“How’s this look to you?”

Kane glanced around, and his gaze was at once transfixed by the sight of the painted female’s fingers holding Raven’s folds wide apart. The brazenness of this display struck a deep nerve in him. He could smell her—blood and musk and human misery, combining to set him in an agreeable trance. The thought came to him that he owned this flesh, and he heard himself growl again, very softly.

The sound seemed to unnerve the painted female. She shifted her weight and her grip on her piercing tool flexed, but she held her ground, and more importantly, she kept her free hand where it was, spreading Raven for his hungry eyes. The mating feeds he had been watching had shown him that when female humans sexed with each other, they used their hands for pleasure-petting. This female’s touch was nothing like that. It was professional, almost indifferent. But it was easy to imagine how it might otherwise be, and that was a pleasant place to let Kane’s mind wander.

“Why do you do this?” he asked suddenly. His eyes still stared intently down at human fingers over female flesh.

“It’s a living. It’s just what I do.”

He was shaking his head already. “I meant, why do you humans put holes in yourself like this?”

He was aware of the painted female’s shrug, even though he didn’t raise his eyes to watch it.

“It feels good,” she said. “Some people like the piercing part even, but mostly it just feels good for…you know. Sex.”

“Do you have them?”

A long pause answered him. Kane did look at her then, and she flinched at the touch of his eyes before shrugging again. “I have a couple.”

“There?” Kane pointed at her hand, still displaying Raven’s swollen sex.

The painted female visibly steeled herself and said, “Yes,” in a bold voice. “And it does feel good. For sex. I especially like it when my guy goes down. You can do a lot with a clit ring and a tongue.”

Kane frowned, his eyes wandering back down to Raven’s pussy as he tried to puzzle out the meaning of those words. He touched the tip of one claw to the glittering ring crowning her core, and she shivered. He hooked it, very carefully, and gave a gentle tug. She screamed. Kane looked up at the painted female. “Show me.”

She flushed, blinking rapidly. “What?”

He snarled and leaned forward over Raven’s body to get within biting distance of her. She tried to yank back, but he caught her by the hair and held her in place. He waited out her first panicked seconds of struggle, and when she’d calmed down and could meet his eyes, he said it again. “Show me.”

Raven moaned, perhaps an objection, perhaps only an insensible sound of her pain. Kane patted her, watching the painted female react to his command. She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t look hugely unhappy, either. More than anything, she simply looked embarrassed. She squirmed around a little in his grip, but eventually, in stilted movements, she bent and pressed her mouth to Raven’s sex.

Kane felt an immediate hot jump in his own groin. Raven mewled around her gag and tried to bring her legs up and together, fighting her restraints. “Lie still,” he told her mechanically, and she obeyed, probably with the same mindlessness. Kane could see the female’s tongue licking and teasing. And sucking. He let go of her hair and leaned in a little closer.

The female raised her head slightly, her expression intent and somewhat flushed. “There, are you happy?” she asked. “Christ, did you really come all this way just to watch a girl go down?”

“No. But it’s worth watching.”

She muttered something out of Kane’s hearing and lapped again at Raven. “Why?”

“It’s not something we do,” he answered, and showed both rows of cruelly-pointed teeth. “Unless we know our partners very well.”

The female flinched, but only a little. Then she looked him square in the eye to say, “You should try it. Tasty.” She bent again, sucking and licking…biting. It was as if she were teasing him as much as Raven.

“I’ll take your word on it,” Kane said after a moment. “I’m not particularly interested in making her happy.”

“You make her happy, she’ll make you happy.”

“You open a few human skulls in front of her, she’ll do the same thing,” he replied. His hand rasped down between Raven’s breasts, stroking lightly at her sternum, feeling her heart race in human rhythm beneath. “I like this one,” he mused, and studied Raven’s face without smiling when she opened her eyes and gazed at him with dumb gratitude. “I like her…not just for fucking…but because I like her.”

“And they say romance is dead,” the female said wryly. She leaned back, rolling the nub of Raven’s clit between her fingers. It seemed to Kane that it had stiffened somewhat.

“Mm.” Kane watched the movements of that hand, his own pressing Raven flat as she wailed around her gag. “I don’t know the word. I can’t make out its meaning.”

“Romance,” the woman said again, and Kane bared his teeth at her.

“I can hear you,” he said with tight annoyance. “What does it mean?”

This time, the female didn’t flinch at all. “Love. You know that one? When you like someone a lot. When you want her to like you the same way. Don’t your people fall in love?”

“I suppose so.” Kane was vaguely but genuinely intrigued by the concept, albeit distracted by the metal gleaming in Raven’s wet cunt.

“You suppose? You don’t know?”

“I’ve spent most of my life in space,” Kane replied, taking absentminded note of the growing bravado in the female’s voice. “I’ve been to Earth more than I’ve been home. But yes, I’ve seen…affection. I suppose they felt love.”

“You suppose. That’s blows my mind. They don’t get married? They don’t have kids?”

“I don’t know those words. No, just shut up,” he said as she began to explain. “I think you’re done.”

Kane took the strap out of Raven’s mouth, worked an arm beneath her, and pulled her gently into a sitting position as the female undid the rest of her straps. “You did very well,” he told her, speaking Jotan so that she wouldn’t get too accustomed to sounds of praise, and she turned her face into his chest and wept a little, both hands pressed to her own sex, cradling herself and her pain.

“I need to take you through the care instructions,” the female was saying. “It’s important,” she added, as Kane turned an irritated eye on her. “You need some hypo-allergenic lotion and you need to rub it over the tattoos about every four hours to keep it from drying out for the first few days until the swelling goes down. Don’t rub, don’t scratch, don’t use soap and water or the ink might run. If it starts oozing or anything, use a dye-free antibiotic cream. As for the piercings, rotate the metal to keep it from crusting up and use a good hydrogen peroxide wash twice a day at least. This much metal, if you let an infection get started, you can be looking at some real damage, so be careful. Oh, and don’t take the piercings out for at least six weeks or they’ll heal up almost immediately. Got that?”

Kane gave Raven’s untouched arm a squeeze. “Did you understand that?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Kane nodded, although he suspected much of the rambling information the female had listed had to do with keeping Raven’s new body clean and free of infection, and when it came to that, he was reasonably sure he could do that better than anyone or anything on Earth. “All right,” he said, and lifted Raven off the table. He set her carefully down and kept his hand on her until she had hobbled a few steps and looked steady.

“Good?” the female asked.

“Good,” Kane said, and seized her by the hair, hauling her halfway over the little table and plucking the harvester from his pack.

“Wait!” she screamed, scrabbling at his hand, her kicking feet shattering rows of ink bottles behind her. “Wait! I won’t tell anyone about you! I promise! I swear I won’t!”