“So I’ll ask again,” she continued. “Do you suppose he might be better equipped?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well.” She tipped her head back and considered the corner of the ceiling. “Could he have some device that would tell him if someone followed him here? Maybe the reason you haven’t bumped into him is because he’s deliberately avoiding you.”
Tagen drew back and stared at her. He found himself wondering if such devices even existed. Some cold part of his brain reflected that it would be easy enough to hide a tracer beacon in all the orbiting junk around Earth, one very capable of sending an alert to an individual on the surface if another ship passed close enough to trigger it.
“Give me another example,” he said warily.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She thought about it, one of her bare feet patting at the floor in eerie mirror of a takking talon. “I guess all he’d really need is something that could detect your funny little computer.”
“Detect it how?” he asked, baffled.
“Well, I’m assuming it’s not running on Duracells and fairy kisses,” she said archly. “So it’s a safe bet your batteries are different from anything on Earth. Are they emitting anything?”
“I…” He closed his mouth and merely looked at her. He had no idea.
“I don’t even mean radioactivity or anything like that,” she went on, waving a hand dismissively. “Probably even your fancy alien Geiger counters would still have to get right up close to something before it could pick emissions up. I was thinking more like transmissions. You know, something he could hack into if he had a similar computer.”
“I do not know,” Tagen said, frowning at her. “I only know that I could not.”
“Then he probably can’t either,” she said, looking away. “It was just a thought.”
A damned good thought. Gods, little wonder humans had come so far so fast, if this was the way their minds worked.
As if he didn’t have enough to worry about. This was going to keep him up all night.
“What of Earth’s devices? Earth’s resources?” He reached out to touch her knee and she sprang up as though he’d burned her, but quickly mastered herself and pretended merely to be pacing around the room. He noted she put the low table between them. As benignly as possible, he said, “Do you know of anything you can access to aid my search?”
He watched her closely while she thought, saw her consider and disregard any number of possibilities. At last, she shook her head.
“Watch tee-vee, I suppose,” she said. “See-en-en, as opposed to tee-en-tee. See if anyone out there has seen some psycho stalking people in the woods. Or…” Her jaw worked a moment and she stared out the window at the forest. “Or worse.”
Very tactfully, Tagen said, “I do not think E’Var will allow people to see him.”
“I know he can’t just cut his way through a Wal-Mart,” she said. “But he’s got to carry his trophies around with him until he leaves. So someone is bound to notice him.”
“You underestimate him, forgive me, badly.”
“Well, how many people do you think he’s going to attack before he decides he’s done?” she asked. “How many trophies does he usually take before he fills up?”
Tagen thought of the
Yevoa Null
, the size of its holding pens and of the chemist’s bay full of Vahst. He thought of the preserves on Jota’s moon, of hundreds upon hundreds of humans recovered with E’Var’s name stamped on their hobbles or collars.
“Five?” Daria pressed. “Ten?”
“Many,” said Tagen. He picked up the tuning controls for the tee-vee and brought the picture on again. His law program was on, but he found it difficult to concentrate. A chemist’s pack with only the most rudimentary supplies would not be much larger than his own supply pack. What would E’Var need but a harvester, an analyzer and extractor module for a chemist’s computer, and a few empty containers for the processed Vahst? “Many.”
“Then do me a favor and watch the damn news.” She picked up his glass and stalked back toward the hall. He heard her mutter, “Many,” as she retreated.
Tagen watched her go and then scrolled down through the channels until he reached the media programs. He listened as he moved slowly through the different feeds.
“…dead in a Shiite mosque this morning after an attack by a suicide bomber. The official death toll is estimated to be over three hundred…”
“…mysteriously collapsed. Investigators have confirmed foul play…”
“…making him the youngest person ever to be accused of first-degree murder. A spokesperson for the district has said the seven-year-old will be tried as an adult…”
“…shot and killed seven co-workers and injured eighteen others…”
“…the seventh school shooting this year…”
“…stabbed last night…”
“…dead this morning…”
“…no suspects…”
“…no clues as to the victim’s identity…”
After a while, it just all ran together.
