Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

Chapter Eighteen

Another day, pulling him by force from sleep with the itching and aching of his tsesac before the sun was even high. Tagen struggled upright against the sodden skin of his sheets and clapped a hand to his brow. When he drew it down over his face, sweat came off him in streams.

He had already lost one struggle to Heat this morning, but he was not ready to succumb to it again. He would battle with it. Escape to a cold shower, hide in the shade downstairs, try to ignore the urgent demands of his body until he surrendered in fury and in secret.

Battle, yes, but there could be no victory. He would be defeated sooner or later, and he would have to hide, muffling himself with pillows while he struggle to empty himself of burning seed before Daria—

Tagen’s frustration exploded him in a snarl and he threw an arm over his eyes to mask them. Why wait? Why torture himself for hours yet to avoid raising her alarms? He terrified her already. No amount of respectful distance was ever going to woo her to him.

Damn her. Damn her! She could not disguise her body’s cravings, but at least for her, they were only cravings. She had crept behind his door and stolen sight of him as he dressed, but she did not come to him. She sat beside him in a halo of mating musk, looking, lingering, but would not touch him. And of course, she had run from his first cautious overture and shut herself in the utility room.

So that left him here, alone in his borrowed bed with the thought of her burning behind his closed eyes. Dark fantasies and frustration, and those alone until either Heat was done or E’Var found. He would not make a slave of her just to have flesh. To force a female was high among the most contemptible crimes Tagen could imagine, but it was more than morality that restrained him. Somewhere inside her, and not very deeply buried, Daria Cleavon believed he would attack her. Heat-ravaged though he was, he would not prove her right.

But it was her he had thought of when Heat first took him this morning. It was her musk he had remembered and her body he had imagined. It was her name that had burst incandescent in his mind as his true-cum emptied and Heat was relieved for a few more precious hours. It was her who had followed him into dreams, to mate with him again and again.

And it was her step in the hall right outside that he heard now, rousing him from his fitful doze. She went into the bathroom and rattled around, loudly sterilizing every surface until the acidic scent of disinfectant came through the cracks in Tagen’s door. He listened, knowing he would have to go into that room soon enough. He was getting a headache already.

She finished shortly and went back downstairs, but not without hesitating. The day was wearing on and he had not emerged from his room. Soon, she would come knocking, offering him food and drink he could not taste, infuriating him with her nearness, her desire, and her fear. He had to get up before she trapped him here, with pools of his seed still warm on his bedding.

Tagen rose, gathered fresh clothing from his sparse stores, and went to the newly-aseptic privy to clean himself and his sheets. He could not bear to fully dress afterwards; the human’s pants alone covered him, and if his bare chest bothered Daria, so be it. Let her be bothered for a change.

He hung his sheet out the window to dry and headed for the stairs. Daria came up them as he went down, carrying the device she called a ‘vacuum’. She looked at him and her cheeks colored. Then she ducked her head and passed him, leaving a trail of musk behind her to aggravate Tagen’s Heat-heightened senses.

He paused on the lowest step to look after her, indulging in a pleasant fantasy of pursuit. In her darkened room, with all the cool ocean colors around him, he would catch her. Now. Before Heat had a chance to sink down into his senses again, while he could still be gentle enough to ease her to passion in the slow way that humans required. He would sway her, and she would have him.

But she did not so much as glance behind her as she climbed. She disappeared into her room and soon the roar of the vacuum sounded. Grendel came spilling out a second later, all his fur on end.

Tagen commiserated with the cat’s pique. He picked the animal up and carried it into the kitchen to feed it. He knew Daria must have offered it a meal already, but damn it, Tagen needed to have something in this house fawn over him. Tagen assembled a line ration out of bread and meat, and shared it out with Grendel as he sat in the shade in the corner. The cat ate, and then leapt up on Tagen’s lap, clawing at his chest and butting its head into Tagen’s jaw, purring. If only bologna had the same effect on humans.

Tagen rubbed at the cat’s nose, neck, and tail, and then set it down on the tiles and stood up. He had little time before Heat returned. He had to use it wisely.

Tagen knew he should be watching the media feeds, but he lingered in the kitchen. Daria’s computer beckoned. Beside it, the loose fan of pages she’d made for him. She’d marked several listings.

Tagen traced his claw over her messy alien letters, wishing he could read them. She was working so hard. If E’Var was anywhere on this world, she would find him. He believed that. She had a keen intellect and an ability to deduce that Tagen genuinely admired. Hers was not a military mind, but it was a ready one, and it complemented his perfectly.

