“It’s like she said. She’s been a bitch longer. I’m learning a lot.” Raven pressed herself against his chest and he let her, although he didn’t make a single welcoming move, not even when she kissed him. But when she moved her mouth to his ear and breathed, “I’m learning more from you, I think. How much do you think you’ll get when you sell her?” he finally bared his teeth in a grin.

“Fifty crona,” he muttered back. “Easy.” He drew the word out into a purring sort of snarl and bit her gently on the neck. His arm came up, pulling her tight against him, but only for a moment. “We eat,” he said, pushing her away. “Ichuta’a, thank Raven for letting you stay.”

Raven met the simmering hatred and helpless confusion in Sue-Eye’s face without flinching. Clearly, Kane wasn’t the only one caught off-guard by her response. She waited.

“Thank you,” Sue-Eye said.

“You don’t sound like you mean it,” Raven said, and was emboldened by Kane’s tolerant laughter.

Sue-Eye’s mouth thinned. “Thank you,” she said again, and did a much better job of disguising the flat hostility. Her gaze flicked past to Kane. “Shall we kiss and make up?” she inquired.

Raven’s stomach clenched, but she didn’t dare look to see Kane’s answer. She was afraid of making any move that might seem to him like encouragement, but she was afraid even more, even now, that if he saw her reluctance, he’d make her do it just to show her he was still boss.

Kane was quiet for what felt like a very long time. Suddenly, a snarl. “No,” he said sourly. “No. We eat. Then we go. And keep your hungry hands off her, ichuta’a. Today, I am for Raven. Today, she is for me. If you want to fuck, I’ll find you someone else.”

It was gratifying to see Sue-Eye pale so fast. “No,” the blonde said. “I’ll wait. I’ll wait for you, Kane.”

“Good.” He walked between them, giving Sue-Eye a slap on the ass and letting his other hand caress Raven’s thigh as he passed. “Get dressed, both of you. Let’s move.”

*

The sounds of people moving around in the next room woke Tagen early. Grendel, shut away in the bathroom the previous night so that it could not complicate the matter of mating by leaping onto the bed at inopportune times, acknowledged the muffled commotion by sending out several minutes’ worth of yowling complaints. There was no use in trying to quiet the animal. Knocking on the wall would only encourage its vocalizations. When the cat finally quieted, Tagen pulled Daria into the curl of his body and resettled himself, filling his nostrils with the scent of her. The crowd next door finally left, and he shut his eyes and prepared to find sleep again.

Daria’s fingertips fluttered over his hand on her belly. She made a sleepy sound of pleasure and turned to him, smiling. “I could get used to waking up like this,” she said.

So could he. He had never slept with a mate before, unless one counted Heat-seasons of the past when he had collapsed of pain and exhaustion atop a heap of sweat-soaked, faceless bodies. Recreationally, however, sex ended when it ended. He found the human habit of lying together afterwards a soothing one. Hot, but soothing.

“Do you want to get up?” she asked. “Scare up a little breakfast maybe? There’s a waffle house right next door.”

“My brave human,” Tagen growled, his eyes still shut.

“I could keep from freaking out too badly,” she protested. “Long enough to order, anyway. We couldn’t eat there, of course.”

“Of course.”

“It’s your hands I’m thinking of when I say that, you know, not my nerves.”

“You think of everything.”

“Want me to go?”

“No.” His arm tightened on her waist.

Her tone turned teasing. “Want me to load up the car?”

“No.”

“Want me to—”

“I want you to lie quiet.”

“—bite you on the chin?” she finished.

He thought about it. “I’m not certain,” he said finally. “Perhaps you should, and I will thus know for myself.”

She shifted around until she faced him fully, and then wrapped her arms around him and let her teeth graze lightly over his sensitive throat, nipping agreeably until she worked her way to her target. She bit slowly, sending a shiver down through his senses, a far more effective wake-up than even his neighbor’s leave-taking had been. She drew her teeth a little apart without removing them from his flesh and let her tongue flutter at him before biting again, just a little harder this time.

Tagen drew in a breath, released it in a growl, and said, “Do I kiss as well as you bite?”

“I don’t know. You’re an awfully good kisser.” She ran her teeth across the curve of his jaw, over his chin, to bite him on the other side. She did that thing with her tongue again, too, and even sucked briefly, bringing blood right to the fore before biting down.

Tagen groaned with pleasure, his hips arching up, and then drew back and smiled at her. Her hair was fetchingly mussed and her eyes were gleaming with good humor. He was struck all over again by her alien beauty, her delicate features, and that alluring half-mask of white lace. On impulse, he tucked his head and kissed her scars, tasting her, letting himself explore her with the same sense mystery and intensity of that first time. When he finally worked his way to her mouth, she received him eagerly.

As her hands scratched sensuously down his chest, it occurred to Tagen that when he got around to filing an official report, there were one or two details he might have to gloss over. Any of the admiration and respect he might garner for accepting this mission on a hostile world would diminish greatly as soon as his supporters learned he’d spent so much of his time sexing with this beautiful human.

But the threat to his career was, literally, light-years away. Daria was here now, her mouth was against his, her hands were winding their way down his body to his stiffening shaft, and her musk was a perfume of immediacy in the air he breathed. Not for all the medals in the Fleet would he unhand her now.

The pleasures of her slender body far outweighed her size, but in the coolness of early morning, he could exert the formidable control it required to test them fully. He forced himself to be content with just the touching of her, ignoring the strident demands of his own body to thoroughly engage hers. And he spoke to her, telling her all that he loved about the needful flesh of her-the swell of her breasts so perfectly filling his palms, the feel of her lips moving with his, the silken slide of her legs twining around him, the scent of her hair as it curtained them both. There was never enough to tell her; there was always something more that deserved to be said aloud. He whispered to her of the miracle she was, the seductress, the goddess, using his language when he did not know enough of hers, until finally she could not resist his words. Once she had accepted them, she became the essence and ideal; she opened to him as a goddess and he joined with her in that otherworldly bliss.

The sex could not have lasted as long as it seemed, but the sex was almost incidental. The passion eclipsed even sensation. He imagined he could feel her pleasure as much as his own, and what he gave her, he gave with increasing wonder until his thoughts were themselves wiped clean by the pure light of consuming fulfillment.

She lowered herself with that serene smile until she lay curled atop him, and her weight on him was a pleasure all its own. He did not have to ask if she had come to passion; he could still feel the hum of her release passing through her and into him. He held her, still joined to her, and dozed.

“Now do you want to eat?” Daria said drowsily, her breath puffing warm on his chest.

“Yes,” he said. “Now, I do.”

“Well, now I don’t feel much like moving, so you’re out of luck, spaceman.”