R
aven swam in a haze of light, surrounded by invisible colors. She still knew they were there, somehow, but at least they had become invisible, so she knew she had to be coming down. She also knew she was in the hotel and tied to the bed, which was in itself a marked improvement over earlier, when she had honestly believed she was swimming. Breaststroke and everything. Yeah, he was a heavy-handed bastard and a murderer, but give the Devil his due, Kane made some
nice
shit.
And speak of the Devil…
Kane unlocked the door and came inside, one arm curled around a bucket of Colonel Sanders’ finest. He glanced at her, grunted, and closed the door. “How do you feel?”
The question sparked a strong sense of déjà vu. He must have asked her before.
“Pretty good.” When he only arched a brow at her, she added, “Nothing hurts.”
“Really?” He put the food down, tossed his hat on the table and shrugged out of his coat. “Nothing?”
“Well, okay, my arms hurt, but that’s from being tied up, you jerk.” Oops. Shouldn’t have called him a jerk. She guessed she wasn’t as sober as she thought she was.
“I wouldn’t have to tie you up if you’d behave,” he replied mildly, coming to her side. “You don’t have a wide stripe of self-control.”
And oooh, did she want to answer that.
Kane fingered the metal ornamenting her breasts and belly, then parted her pussy lips and stroked cautiously at her labia. His hands were completely impersonal, his expression merely academically interested. “This doesn’t hurt?”
“A little, but only when you touch ‘em. And it’s not so bad.” Raven nibbled at her lip, debating the wisdom of her next words. “Please untie me.”
He raised his eyes to meet hers.
“Please.”
“I think one more night will do you good,” he told her.
He was serious.
“Kane, please!” Raven cried. “My arms are killing me!”
Kane reached up to enclose her arm in his hands. He rubbed slowly, kneading at her biceps with the rough pads of his fingers. Her strained muscles came unlocked, much as Raven wanted to resist, and in the end, she shut her eyes and just tried to pretend she was somewhere else. It wasn’t hard. Not in the state she was in.
He went to work on the other arm, chuckling. “I don’t know why I do these things to myself,” he said conversationally. “I’d love to have you untied. And grateful. But, damn me, I love to torture you even more.”
His hand strayed down to the crux of her splayed legs and stroked past steel and into secrets. She winced at the bruisy ache his touch awakened, and he growled low in response. “I’d have to be a lot more careful than I know how to be,” he muttered, and then grinned at her. “But you’re healing up fast.”
“Untie me,” she said. “There’s things I could do.”
“Oh, I know.” He laughed softly, his finger driving slow up inside her, teasing her with uncustomary gentleness. “And I want you to do them, that’s the hell of it. Am I hurting you, Raven?”
“A little.” And behind the hurt, there was that glowy good-will that was the echo of his waning drug, a thing that made the pain easy to endure.
He adjusted the angle of his thrusting hand. “And now?”
“No,” she whispered. She closed her eyes.
“You look so unhappy,” he observed. “Your face is a liar, Raven. You know you like what I do to you.”
“When the sun gets hot, you get hard,” she said, and his hand stopped moving. “Do you like it?”
Silence.
Stupid drug-addled thing to say. She didn’t much care. Colors were everywhere.
Then laughter, low and genuinely pleased. His hand resumed its lazy rhythm on and inside her. “Mm, I like that.
Kanetus E’Var y tantanka Vahst
. Ha.” His fingertip began to rub in tiny, rapid circles as he thrust and Raven ground up at him with that sleepy-brained pleasure before remembering she hated him and trying to pull away.
“No no no,” Kane crooned, leaning over her as he rubbed. “
Ge-sa en Vahst
. I don’t care. And I don’t let you care. I am Heat. Ahhh.” The sound came from him as he arched against her, his bare chest pressing against hers. He grazed his sharp teeth along her shoulder and then whispered, “You’re wet, Raven. You are. Listen. You don’t have to open your eyes if you don’t want to. You can hear it.”
She could. She could hear the sucking, greedy sounds of her body wanting what he gave her. “So what?” she said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“No, you’re right, it absolutely does not.”
