He continued to stare off to the right of her knees and say nothing. His face was stone. His whole body was stone. Sweat was the only thing that moved on him.

Daria continued to stand her ground at the foot of the stairs, but the heart went out of her when he did not argue with her. She sighed and dropped her arm to her side. “It’s your decision,” she said. “You know my feelings, and I’ll only say one more thing about it. You haven’t made any progress in your search since the weather got to you, but E’Var has, and he’s made plenty. If you have any desire to catch up to him, then please Tagen, let me help you.”

She stepped away from the stairs then, knowing there was nothing more that she could say. He took them without looking back. She heard his door shut, and she was alone once more.

*

He did not come downstairs for the rest of the day. She did not go up, not even to bring him the food she knew his body desperately needed. Seeing him would only lead to more pointless arguing. What she needed to do now was leave him alone, and let him think about it.

As evening fell, Daria did the first thing that admitted out loud what decision she’d made. She put Grendel outside. The old tom complained bitterly for five full minutes and then lost interest and wandered off in search of mice. Daria finished the dishes and turned out the lights. The house was still. She went up to bed.

The light was on in Tagen’s room. Daria stood in the hall a little while, knowing she could never simply go over and knock. He was hanging on to his pride by his fingernails; he might give in if she walked in on him and ripped her clothes off, but he’d never forgive her for it. She had to let this be his choice, even if the choice was no.

She went to her room and sat on the end of her bed, staring at the wall without seeing it. This was not the way she’d ever imagined rediscovering her sexuality. After she’d been released from the hospital, she’d had to attend counseling paid for as part of the lawsuit against Kruegar and Lauder. She’d still been going places back then, not just driving around, and she could remember her therapist’s absolute fixation with Dan’s leaving her. ‘You’re angry,’ he had kept saying. ‘You’re angry because the attack destroyed your self-image and then Dan destroyed your sexuality. You’ll never feel desirable again until you rediscover your sexuality.’

Which was what she got for seeing a Freudian.

She could still see Tagen’s eyes, blazing like molten gold, incandescent with raw and furious lust as he looked at her. Telling her to get away from him. Wanting her so badly that he could not stand to be in the same room with her. She wasn’t sure if this was rediscovering sexuality or not, but it did make her painfully aware of herself as a woman. If it wasn’t exactly natural desire on his part, it still made her feel…something.

She hadn’t had sex in six years. Not even with herself.

Daria reached up, her fingertips sliding along the smooth plane of her cheek, tracing the scars she could not feel but knew were there. Tagen didn’t see her scars, not until she’d held them up like a hammer and hit him in the face with them. And he hadn’t pitied her for them. He’d been angry and disgusted with her legal system, but he hadn’t pitied her. She could never be a beautiful woman, not as a human and not by whatever standards his race judged beauty, but he would never see her as ugly, either. She could do a lot worse than a man like that.

Daria got up and took a shower. She shaved. She dried her hair, brushed and braided it so it couldn’t get in the way. She changed the sheets on her bed. Funny, how all the little rituals came right back. She switched off the lights but left the door ajar and lay herself down, naked. She would wait. She was nervous, but it wasn’t a bad way to feel. She was waiting for her man…and she really thought he would come.

Minutes crawled by, marked in red by the light of her digital clock. Shadows of trees cuts darker lines on the walls and ceiling as a summer breeze blew through. Silence. Stillness.

And then, a wedge of light pushed out into the hallway, there for a moment and then gone with the closing of Tagen’s door. Nothing, nothing for a long time. He had gone downstairs or he had gone back to bed.

A creak of hinges brought all her awareness back into sharp focus. His silhouette filled her doorway. He did not speak.

Daria sat up and pulled back the sheet that covered her. She waited, her heart pounding.

The door closed, but she couldn’t tell what side he’d been on. The first she knew that he was with her came when his hand touched her cheek.

“Be certain,” he said.

“I am.”

“I cannot promise to be gentle.”

“I know.”

His hand withdrew. There was the faintest of sounds, like the rustle of a moth’s wings, as his uniform fell to the floor. Then the shifting of the mattress as he knelt on the bed. She could feel the heat of his body, but he did not touch her.

Daria reached for him, her fingers brushing the burning field of his chest and following it down to the stony shaft protruding below his hard stomach. She closed her fist around him, testing his girth, and felt something that was not entirely apprehension knocking at her ribs.

Tagen’s hand unexpectedly lit between her thighs, touching her with the same cautious exploration but without groping for her in the dark. Her body wakened all at once, becoming electric and hot, all her nerves tingling with urgency as she accepted his touch. His finger stroked along her cleft and up, finding her unerringly, and her hips moved to meet him. “I…cannot help but hurt you,” he said, and despite the pain in his voice, the part of him she held in her fist throbbed even harder.

“Lie down,” she said. She wasn’t sure if it would help or not, but she needed to feel as though she had some control. Things were moving so fast, and it was her fault. Hadn’t she skipped right past foreplay to take him in her hand? Hadn’t she, for that matter, skipped right past dating to take him to her bed?

Tagen obeyed, slipping around her to lay his head on her pillows, his hand still stroking her. She could hear wet sounds of sucking around his fingers and her cheeks crawled with heat. It had been so long, but still, should she really be so eager?

Yes, she thought, as his touch went deeper. Yes, she should be eager. He was a good man. She should be eager, and by God, she was.

She swung up over him and lowered herself to straddle his hips, feeling the width and reality of them—a man again in her bed—with undeniable excitement. His shaft probed at her; he uttered a low moan of tightly-mingled pain and relief as she fit herself against him. Slowly, bracing herself on his chest, she began to bring them together.

There was pain at first, invasive and piercing, as if her six years of abstinence had served to render her virginal once more. Like a virgin’s pain, it lessened as she moved. Tagen’s hand brushed at her thigh once and then disappeared from her. She could feel him shaking with whatever awful tension men feel when sex begins so carefully, but he did nothing to force her on faster. She willed herself to relax, sliding carefully up and then down again, claiming just a little more each time. The feel of him was more than she could grasp; it was like a color exploding just beyond her ability to see, like an earthquake just strong enough to tremor in her bones. Her desire whipped at her, but caution held her back. She moved with excruciating slowness, and let her senses scream free with the tangle of fear and lust and raw, unreasoning pleasure.

When she had engulfed half his length, he gasped hard and she felt a spurt of heat drive up inside her. She paused, wondering if that were it, if they were done, and then realized he was still hard as rock, still hoarse and trembling with need. She continued her slow climb toward joining, feeling with disbelief two more short jets of cum.