“Then why didn’t you—?”

“Because I am Jotan and I am male, and we do not go to females, they come to us!” Tagen forced his hands to release her and he stepped away, breathing fast and hard. “Tell me what to do,” he snarled. “Tell me how to win you. Tell me how to please you. Tell me anything, but tell me, Daria Cleavon! You expect me just to know these things!”

“I know.” She was flushed and would not meet his eyes. Her hands rose and rubbed at her arms as though she were cold. Her face was pinched with hurt and unhappiness, but more than anything else, it was a lost and child-like confusion that haunted her eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know what I want. I just know that you’re the first…the first man that I…”

Her hand found her cheek, covering that small part of her that she had allowed to become her whole self, her whole world, and suddenly Tagen was furious. Not at her, but at Earth, at this hot, miserable, poisonous planet that had first spoiled and then forsaken her.

He closed the distance between them in a single, swift step and yanked her hand away from her face. “Stop that!” he snarled, fighting for calm and yet roaring it anyway. “Stop doing that to yourself!”

He let go of her and grabbed at the shirt he wore, ripping it when he could not seem to pull it off fast enough. He caught her hand again and slapped it down over the keloided scars left by some years-past blaster fight, a starburst of raised flesh he had never bothered to have repaired. “Do you know what this is?” he demanded. He seized her head when she tried to wrench away and made her look at him. “It is skin, Daria. Skin. It keeps the life in our bodies and it keeps the weather from getting in. It does not define us. It does not command us. It is only skin.”

He stepped back and pulled her with him, off the counters and behind him as he marched her through the house and out to her yard. He stopped when he came to the raised garden with its little wall of stone and put her in front of him, cupping her face and making her look at what he needed her to see. Her lindaria, her hateful little weed, twining delicately out through the cracked rock to seek the sun.

“That is what you are,” he said. “That is what I see when I am with you. I see the vine that grows through stone.”

She made a sound, something between a sob and a scream, and tried to break away from him.

“You credit me with saving you,” he said, holding her implacably in his iron grip. “You tell me you were drowning in fear and that I have pulled you free. You do yourself injustice, Lindaria Cleavon. I am just another stone, and you have grown through me. The strength was yours and it was with you all the while.”

With great reluctance, he let her go. If he had not reached her after all of that, then Earth had won, and he never would.

She didn’t run. She didn’t hide her eyes and she didn’t cover her scars. She didn’t even hit him, a thing Tagen expected and could not have blamed her for. She stood shivering and looked down at the weed in her garden. When she finally spoke, her voice was whisper. “If I asked you to leave right now, would you go?”

He felt something inside him break open and bleed. He had no will left to argue with her. He had fought, and he had lost. “Yes,” he said, and turned away.

Her hand caught his. “And if you wanted to stay, would you?” Her eyes met his, bright with her human tears, searching.

“Yes.” And, gods help him, he meant it.

“Then stay. Please stay.” She looked at his hand in hers, brought it to her lips and kissed it. One of her tears fell, tracing a trail down to drop off his claw. “I want you to stay.”

He cupped her chin and gently brought her head up until her gaze met his. “And what else do you want?” he asked quietly.

Her mouth worked but she made no words. She looked at him in helpless silence, trembling.

How easy it would be to take, he mused. To ease the stiffness from her small frame with his unrelenting touch. She would fold, he knew. She had resisted him in the kitchen, but she had clung to him in the end. It would be so now. He had only to fight her a little.

But he was tired of warfare. “I am male,” he reminded her, and stepped forward so that she could feel the proof for herself. “You are female. The females come to us. The females command. Command me, if you want me.”

Color flooded her cheeks and she cast her eyes about despairingly before meeting his gaze again. “I…Kiss me.”

It was a start.

Tagen bent and touched his lips first to her cheek, kissing the scars that laced along the side of her face. Then lower, nipping lightly at the delicate curve of her jaw. He kissed the hollows of her slender throat, smiling to find the racing of her pulse just beneath the thin skin. And finally her mouth, sharing her breath and feeling her lips part to admit him.

The sun was on his back, spurring him to greater urgency. And she was warm against his bare chest, warm and soft and insistent all at once as she brushed her fingers through his hair and pulled his mouth even harder against hers. He pulled away, seeking breath and a moment’s stillness before his needs wrested control from him, and she bit him, her human teeth sending sheer fire right through to the heart of him.

He must have cried out because she drew back at once, looking nervous. “Did I hurt you?” she asked.

He stared at her dazedly and then pulled her hard against him, invading her mouth and groaning as she met his caresses with the red passion of tooth and claw. He was untried in the ways of her wooing, as much as she was with his, but they found a common ground together and fought there to give as much as they could to the other.

Her hands tugged at his clothing, bringing painful awareness of that barrier back to his mind. He drew away, trying to puzzle out the fastenings on her frayed shorts, and finally panted out an apology and shredded them in his claws.

She laughed, the sound like water tumbling blessedly over the molten rock of his mind, bringing clarity back to him enough to delight in her again. He had never known such a female; he had never experienced such vulnerability and strength, such passion coupled with such sincerity. He unknotted the tied folds of her shirt and pulled it from her with an exaggeration of gentleness, just to show her that he still knew how, and then lifted her in his arms and pressed his mouth over the swelling of her breast.

She gasped, her legs flying out to enfold his ribs, and he grinned as he explored the sensitivities of her flesh. The thin human skin was a masterpiece of responsiveness, and Daria was unmoored in the storm it inspired in her. She rocked against him, clutching at his shoulders, screaming at the sky. He could content himself with this for hours, just to feel the freedom of her passion and to hear her unbridled cries.

But in the end, she would not allow it.

“C-command you!” she managed, and he lifted his head in surprise. Her eyes were burning down on him from above, fierce and glazed with need. “I command you to make love to me!”

Of all the times to need a language lesson.

Tagen hesitated, lowering her until she found her feet. “Make…?” he echoed. He would do anything she asked, perform any human act of courtship. He was close to winning her. He could sense her desire rippling in the air like, well, like heat.

She laughed again, a tight and frustrated sound, and dropped her hand to grip his rock-hard shaft. “Lie down with me,” she said. “Right here. Right now.”

Ah. That he could do. Growling, he swept her feet from under her, catching her wrists and lowering her to the dry grass. He knelt between her legs, caressing her supple calf before sliding his hand up to cup her hip, lifting her to meet his first careful thrust. She welcomed him with a cry, locking her ankles behind his hips and bringing him home to her.