“What were you thinking?” Incredulous. Disbelieving. Damned near to panic.
“It is the heat.”
“The what?” She drew away from him, her hands curling back into protective fists, as though the bulge pushing hard against his clothing were a disease she could catch if she came too near.
“The heat.” His hand was shaking with the need to assuage himself. “My kind…I have no choice. It is the heat.”
“Can’t you…do something else about it?”
Yes, he could throw her down on this table and—
Tagen bared his teeth and snarled the thought away, sending Daria flying back in a staggering leap, out of her chair and halfway to the door. “I have been taking something…a kind of medicine, you might call it. I was not prepared for ninety days of your summer. Who could possibly expect that?” he added in a furious rush.
She came an edgy step forward, allured by vulnerability, perhaps. He imagined he could smell her sex musk, and his claws gouged deeper into the table. Her eyes were still frightened, anxious and unreasoning, and it came out of her, as he knew it would, in anger. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?” she demanded, almost shouting at him. “I have a goddamned air conditioner! I could have found the money somehow to get it repaired if I’d known you were going to jack yourself off in my goddamned kit—”
Tagen lifted his head and glared back into her eyes, clenching his jaw as though he could bite his own answering anger in the throat before it escaped him. “Do not shout at me,” he said, very quietly. “I cannot help it any more than the color of my hair.”
Now she flinched, hard, and looked away. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her hands began to twist at themselves. “I’m sorry. I know you can’t.”
No. No more than she could help her unreasoning, persistent fear. Tagen put out one hand, splayed for apology, and Daria uttered a shrieking little gasp and slapped it away, showing the whites of her eyes in panic.
Tagen’s patience snapped, almost audibly (although the cold, even voice of his dark heart remarked that as long as she was aware of him and frightened anyway, he might as well give her something to fight against and get himself relief as well). He shoved himself away from the table and immediately pushed the heel of his hand against his loins, stroking hard up and down along his length, baring his teeth at her in fury. “I cannot help it. Do you think I would come into your house if I had any other choice? Do you think I want to see that look in your eyes, or hear my name as you curse?”
He advanced on her, stalking her, exaggerating the sliding, squeezing grip of his hand and she retreated with such speed that her bare feet slipped out from under her and sent her in a heavy sprawl over the stone tiles. He reached for her and caught her arm, and she screamed, just once, with wordless terror. Tagen flexed his claws, staring down at her with some evil desire to hurt her as much as he was able, and then he hauled her up and set her roughly on her feet.
“If it comes as any comfort to you,” he snarled, his mouth twisted in mockery of a smile. “It hurts more than I have words to say. You can think of me…copping a feel and know that I am screaming.”
He turned away from her without another word, staggered up to his room, and slammed the door.
*
Daria cried herself dry of panic at the kitchen table. It took a long time, and when the storm passed, she got up and went sickly down into the laundry room and ran a load of linens. She organized her tool shelves as they washed. She readied three dozen planting pots as they dried, just in case she decided to plant something in the fall. She folded sheets and pillow shams, staring at the empty wall and forcing herself not to think. Her heart was a stone in her chest.
She went upstairs to put the clean towels on the shelf and heard, through the wall and over the drone of the TV downstairs, a muffled, gasping cry from Tagen’s room.
Know that I am screaming.
She stumbled back downstairs to the kitchen, as far as she could get from the anguished sounds he was making. She paced over the stone tiles, her hands digging at each other and her blood pounding in her ears.
He couldn’t help it. God, you had only to look at him to know that was true. She’d never seen anyone so far from horny in her whole life. She’d never seen anyone hurt so much. And she’d never seen anything so big straining at the front of someone’s pants.
Horror clenched at her again, that same old mindless panic. She rubbed at the bad side of her face, hating herself, hating the weakness that rode her like a rabid baboon on her back. There’s a man in the house and he’s going to get me. Sooner or later, he’s going to get me. The only thing worse than hearing that dull, mechanical drone eat up your brain when you knew it wasn’t true was suddenly facing the possibility that it might be true, it really might be.
‘It’s just the heat. He said so. It was nothing personal. Just the heat.’
She picked up the phone and the yellow pages, and looked up air conditioner repairmen. She called them all. It took two hours. The best offer she got was still better than a thousand dollars, and the soonest he could come would be some time in September. She made the appointment, knowing Tagen wouldn’t still be around, out of penance.
The TV was still on. She got up numbly and went to watch it, rubbing her stomach and wishing she had the nerve to go upstairs.
And do what? There were only so many times she could apologize before it lost all meaning. Besides…what if she interrupted him? What would he do? What would he expect?
She could see herself pressed facedown on the sofa-bed, her hands twisting in the sheets and her mouth open in silent screams. She could see her body rocking in the short, brutal jerks of his fucking. She could see it all, clear as day, and knowing he’d never do it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. She’d seen him look at her. She’d pretended not to for as long as she could, and then she’d pretended not to know why, but the clock was striking midnight now and it was time for the masks to come off. She’d seen more than idle curiosity in his covert gaze.
Yeah, and she’d done more than feign ignorance. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, right? And the truth was, hadn’t she liked it just a little when she felt his discrete stare gliding down her body? Hadn’t she found reasons to bend over or reach up, reasons to keep her back turned and her eyes occupied so he could really get in a good long look? And when she was up in the small hours of the night, hadn’t she heard the bad jazz of premium cable soft-core porn and felt that little sting of triumph, knowing he was watching and thinking, however absentmindedly, of her?
And now she was freaking out at the thought of him hard and hurting, when she had been so pleased, however secretly, at the idea that he found her desirable. When she’d spied on his naked body and thrilled to see it. When she had been curious, however uneasily, at what it might be like to be held by him. That wasn’t just neurotic, that was hypocritical and stupid.
Miserable, Daria sat down on the couch and stared into the open, pitiless eye of the television. It was still on CNN, Tagen’s second-favorite show of all time. Two reporters were grimly rehashing the morning report.
“—still have no suspects in what police are calling the Dog Pack murders, which occurred fifteen miles east of Blue Ridge and took the lives of thirty-six people. The bodies were found early yesterday afternoon and police believe the murders occurred the previous night in a gang-related execution-style spree. Although some of the victims were shot to death, many others were bound with duct tape and then killed with what has been described as a hooked instrument or pry bar. Sources at the crime scene have informed us that sufficient force was used to crack the skull of the victims into two pieces, and that pieces of the brain were ritually removed and left at the scene. Investigators refused to confirm this report, and instead said they are actively pursuing leads. We’ll have more on this shocking story as it develops, but first, a look at the local news.”
