“There must be others,” Tagen continued, considering the shape of her rounded breasts from the corner of his eyes. “But we are not actively searching any more.”
“Why not?”
“The cost was prohibitive.” The So-Quaal were almost certainly still searching for new life-forms, but Tagen did not elaborate. He could not tell her about the So-Quaal without running the risk that she might recognize them. Tagen had seen images of So-Quaal on the tee-vee already, along with anecdotal evidence that some of the humans had fallen victim to their research and hybridization efforts. Daria did not need to know every truth. He wanted her to be able to sleep once he’d left her.
“So, is Earth the only planet of aliens you don’t…like?”
He looked at her inquiringly.
“Do you talk to the other aliens? Or do you avoid everyone the way you avoid Earth?”
Tagen hesitated. No matter how he answered, it would be easy to take insult. “Earth was…hostile…when it was discovered.”
She smiled faintly. “Not like now, huh?” she said, with just a trace of irony.
He watched the tee-vee. The aliens had managed to give the kicking female an extremely superficial wound in the shoulder, which everyone around her treated as life-threatening. It made Tagen think of his last injury in the field—a five day siege at the docking station for Kevrian cargo raiders, every day on that world equal to three of Jota’s, and every shot fired a threat to the integrity of the hull. Tagen could remember hugging the back of a support pillar as he charged his blaster, watching the shots from either side exchanged in the air before him, and thinking of the total lack of oxygen on the planet’s surface outside. On his first day of that conflict, Tagen had been caught in a crossfire and taken blaster fire to his face, chest, back, and gut. His commander had pulled him from the lines, injected him with pain censors and stimulants and then thrown him bleeding back into the fray.
“You’re smiling,” Daria observed, and looked at the tee-vee dubiously. “It can’t be the movie. What are you thinking?”
“I am thinking about time,” Tagen said.
She nodded, accepting that. “It really flies when you watch tee-vee all day.”
There was no sarcasm in the words. In point of fact, her tone was almost rueful.
“When I first came home,” she said, her hand rising to caress her cheek, “I did nothing but watch tee-vee. Just…just to have a voice in the house, you know? I’d watch for, like, sixteen hours and then not be able to name a single show I’d watched. It was like drowning in sand.”
She seemed about to say more and then she looked at him with mild surprise, as if she’d forgotten he was there. She uttered a nervous laugh, rubbing her face before clasping her hands together. “At least you’re getting something out of your tee-vee time.”
Yes, he was getting further and further behind E’Var. Newly discouraged, Tagen eyed the screen, where the male and female were heavily conversing in a medical bay, all their bickering forgotten.
Daria came and sat beside him, and immediately, all thought of the show’s improbabilities went completely out of his mind. Tagen didn’t look at her. He moved no muscle at all apart from what it took to continue breathing. But he was aware of her. He felt her; the space she occupied seared his entire left side. Her scent dug into all his senses. Female. Very female.
And all at once, Tagen had an epiphany, his very first.
He wanted her. He wanted not just a willing female for a restless bout of sexplay, he wanted her. He wanted Daria Cleavon.
He didn’t know why. She was human. That alone should have been reason enough not to want her. But the more time he spent in her home, the fewer their differences seemed to matter. And no, she was not the sort of female he normally found attractive, but that was all right, too. He was in the unique position of holding power and authority over a female and he found it very arousing.
Tagen’s claws dug in at his knee where he forced his hand to casually rest. The pain was centering, reminding him in no uncertain terms that if he should make an overture, even if he knew how, he would not be welcome.
The tee-vee program chose that precise moment to cut to a scene of the two humans naked, writhing in a swaddle of sheets and sweat-damp limbs.
Tagen continued to stare without changing expression, but he was intensely aware of Daria at his side and of her sudden stillness.
The male’s hands moved up the female’s undulating body, gripping her breasts before consuming her in a kiss. This was how humans mated. This was how Daria would move beneath him. These were the sounds she would make. This—
Tagen suddenly pulled in a breath, his mind closing to the visual and opening on reality.
Musk. Mating musk. Daria, here beside him, neither touching nor looking at him, but thinking of him, perhaps. Wanting him, as he wanted her.
Why, damn her, why would she not advance? Why would she not turn to him, speak to him, tell him what she wanted? He did not dare to move first. Even if every instinct went against taking the first step when a female had not indicated approval, he could not risk antagonizing her. He could not withstand the flood of fear in her eyes, not now, not when he wanted her so completely.
In programs such as this, a female frequently announced her willingness to mate with a touch. Daria was in comfortable reach. Her hand could come to his knee so easily. So easily.
On the screen, the female was crying out aloud at the height of her pleasure and the male groaned and sank down slow atop her. Daria’s mating musk grew stronger, and suddenly, Tagen could not sit quietly and pretend none of this mattered. He turned to her, his stomach tightening apprehensively, and readied himself to put his hand on her.
She stood up fast. It was perhaps unfair to say she sprang away, but neither was it wholly inaccurate. She went rapidly around the low table to the foot of the stairs and looked back at him.
He was bitterly prepared for fear, but it was not there. Her eyes were clear. Uncertain and deeply unnerved, but also intense and yes, desirous.
Tagen stood up.
“Good night,” she said. She turned away and went quickly up the stairs and into her room. The door shut resoundingly.
Tagen was on the second stair before he could fully comprehend that he had left the couch. He stopped there, his claws gouging at the banister, knowing that if he moved up another step, it would end with him in her room again, and this time, gods help him, he would have her. And that he would not do. When she was ready, she would ask him. He wanted her, but more even than that, he wanted her to want him.
Tagen turned around and stalked away from her, out the front door and into the warm night air. He walked fast, all the way to the edge of the wood, but could not avoid the golden light spilling from her window and could not clear his senses of the intoxication of her musk. And now…now he didn’t even want to.
Tagen leaned his back against the pillaring support of a tree and unfastened his breeches. He closed his hand around his shaft, his eyes sliding shut, and thrust into his fist. Slowly, slowly. He would have to be careful with her, gentle. She was so fragile, so small (his hand tightened), but he would be gentle. Like the human males on the late-hour video feeds, he would show her tenderness and care. And like the females, she would respond with cries, with moans. She would hold him against her. She would find her pleasure again and again before him.
Tagen locked his voice behind clenched jaws as he erupted out into the night.
Better, he thought, catching his breath and slowing his racing heart. At least it was acknowledged and out of his system. Maybe now he would be able to concentrate.