She stood up fast. It was perhaps unfair to say she sprang away, but neither was it wholly inaccurate. She went rapidly around the low table to the foot of the stairs and looked back at him.

He was bitterly prepared for fear, but it was not there. Her eyes were clear. Uncertain and deeply unnerved, but also intense and yes, desirous.

Tagen stood up.

“Good night,” she said. She turned away and went quickly up the stairs and into her room. The door shut resoundingly.

Tagen was on the second stair before he could fully comprehend that he had left the couch. He stopped there, his claws gouging at the banister, knowing that if he moved up another step, it would end with him in her room again, and this time, gods help him, he would have her. And that he would not do. When she was ready, she would ask him. He wanted her, but more even than that, he wanted her to want him.

Tagen turned around and stalked away from her, out the front door and into the warm night air. He walked fast, all the way to the edge of the wood, but could not avoid the golden light spilling from her window and could not clear his senses of the intoxication of her musk. And now…now he didn’t even want to.

Tagen leaned his back against the pillaring support of a tree and unfastened his breeches. He closed his hand around his shaft, his eyes sliding shut, and thrust into his fist. Slowly, slowly. He would have to be careful with her, gentle. She was so fragile, so small (his hand tightened), but he would be gentle. Like the human males on the late-hour video feeds, he would show her tenderness and care. And like the females, she would respond with cries, with moans. She would hold him against her. She would find her pleasure again and again before him.

Tagen locked his voice behind clenched jaws as he erupted out into the night.

Better, he thought, catching his breath and slowing his racing heart. At least it was acknowledged and out of his system. Maybe now he would be able to concentrate.

He glanced up at the house as he fastened his breeches again, and saw the light in Daria’s room switch off.

She was still awake. He could go to her right now, before she slept. He could knock. If she said nothing, he would know what it meant. But she might admit him. He had to do something.

‘If I want you in my room, I’ll leave the door open.’ The memory of her voice was as clear in his mind as if she were directly behind him.

He would not knock. When she was ready, she would invite him.

He would wait.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Thirteen

Tagen woke up with no suppressants. He looked anyway, staring for a long time into the empty bottle, punishing himself with the sight of it while Earth’s sun rose. He could feel the temperature rising, could actually feel it. Already.

He could only hide in the shower for so long. The water was cool, but the damp and the heat of the room began muggy and became smothering very soon. The rest of the house may be as hot, but least it was drier.

Tagen watched the media briefings as long as he could stand to. It was hot, and the images of persistent violence got in under his skin and stung at him like salt. He felt restless and irritable and eventually, he just had to get away from it all.

He went outside. He supposed it was hotter in full sun, but there was a breeze now and then and the air was free of the ever-present sting of disinfectants that clung to Daria’s home. He paced around the shaded side of the house, telling himself he was contemplating E’Var’s location, but in truth unable to concentrate or even form a coherent thought. He was walking just to walk, and all the while, the shade shrank and the sun burned down.

At last, he permitted himself to be defeated and he went to the kitchen for iced water. He paced rapidly around the kitchen as he drank, and then sat down at the table in the corner to chew the ice. There, exhaustion fell in on him all at once, leadening his limbs and stealing the breath from his lungs. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out heat along with light. It was psychological, all of it. He could not go into Heat so soon.

He wanted to shoot something. Not out of malice. Not even to do harm, and certainly not to a living thing. But just to have weight and resistance in his killing hand, to hear the whine of fire and see something break and burn. To have damage that was physical, damn it all. To have something real before him and see it shatter. To exorcize his mood with effects he could see.

The heat. Damn this hell-shat heat!

“I’ve been looking for you all over!”

Tagen flinched and snarled hard, and Daria’s strident voice cut itself off while the last word still hung in the air. He dragged his eyes open and glanced around, knowing he should apologize, but unable to muster the motivation. She was standing in the doorway behind him, looking nervous.

“Where have you been?” she asked timidly.

“Out.” He glared into his glass. Some of the ice had already melted. He drank.

Daria continued to stand and watch him. The longer she did so, the more her sweat seemed to permeate the air.

He didn’t feel like ignoring her any more than he felt like watching the tee-vee. He raised his head and stared back at her, letting his eyes drink in what his nostrils could scent—a female, young and healthy. What matter that she was alien? She was here.

Daria stepped back under the directness of his gaze and her face first lost color and then gained it back in shades of pink. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Was he okay? Hmmm.

“Do you have a headache?”

“No.”

“Well…” She shivered and then sparked with that fear-born anger and stalked over to the sink. “Well then, stop staring at me.”

Tagen chewed on ice, letting his eyes trail down her narrow back to the sensual swell of her hocks.

“While you were out, I was busy,” she announced, “trying to find your guy on the internet.”

Tagen said nothing. She glanced back as if to determine he was still there, still listening, and when she saw his steady gaze, she flustered. “What did you find?” he asked, forestalling her.

“F-find what?” She blinked rapidly and then cut her eyes at the computer and rallied. “Nothing,” she said, and somehow made it an accusation. “I found a whole lot of it, too. You know what? I don’t think your guy’s on Earth.”

“Hm.”

“So you can leave,” she said, and set her jaw against him.

He found the look, unusually assertive for her, intensely arousing.

The pink of her cheeks darkened to red. She turned her back on him. “You can’t live here,” she said curtly. “Your guy is dead. Go home.”

“No.”

She went rigid so suddenly, so completely, that it was as if she’d had been shot. The muscles of her arms stood out in sharp relief, but she did not face him. Tagen realized that she thought he was going to come for her. She expected him to come for her right now, right here in the kitchen, and…and do what, exactly? Oh, he knew what he wanted to do, but what did she imagine?

The same thing, probably. For a long, black moment, Tagen was tempted to do it. He would stand up and cross the room, just to see what she would do. She would panic, or perhaps she would not. Perhaps, in the extremity of her expectations and terror, she would instead submit.

Tagen raised a hand hooked into claws and held it before his face, shaking with the urge to strike out, even at himself. Pain would be welcome respite from this damned maddening irritation. When it passed at last, it took all the strength from his body with it.

He slumped forward, heavy and exhausted, and stared down at the tabletop. “He is here,” he said. “I know he is here.”