If he knew how to voice this, would it matter? One of the programs he had seen on the tee-vee had a female who had refused a mate because he wanted her body and not her mind. Tagen did want Daria’s body, he wouldn’t even try to think otherwise, but it had been his high regard of her mind that had allowed him to see her as desirable and not merely human. Perhaps—

He could not do this. It was pointless and it was depressing, and with Heat searing in his blood, it was also torturous.

Tagen poured himself a glass of water and added two handfuls of ice. He hesitated, hating the unprofessionalism of it, and then surrendered and took a last ice cube and rubbed it over the back of his neck.

Bliss.

As the ice melted under his palm, Tagen did his best to cool as much of his body as possible. His chest, his shoulders, his stomach—ice burned a path down and around him while he concentrated just on keeping his mind free of the female who obsessed him.

“Oh!”

Daria. Tagen flinched and the ice slipped between his fingers and broke on the floor. He backed up and Daria grabbed a towel and came to clean it. He hadn’t even heard her come to the doorway.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” She knelt at his feet, mopping at the shards of ice and drops of water as though it were unrefined oil.

On her knees.

Tagen swallowed hard, his eyes fixed on the rocking movements of her body. The itching of his tsesac became more insistent. He turned away, taking his glass to the table, where he could better hide the hardening of his shaft. If he retreated too suddenly, she might follow. He would wait, and she would eventually wander off to clean something, freeing him to withdraw to his room and lock the door.

“Have you got a minute?” Daria asked, rising and dropping her towel in the sink.

Would it be too suspicious a thing to say no? Before he could decide, Daria added, “I may have found some things.”

“Truly?”

Daria’s hesitance was a hopeful thing. The slow nod with which she finally answered was so heartening that even Heat was driven from Tagen’s mind. She had found something. She really thought she had.

“Tell me.”

She crossed the room, bringing with her the maddening perfume of her sweat, shot through with lingering traces of musk, and Tagen stared into his drink and thought disjointed thoughts of touching, of taking. She sat at her computer, not with him at the table, and he supposed that was for the best, but it tore at him anyway. He closed his eyes, thinking that it would be a natural enough thing to rise, to go and stand behind her as she looked into the screen of her computer, perhaps even to place his hand on her shoulder.

“Okay, so I went back to Deathwatch and picked through the archives for the last thirty days. That’s a little bit further back than even you told me to go, but I figure better safe than sorry.”

Indeed. Better safe than sorry. He stayed where he was.

She continued to talk, but the words blurred out of comprehension. Heat had him, and there was a female here. Seeing her, smelling her, was an agony all its own.

Tagen wanted to go back upstairs, back to the privacy of his room and his bed, to empty himself for another short span, enough time perhaps to see out the remains of this day. If there was any sympathy in the Divine Will that governed this universe, perhaps it would cool down enough not to re-stimulate his tsesac after it was drained. And perhaps it would stay cool throughout the next day.

And perhaps E’Var would let himself in through Daria’s front door, already in binders, and surrender himself to be taken home. As long as he was wishing, why not go big?

He focused again on the words coming out of Daria’s mouth. Everything she was doing, she did for him. She deserved more of his attention. He felt guilty, but it did not keep the sweat from rolling down his back or the itch from sinking deep into his tsesac as it churned, swollen with seed. His hand strayed beneath the table to press on his stiffening shaft. It hurt to touch himself, but the pain was better than the endless, mindless itch.

“…finally got it narrowed down to just violent death where the weapon is not proven, although you can see that the cops are making some guesses. Like, there’s this spree of camper-killings over here. Most of them say cause of death was blunt force trauma or an axe, but the first two were just your basic dead people. The guy was beat to death against a tree, and the girl drowned, but only after she ‘sustained massive sexual trauma’. Hopefully it was after. I don’t know, though. Is your guy E’Var a rapist?”

Heat. Carefully, Tagen said, “I would not know. My knowledge of his activities is limited to those employed on-world.”

“Okay, well, so my keywords were ‘violent’, ‘massive’, ‘severe’, ‘head’ and ‘brain’, but, as you can see, I still turned up a whole lot of shootings and stabbings and stuff. I’m afraid to whittle it down any further because I don’t want to accidentally screen his stuff out.”

“Understandable.”

“So let’s pretend that these campers are his. The time’s about right. Then we have some random body dumpings along the highway…those could be his. And there’s two guys in a trailer park, but I don’t know…something about that one doesn’t sound like our guy. And someone took an axe to a post office, but I think that’s just your basic postal problem. There’s two blunt force to the heads at a playground, but I’d think you’d need a mature human hypothalamus for this drug of yours, so I’m kind of discounting that one. But this, though…this one I think is a match. Someone went to a bar in Blue Ridge and killed everyone inside. More than thirty people.”

Tagen sat up a little straighter, winced, and pressed his hand a little harder on himself, resisting the urge to begin rubbing. “How would that be possible, even for E’Var? Someone must have struggled, shouted.”

