“In a sense. Global climate control.”
“Gosh, that must be nice. Do you use it to keep your summers from getting too hot, too?”
“No,” he said, glancing wryly back at her. “For some unknowable reason, our government thinks it would be a good idea if we bred once in a while.” He paused to move the ladder to a new tree, and Daria followed after gathering the cut branches into a neat pile. “Humans don’t have a breeding season, do they?” he asked. He’d been wondering for some time.
“No, they—Hey, contractions! Way to go, Tagen!”
“Thank you. I have been studying very hard.”
“No, to answer your question, humans don’t have a breeding season,” she said, smiling. “I think a lot of babies get conceived in the winter, but that’s probably just because we get snowed in and get bored. Men are fertile all the time around here. And women become fertile once a month for about a week at a time.”
“Truly? So often? Do you know when you are fertile?”
“Not exactly, but we know right afterwards when we’re not, so we can kind of guess if we keep track.” Her face drained suddenly of color and she jerked back, her hands flying to her belly. “Oh God!”
He took her fear at once and came off the ladder to console her. “No, no, Daria. It is not possible for our kinds to produce young.”
“How do you know?”
“Because…” He let his hands fall from her shoulders and looked up at the stars for strength, invisible behind their curtain of blue. “Because it has been tried,” he said, and sighed. “Daria, there are things I have not told you.”
“It’s not just the drug, is it?” Her voice was soft, numbed by understanding, but the anger he feared most did not come. Her fingers slipped through his and she came close against his arm. “He’s taking us back, isn’t he? He’s taking people.”
Tagen looked at her hand in his, her cunning little fingers, so slim and graceful. He looked into her eyes—green and blue and white—all the colors of her Earth.
“What does he do with them?” Daria asked.
“All that can be done,” he answered, as gently as possible. “He…and others like him…sell humans to become…I do not know the word. They are forced to work.”
“Slaves,” she said. Her gaze drifted from his, staring in horror at some empty point in space. “The word you’re looking for is slaves.”
“It is a crime,” he said. It was very important for him to make that distinction, and for her to understand it. “As serious in its way as murder. When we find them, the criminals are imprisoned for all their lives. The humans are…removed.”
“But you don’t bring them home,” she said in her quiet voice. “No, how could you?” She shivered, despite the warmth of the air, and looked at him with eyes bright with hurt. “What happens to them?”
“There is a place for them,” he said. “We have cities built. Most choose to build their own. There is farmland, livestock. At one time, we stationed doctors among them, but they were not…well-received. Now we let it be known that medical care is available upon request. To my knowledge, such requests have never been made.”
“But they’re happy?” she pressed.
Tagen hesitated, thinking of the few times he had been present at the delivery of recovered humans to the preserves. He remembered them, a shambling, wary lot, hobbled and muted, crippled and scarred, looking as if they had known only hatred and fear their whole lives. The children might laugh—children could be happy anywhere—but even their small, filthy faces had been pinched with suspicion.
“I’m sure you do your best,” Daria said softly, and turned away.
“It will all end soon,” Tagen told her. “The Gate that brings our criminals to your world will be destroyed. It had been hoped that some peace could someday be forged between our two peoples, when your race had matured.”
“Or when yours had,” she said, still without looking at him.
“Yes.” He sighed. “But the cost of life is too high. The Gate will come down.”
“Then why…?” She turned and searched his face intently. “Is it the only one?”
Gods, she was quick.
“For now,” he said. “We do not know for certain, but E’Var may be building another. This is why we must take him. This is why we cannot allow him to come away from Earth with Vahst that he can sell.”
She nodded, stared at her feet, and nodded again. “You’ll find him,” she said.
There was no doubt, not even the slimmest reservation, in her words. Her conviction was a thousand times more strengthening than any Magistrate’s praise or guarantee of promotion. Tagen put his arm around her and she pressed against his chest at once, letting him hide her in his protection.
