Kane glanced over at Raven. She was sitting at the table but had the chair turned so that she could see the television, too. Her drying cloth was lying draped over her lap. He found himself wondering idly what breasts tasted like, if maybe they were the best part of the human or what. He’d eaten human once or twice, when there’d been no other food, but it had disturbed him. Meat was meat, but he didn’t like food that could talk at you.
The female was riding her mate faster now and making a string of high, moaning sounds. Raven made sounds a little like that when he fucked her, but not often, and not with quite the same urgency. Finally, the male threw his head back with a grimace and the female raised off him so that his true-cum shot out against her thigh. The female turned around and they rubbed mouths some more. Then they started talking and Kane lost interest.
It occurred to him that although this was not the first time he’d seen Raven completely naked, he’d never really looked at her. When he’d had her in the shower, he’d been far more interested in what she was doing than in how she looked doing it, and it was usually dark when he had her in bed with him. He turned his head now so that he could study her. He was growing more accustomed to the roundness of her, the softness. It almost looked natural to see her curves all folding together as she sat there.
Completely exposed and in full light, he could see all her different colors. The brilliant white lengths of hair around her face that made her skin seem tan; the deep, gleaming violet of the rest of her hair that made her skin seem white. The pinkness of her lips, the little circles of black and blue set in all that white in her eyes. The little brown dots in the middle of her breasts. The gold glinting in the puckered dimple of her belly. If she spread her legs, he would see pink in the folds of her pussy. There were even little smudges of purplish-yellow here and there where he’d hit her.
Kane cocked his head as he noticed a dark mark high on Raven’s right arm. It didn’t look like any of the other bruises. Its outlines were blurred, but it maintained a strange symmetry nonetheless. It looked like a scar or a burned-in brand. Kevrian miners branded their slaves and left marks somewhat like that.
Kane sat up a little straighter and snapped his fingers.
Raven was on her feet at once. She came to the bed and started to kneel, already reaching for him.
He knocked her hand aside impatiently with his knee and took her arm, turning it so that he could get a better look at the mark. It was perfectly smooth and flush with her skin, which meant that it couldn’t be a brand. Brands either stood out or were cut in. He ran the very edge of one claw carefully over it, but although he raised a red line of irritation, none of it flaked off. “What is this?” he asked, puzzled.
“It’s called a tattoo. It’s like paint, only under the skin instead of on it.”
Sounds from the tee-vee distracted him. The male human was now outside in a field with two yellow-haired females. The females were both attempting to blow him at the same time, stopping often to mouth each other or to rub their breasts against the male’s cock.
Kane watched the females compete for the right to mount the male, again strongly reminded of the Flesh-halls of Jota, although the humans in the program were considerably less frenzied. They were almost playful as they pulled each other off the male, sucking at him and then tonguing each other. Finally, the smaller of the two females apparently won, but instead of mounting him, she turned and presented him with her hocks.
Kane let go of Raven’s arm and slid in closer to the monitor, frowning. The angle of the feed changed, coming in very close to show the pink folds of the female, and the male’s cock pushing into her even though he was still behind her. The image changed again to bring all three of them into view: the male fucking the female who was now licking and sucking at the other female’s pussy as she lay on the ground and rubbed her own breasts.
He looked curiously at Raven. “Have you ever done that?”
“No.” She watched the monitor with convincing indifference.
The humans were readjusting themselves. To Kane’s utter astonishment, the male lay on his back for one female to mount and allowed the second to position herself over his face. He could see the male’s tongue thrusting up at the female as the two rubbed mouths and ground their breasts together.
Kane looked sharply at Raven. “Do that,” he commanded.
“Which part?” she asked, studying the images on the screen.
“That…that thing those females are doing to each other.”
Raven reached up and squeezed her own breasts obediently, looking at him from the corner of her eyes. After a second or two, she rubbed her palms over them, first lightly, then harder. It made the circles in the center of them stand out, but that was the only difference Kane could see. Certainly, Raven wasn’t tossing her hair or keening like the humans on the monitor.