He took his hand from her suddenly, and Raven’s eyes flashed wide. She bucked her hips, but he was already standing and walking away, leaving her keyed and empty. She stared after him in disbelief and then struggled, really struggled, against the sheet binding her ankles. Kane leaned against the wall, chewing on a piece of chicken. He watched her, smiling.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Since that very first time at the rave on the beach, there had only been two kinds of sex for Raven: either it was good and she came, or it was business and she didn’t. Kane had proved he could make her cum whether she wanted to or not. He was a king and a country all his own, but that didn’t give him the right to do this, to make her hot and then shut her down. It wasn’t fair. It just…wasn’t fair!
But an endless bout of pitching, kicking and pulling got her nothing but a burning sensation where her bindings chafed. Exhausted, she fell back, capable only of writhing in weak futility. Her efforts had sent her heart to racing, and that in turn only stirred up the quasi-intoxication of her brain, loosening her lips even though she was just sober enough to understand the un-wisdom of what she was about to say.
“What are you waiting for?”
“I never know with you,” he replied seriously. “Maybe I’m waiting for you to ask me nicely.”
“You untie me right now, you son of a bitch!” she screamed.
He burst out laughing.
She lost it. With her inhibitions firmly out the window for now, she unleashed a rage of truly volcanic proportions. She bucked and banged the headboard. She cursed him until she ran out of profanities and was reduced to wordless tantrum-screaming. She managed to knock a picture off the hotel wall and tip the lamp on the nightstand over, but that was it. Ultimately, she wore out and sagged into the bedding, choking on the rawness of her throat, sweaty and trembling with strain.
“I hate you,” she said, her voice cracking.
Kane strolled up beside her and set the bucket of chicken on the bedside table. He planted a knee on the mattress and then swung his leg up and over her, straddling her hips. She glared at him, her jaws tightly clenched, and he rocked a little, settling himself with insolent slowness atop her. He took a drumstick from the bucket and pinched off a bite, holding it to her lips.
Without thinking, she lunged up and bit him on the hand.
Kane hissed through his smile and his hips ground down at hers. It brought pain back to her in a sickening bloom, but it woke that druggy pleasure also. Raven gasped, her eyes rolling back with the force of the conflict, and writhed luxuriantly beneath him. Somewhere in the middle of her sensual awakening, he started to feed her. She ate mechanically, but there was something unsatisfying about the way the chicken broke open in her mouth. She kept trying to spit it out, to get her teeth on the hand that fed her, and every now and then, he’d let her.
“You’re still a little under, aren’t you?” he murmured. He tossed the bones indifferently to the floor and leaned forward, pressing his hands to the headboard and bending until his chest just lightly touched hers. His breath came in puffs against her face and she closed her eyes away from the sight of him overwhelming her vision.
He growled, a sound that vibrated through his chest and into her, stiffening her nipples and coarsening her breath. She turned her face into the pillows, not sure whether she were escaping him or offering herself, but she knew he’d take and he did. He nipped at her exposed jaw, lightly at first, and then as deeply and intensely as any kiss. Pain squeezed a sound out of her; he responded by moving his hips back and forth over hers. She could feel him stiffening through his clothes and she pressed up against that hardness, her mind fogging with opiate pleasure.
Kane’s hand pushed between them, feeling carefully at her slick sex. She moaned, trying to impale herself on his searching fingers, but though he ground his palm against her, he wouldn’t give her what she wanted. The pitch of his growl changed from that sensual rumble to one of sharp frustration, and then he pushed himself back to sit on her thighs. He peered at her splayed sex and bared his teeth.
“It’s okay,” Raven heard herself say, speaking fast and pleadingly. “I’m fine, it doesn’t hurt, it really doesn’t. It’ll be fine. Fuck me.”
He muttered one of his hard alien curses, glaring at her pussy. “No.”
“You bastard!” she said, and burst into tears.
“I know what that means and I had a father,” he replied, cocking a brow at her. “So that isn’t a very nice thing to say. Do you know what happens to people who say unkind things to me?”