“Yeah, well, whoever it was shot the place up pretty good. When guns start going off, it’s human nature to hit the deck. That might have made it pretty easy for him to get everyone else under control.”

Tagen was shaking his head, closing his eyes again. “No, that would never be E’Var. What could it possibly profit him to use a gun on humans?”

“He only shot some of the people,” Daria replied. “The others, quote, sustained massive cranial trauma with an unknown instrument, end-quote. In other words, someone bashed in the back of their heads. Tied them up, it says, and went one by one down the line. It doesn’t specifically say that parts of the hypothalamus were removed, but then, the cops’ll probably want to keep that little tidbit to themselves.”

“Why?”

“To weed out false confessors. And don’t ask,” she said, as he opened his mouth. “I don’t know why anyone would want to confess to a crime they didn’t commit, but people do, and cops have to keep secrets to keep from running wild goose chases all day long. That’s just how it is.”

“Wild goose chase,” Tagen echoed. He liked the sound of that, even though he didn’t know the second word. It had a crazed, frenetic feel to it. He knew exactly what it would feel like. Wasn’t he on one right now? “And do the police claim to have a suspect?”

“Funny you should ask. They say they’re investigating leads, but they always say that when they don’t have the slightest idea where to start looking. But they also say that the attack was gang related because all the victims were associated with a biker gang called the Dog Pack. I don’t know. My instincts say this is our boy, but it could just be a…Are you copping a feel on yourself?”

Tagen eyes snapped open wide and he yanked his hand up above the table. Heat immediately poured in to fill the place his grip had been and he bent almost double, digging furrows into the tabletop to stop himself from seizing his swelling shaft again.

He was caught. He flicked his eyes at her, saw her bewilderment turning aghast, and stared stonily at the table. He could feel himself throbbing to full erection, chafing at his tight coverings well beyond the point of mere pain.

“Jesus, man!” he heard her say, and he closed his eyes. “We don’t…we don’t do that out in the open!”

“I know.”

“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.”

The second reporter waited until the camera turned on him and then solemnly said, “Authorities were called to a local hardware store earlier this morning when a full-scale riot broke out after store managers refused to honor rain checks issued for air-conditioners. Over fifteen people rushed the warehouse of the D-I-Y Depot, knocking over dozens of displays and stealing merchandise, as well as assaulting employees. Two victims were taken to the hospital and released after treatment.”

The screen chanced to show a man in a store apron, his face still chalky with shock. There was a bloody scratch on his forehead, and one of the lenses of his glasses was cracked. “Air conditioners are considered a seasonal item by the district operators and I don’t have any control over ordering or shipping them,” he was saying. “I issued those rain checks in good faith, but the backlog on those items was…was pretty long, and at a certain date, seasonal items just aren’t restocked. I tried to explain that and offer refunds, but they…they…just swarmed me.”

Another screen change, this time to a furious-looking woman in a sweat-damp tank top. “I’ve been on that waiting list since the beginning of June and now they tell me they’re not getting any more?! They’re getting leaf blowers! They’re getting plastic pumpkins! It’s the middle of July! It’s a hundred and eight degrees outside! I’ve got kids!”

Daria switched off the television and rubbed at her forehead. She was sweating. This had to be hell for Tagen. But what was she supposed to do about it?

The thought brought back a crushing nausea and Daria got up and wandered back to the kitchen, fighting tears. Tagen had really picked a prize when he came to her for help.

She cleaned up the dishes drying sticky on the table and put them in the dishwasher. She wiped down the countertops, the cupboard faces, and then cleaned out the sink. She still felt sick and stuffy-headed, so she ran a bucket of mop water powerful enough to make her eyes water. She got on her hands and knees and started scrubbing the kickboards, letting the pine-oil scented steam blow out and fill her senses.

“Oh Gods, must you?”

She turned, hugging the scrubber to her chest, and saw Tagen in the doorway. He was bare-chested, physically dripping sweat, and he was pinching the bridge of his nose with the world’s worst headache painted across his face for the whole Earth to see.

“Sorry,” she said, and quickly began to gather the cleaning supplies. “I’ll open a window.”

When she returned from dumping her mop bucket, Tagen was sitting at the table, popping ice cubes from the tray one at a time and pressing them to his brow. His eyes were closed. He looked more than merely hot and hurt and tired. He looked like he was dying.

“I tried to call a repairman for the air conditioner,” she said. “It’s…not going to happen.”

He did not look up or respond in any way.