“Turn around,” he said. “Put your hands on the floor.”
She did, presenting her hocks, and yes, he could see the pink swell of her sex beneath her cloacae. Kane touched her with one finger, rubbing along her outer folds as he watched the humans on the tee-vee maneuver into yet another outlandish mode of fucking. It had to be some sort of instructional program. After all, Raven’d had to learn that thing she did with her mouth somewhere.
Kane slipped one finger inside her and felt her clench on him. She was tense, staring fixedly straight ahead, taking deep, slow, deliberate breaths. He regarded her, amused, thinking how fun it would be to give her just a little prick with the claw he’d sunk inside her, just to see her try not to jump. Instead, he pulled back and resumed stroking her. He just couldn’t get over how smooth she was without the hair.
On the monitor, the male had finally finished and a new scene began, but Kane turned the tee-vee off. With one hand, he continued to caress Raven’s newly-shaved pussy, and with the other, he traced the faded edges of the tattoo on her arm.
“What does it mean?” he asked at last.
“It’s supposed to be a coyote. That’s a kind of animal here on Earth that lives in the desert. Mangy, ugly, noisy animals. I think it’s stupid.”
She was leaning back into his hand a little. He wondered if she knew she was doing it.
“Why did you get it, then?” he asked, nudging her thighs a little further apart.
“I didn’t want to,” she explained.
Now
she was trying to lean away from him. He caught her shoulder and pulled her firmly back, thrusting one finger up inside her as punishment and discovered she was wet. A quick glance at the dark face of the tee-vee showed him a mirror of her distress, all the mask-like resignation of her earlier compliance utterly gone. He could feel himself smiling.
“You’re not answering my question,” he said, making it a warning. He pumped his hand against her, holding her steady and straight-backed in place. He made it a point to thrust hard every time she squirmed. “Why did you get it, Raven?”
“There was a guy I was working for.” Her words were breaking up, her breath quickening. She looked completely miserable. “He made me get it.”
Kane thought about that as the slick walls of Raven’s pussy began to contract and spasm, coating his hand with oil. “Why?” he asked, pumping harder.
“D-don’t—” she whimpered, reaching back to try and push him away.
He stood up fast, yanking her off the ground so that all her weight was on his hand, snapping his arm around her shoulders to restrain her, and drove another finger into her, rocking her whole body in rhythm. She came explosively, kicking and slapping, but she came anyway.
“Don’t tell me don’t,” he said reasonably, and shook another series of spasms out of her. She was dripping, dripping off his hand, and she was crying. “Don’t do that, Raven. I don’t like it, and you ought to fucking well know that by now.”
“I-I’m suh-suh-ar-ree-ee,” she sobbed, clutching at his arm, still trying weakly to lift her hips away from him.
“I think I’ll make you do this all night,” he continued thoughtfully. “How would that be?”
All she could do was nod and cry.
“Stop making that noise. I can’t understand you when you do that.” He made her cum again, just to hear her trying not to wail as she composed herself, and then asked, “The tattoo, Raven. Why?”
It had been just a hell of a long time since he’d had this much fun.
“It wuh-us his name,” Raven said, swiping desperately at her face. “So everyone would kn-know I worked for h-him.”
Kane’s entire body stopped moving. Not just his hands, but his heart, his lungs, even his blood. An ugly heat cut upwards through him from his stomach to the back of his throat. “Say that again,” he said softly.
“His name.” She tried to look at him, but timidly, as if she didn’t quite dare. “His name was Coyote, like the animal, so he—”
Kane put her down and stepped around her. He picked up the towel she’d discarded earlier and wiped his hands, trying to sort out just what he was feeling and why. The urge to kill was a maddening itch in his hands and right behind his eyes, but it wasn’t Raven he wanted for a target. Just what he did want to do to Raven wasn’t quite clear, but one thing was extremely certain.
Kane turned around. “Get it off,” he said. He even managed to sound calm.
“I can’t,” she said, and threw up her arms, falling submissively to her knees as he came at her. “It’s under the skin! I can’t do it!”
