“What does that mean?” he asked, his voice no more than an animal growl.
“It means, shoot there and I die,” she said calmly.
He eyed her suspiciously. “It’s not a name?”
“No.” Johnny Lobo had put it on her himself. So he had a target, he said, if she ever got out of line. Kane was looking at it now, his gaze flat and assessing. It was almost the same way Johnny Lobo had looked that night, straddling her in the filthy chair with the needle in his hand. She’d believed it was an act of love back then. God, what an idiot.
“I have others,” Sue-Eye said, as much to shut off that corner of her memory as to recapture Kane’s attention. She picked off her boots and shucked out of her jeans, turning around to show Kane the barbed wire wings stretching out over the crack of her ass.
“Hunh.” Kane’s claws scratched lightly at the markings, but when Sue-Eye glanced over her shoulder, she saw his gaze resting back on Raven. “I like this. Does it have a meaning?”
“Yeah,” she said dryly. “It means, ‘Hey look, I got a tattoo over my ass.’”
Kane laughed.
“It also means I blew a hundred bucks while I was stone drunk, which ironically is what this one means, too.” She pulled her panties down and showed him the arcing, golden sun tattooed around her belly button.
Kane’s eyes sparked fire and he leaned forward to get a better look. “I like that,” he said, almost grimly.
“Good. Because the only thing pierced about me are my ears.” She gave the stud in her left a dismissive flick. “You can put more in me if you want.”
Kane merely grunted and leaned back. He nodded at her panties and she rolled them off and stepped out of them. He drew back in disgust at once. “That comes off,” he said, his lips pulled back in a snarl.
Sue-Eye nodded, inwardly annoyed. What was his problem with bush?
His computer sounded loudly and Kane glanced at the screen, his lips moving in a humorless smile. His gaze lit on her again, tracking slowly up from her cunt to her face, and finally locking with Sue-Eye’s. “That’s for you,” he said. “You’re clean.”
She felt clean. Not just sober, which she hadn’t been more than a few hours at a time in the last six years, but clean. Her head was clear, her body felt strong; nothing burned or itched or ached. She had all her concentration with which to plan her answer.
“Thanks,” she said. “I feel great.”
He arched a brow at her.
“You don’t believe me? What can I do to prove it?” she asked, placing one hand on her naked hip.
“Nothing, yet.” His smile faded and he threw a glare out the window at the sun, his hand stealing to his crotch again and rubbing restlessly. He rose from the bed, glanced once at Raven, who had watched the whole inspection in guarded silence, and returned to his computer. “Drink something.” Spiky characters scrolled down the screen in columns as he began to work.
Sue-Eye picked up her top and crawled back into it, telling herself not to feel as irritated by his disinterest as she was. It was a good start. He liked her tattoos, he’d laughed at her joke, and he was talking to her. There was solid ground here somewhere. She was going to find it. She zipped up her jeans, leaving her panties discarded on the floor, and went to get another bottle of water.
It tasted even warmer and staler than the first, and her body didn’t want to take it. She sipped anyway, giving Raven a sister’s sour look as she drank.
“He gets nervous,” Raven whispered when Sue-Eye returned to the bed. “I think whatever he does to us is pretty dehydrating. I got really sick.”
“Well, it’s nice to know he’s looking out for us.”
“He takes good care of his tools,” Raven said.
Kane glanced back at her, smiling thinly, and then faced his monitor again.
Someone knocked at the door and Sue-Eye got up to get the food. She paid the delivery guy (who gave Kane, the two girls, the panties on the floor and the one bed a long, disapproving and distinctly envious look) and then doled out covered platters to all of them. Kane took his with this eyes still on his work, opened it, glanced at the contents, and then dropped his plate with a bang on the tabletop and shoved his chair back.
“What is that?” he asked quietly. His body was rigid and unmoving as rock.
Sue-Eye blinked in surprise at the very tasty-looking lobster, steak, potatoes, carrots and roll his meal contained. “It’s food,” she said.
“Is it a bug?” His voice hadn’t risen in the slightest. His claws flexed. That was all.
“No,” said Sue-Eye, just as Raven said, “Sort of.”
Sue-Eye shot her a murderous glare, and Raven hastily added, “It’s called a lobster. It’s related to bugs the same way humans are related to monkeys. Do you…do you know what a monkey is?”
Kane nodded slowly, but never took his eyes off the lobster.
