Finally seated against him, filled by him, the sensations became overwhelming. The slightest movement brought such crushing friction that pleasure was inescapable and terrifying in intensity. Daria rocked erratically, trying to acclimate herself to the sense of fullness, of fantastic heat and desire. She couldn’t experience him without needing to stop and compose, slow her breath and her heart, claw her mind back down from its shrieking ecstasy. She came to this sex as untried as a true virgin, hungry and fearful all at once. “Help me,” she stammered.

Tagen’s hands found her hips, removing all choice from her as he began to move her. A cry tore its way from her throat and her hands clenched on him involuntarily, but her hips bucked wildly, seizing on the pleasure he inflicted on her with greedy need.

“Am I hurting you?” he asked, but though his voice was strained, his hands kept on sliding her along his slickened length in a quick rhythm, forcing her to ride him with an abandon she yearned for but could not achieve.

“No,” she gasped. “No, it feels good. Oh God, it feels so good.” She began to cry helplessly, knowing he would misunderstand, but a slave to the storm of sensation. She could feel orgasm coming, like the tidal pulse that follows a sea-quake. It was terrifying, black and full, but a part of her opened up to welcome it.

Her scream came first, high and wild and despairing. Her body followed, explosive with pleasure, and as if some great unseen switch were finally thrown, Daria surged against him. Her hips ground and pumped in urgency, her hands clawed and pulled, and she drank him in with her whole body. She never stopped cumming. Wave after wave crested and crashed, driving her to a frenzy of hungry desire and fulfillment.

He was cumming as well, in and out of rhythm with her, thrusting hard and fast even as she rocked and pitched at him. The rest of him was rigid, an automaton of one purpose, locked in motion.

Without warning, his arm snapped up and around her. He rolled, taking her with him and pinning her under his weight. He reared above her and slammed his hands against the headboard of her bed, his weight looming god-like and only half-seen in the shadows above her lust-glazed eyes. His hips continued to drive at her, cumming with nearly every thrust. His breath came in harder pants; sweat dripped from his flesh to sizzle on hers. She could not keep her hands still; they pulled and scratched at him, trying to pull him down, to bring him fast against her. She wanted all of him, all of him, but the little that he gave her was maddening enough.

He roared suddenly, a deafening, eruptive sound, and slammed against her with all his strength in one last, brutal movement. She felt his seed at last, a great rushing jet of it, drumming deep into the heart of her. Then he fell, completing her with the mass and reality of him, crushing a final, shivering release from her still-humming body.

She held him, her hands creeping slowly up the slick sides of his ribs to rest on his back. She could feel nothing but the receding of that consuming black tide, nothing but the dry snap and thrum of wakened pleasure. She could feel nothing but the stunned joy of what she had done and what she had taken. She thought she might still be crying, but she knew she was smiling as well.

It had not been gentle. It had not been lovemaking of the kind she remembered, the kind she had once shared with the man who might have married her, who might have given her children. It was rough and hungry, not unskilled but certainly not considerate. It was sex, pure and unapologetic, as hot and fierce as lightning, and it was very good sex.

His hand brushed her cheek, and she could feel his concern as he smoothed her tears back into her skin.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said quaveringly. “Don’t you dare. I wanted it and it was everything I wanted.”

He rolled away, and the feel of him, even now, sliding free of her was enough to waken a ghost of yearning throughout her body. She stretched, contented in every searing fiber of her being, and reached for him.

He caught her hand out of the air and squeezed it lightly before placing in on her chest. “I thank you,” he said. “You cannot know enough. May I…come back to you when the sun rises?”

“Yes,” she said.

Tagen sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

Daria’s satisfaction curdled and froze in her chest. “You’re leaving?”

“It is too hot to lie together.” The mattress creaked and there was a rustle as he collected his clothes. As before, he made no sound as he crossed the floor. She still thought he was there looking down at her, when he suddenly opened the door. He closed it behind him without another word.

Daria lay stunned, her heart still beating down from the frenzies of sex. She could still feel echoes of orgasm running electric through her body, could still feel the rawness in her throat from her screams. She had given him all she had until every restraint lay shattered. He, on the other hand, he had scratched an itch and then gone back to his room.

Blinking tears, Daria got up. She changed the sheets again, and carried them, damp and fragrant with sex, downstairs to wash them. When she was done with that, she’d mop the floors.

Was that all there was between them? Was that really it?

Maybe she’d wash the walls.

Why was she even surprised? When you took out all the times they’d just stood around and argued with each other, they’d probably only had three conversations. She couldn’t blame him. He only took what he was offered, and he never promised her a thing.

And the cupboards.

She wanted to die.

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Chapter Twenty-Four

Tagen awoke with the light of late morning prying at his eyes and the itch of early Heat sinking into his tsesac. He waited for the crush of despair and bitterness the latter should have inspired and felt none. He could not remember sleeping so well, not even in his own bed on Jota. He was completely relaxed, completely at peace. And he was hungry. That had to be a good sign.

He rose and dressed himself in the snug human clothing. The feel of the alien fabric brought Daria to mind and he growled good-humoredly to himself. There was something profoundly moving in the way she strived to meet his needs, even through her fear of him.

All his needs.

Were it not for Heat’s furious claws sunk inside him, he could have easily been amazed by the passions of his night’s partner. He was going to have to rethink his notion of humans as fragile. She had been in every way his equal, if not his master. Thinking on it now, remembering with fondness the dazed cries she’d unleashed as she rode him to climax, brought him a profound gratitude and a yearning that set his heart to burn.

She had mated with him. Against every taboo that surely stood in place, she had taken him inside her. She had freed him from his agony and she had taken a brilliance of pleasure in the process. He had asked if he could come to her again and she had not hesitated before saying yes. When he lay with her today, it would not be after hours of Heat had savaged his senses. He could woo her, show her the care such a female deserved, and find more than mere relief in her welcoming arms.

Tagen showered and shaved, armoring himself against the disheveling effects of a new summer day. There was a thought worrying itself free from the Heat-leadened fathoms of his mind, and he was content to let it. Something to do with the news reports he had seen on the tee-vee, specifically, with the images that sometimes appeared behind the media-purveyors as they spoke. There was some connection, he was not sure what, but he sensed it was obvious and that he would be mightily annoyed at himself once it did break out and reveal itself. For now, ah, he was rested, he was hungry, and he was…