“I can see why you didn’t tell me,” she said. “I don’t blame you. I kind of wish I still didn’t know. It’s so hard to think that…that it could be true. It’s been Earth’s nightmare for so long, it’s almost a joke. But it’s been real the whole time.”
It was every world’s nightmare, rekindled on Jota each time the Far-Reachers encountered a new world. The Kevrian had been the first to actually engage them, and that had been the death-knell for the Far-Reacher program, but see how it had ended. Jotan, who themselves feared domination by alien forces, turning a blind eye to the slow enslavement of the human race. Daria was right. It was a joke, one so cruel, it could not be acknowledged by any power on Jota.
“You’ll keep me safe,” Daria said, her arms tightening around his waist. “Won’t you?”
“Yes,” he said.
He felt her chest hitch once in soundless laughter. “You didn’t even hesitate,” she said.
“Some things do not require thought.” He cocked his head. “
Don’t
require thought.”
“You’re trying so hard.”
“I must impress a great woman.”
She looked up, smiling at him with her sad eyes. “You know, for a guy who doesn’t speak N’Glish very well, you sure know all the right things to say.” She twined her hands around his neck and rose up on her toes to touch her mouth to his. “Take me inside, Tagen. Make me feel safe.”
Tagen lifted her easily into his arms. “I wish that I could be here only for you,” he said. “I would give anything to keep you from every harm.”
“Show me,” she said.
He carried her into the house and up the stairs. He took her to his bed, in the room where her unhappiness nested, but she did not object and there was no reticence in the way she reached for him. He undressed her, pressing his mouth to every piece of her as he bared it, tasting her soft skin and feeling her shiver in response as he explored all her graceful curves.
Her hands found his head, combing lightly through his hair before cupping his face and guiding his questing lips to her breast. He suckled carefully, his fingers flowing along the hollows of her throat, her round shoulders, her sloping ribs and the valley of her waist. Her body, her beautiful alien body, undulated beneath him, arcing to meet his touch and falling away to savor it. Her pleasure gave him confidence. There was something he wanted to try.
Tagen kissed a trail between her breasts and down to her soft belly. He sipped teasingly at her navel and then moved down, over the cushion of musk-rich down. She gasped as his tongue flicked tentatively at her sex, her hands clenching in his hair. The nub crowning her cleft tantalized him; it stiffened under his careful touch, and Daria’s hips rose and fell in rhythm as he tested its responses. The scent of musk flowed, maddening so near to him, and he slipped his hands beneath her, tilting her up so that he could drink her juices. The taste of her—dizzying and wild—invaded him with all the strength of pure Heat, but with none of its fury. His tongue stabbed deeper, bringing dazzling cries from his writhing partner that only seemed to thicken the fog surrounding him. He could not seem to be satisfied; her musk grew and grew as she came, and he made himself drunk on her pleasure.
At last, his entire body seared with urgent need, Tagen rose and stripped himself of his clothing. Daria’s eyes flashed wide, hungry, and she reached for him, pushing his hands away so that she could tear away the final barrier between them. Tagen forced himself to stand immobile as she pulled his jacket and shirt free, her mouth and tongue a torture on his bare flesh.
“Trust me,” she whispered. Her hands scoured down his stomach to tug at the fastenings of his pants. “I need you to trust me.”
“I do.”
She took his rigid shaft in her hands and then closed her mouth around him.
Tagen’s breath hissed explosively out of him, only partly in the shock of the unexpected action. The sensation was beyond description, almost beyond his ability to feel. He had heard of such a thing but he could never have imagined such resounding pleasure. Her tongue, her lips, her breath, her teeth—all these things in every combination, moving over and all around him. It was ecstasy, enough to be anguish.
She pulled away at last, trembling as she pushed his pants down and helped him step free. She took his hand, smiling at him with passion and with trust, and pulled him down on the bed beside her.
To enter her was a celebration of the soul. She rose above him, her arms outstretched and her head thrown back, flying somewhere in her own mind as she moved with him. Her body swayed and arched, surged and ebbed; she danced with him, the act of sex made into art so pure it hurt to see. His hands could not keep from her, touching her, proving her reality to himself again and again. She was a god in her element. She was a star at the universe’s creation. And she was his.