“They’re good, Kane.” Raven sat up. “You crack the shell off and dip the meat in the sauce. Rich people eat ‘em. They’re good.”
Without a word, Kane picked up the lobster, leaned out, and dropped it in Raven’s plate. As an afterthought, he took her steak in exchange.
Raven shrugged. “Thanks.” She snapped a pincer off and started eating.
Well, that hadn’t worked. Sue-Eye ate her dinner without tasting it and drank as much water as her stomach could stand. She watched Kane at his computer; he ate mechanically, typing and fussing with his vials, ignoring both of them while the front of his pants bulged steadily outward.
‘It’ll get hot and he’ll get horny.’ That’s what Raven had said. But he didn’t look all that horny, despite the swelling urgency of his prick. He looked hot and pissed off, that was all. Just a man trying to get a little work done under some extremely shitty conditions.
Would he ask for her? Or would he just expect her to know when he wanted to screw? The Dawg was like that; he’d just sit and get progressively madder while his bitches went about their business, and if he had to get up to get one, he’d do it by breaking a bottle over her first. Sue-Eye could remember a scrawny little bitch, one of the Cow-Boy’s, who had turned a blind eye (believing, no doubt, that the Cow-Boy’s tag on her collar rendered her immune to the Dawg’s cock, more fool her) for so long that when he finally took her, he did it with the barrel of his gun pushing up her pussy while he fucked her ass. Then again, if a girl moved too soon, the Dawg was apt to send her away with a fist to her face. In Sue-Eye’s experience, if a man was pitching, he was ready to score, but she didn’t know this man.
Sue-Eye glanced at Raven. The bitch was lying back in the pillows, eating lobster and trying to decipher the static on the TV. She looked calm enough, but then, it wouldn’t be
her
ass if Sue-Eye missed her cue.
“Get up,” Kane said abruptly.
Sue-Eye stood and stripped out of her shirt.
Kane glanced at her, amused. “My impatient
ichuta’a
,” he said dryly, and without a trace of fondness. “Get cleaned up and take that hair off.” He nodded at her crotch, one fang gleaming with the curl of his sneering lip. “All the way off.”
Well, sure. What did he think she was going to do? Clip it into her hand and then come out and throw it at him?
She had to stop that. It was dangerous to have thoughts like that. They had a way of creeping out in unguarded moments, and then this man would take her eyes out of her head. Never forget that. Never for a moment.
Sue-Eye went into the bathroom and showered. It was her first in three hot days. The Pack wasn’t big on personal hygiene, and she’d been bunking in a tent behind Top Dawg’s trailer, stewing in her own sweat until she couldn’t even smell it anymore. The water felt good sluicing over her, and Sue-Eye took her time with the razor, making sure she got her pits and her legs as well as her pubes. The little bottle of shampoo that came with the room was abrasive, slow to lather and left her hair stringy and raw-feeling. The comb just broke teeth out when she tried to brush it. Didn’t matter. He wasn’t into her for her hair.
The bathroom door opened and Kane entered. He watched her struggle with the comb for a while, and then he unfastened his pants and let his engorged cock free.
‘He’s just a man,’ thought Sue-Eye, staring at that club-like organ from the corner of her eye as Kane undressed. ‘His itch needs scratching, that’s all. Keep him happy, he’ll let you live. Fuck with him, and your brain will end up in one of his bottles. This ain’t the Dawg. This guy is more devil than the Dawg ever dreamed of.’
When she dragged her gaze up to his, he was smiling. He stepped forward, over the side of the tub and under the spray. She stepped back to make room for him, and he growled at her, freezing her instantly in place. His hand came up and gripped her hard between the thighs, his thumb rubbing roughly back and forth over her slick pubis. She spread her legs for him and his brows lifted.
“Are you trying to show me that you’re eager?”
She nodded.
His smile broadened, showing the glint of his inhuman teeth. “So I excite you, do I? That’s convenient.” His finger pushed up inside her, just a little.
She thrust her hips against him, riding his hand, making practiced sounds of desire. She could fake it with the best of them, could Sue-Eye. She’d faked it for Dawg, she’d faked it for Dad, she’d even faked it for Johnny Lobo, there at the end. And whether they wanted to admit it or not, every swinging dick that fucked her wanted to believe she meant it, because that was a man all over.
Kane watched her through slitted eyes, still smiling.
