But in the dream, there’d been no laughter. He was breaking up with her again. Calmly. Dispiritedly. She’d given his room away, he kept saying. She was letting another man wear his clothes.
She’d wanted to explain about Tagen, that Dan had already moved out and Tagen needed his things, but her mouth was filled with tubes. She could only look at him, mutely dismayed, and think about which pieces she should move so the game of chess could continue.
To go from that to this—to Dan’s old room, to the unstable glow of sunset, to the smothering weight of this heat—seemed a natural enough progression. Any second now, Tagen would probably sit up and accuse her of using him to replace Dan, and then maybe a nurse would walk in and start pouring oil into her eyes or something.
Why did it have to be so hot? She wasn’t touching Tagen, yet there was a heat pouring off him that was burning all down her left side just as though she was lying next to a furnace. She could feel sweat tickling its way down her skin in a dozen different places, but her mouth was desiccant. The sheet that was her only cover clung to her in damp folds and sent up a misty fume of intimate scent; it was like sleeping under someone’s tongue. It made it hard to lie still, even harder to think about moving, and her mind felt as leaden as her limbs.
The dream stayed sunk into the fore of her thoughts. She’d given away Dan’s room. She’d given away his clothes. She’d given away herself.
Daria turned, running her eyes over the half-covered figure of her alien, who was not quite snoring but sleeping very deeply here beside her. He was lying on his side, faced away and sprawling with that unselfconscious dominion that told of a man extremely used to sleeping alone. His back was broad and smooth. His sweat and the setting sun’s uneven lighting gave his skin an eerie luminescence. His hair cut a black curl into the perfect shape of him, tempting her to brush it away, tempting her to touch him at all. He really had an amazing body. A soldier’s body, carved to powerful dimensions, marked with moments of hard survival.
Watching the shadows slide across and around his muscles with every new breath should have been soothing, but it was hard to look at Tagen with the dream still heavy in her mind. Dan had been lean and workout-trim and wonderful, but there was no mistaking that body for this one. Even the feel of his skin was wholly different. She’d replaced a patent lawyer with a soldier and she’d replaced a human with a Jotan.
The thought fell into a hollow place and stayed there. Daria rubbed unconsciously at her belly, and then reached out and laid her palm against the high plane of Tagen’s back. His slow slumbering breaths never paused. She closed her eyes, feeling the workings of his body, the strange texture of his skin, the heat of him. He felt so real. She was the dream in this room.
Daria followed the shadowed line of his spine down over the sweat-slick country of his back until the rumpled sheet at his hips interrupted her. Not a light sleeper was her spaceman. She’d always assumed soldiers got conditioned to snap in and out of consciousness at the slightest provocation like, well, like the other night, when she’d burst in on him and he’d pointed a gun at her. Oh, it looked more like a flashlight than a gun, but having been on the wrong end of it, Daria could say with confidence that however it looked, what it
was
was a gun. And really, knowing that he’d done it once should be reason enough to let the man sleep now.
She slipped her arm around him anyway, letting her fingers play along the unseen hills and valleys of his stomach. Her thoughts drifted indistinctly from alien weapons to spying on Tagen while he got dressed, and then to Tagen undressing her and back to Dan. She wondered what he was doing with himself these days and the curiosity was not the depressing ache for an ex-lover as much as the cursory interest for an old classmate. She supposed he must have someone in his life by now, someone who wouldn’t do him the inconvenience of getting half her face burned away by acid. Maybe he’d finally taken that honeymoon in Hawaii they always meant to take, had those kids they used to talk about having. She wondered if she wished him well, decided after some little thought that she wouldn’t go that far, and then spooned up against Tagen.
He stirred at last, stretching hugely before rolling onto his back and raising up his head to look at her. He dropped back, scratching his hair into some semblance of order, and mumbled words so thickly-accented with sleep that she honestly couldn’t tell whether he’d said them in her language or his. It didn’t matter. She slipped in under his raised arm and laid her head on his chest.
He pushed himself halfway up, as if to better study this strange person who was trying to snuggle when it was ninety degrees out, and then fell back again with a sleepy chuckle. His arm curled around her, holding her even closer, and his other hand came to stroke through her hair.
