He was happy.

Tagen toweled off briskly and dressed, grinning fiercely at nothing at all, and marveling pleasantly at the intoxication that seemed to be occupying his soul. Who would have thought it? Who would have thought it from a human?

The scent of cleanser struck him like a hammer as he came downstairs, flattening his newfound good mood. He went cautiously into the kitchen and there was Daria, lying curled on the tiles beside a bucket of nearly-clear water. Even in sleep, her face was strained and marked with tears.

The heart in him froze and dropped away, leaving him hollow. He’d hurt her. He knew he had, but not like this.

He took only two steps into the room before the sound of his talons on the tiles roused her. She stirred with obvious stiffness and blinked up at him, her face waking by slow degrees to puzzlement and pain.

“Do not fear me,” he told her, showing her his empty hands. “I am putting you to bed. And that is all.”

“All?” Her face crumpled and she turned away, awkwardly standing and bending to fetch the bucket. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have expected—” She sobbed once and put the bucket back down, slopping water over the sides. She pressed her hands to her face and shook in silence.

“I hurt you,” he said, his voice strained. He wanted to touch her but did not dare for fear of sending her into panic. He felt sick, physically sick. He couldn’t watch her and he couldn’t tear his eyes away. What had he done to her? He had tried to be so careful and he had hurt her so much.

“You didn’t hurt me,” she wept. “It’s my fault. My fault for thinking it was anything but what it was.”

What it—? For no reason at all, Tagen found himself thinking of the tee-vee again, and in particular, of the programs it broadcast that showed humans in their wooing moods. He was a military man and he thought in straight military lines, but he was capable of making the occasional leap of insight, and he made one now.

Thunderstruck, Tagen started for her, one hand reaching to close over her arm. “What it was,” he echoed, “was a true thing. I felt what you gave. I felt what you took.”

She pinkened and pulled away. “Don’t say things you don’t mean,” she said angrily. “It’s cheap. I don’t need to be placated. I can live with it just fine. You needed to fuck and I let you. I was stupid to think there was anything more to it than that!”

“A fuck?” Startled and then profoundly stung, Tagen turned her roughly to face him. “A fuck?! Only that? Gods, I grieve that you could even think so!”

“You didn’t even kiss me!” she shouted.

He gaped at her. “I do not know how!”

“You could have asked.”

He couldn’t seem to find his footing in this conversation. He shook his head, shook it harder, and then tried again to reason with her. “Heat does not allow for tenderness such as I have seen when humans mate. I only tried—”

“If you say not to hurt me one more time, I’ll scream!” she yelled. “You did hurt me, dammit! You hurt me when you got up and left, like I was…like I was your damn Pumpmaster 5000! You don’t have to be in love with me, but you could at least pretend to like me a little! You just got up and left!”

“It was hot,” he argued. “There is affection and then there is comfort! Can you look me in the eye and tell me you could have slept if I had held you through the night?”

“Maybe!” she snapped. “I would have tried, at any rate, because that’s what people do when they like each other! They try to get along!”

“Is this how you try to get along?” he shot back, his voice rising. Her answering flinch was as good as a slap. Tagen stepped away and took back some self-control. “Did you say you wanted me because of your liking for me? No. You said you would lie with me because you feared Heat was killing me. You did not say you wished to mate with me, you said you would help me. And you did not kiss me, either,” he added irritably.

She dropped her gaze, her lip trembling, and looked at once furious and miserable.

“No,” Tagen said, sighing. “I did not try to please you. I did not think I would be welcomed. You took pleasure anyway and I was grateful. My one thought—scream if you so desire it—was not to hurt you. You simply do not know how easy it is to hurt you.”

“You’re stringing me along,” she said. “And it’s too little, waaay too late.” She turned away, swiping at her eyes.

Tagen moved before he could think, seizing her and pushing her roughly against the counters, his body crushing hers. His hand twined through her hair, pulling her head back and exposing her sleek throat to him. Heat was there, heightening but not commanding, and he let it fill him with flame as he moved his mouth over her. He could taste the sweat that beaded her skin. He could feel the blood as it pulsed from her heart. He bit slowly, savoring the resistance of her until his teeth threatened to draw blood.

She gasped and struggled, then clutched at him, shivering in his hands. Her lips were working soundlessly, her eyes shut tight. Tagen closed his mouth over hers as he had seen humans do on tee-vee and she struggled again, scratching and punching at his shoulders. He gripped her tighter, kissing her with bruising force until she shuddered and began to kiss him back. Her tongue met with his unexpectedly and he let her guide him, exploring this human thing as fascination led swiftly to violent desire.

It was unnatural to be so aggressive, to take what a female had not first offered, but he followed his instincts, growing bolder as she continued to melt against him. He did not know what she wanted. He gave her Jotan wooing instead, his hands drawing down her belly where sensation was sharper, careful of his claws…but not too careful.

Her hands crawled up his chest, rubbing, caressing, and he mimicked her unthinkingly. She arched into his palm when he cupped her breast, and then she shoved him away with a high, sobbing moan. “Just stop it! You don’t mean it!”

Tagen snarled furiously and picked her up, thumping her hard on the countertop. He pushed himself between her thighs before she had time to kick him away and pulled her sharply to him, preventing even a token gesture of escape. He was hard already, and he caught one of her flailing hands and brought it to that hardness, growling, “You think that I do not?”

She tried to pull her hand away, but he forced her instead to stroke him. He watched her face contort with passion and dismay, felt her shudder in his grip, and on the second pass along the length of his shaft, her hand slipped beneath the waist of his coverings and closed around his flesh. He released her. She remained.

“I wanted you,” he breathed, and pushed her shirt up in pools over his hand to lick at the sweat between her breasts. “Did you think I did not want you?”

“You were s-so adam-ment about n-not obligating—”

She finished with a cry as he closed his mouth around her nipple. He sucked the hard bud carefully between his teeth, and her hand on his shaft clenched.

“How could I tell you?” he demanded. “When you have been so afraid that I would force myself upon you? I have seen that fear in you from the day that first we met. And then you did allow me to sex with you, because you did not wish to see me suffer, you said. On my world, we would not consider that a passionate invitation. Gods, can you know how cruel you were in your compliance? To permit me to come to you in Heat, when I wished only to come to you like this?”

He cupped the full curves of her bottom and pulled her hard against him, shaping her to his rampant desire, and thrusting his hips at hers. “You said if I were human, if you knew no fear, you would have taken me to your bed before this,” he growled, biting and sucking at her jaw, her neck, her breast. “You said you found me attractive. You could have drawn a knife and stabbed me with less pain!”