Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 30 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-One

Steady thumping. Breathy moans. Kane’s name in plaintive whispers.

Raven opened her eyes and saw them. Kane had Sue-Eye up against the wall. He held her thighs, his powerful arms flexing in rhythm with his thrusts. Her hands were digging at his back, kneading at him in catlike pleasure.

She watched. It made her feel…something. Relief, she decided. Maybe Sue-Eye would leave her alone if she got her fill of fucking. Maybe Kane wouldn’t want to oversee the girl-on-girl stuff if he was in and out of Heat all day.

Yesterday had been hell. Sick and cramping and bleeding, and Sue-Eye crawling all over her every time she opened her eyes. The little cabin had been greenhouse-stuffy by late afternoon, but apparently it never got quite hot enough for Kane to go into Heat. He had all kinds of time in which to indulge his lesbian fantasies. Once or twice, he’d joined them, but he’d made it clear that his dick was for Sue-Eye.

Only Sue-Eye.

Raven shifted, tugging the sheet that was her only covering up around her waist. The little sound it made attracted Kane’s eye. He looked back at her, his hips still working smoothly, and then let go one of Sue-Eye’s legs to cover her mouth.

Raven closed her eyes again, drowsing to the now-quiet sounds of them. She already knew she was as good as up. Now that she’d woken, never mind how briefly, she was aware of how badly she needed to clean up. And once she’d showered and changed everything out, the cramps would be set in. At least this would be the last day for that. She was regular as a clock under ordinary circumstances—one day spotting, two days cramping and nauseous, and three days to taper off. If she could get through today, it was smooth sailing.

Kane’s breath began to come in growls. Quiet ones, but enough to make even a doze out of reach. Raven threw the sheet back and sat up.

Kane glanced at her again, long enough to watch her take her feet, and then removed his hand from Sue-Eye’s mouth. Her cries came out with enthusiasm and Kane pulled her thighs up higher and fucked harder, making no more effort to be quiet.

Raven left them to it and went in to shower. Blood swirled down the drain in Hitchcockian clarity. She hated her period. It was disgusting and humiliating and messy at the best of times, but having to have it right out in the open in front of Kane and Sue-Eye made it a million times worse. She wished people could get spayed as easily and cheaply as cats. She’d be the first one in line.

She soaped up and shaved, and for some reason, felt better. She told herself it was just cleaner that way and refused to think about it any more. It had nothing to do with Kane and his pubic hair phobia, nothing to do with making herself more the woman he wanted.

While she was shampooing her hair, Kane opened the door and came into the bathroom. He pulled back the curtain and stepped into the shower with her without speaking. He moved her aside and leaned in under the spray, his head bent and eyes shut.

Raven watched him a while, then lathered up her hands and began to wash his back.

“Mm.” He rolled his shoulders comfortably, and then raised his head and smiled back at her. “Stand away, Raven,” he said gently.

She dropped her arms, stung, and stepped back to the other end of the tub.

Kane scrubbed at his face, turned to rinse his back, and then climbed out and pulled a towel from the wall. “You look better,” he said.

“I told you it wouldn’t last.”

His smile broadened and there was something faintly patronizing in it. “I need my ichuta’a,” he called.

Raven rinsed out her hair quickly and got out of the shower as Sue-Eye came to crowd the bathroom.

“Wash up,” Kane ordered. To Raven, he added, “I’ve made you more medicine. You’ve healed up nicely. It should be the last time you need it.”

“Should be,” she agreed, looking down at her breasts. The metal decorating her flesh looked like it had been there for years. She tugged at her nipple ring experimentally. Didn’t hurt at all.

“You go on now and put it on,” he said.

Raven glanced at her box of tampons. “I’m not—”

“Go.”

Raven went. As she rubbed his cooling lotion into her piercings, she heard him speaking in a low voice to Sue-Eye, but she couldn’t make out what over the sound of water drumming. Hopefully, he was telling her to get breakfast. Then they’d probably hit the road. Checkout was at eleven, and it was eight now. She knew they didn’t have enough cash to stay another day. They probably didn’t have enough cash to feed anyone but her. Kane was a fanatical believer in the healing powers of steak. They’d probably have to kill someone for gas money.

Funny how quickly some thoughts became academic ones. Need money? Better kill some people. One plus one and all that.

Kane came out, watched her apply lotion for a second or two, and then sat down at his computer.

Raven lingered in case he had something to say, and then headed in to hang up her towel and get a tampon. Sue-Eye had drawn the curtain, which was as much privacy as Raven could hope for these days. She propped her foot up on the toilet and got herself plugged. “Do you know if we’re leaving?” she asked.

“Not for a little while,” Sue-Eye replied. She sounded as if she were smiling.

Raven returned to bed and curled up, rubbing covertly at her belly to ease the cramps. She closed her eyes, not because she was tired, but sleep was as good a way to pass the time as any.