“Are you all right?” he asked in recognizable if fuzzy English.
She nodded, staring at the nearest pile of Dan’s boxes. She wondered if he’d gone back to live in the city or what. Maybe his number was listed in the phone book. She could call him up, give him one last chance to come out and get this stuff and then…run it out to Goodwill or something. She didn’t want to look at it anymore. Well, she’d never wanted to look at it, which was why she supposed she’d shut it all away up here in the first place, but now she didn’t want to even think about looking at it. Six years was long enough to be tied to these old bones.
Tagen’s breath deepened back to one of those not-quite snores, interrupting her wandering thoughts. She realigned herself to his reality, running her open hand up his chest and around his side in a half-hug. He roused with a growl. The arm that cupped her lightly squeezed and the hand combing at her hair moved to caress her cheek. She could feel sweat from his body pooling onto hers and dripping away. It was too hot for this, but she couldn’t make herself let go and move away.
It was getting darker. The orange glow faded out to the grey, phantom light that follows sunset. In minutes, she wouldn’t be able to see him at all. She stared at the shadowed sculpture of his bare chest, wanting to memorize it while she could. His body was an anchor; when she closed her eyes, she still felt lost in dreams.
He was dozing again, trying to stay with her, but slipping further and further away. Daria closed her eyes and moved her hand again, to feel him without the interfering sight of Dan’s things taking up the background. She explored the perfection of his powerful body with the lightest sweep of her fingertips until she came to the raised and roughened scar that marked his side.
“What did this?” she asked.
He drew in a breath and stretched before letting it out again. “What weapon, do you mean, or what enemy held it?”
Poor guy. She was keeping him awake. She said, “Both. Neither. What happened, is what I guess I really mean.”
“Mm.” He shifted, not pushing her away but kicking back the half-cover of the sheet. “There was a
danz tuvai
…forgive me, a…stronghold. To manufacture and repair stolen ships for other criminals. What you would call, I think, a chop shop.” He spoke the words very distinctly, and then yawned. “They knew we were there before we had landed. They had locked down their defenses, the doors were impenetrable. My commander ordered us to open a wall. There was heavy fire.” He stroked her hair, his thumb tracing along the smoothness of her brow. “Why do you want to hear this?”
“I want to hear your voice.”
“I could say other things.”
“You never do, though.”
“Hm.” His hand went to pillow his head, but the other on her hip took up the slow caressing movements. “No. I suppose I do not. I cannot even blame my poor grasp of English. Conversation is an art. I am not creative.”
“You’re plenty creative when it comes to some things.”
“Am I? In what—? Ah.” He chuckled and growled again, this time with libidinous intent. “Shall I say I was inspired to greatness?” His teasing words ended in another yawn.
She should let him sleep.
She moved her hand away, over the scarred side of him, down over the ridges of his stomach, and still further. His skin was like fine suede stretched tight over marble and wetted with hot oil. She could taste salt when she kissed him, could feel his heart beating beneath the thin touch of her lips, a little faster now than before. Her fingers enclosed him, stroking gently, and her lingering kiss became a bite.
His hips arched at once, but his groan had more reluctance than arousal. “Daria,” he said, sounding strained.
She shifted, still caressing him below, to bite him again, now on his stomach. Again, he thrust hard into her hand and this time, he caught at her wrist. But he didn’t pull her away, and as she continued to nip and lick her way down his body, he ultimately sighed and released her.
She didn’t speak. Neither did he. There was only room for one art to be practiced here. She worked her way to him at a dream’s pace, letting herself be conscious of nothing but the taste of his sweat, the heat of his alien skin, the growing hardness in her hand. She cemented herself to his reality, letting his body be the full substance of her world. Pleasure came to her like echoes thrown by his own. She closed her mouth over him and felt orgasm begin to unfold in syrupy delight deep inside her.
Tagen’s hands brushed at her, catching in her hair before resting heavily atop her head. He did not attempt to guide her, but the speed and strength of his restrained thrusts increased as she continued her languid caresses. She drew him in one inch at a time, thoroughly slicking and exploring its dimensions before taking more. Her hands stroked and squeezed, and then slid out to scratch at his stomach, kneading at him blissfully before cupping and sliding along his shaft again. And all the while, rapture grew in her; she basked in the reflected glow of the pleasure she gave him.
