” she told him, and giggled. “God, that shit works fast!”
“Yes, it does. Can you walk?”
Raven obligingly stepped over to the door and back again. She finished with a twirl and would have tried a curtsy, but she got dizzy and needed to fall into Kane to keep her balance. He caught her, which was thoughty of him. “Whoops!” she said brightly, and bit him.