He said it like an officer, like a man who was used to giving orders and seeing them obeyed. Daria’s hands responded to that voice, even before her brain could help her form a word of protest. He watched, his lips curving in a smile as she stripped to the skin. She was trembling a little already, amazed and bizarrely proud to see the desire in the eyes that moved over her.
She’d never undressed so brazenly; she tried once to hide behind her hands and Tagen growled a warning. “I shouldn’t,” she said, hugging herself.
“Why not?”
There was no easy way to answer that. “I’m not supposed to want to,” she said helplessly.
“Do you want to?”
She looked away.
“I want you to,” he said evenly. “I could look all day at your beautiful body.”
She bit her lip and continued to stare at the far wall.
“But I remove you of choice, Daria. I am male. I command. Lower your arms.”
She did, slowly, shivering in the heat.
He growled again, an appreciative ribbon of quiet sound, and ran his fingertips very lightly down her hair. “My beautiful alien,” he murmured. “How can you bear to be covered?” He took her hand in his, his thumb caressing her palm, and placed it over her breast. He stroked, compelling her to caress herself, and bent to brush his lips over hers. “Tell me you are beautiful.”
She wanted to. She couldn’t.
He found her other hand, set it under his on her side and drew it down, over her belly, over her hips. “Tell me,” he insisted. His hand and hers slipped between her thighs, and when she tensed, his tongue darted into her mouth. He stroked, soft and slow, as he kissed her, and gradually, she relaxed. Her fingers parted her folds; they were soft as petals. His hand slid back up, savoring every inch of skin, to plunge into her hair, but hers stayed where it was. “Tell me you are beautiful. I command you.”
“I’m beautiful,” she whispered, and flames rushed across her face, burning the lips that had admitted such a ridiculous thing.
“You are.” He kissed her again, breathing for her, tasting and exploring her, and then standing away from her. “Touch,” he said, when she tried to reach for him. “Your hands are mine. Let me see you know your beautiful body.”
She shook her head, embarrassed and eager all at once, clenching her hands at her sides because they wanted so badly to rise and obey him.
“Show me how you want me to touch you,” he said. “And tell me you are beautiful.”
That was the breaking straw. She thought she would do anything at all to have his hands on her right now, with his eyes burning on her with such desire. She cupped her breasts, gazing at him imploringly, but he did not move. “I’m beautiful,” she said.
“What is beautiful? Tell me.”
“My breasts are beautiful.” She caressed them, her breath quickening. “My body is beautiful.” She ran her hands down the rise and fall of her ribs to her waist. “My hips are beautiful. My thighs are beautiful.”
“Yes.”
“My…my…” Every word she could think of was ugly. “My sex is beautiful,” she said at last. She watched him watch her touch herself, emboldened by his smile and burning eyes. “My sex is beautiful,” she said again, brushing through the down of her pubic hair to cup the gentle mound. “I’m beautiful.”
“You are,” he said again. “Remove my clothing.”
Her hands were shaking, which made finding the unfamiliar fastenings even more difficult. Tagen stood quietly under her increasingly anxious attempts, offering no advice. He seemed to be enjoying her frustration. “I like to see you bare your teeth,” he said, when she shot him an irritated glance.
She blushed and bared them more. “You like it when I look fierce?”
He laughed. “You do not look fierce,” he said chidingly. “You look…cute.”
She gave up on his uniform jacket, cupped his neck and bit him on the jaw, smiling as his muscles locked tight. “Was that cute?” she asked.
He growled, louder this time, and looked down at her with hunger. “Let me show you how these open,” he said, and guided her hands to the fastens of his uniform.
Inch by inch, she brought his jacket off, kissing and biting at each new precious point of skin. She could hear his breath quickening, his heart racing, and it filled her with pleasure. He wasn’t in Heat now. All these reactions were for her alone. She found herself exhilarated and amazed by her power over him. When she had him fully bared to her, she hesitated. He had been naked beside her for hours outside, but this was the first time she had really looked at him, and when she actually saw the greater proof of his passion, her nerve began to fail.