“Let me—” He tried to sit up, to pull her to him, but fell back with a groan as she took him fully into her throat. She began the first of many slow swallows and he cried her name, deliriously and with a kind of despair, his claws ripping at the sheets. She watched with catlike contentment while agony and ecstasy pursued each other on his face. He wanted to make love to her, she knew. He wanted to be the one who held and controlled and commanded, but she couldn’t let him. Selfishly, she hoarded him, letting herself alone revel in the pure sensuality of possession until he began to crest. He tried again to take her in his arms, but she would not be moved and he was reduced to curling around her, his hands sliding down her back in a protective embrace.
His heat was all around her, a shell of hard, male flesh. Daria swam in pleasure, her eyes closed and all her blood alive, as he came. His hoarse cry brought her to the completion this ritual had kindled in her; all her body turned to fire for one timeless moment of pure joy. She lingered, savoring all there was, and finally, reluctantly, separated herself from him.
He remained enfolding her. She could feel his breath between her shoulders, his hair brushing at her back. His hands still gripped at her hips, not caressing now but only holding her. She pressed her lips to his thigh and he stirred at last, speaking alien words she did not know to express a sentiment she could only guess at. He moved slowly, his hands sliding up her bare back, stroking once more at her hair before he settled himself back into the bedding.
Daria curled at his hip, not touching him now, much as she wished to. He needed to sleep. She was a horrible, selfish person who needed to let her lover sleep.
Tagen’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. It was not a human hand. His breaths were already lengthening towards sleep. She wondered what sorts of things he dreamed when he closed his eyes. She thought for the first time of the other alien on Earth in a tangible sense, not as some faceless boogeyman, but as a real being. Somewhere out there, he might be sleeping, too. Somewhere out there, some poor girl—two poor girls, even—might be lying just as Daria lay, with a clawed hand upon her shoulder and the musky taste of him in her mouth, but with fear and pain pooling inside her where Daria knew only love.
Somewhere.
The first snore rumbled from Tagen’s chest. The second followed.
Daria eased away, letting his hand slip and fall to the mattress. He slept on, undisturbed, even as she crawled back and rose from the bed. She looked down at him in the darkened room—his beautiful, naked body—feeling the fingers of that helpless love and dreaming loss play through her still. She loved him, but she couldn’t sleep here. She couldn’t share this lumpy sofa-bed with him and Dan and the faceless E’Var and his two faceless victims. She turned away with a lonely pang, her own hand rising to touch the place where his had lain, and made her way to the door while she could still see it.
Grendel came bolting in the instant the door was open, grumbling at the indignation of being excluded. He leapt up onto the bed and settled at Tagen’s hip, purring aggressively until Tagen’s hand moved in sleep to settle atop him. Grendel’s eyes in the dim light were slits of accusation Daria just couldn’t face. She stepped into the hall and shut the door behind her.
I
t was a nice night. Warm, but breezy, with a full moon out and plenty of stars scattered across the cloudless sky. Driving around in a decent car with the windows down, smelling barbeque smoke and sprinklers wetting down new-cut grass, with your guy on your right and his hand on your knee was a whole goddamn bag of good n’ fine. If asked, Sue-Eye would not be able to think of a single time in her life in which she had ever been completely happy, but for tonight, at least she was content. Sometimes, that was just what a girl had.
They were circling yet another dot on the map of the Edge of Nowhere. There were ten streets running one way, ten streets running across them, and a bridge separating the residential area from the tourist block. There was a post office and a feed store and a corner market that charged six bucks for a half-case of Coke and two churches and five little stores with the word ‘antiques’ somewhere in the windows and no mailboxes in front of the cute little wedding-cake houses. There were also eight—count ‘em, eight—seasonal hotels dabbed in here and there in all this quaint little clod-hoppin’ beauty, ranging from respectable bed and breakfast joints all the way down to seedy little fishing shacks out by the river. There had to be some kind of Buttfuck-Empty Class Reunion going on, too, because all eight places looked pretty full. Not packed by any stretch, but still, for a place that proudly boasted six hundred and twelve God-fearing souls on the sign leading into town, eight hotels at even half capacity was pretty damn good.