“But part of hunting smart means bigger kills. I’ll fill up faster and we’ll leave all the sooner, so keep that in mind when you’re choosing your towns. And don’t—” He broke off, snarling as Sue-Eye did something unexpected and acrobatic with herself, and then resumed the thread of his thought somewhat hoarsely, “Don’t hesitate to tell me when you have thoughts like these. They’re useful.”

He dismissed Raven with a flick of his claws and then seized his ichuta’a and threw her down on the bed beside him. Foreplay was done. He took her now without restraint, drawing howls of equal parts pleasure and pain from her arching throat. A sweet sound. He relished her cries, rapidly losing himself in the natural give of female flesh.

Some people were just made for rough fucking. Kane watched his blonde ichuta’a thrash and cum deliriously beneath him, making no effort whatsoever to please her and yet, here she was. He teased it out for a while, contenting himself with teeth and claws and the rising scent of her musk, all the while wondering idly just what he was going to do with her once Raven was well again. He supposed he must have at least some subconscious plan to carry her around, or else he wouldn’t care if she went sour on him or not. If not, it seemed like an awful lot of trouble just to ensure her obedience for a few more days.

“But you will be obedient now,” he growled, striking hard at that soft female place and sending Sue-Eye into gales of shrieking pleasure. “Won’t you? My good little ichuta’a.”

Sue-Eye’s entire body clenched tight and she shuddered hard, bringing him violently to climax. He fell over her, snapping spastically at her shoulder and grinding his hips into hers as he emptied. He stayed there, fit close, until his breath evened, and then he rolled to his back and stretched luxuriantly. His human came in under his reaching arm and he let her stay curled against his side. He shut his eyes, dozing to the scent of blood and musk and the sound of both their heartbeats.

Raven. He roused himself to look her way and she instantly sat at the table with her back to him and picked up her stylus. Scratching letters in Jotan columns across her paper, just as though she’d been doing it all this time. He was tempted to call her over, break the mask of that indifference with a few well-moved fingers, but no. She was still having her period and he, well, he had a tendency to get caught up in the moment.

“Thank you, Kane,” Sue-Eye whispered. The arm that lay over his chest, bruised and bloodied, squeezed him in a hug.

He licked at the nearest wound, her shoulder, and settled his chin comfortably on her hair. He thought of Raven, well again and ready for mating. He thought of tomorrow’s hunt. He thought of the ship that he would have when he finally got home. He smiled and he slept.

*

Daria woke up.

It wasn’t easy. Just opening her eyes brought her no closer to clarity. It only took her from one surreal setting to this one. Dan’s old room, awash in the flickering orange fire of sunset, with towers of boxes looming all around her and another man sleeping in the bed beside her. Daria stared up at the ceiling, watching shadows cast by swaying branches and wondering if she was really awake at all or if this were just some bizarre continuation of her dream.

She’d been dreaming of the hospital, or at least, of a funhouse mirror’s version of it. White walls glowing with sterility and her in the bed. She’d been fastened in place by thousands of wires and tubes; they surrounded her, constrained her, invaded her body, brought her fluids and took them away, filled her arms and her belly and her mouth. But this wasn’t horrible, for some reason, although the memory of it in waking Daria’s mind certainly was. In the dream, it was just Daria in the bed, and it was the way things had always forever-been. And Dan was there, wearing a tux of all things, complete with cummerbund and carnation, playing chess with her. She couldn’t move her pieces, of course, her arms were utterly constrained, so Dan moved them for her. She didn’t tell him how to move, but somehow he always knew which piece and how and in the dream this hadn’t seemed a bit odd.

He’d been a lot like that in real life, she remembered. Sensitive. So marvelously attuned to her little wants and needs. When she didn’t feel like cooking, he always had a way of popping up to suggest going out. When those first restless threads of desire began to weave themselves together, his arms had a way of sliding unexpectedly around her. In bed, he always knew just where she needed to be touched. It was as though there was no part of her life, no part of her body, that held any secrets from him. She’d always told him he was wasted in patent law, that he should have been an artist. He’d say he wasn’t temperamental enough, and then they’d both laugh.

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.