He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back up, giving her a vicious shake and snarling, “I will cut it right the fuck out of you and don’t think for a second—”
“I can’t! I can’t! Please don’t kill me I can’t take it off!”
He shook her again to shut her up and roared, “
Then who can
?!” full into her face.
She pressed her lips together, staring at him with her huge eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered, “I don’t know. Please. I don’t know.”
An idea came to him. Kane let go of her and took a step back. “Do you know where you can find another tattoo human?”
She blinked twice and cast a dazed look around at the table and the phone that was there. “I…I could find one,” she said.
“Do that. And then get dressed.” Kane sat down and picked up one of the oversized human boots. Another thought occurred. “Where is this human Coyote?” he asked.
Raven had found a large yellow book in the table and had it open already. She looked around at him, her fingers marking her place in the book. “Someone told me he got killed.” Hesitantly, she added, “They said he was shot in the stomach.”
Gut wound. Took a long time to die from that.
Kane felt better.
*
“This is it,” Raven said, pulling the car up to the curb before The Priestess of Ishtar Tattoo Parlor. It was 8:50, and according to the sign, the place closed at nine, but it didn’t look empty. Although it was difficult to see past the posters plastered over the windows, Raven thought there were still people moving around in there.
Kane only grunted, waited for her to kill the engine, and then unstrapped himself and let himself out. He slung his pack over his shoulder, glancing up and down the empty street, and then went on ahead of her without looking to see if she followed.
There was a moment, even now, when Raven thought of running. Sitting there in the car, in that heartbeat-fast flicker of time, she looked at her hand on the ignition of the stolen car and thought of turning the key, gunning the gas, and getting the hell out of Dodge. The wheels would make a sound like a woman screaming when she peeled away from the curb, the smell of rubber would drift up even inside, and she’d be thrown back by the momentum of her leave-taking.
Yeah. All of that. All of it, so intensely visualized that it was almost like a memory of something that had already happened…along with the thought-memory of Kane leaping onto the back of the car (his weight bumping her, unbuckled, half-out of her seat), the sound of his claws blackboard-scraping-shrill as they peeled back the roof and then, oh, probably a burning, heavy sensation as he hooked them under her chin like a fishing gaffe and hauled her out by her jawbone.
No. Escape was still a thought for her, but it was a fleeting thought, and it was ignored.
She got out of the car, slipped the keys into her back pocket, and ran a little to catch up with Kane before he decided he had to look for her, an action that would terminate in a sound slap for her when he found her.
The door chimed when he opened it, and a huge, painted mass of muscle seated in front of an ancient rotary fan said, “We’re closed, pal,” without looking up from his magazine.
Kane did him one better by not even looking to see who spoke. He held the door open at arm’s length until Raven ducked inside, and then turned around to close the door and lock it. He leaned close to the glass panes, checking up and down the street with a practiced eye, and then turned off the neon ‘Open’ sign and began to lower the window shades.
That made Raven a little queasy. The windows of the tattoo parlor were completely covered in posters from about arm’s-reach and down. The fact that Kane was covering them the rest of the way pretty much meant he’d already decided on doing something that would…splash.
The big man with the magazine watched all this with an expression of mild interest. “What the fuck are you doing?” he inquired at last, pleasantly.
Kane continued to ignore him.
Raven hugged herself uneasily, shifting her weight from foot and foot and wondering when this was going to get bloody. She no longer thought of this eventuality in terms of ‘if’, only ‘when’. Later was better than sooner, but at least with sooner it was over faster. Kane was methodically giving the store the appearance of non-function, which meant he intended for them to be here for a while. Just what else he intended was not entirely known to her, and the uncertainty made her nervous.
The parlor was small, made even smaller by a low, oriental-style screen that separated the little waiting area where the big man sat from the artist’s area, from which place Raven could hear a high-pitched whine like that of a dentist’s drill. There was one other door, which Kane opened, examined, and shut again. Closet or bathroom then, but definitely not an exit.