Sue-Eye rejoined them, but didn’t go to the phone to order food. She came to the bed instead, and at the first dimple of her weight on the mattress, Raven was wide-awake and clenched like a living fist. ‘Not so soon,’ she thought, dismayed. ‘Relax. Maybe she wants to watch TV.’

That thought ended with Sue-Eye’s hand, still damp and soft from the shower, on Raven’s arm. She tried to shrug away. Sue-Eye moved to grip her thigh instead.

“Stop it,” Raven whispered, kicking.

“Raven.”

She winced and slowly raised her eyes to meet Kane’s. She saw no mercy in them, but no overt cruelty either, and she nerved herself for a cautious protest. “I don’t want to.”

“You need to,” he said incomprehensibly. “So lie still. I’ll tie you if I have to.”

Raven shook her head, still trying to puzzle out his use of the world ‘need’, absolutely mortified at the thought of being bound hand and foot for Sue-Eye’s use. She felt the blonde’s hand cupping her breast, and at her touch, a flicker of connection tried to make itself known in Raven’s brain. She looked down at the unwelcome hand and then over, suspicion illuminating her mind. ‘What did you tell him, bitch?’ she wondered.

Sue-Eye’s smug smile was as good as a neon sign admitting culpability. Not guilt. Pride, maybe, but not guilt. This wasn’t something that had just happened. This was a plan.

Sue-Eye’s smile widened as she saw realization in Raven’s face and she leaned in to kiss her mouth, forcing her tongue past Raven’s lips. Invading. Dominating.

Raven shut her eyes and closed her hands into fists stiffly at her sides. Sue-Eye, undeterred, straddled her aggressively. Her hands on Raven’s breasts were triumphant and rough. She was not even pretending to be a partner this time. She knew Raven couldn’t object. She was taking.

A good old-fashioned ‘ouch’ was a tempting thought. Kane would probably have the bitch pulled off her by her bottle-blonde hair if he thought she was hurting her. On the other hand, he’d be just as likely to give Raven a smack for whining before he tossed Sue-Eye back at her.

So Raven was quiet. She kept her eyes shut and let the bitch paw at her, but she couldn’t ignore what was happening to her. Sue-Eye chose to be rough for her own reasons, but she tempered this at times with deliberate tenderness no body could disregard. Skilled hands and a teasing tongue traveled freely over Raven’s flesh, coaxing heat from her however reluctantly.

She was slow to respond, but Sue-Eye had plenty of time. Her mouth invaded Raven’s insistently only to close over her breasts, wetting and sucking the nipples alive so that Raven could not escape the shivery sensation of Sue-Eye’s breasts rubbing hers. Sue-Eye’s hips ground down at her in tight circles until Raven’s own began to writhe, seeking escape before the humiliation of pleasure. Then Sue-Eye’s hand was at her clit, pressing hard in mimicry of a man’s thrusts, and no matter how Raven moved, she was only adding to the intensity of her body’s reactions.

Someone moaned and it was her. Raven turned her face into the pillows, but Sue-Eye grabbed her cheek and turned her back, punishing her with a deep kiss while her hips moved. Sue-Eye’s hands covered her breasts, squeezing hatefully as she licked her way down Raven’s twisting body all the way to her pussy. The feel of her mouth closing on Raven’s clit was as sickening as it was rapturous. She kicked frantically, trying to knock the blonde away, but Sue-Eye had the leverage to grip her thighs and shove them wide open.

Raven’s voice ripped from her in a ragged cry and she surrendered. She came in a swoop of ugly sensation, bucking mindlessly to dislodge the hungry mouth sucking at her core, and then came again when Sue-Eye slid her hands under Raven’s ass and began to move her in rapid upwards thrusts. She wailed, one hand groping through the air, and suddenly she slapped into skin.

Her eyes flashed open and there was Kane, a thousand feet tall, looking down at her. He was smiling.

She closed her eyes again, shutting herself away from the sight of that terrible god. But when she felt his claw at her lips, she opened immediately and sucked with passion as tears of shame slipped from her eyes.

“Cum for me, Raven,” he murmured, and something in her betraying body unlocked for him. “Cum for me. I command you. Cum!”

She screamed around his finger, her awareness of the room washing out with the force of her climax. She couldn’t feel Sue-Eye anymore. She couldn’t feel anything but him, and he was all through her, body, mind and soul. She came three times in overlapping succession, each new wave smashing her further out into space, and when the last one rolled back, blackness rolled in.

She fell limp, gasping for breath and waiting to see if she was going to faint or not. Slowly, her vision returned enough for her to see Kane’s hand wrapping around Sue-Eye’s hair, yanking the blonde off her and sending her tumbling hard to the floor. Raven uttered a grateful mew, and Kane sat on the bed beside her and stroked a claw through her hair.

“Feel better?” he asked.

She couldn’t tell yet. Her nerves were still tingling too much to know what her cramps were like, but she nodded anyway and let her eyes slide shut. His hand continued to smooth across her brow and through her hair, over and over, stroking her to sleep.