“They don’t have any in the stores right now, either,” she continued. “So we’re stuck with the heat.” Her hand was rubbing at the side of her face. She made it drop, and stuffed it into her pocket for good measure. “Tagen, I’m sorry. If I’d only known, I—”

“You would have done exactly what you did.” Now he looked at her, and the complete lack of accusation in his face was somehow the worst thing he could have done to hurt her. “You would have blamed me. Cursed me.”

“I was wrong. You didn’t deserve it.”

“I know.” His eyes slid shut again. He found another handful of ice blindly and brought it to his chest, rubbing slowly. “But that does not seem to stop you.”

Daria went to the freezer, blinking back tears, and brought him a bag of frozen peas. When she put it on the back of his neck, he hissed and leaned into her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I keep forgetting you’re here to help me. Like you said, E’Var is hunting throw-away humans and you’re right. I’m one. It scares me…and you scare me…Tagen, everything scares me. Do you think I like that?”

“Sometimes.” His hand came up and pressed the bag of peas to his own neck, and she stepped away.

“I don’t,” she said. “I know I’ve done nothing but freak out since you got here. I hate myself for that.” She stood, twisting her hands together and staring at his unmoving back. “Please don’t give up on me.”

He sighed and finally glanced back at her. “I tell myself again and again to show you patience,” he said wearily. “I know that you are one of many, many humans I have known…but I am your first Jotan. I know you are doing your best.”

“I am,” she said. She pressed her palm over her bad side without any conscious thought, heartsick. “But my best sucks. I’m a horrible person. And it’s got nothing to do with you.”

Tagen sighed again, half-growling this time. He put the peas on the table. “Sit down,” he told her, and as she gingerly obeyed, he said, “Jota’s climate is very mild. Summer, as you call it, is short. We do not have heat like this more than a short span of days. My people live long. Our offspring are born two and three at once. We do not breed every time we sex. For us, breeding must be forced. The heat…forces us.”

She nodded, her eyes fixed on his. She was almost shaking with the effort not to look down, to see the monstrous bulge he had been gripping earlier. All of her best intentions would be shattered if she had to see that, to face what he was and what he wanted from her.

“It…is a terrible pain,” Tagen continued, and looked it. “That is part of the necessity, to force us together to mate. It has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with anything except the heat. We have medicines on Jota that prevent its effects, but I did not have enough and your Earth’s summer never ends. I cannot help it, Daria. I must do what I must do. It offends you, but I have no choice.”

“I understand,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “And I’ve got to be the only woman on the entire planet who would let you deal with it on your own when you’re here to save us from someone like E’Var.”

His brows were knitting together.

“I know what you want me to do,” she went on, speaking fast before she lost her nerve. “And it’s not fair of me, but I can’t, Tagen. I just can’t.”

He stared at her for a long time, his face gradually losing expression, a thing that made him seem even more formidable than his frown had been.

“Lindaria Cleavon.” His voice was very low and even, but his eyes were blazing, molten with emotion. He stood up slowly and leaned forward over the table, his hands pressed flat but the claws flexing ever so slightly. He looked down at her, fierce, unblinking, and quietly said, “I did not ask.”

Daria sat, feeling stunned and faintly embarrassed. Of course he hadn’t. He hadn’t given any indication whatsoever that he was even thinking in that direction. And once again, she had jumped at the chance to slap him down, this time, before he could even make a suggestion. In a tiny, creaking voice, she heard herself say, “Christ, even when I’m apologizing, I fuck things up.” She started to stand, her eyes brimming.

Tagen sighed and dropped back into his chair. “Sit down,” he said, rubbing at his eyes.

She didn’t want to, but she’d already insulted him once today. She sat, but kept her eyes on her hands as they knotted nervously on the tabletop. When she finally glanced up, she found he was watching her hands as well.

“What happened to you?” he asked softly, and raised his eyes to hers.

She felt her breath freeze in her throat but she couldn’t look away. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, hearing desperation and despising it.

“And I did not want to ask,” he replied. “But it is better, I think, to do so than to go on pretending not to see it rotting between us in this way.”

Tears dug in at the corner of her eyes, blurring the sight of him and his unblinking patience.

The silence stretched out thinner and thinner.

“You have never told the story,” he guessed. That worry-line of his had faded in between his eyes.

Against her will, she nodded. “I did. At the trial.”

“How did you begin?”

She closed her eyes, started to cover them, and Tagen took hold of her wrists and forced them gently to the tabletop.

“How did you begin?” he asked again and would not let her look away from him.

“I was working at Kruegar and Lauder,” she said at last, because she could not think of any other way to start. “Shipping company. I was an export sales representative.” She started to try and find some way to explain these words to him, but realized that it made no difference to either of them. She went on. “I was living with a man, someone I worked with. His name was Dan Fiennes. We were talking about getting married, maybe. Maybe having kids. He said he loved me.”