He sensed it and cupped her chin, tilting her head so that she had to meet his eyes. “Do I please you?” he asked.
She opened and closed her mouth, unable to find an answer.
“Do you like my body?” he pressed.
Oh God, at what point was her face going to explode into physical flames? “Yes,” she whispered.
“Then I command you to put your hands on me, Daria Cleavon. I command you to tell me what you like about my body.”
She couldn’t do it. Why were her hands going out to lie upon the plane of his chest when she couldn’t possibly do that? “I like to feel your heart beating,” she heard herself say. “I like to lie on top of you after and feel myself rising when you breathe.”
“I like to feel your weight when you do that, too,” he said, smiling.
“I like the way your muscles feel,” she said, running her hands down his sides and up again. “I like the way they blend into each other. I like to feel them jump when I touch you.” She scratched lightly down his stomach, was rewarded with just such a jump, and she splayed her hands atop his lower abdomen to savor it. She looked down at the unmistakable proof of his maleness. She wasn’t blushing any more. “Tell me the word for you,” she said.
“
Chi’ay
,” he whispered.
“I like your
chi’ay
.” She brushed her fingers down its length and then encircled him, stroking once slowly, and then let go. “It makes me feel so happy to see you wanting me. Will you take me upstairs?”
“No.” His voice was strained, but his hands sure as they went around her waist. “That I cannot do.”
He lifted her to him, his golden eyes boring into hers as he entered her, drawing her down slowly so that she had no choice but to feel the fullness of him. She clutched at his shoulders, shuddering with the first pleasures, and he moved one arm to support her back, one hand to cup her bottom. He rocked gently, moving her with a strength and control no one else could possibly duplicate, bringing her to a crashing and immediate orgasm.
“And that I greatly like to hear,” he murmured as she cried out. “Lean back for me. Let me guide you. Let go your hands, Daria, I will not let you fall.”
Her grip on his neck tightened; it took real effort to unlock them. She slipped back by degrees, looking nervously into his molten eyes, wanting and trusting him, but unsure. He took all her weight with ease into his hands and leaned her back from him until she felt as though she were floating in space.
Then he shifted, thrusting up at her tilted hips in delicate, almost circular movements. Daria’s entire body came alive like a hot wire in an orgasm that ran straight up her spine and exploded white behind her eyes. She screamed, clutching at his wrists, her hips bucking uncontrollably, and he laughed, delighted. “I like to feel your little claws dig at me when I please you,” he told her. “I like to see that amazement in your face. You look as though no man but me has ever given you such pleasure.”
No man ever had, but she couldn’t find the breath to tell him. She opened her hands and threw her arms back, letting him suspend her, letting him be master of her. She screamed when the intensity of what he was inflicting on her became too much to keep silent. Her body moved how it wished to move and she gave it all the reins. She would do nothing,
nothing
, but accept this.
“Yes,” he breathed, and his hands gripped her tighter. “Yes, my beautiful Daria. Yes, I see you. Let all yourself go. Let me lead you.” He said more, in and out of English, but his words ceased to have much meaning. Sensation had eclipsed sound. He was loving her out into oblivion and she was powerless to do anything but let him.
The pleasure kept growing, assailing and battering at her, and he kept right on driving her through to new crests. She could sense something even greater, some monstrous crouching completion just out of range. She struggled to keep it at bay, certain that anything more than this would kill her, but it was Tagen who commanded this storm and he pushed her relentlessly forward. She let go. She opened herself. She took it.
In the frenzy of that final climax, Daria’s senses unraveled. She knew her eyes were open, but she could not see. She knew where Tagen’s hands must be, but she could not feel them through an awakening of sensation that was as brutal as it was clarifying. She knew she was still screaming, but she could hear no sound beyond his triumphant laughter. Everything else was gone, swallowed up by the electric fire that consumed her flesh and spirit. She felt she hung suspended there for entire years.
Slowly, reality crept back in.