They climaxed together and Tagen felt this release for the first time as a joining. He thought he could almost reach out and touch her soul; he thought he could see her heart like a glow around them both. They were one. They were truly one.
She folded over, lowering herself with that dancing, dreaming grace until she lay atop him. His arms came up and closed around her waist, holding her against him, holding them joined.
“I love you, Tagen,” she breathed. “Do you know that word?”
“Yes,” he said.
He did now.
I
t took most of the day to work the dopamine into Vahst and by the end of it, Kane was ravenous and his eyes were smarting from staring at the dark screen at tiny numbers. But he had five new vials of finished product in the preserving compartment and that made it impossible to feel too pricklish. Filling forty vials with concentrated Vahst was a hellish undertaking for a single man, but he was beginning to think he could actually pull it off.
He stood up, sealing his pack and dropping it on the floor, and stretched out all his cramping muscles. “Let’s see it, Raven.”
She handed him several sheets of writing and he studied them with a pride that was almost fatherly, a feeling that struck him as being profoundly disturbing. She’d written out the alphabet, his name, hers, the word
ichuta’a
, and, he saw with a smile, the word
thal
. The letters were childishly uneven. He needed to show her better how to form them. She could write well enough in human, there was no excuse for sloppiness.
He let the papers drop to the tabletop and ran his eyes over her instead. Her clothes were dry, but he hadn’t let her up to dress yet. He liked her this way. Glittering. He was proud of the overall effect of her naked body and gleaming ornaments, but there was nothing fatherly about it this time. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Better.”
She looked better, at last. He could still smell blood on her, but not as much as there had been, and she’d stopped griping at her belly. Soon, he’d be able to have her again, and he meant to enjoy her fully. He touched the tattoo on her arm that marked her as his, and then traced a claw lightly down to the rings in her nipples, then to the gems he’d set around her navel, and lower still, to her cunt. His next breath was nearly a sigh. He stroked along her metaled folds, remembering how it had been to take her, to make her cum for him, to feel that wild body writhing and sucking at him in her throes.
She was watching him now, her face guarded and delightfully solemn. He bent and nipped at her jaw, giving her hip a friendly slap before stepping back. She smiled faintly but it didn’t touch her eyes. There were times when Kane wondered if some humans might not be just a touch psychic.
Time to eat.
Kane fetched his pants from the bathroom where they hung, along with those of his humans, over the curtain bar. He dressed and came out to put clothes in the hands of his females. It was a shame to have to cover Raven’s jeweled body, but a pleasure to watch her do it. The way she moved…
“
Ichuta’a
,” he said, and snapped his fingers as he sat on the foot of the bed. Sue-Eye was at his side in an instant and he pulled her comfortably down onto his knee, giving her a little bump when he noticed her wince. “And how are
you
feeling?” he asked solicitously.
“Fine.” Her voice was strained, although she fought not to show it in her face. She kept trying to tilt her hips forward on his thigh so that her bottom didn’t take her weight, and he made a point of repositioning her roughly every time she did.
“Fine,” Kane echoed. He bumped his knee for her a few times playfully and nipped at her shoulder when her face puckered up. “Good. Get dressed and find us food.”
She sprang up, and then walked stiff-hipped to the phone. Kane flexed his claws, watching her, restless but lazy.
His eye fell on Raven and he snapped his fingers. She came readily enough, but with far less enthusiasm than his blonde
ichuta’a
. He pulled her down to straddle him, fitting her legs aside of his and pulling her tight to him. He locked his arms around her waist to keep her there and put his face very close to hers. “Bite me,” he growled.
She lifted her brows. “Where?”
“I don’t think I care.”
She leaned into him awkwardly and closed her teeth on his chin. She bit, lightly at first, and then harder, until Kane groaned with pleasure. He opened his eyes as she pulled back and caught her frowning.