“Rotten day to have to walk fifteen miles into town,” the human remarked with a sun-ward glance.

“True.”

“I guess I could be persuaded to give you a ride for a few bucks.”

“I don’t have a few bucks.” Kane heard his groundcar’s door open and Raven’s footsteps crunching on gravel. He watched the human look past him as she approached. The human seemed a little unpinned by the addition of Raven, but he recovered quickly.

“Ah, what the hell.” The human gave a wave to the inside of his groundcar. “Hop in.”

Kane smiled wide and stepped back, catching Raven’s arm and towing her out of easy listening range. “Get my pack,” he said, and quietly added, “Sit with him and keep him distracted.”

“How distracted?” she asked, looking nervous. “Do…Do I have to…?”

“No, I’m going to kill him.” Kane paused and cocked his head at her, teasing. “Why, do you want to…?” He raised his eyebrows to emphasize the unspoken and snapped his teeth at her.

She recoiled so cutely that he couldn’t resist leaning in and nipping at her jaw. “Just distract him,” he said, and got into the car behind the human.

“That your girlfriend?” the human asked, watching Raven jog away.

“Just someone I picked up.”

“Really? Well. Some of that going around, I guess.”

Raven came moments later with his pack in hand and joined the driver in the front seat. “Hi,” she said.

“Well, hi.” The human started up his engines and pulled out onto the road. “So. Where you two headed?”

“West,” Kane said.

“San Francisco,” Raven added, tugging her skirt up a little higher. “At least, that was the plan. Now that the car’s dead, who knows? This isn’t the best hitching weather.”

“I hear ya.”

The humans chatted and Kane listened just closely enough to ascertain that Raven wasn’t slipping in any warnings. Mostly, he watched the driver in the console mirror, smiling whenever their eyes met.

“Well now, sounds like you’ve for sure got your problems,” the driver said, and Kane detected a faint strain beneath the casual tones. “Now, I could drop you in Tallahook easy enough. It’s right on my way, maybe fifteen miles. But I’m headed to Portland myself.”

“Really?” Raven glanced back at Kane.

“It’s not all the way for you folks,” the human continued, in that same too-hearty tone that spoke all kinds of warnings to one who was listening for it. “But it’s halfway at least, and you shouldn’t have any trouble catching a ride from there.”

“That’d be great,” Raven said.

Kane waited.

“So I’m thinking,” the human said carefully, and cleared his throat. “I’m thinking, what’s that worth to you?”

“We’re…kind of low on cash,” Raven said, sending swift glances in Kane’s direction.

“Did you have cash in mind?” Kane asked pleasantly.

The human uttered a self-effacing sort of laugh. “Well, no sir, I did not. But there’s still time for me to stop you off in Tallahook, if you’d rather. But I am offering to tote you a couple hundred miles for free.” He shrugged, still smiling, but plainly nervous. “I’ve got no diseases and I’m not a weirdo. I’ll even wear a condom if you will.”

“If—” Raven stuttered to a stop and then turned all the way around and stared at Kane.

Kane looked back at her. Something in the set of her eyes told him the driver had changed the game slightly.

“What do you say?” the human pressed. “We can send your girl here out to a movie and you and me…” He shrugged again, watching Kane closely in the console mirror.

Comprehension came home to Kane. He rubbed his jaw to hide the smile breaking free of him and when he was quite sure laughter wouldn’t leak into his voice, he said, “I’m going to have to insist my girl stay with me. Strange town, you understand.”

“If it don’t bother you, it don’t bother me,” the human said. He was relaxing, grinning in the way of a man who had made a blind leap and found solid ground instead of space beneath his feet.

“She does amazing blowjobs,” Kane informed him and settled back in his seat. “There’s no reason she should have to sit and watch. We can take you together.”

“I…That’d be fine.” The human drove, his hands clenching on the wheel. “Hot damn,” he said after a moment.

“In fact, there’s no reason we should have to wait at all, is there?” Kane smiled at the mirror, where the human’s eyes were on him. “Pull us over.”

“What, here?” The human licked his lips. “Now?”

“If you want.” Kane leaned forward, letting his breath tickle at the human’s ear. “I want.”

The groundcar’s wheels screeched as the vehicle found a turn off the main road and into the woods.

“Back,” Kane said. “Well back. I want to be loud.”

“You got it,” the human said hoarsely.

Kane cocked his arm over the back seat and watched the road disappear behind him. He glanced back and saw Raven staring at him. He showed her his fangs in a cheerful smile and she blinked.

The human parked and Kane got out. “Pack, Raven,” he said mildly, and shut his door.

The human stepped over to him, his face flushed with excitement, and Kane leaned against the side of the car and smiled invitingly. Personally, he would never understand why any male would want to fuck another one when there was a perfectly good female standing right there, but there was something genuinely inspiriting in knowing such a male wanted Kane. He hooked his thumb into the fasten-seam of his pants, and the human’s eyes went straight to it. The human knelt.

Kane held out his hand as the human tugged awkwardly at his fastens and Raven put his pack strap into it. By the time he had his harvester out and loaded, the human had finally managed to work out the way his clothing opened. Kane got to hear the swift, awe-filled breath the human took as he saw Kane’s cock, and then the end came in a snap of bone.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Kane remarked as the body thumped over on its back. He dug the gland he needed out of the mass of brain matter and let dopamine collect drop by drop. “Flattering as all hell, though.”

Raven snickered. “For a second there, I actually thought you were going to do it.”

“Fucking is fucking,” Kane said with a flick of his claws. “So my father said, and I believe him. But a man is permitted preferences and mine is for pussy. If I haven’t managed to make that plain enough, then clearly, I need to be fucking you more often.”

Raven’s smile faded.

Kane ejected the emptied gland and returned his harvester to his pack. He slung it over his shoulder, freeing his hands to fasten himself back up. “We need to get going before I get hot.”

This was Raven’s cue to search the body, but she didn’t do it immediately. She did bend at last, coming away with the groundcar’s keys and more of the green paper the humans used for money, but then she paused again. Her expression was fetchingly cautious.

Kane laughed, slinging the dead human out of the groundcar’s turning arc. “What is it, Raven? Are you afraid you hurt my feelings?”

“Did I?” she asked, surprising him with her every appearance of sincerity.

“No.” He went to her, searching her face curiously for the meaning behind this strange line of questioning. “Were you trying to?”

“It’s an insult here.”

“What is?”

“To say a guy’s gay when he isn’t.”

Kane left aside the incomprehensibility of that premise to pursue the greater point as he saw it. “Is that what you said?”

“No.” She thought about it, visibly searching her memories. “No,” she said again, with more confidence. “But—”

His hand slipped out beneath her skirt and cupped her sex, mindful of her piercings. “But what?” he murmured.

She sucked in breath and looked at him shakily. “That hurts.”

“Mm hm.” He eased his finger past her steel-ringed folds and inside her. “Go on.”

She didn’t. She stared straight ahead, her muscles locked, as he worked his hand carefully at and in her. It wasn’t long before he’d drawn moisture from her unwilling body, and her face betrayed it with an unhappy wince. “I wish you wouldn’t,” she whispered.