She became aware first of him, not her. She was still numb to all but the lingering echoes of that titanic sensual burst. But he was warm and solid and holding her cradled against his sweat-damp skin. One of his hands was combing down her hair. His breath was ragged and still chuckling in her ear.
“I think I’m blind,” she muttered thickly. It seemed the most important thing to say.
“Open your eyes.”
She did, and miracle of miracles, she could see again. The world was too bright. She shut it off again.
“Do you do that to every girl?” she asked.
“No. I am unfortunately limited to those who mate with me,” he replied. “And no, I do not. It is a considerable advantage that you are one half the weight of my usual partners.” He eyed her for a moment, smiling, and then nipped carefully at her throat. “Tell me,” he said, his voice a growl against her tingling flesh. “Did I please you, my alien? Tell me what you feel.”
“I feel like I exploded and got put back together again in the wrong order.”
“Thank you.” He set her on her feet, solicitously holding her arm until she steadied. “Now I will take you upstairs,” he said, “and make love to you.”
She staggered back, her jaw dropping, and caught a teasing gleam in his eye. “You’re joking,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered. “I am. Please prepare us something to eat. I am going to sit before I fall down. You,” he said, lowering himself into the sofa cushions, “burn in my blood, Daria Cleavon. I will be ashes when I return. I will never be able to feel again.”
If there were more perfect words with which to follow such lovemaking, she had never heard them. Daria walked in to fix a couple of sandwiches on a cushion of air.
“C
an I ask you something?” Sue-Eye said.
Kane glanced briefly at her reflection in the monitor of his computer before focusing once more on the information it displayed. That brief look was enough to tell him to expect trouble. She was curled up at the head of the bed and watching him with her hungry, cunning look, the one she thought was so well-hidden and which could be seen even in the dark, dim eye of his computer’s screen. He could feel his temper simmering already.
“Kane?”
He growled a warning at her without interrupting the rapid typing of his fingers. The last two vials of raw dopamine were cycling now and he was readying the formula that would turn it into concentrated Vahst. It was a thing he had done ten thousand times and it still required all his attention. Even if it did not, he wasn’t inclined to sit and chat with his
ichuta’a
. He was still pissed at her for fighting with Raven. Yes, Raven had admitted to throwing the first cuff, but he’d bet his own blood that Sue-Eye had provoked her. He’d never met such an aggravating human.
Sue-Eye, stubbornly untrained in spite of all the cuffs and cues he’d given her, asked her fool question again. Kane gazed into the computer monitor, his talons flexing ominous and unseen below the table. He wondered if his father had ever had slaves like this. He’d admit he’d caused his full share of trouble in the raising, but even as a boy, he’d known better than to interrupt Uraktus when he was working or pick a fight on a hunt.
‘Ha!’ Urak’s voice growled up wryly from the back of Kane’s mind. ‘If I’d
had
another boy, you’d have picked a fight on
every
hunt. The only thing you knew better than to do was pick a full-grown crewman to fight with.’
Well…maybe. But his
ichuta’a
still pissed him off.
“Kane?”
He was going to beat her until her hair bled.
“He’s busy,” he heard Raven whisper.
Silence then, allowing Kane to concentrate, gently coaxing numbers up and around, until he had the winning combination. He began to draw on chemicals, adding to the mix that circulated in the analyzer, and finally initiating the program to extract and refine. The hunt in the woods had been a good one for Vahst. Not many humans, but all of them rutting like wild animals. He took away six full vials of dopamine, which worked out to three of concentrated Vahst, but only enough of the human money for this night in the motel and maybe two meals. Kane didn’t mind going hungry a day, but Raven…the heat had done her a sinister turn. He’d sent Sue-Eye against her twice, and she still didn’t look recovered.
Sue-Eye. Who was even now glaring at the back of him and waiting for his attention just as though she had a right to it. Kane found himself thinking sourly of the drug-addled little female he’d had in the woods. Friendly little thing. Nothing in her blood but the poisons she’d been taking. Easily the worst fuck-mate he’d ever personally experienced, but enthusiastic enough, gods knew. Damn it all, he should have traded up when he had the chance.