“You would have done exactly what you did.” Now he looked at her, and the complete lack of accusation in his face was somehow the worst thing he could have done to hurt her. “You would have blamed me. Cursed me.”
“I was wrong. You didn’t deserve it.”
“I know.” His eyes slid shut again. He found another handful of ice blindly and brought it to his chest, rubbing slowly. “But that does not seem to stop you.”
Daria went to the freezer, blinking back tears, and brought him a bag of frozen peas. When she put it on the back of his neck, he hissed and leaned into her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I keep forgetting you’re here to help me. Like you said, E’Var is hunting throw-away humans and you’re right. I’m one. It scares me…and you scare me…Tagen, everything scares me. Do you think I like that?”
“Sometimes.” His hand came up and pressed the bag of peas to his own neck, and she stepped away.
“I don’t,” she said. “I know I’ve done nothing but freak out since you got here. I hate myself for that.” She stood, twisting her hands together and staring at his unmoving back. “Please don’t give up on me.”
He sighed and finally glanced back at her. “I tell myself again and again to show you patience,” he said wearily. “I know that you are one of many, many humans I have known…but I am your first Jotan. I know you are doing your best.”
“I am,” she said. She pressed her palm over her bad side without any conscious thought, heartsick. “But my best sucks. I’m a horrible person. And it’s got nothing to do with you.”
Tagen sighed again, half-growling this time. He put the peas on the table. “Sit down,” he told her, and as she gingerly obeyed, he said, “Jota’s climate is very mild. Summer, as you call it, is short. We do not have heat like this more than a short span of days. My people live long. Our offspring are born two and three at once. We do not breed every time we sex. For us, breeding must be forced. The heat…forces us.”
She nodded, her eyes fixed on his. She was almost shaking with the effort not to look down, to see the monstrous bulge he had been gripping earlier. All of her best intentions would be shattered if she had to see that, to face what he was and what he wanted from her.
“It…is a terrible pain,” Tagen continued, and looked it. “That is part of the necessity, to force us together to mate. It has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with anything except the heat. We have medicines on Jota that prevent its effects, but I did not have enough and your Earth’s summer never ends. I cannot help it, Daria. I must do what I must do. It offends you, but I have no choice.”
“I understand,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “And I’ve got to be the only woman on the entire planet who would let you deal with it on your own when you’re here to save us from someone like E’Var.”
His brows were knitting together.
“I know what you want me to do,” she went on, speaking fast before she lost her nerve. “And it’s not fair of me, but I can’t, Tagen. I just can’t.”
He stared at her for a long time, his face gradually losing expression, a thing that made him seem even more formidable than his frown had been.
“Lindaria Cleavon.” His voice was very low and even, but his eyes were blazing, molten with emotion. He stood up slowly and leaned forward over the table, his hands pressed flat but the claws flexing ever so slightly. He looked down at her, fierce, unblinking, and quietly said, “I did not ask.”
Daria sat, feeling stunned and faintly embarrassed. Of course he hadn’t. He hadn’t given any indication whatsoever that he was even thinking in that direction. And once again, she had jumped at the chance to slap him down, this time, before he could even make a suggestion. In a tiny, creaking voice, she heard herself say, “Christ, even when I’m apologizing, I fuck things up.” She started to stand, her eyes brimming.
Tagen sighed and dropped back into his chair. “Sit down,” he said, rubbing at his eyes.
She didn’t want to, but she’d already insulted him once today. She sat, but kept her eyes on her hands as they knotted nervously on the tabletop. When she finally glanced up, she found he was watching her hands as well.
“What happened to you?” he asked softly, and raised his eyes to hers.
She felt her breath freeze in her throat but she couldn’t look away. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, hearing desperation and despising it.
“And I did not want to ask,” he replied. “But it is better, I think, to do so than to go on pretending not to see it rotting between us in this way.”
Tears dug in at the corner of her eyes, blurring the sight of him and his unblinking patience.
The silence stretched out thinner and thinner.
“You have never told the story,” he guessed. That worry-line of his had faded in between his eyes.
Against her will, she nodded. “I did. At the trial.”
“How did you begin?”
She closed her eyes, started to cover them, and Tagen took hold of her wrists and forced them gently to the tabletop.
“How did you begin?” he asked again and would not let her look away from him.
“I was working at Kruegar and Lauder,” she said at last, because she could not think of any other way to start. “Shipping company. I was an export sales representative.” She started to try and find some way to explain these words to him, but realized that it made no difference to either of them. She went on. “I was living with a man, someone I worked with. His name was Dan Fiennes. We were talking about getting married, maybe. Maybe having kids. He said he loved me.”
She fell silent, trying to remember that, how that felt. It was funny how time and trauma combined to sponge out the best moments of a person’s life. She knew those days had once been real to her, but was unable now to recall any of the warmth and hope he’d inspired in her. What she remembered best in this moment was that Dan had hated the commute from her house, a forty-minute drive in the morning that could easily turn into two hours coming home in the right strain of rush hour. He wanted to move. She wanted to stay. He liked the city. She liked the woods. All those strings of little half-fights that so easily turned into make-up sex and simmering exasperation. But he’d said he loved her. She only wished she could still remember that.
Tagen let her be for several minutes, but as her gaze began to drift unhappily back to her hands, he squeezed her wrists to bring her back to him. “You worked at Kruegar and Lauder,” he pressed.
“And they hired someone,” she continued, and sighed. “A man named Traynor Polidori. When they asked him if he’d ever been arrested, he said yes. When they asked what for, he said stealing from a clothing store. I guess they were so impressed with his honesty that they never bothered to check and see if he was actually telling the truth.”
Tagen nodded and leaned back, his hands slipping from hers to fold together. He had never looked more like a cop to her than he did right then. It was as though he already knew everything she was about to tell him, and everything she wouldn’t. “What was the truth?”
“That he killed a woman ten years earlier. Tortured and raped and then killed her.”
Tagen nodded once, slowly, almost to himself. “His crime was not discovered?”
“Sure it was. He was even sent to prison. For about three years.”
Tagen’s brows knotted with the same hesitance he showed when he suspected his English wasn’t keeping up with hers. But when he spoke, he astonished her by saying, “Not guilty…by reason of insanity?”