“Tell me what you want,” Sue-Eye murmured, running her hands over her breasts, plucking and twisting her nipples and grimacing as with pleasure. “Say anything. Let me show you how much I’m grateful.”
“Grateful.”
“I didn’t even remember what it felt like to be clean.” That was true enough; she could meet his eyes while she said it. She put her hand over his, pulling him deeper and rolling her hips against him. “I feel alive. I feel…I feel like fucking.” Her eyes slid shut and she leaned back against the shower wall, arching her breast into her palm and groaning for him. “Tell me I can have your cock. I’ve wanted it since I saw it. When you let Raven suck you off, I was drooling. Give me your cock.”
Kane reached up almost lazily and twined his fingers through her bangs. Then he slammed her head back against the tiles and leaned in, his face filling her startled vision, close enough to kiss…or bite. His other hand never left her pussy. His thumb continued to stroke her bare mound.
“I don’t believe a word you’re saying,” he said serenely, still smiling. “I thought you should know that before you got too worked up. I’m in Heat. That doesn’t make me stupid.”
Sue-Eye closed her eyes to hide her thoughts. Her hips kept grinding at his hand. She said, “I’m so horny, I don’t even care if you believe me or not.” It was a risky thing to say, and she needed him to know she knew it. She looked at him, her eyes wide and unblinking, glaring into him as he smiled down at her. “I know that’s dangerous. I still don’t care. I need you to fuck me. I’m begging you.”
“No, you’re not. I’ve seen begging.”
Sue-Eye squirmed off his hand and dropped to her knees in the cramped shower. Cool spray drained over her head and back, stinging as it dripped into her eyes. She grasped Kane’s cock between her hands and licked it like a lollipop, tonguing all the way down to the base and back. He had no balls, only a slightly swollen lump where they should be, but she rubbed at it with her palm anyway. She could feel heat there, searing and strange, and Kane hissed sharply at her touch, but he didn’t knock her away.
“I want this cock,” she whispered. She lathed it with her tongue, sucking hard and slow, her jaw straining to take all of him. She rose up on her knees and rubbed the thick head of him over her breasts and then between them, pushing them tight together.
He laughed again, a startled sound, and tried to step back. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a tit rub,” she said, letting the huge cock slide in and out between her breasts. “You can’t imagine how good it feels.” She bent to lick at the glans pushing toward her face.
Kane leaned back against the wall and growled, his hips lightly thrusting. “That’s good,” she heard him murmur. “You humans…
Chok
, that’s good…have got to be the most creative fuckers in the whole universe.”
Then his hand closed over her head and he shoved her back. She fell into the faucet with bruising force, her legs slipping painfully out from under her.
“But I don’t need creativity right now,” he said. He got her by the arm and pulled her up, pushing her back against the tiles and knocking her thighs apart.
“Yes!” she hissed, clutching at his hips as he shoved his massive cock into her. It hurt, and after all the stretching her muff had had over the years, that was saying something. Sue-Eye could only hope he read the wince on her face as a grimace of pleasure, and heard the strain in her voice the same way as she gasped, “Fuck me! God, that’s what I want!”
He withdrew, pulling at her hips, and thrust again, wedging himself a little further inside her. She felt a hot splash shoot up against her womb, but he did not go limp. He began to thrust in rhythm, rocking her violently up and down on the wall. His claws dug into her ass, molding her fast against him, penetrating her all the way up to her neck. It was the first time all over again, hard and hurtful and his chest crushing against her face, and for a moment, that ten-year-old’s confusion swam up and blacked out her other senses. Still, she managed to gasp encouragement, grunting his name and fucking him back.
He came again, snarling in her ear, and again. His movements quickened, became even more brutal. He almost seemed to be swelling inside her, cracking her hips apart with every thrust, and soon her cries were genuine enough, even if inspired more by pain than pleasure. There was something primal in the feel of him punching in and out of her, the mass of him pressing her to the wall, the heat of his breath against her neck. It hurt, but it wasn’t all about hurting. There was a part of her that was not playacting, and it grew more urgent with every passing second.
He was cumming faster, his jizz sliding down her thigh to be washed away in the cool spray, and she could hear the wet sucking sounds they made even over the drum of the shower. It did excite her suddenly. After a lifetime associating danger with power, Sue-Eye realized the man sunk inside her was the most dangerous of all. He was inhuman, he was deadly, and right now, he wanted her.