“Get dressed, ichuta’a,” she heard him say. He pulled the sheet up over Raven’s shoulders and patted her cheek. “I’ll feed you before we go,” he told her. “But you rest now, if you can.”

Raven roused herself, clutching at his wrist and staring pleadingly up into his face. “Please don’t let her do that again,” she whispered.

His smile widened. “Raven,” he said gently. “Don’t tell me don’t. She’ll fuck you until I say she’s done.” He cupped her chin and leaned down. “And she’s not done.”

Raven blinked her eyes free of water. “I don’t like it.”

“I don’t care.” His gaze broke from hers, traveling down over the shadowed slopes of her concealed body. He leaned closer, his breath warming her skin, and pressed his teeth to the curve of her jaw. He growled, the sound rumbling through her bones, and murmured, “You’ll do as I say, Raven. You have no idea the things I can do to you.”

She supposed it was a threat, but in his smoky purr, it sounded more like a promise of reward for her obedience. She arched back, offering her throat, and he bit again, just above her pulse. She could feel his teeth dimpling her skin. If he wanted to, he could pull her throat out, but his touch now was one of careful passion. He bit, and Raven could feel her body humming with pleasure.

Kane straightened, combing his claws once more through her hair. “All right, ichuta’a,” he said, standing. “Red meat and tea for my Raven, and then let’s make the car ready. I want to leave as soon as she’s fed.”

*

Food. Daria was outside his door, telling him he needed food.

Tagen heard her voice, could even make sense of the N’Glish, but the words themselves held only the impression of meaning, as in the way of distant memory. He was lost in place, gripped on every side by clammy bindings, the light shining through the window on him like pools of molten lead. Heat was coming, as it had done twice already, and the sun had not yet begun to drop. How could anyone eat, knowing that?

The sound of a fist on his door banged him out of his syrupy drift and Daria’s voice called his name again. She sounded frightened. Badly frightened. Perhaps he’d touched her again.

He remembered suddenly touching her in the kitchen. His hand on her back. Feeling her flesh so firm and soft and warm beneath his open palm. And she had smiled. That was yesterday. It had been cooler yesterday. The weather had not turned until late afternoon. He’d had hours and hours without Heat.

“Tagen, answer me! Answer me!” Her voice broke in something that might have been a sob. The doorknob rattled. He had locked it. Couldn’t risk Daria opening on him while he was engaged with his stimulator. He didn’t want to upset her.

“Tagen!” she shouted, and beat on the door, this time with her open hand. “Oh please don’t be dead. Tagen!”

Dead. He smiled weakly. One could not die from Heat. He had suffered it now only three days. Or four. Surely no more than five. In ancient times, Jotan had suffered for the full season. Nine days. Perhaps more. There had been no suppressants in those days.

But there had been mates, he thought dourly. Mates with whom to thrash away the hottest hours. A female’s oils to bring seed swiftly from him and keep Heat from resettling so soon.

“Say something!” Bang bang bang. “I’ll break down the door!”

Such a ferocious little human. Tagen couldn’t imagine her having enough strength to continue knocking, much less to break the lock and force the door. All the same, he was distressing her.

He tried to sit up, but the soaking sheets that lay over him were as good as an iron slab and the effort left him weak and shaking, but at least halfway lucid. “Go!” he rasped.

The hammering on the door cut itself off at once. “Tagen, was that you?”

“Go,” he said again. The single word scoured his throat and burned his lungs. He fell back, his vision graying.

“You have to come downstairs,” she called. “You have to eat something!”

“I am not hungry,” he intoned gravely. “I will never be hungry again.”

“What?”

Tagen raised his head, concentrated, and realized he’d been speaking in Jotan. “Later,” he said in careful N’Glish. “I will try to eat later.” His eyes slid shut. “When it cools.”

“That’ll take hours.”

So it would. Hours more of Heat. Hours more of cloying sweat and the stench of himself filling the room. Hours of the stimulator gripping him indifferently while he fought to keep quiet. Hours and hours of Heat.

Frustration sparked in his gut and tore its way up and out of him in a rusty scream. It split the air and filled the room in tatters he could almost see. Tagen sucked in breath, spots of color exploding behind his eyes, and screamed again until his voice broke into pieces.

“Tagen!” Daria was yanking at the door again, and now she seemed to be kicking it as well. “Tagen, let me in!”

In? Let her in? Very well, if she demanded it, he would let her in and damn the consequences!

He was on his feet and at the door before he could even think ‘no’. He twisted the knob, felt something snap inside it, and then he had the door flung wide. Daria stumbled back and stared at him, her eyes wide and wet, her mouth a circle of shock. The sweat of her struck him like a fist, firing all his senses into clarity. His eyes went to the juncture of her thighs, to the secret sex her clothing concealed, and he had to grip the door’s frame to keep from falling. Or perhaps from lunging out at her.

“Oh Tagen,” she whispered. “You look awful.”

The sorrow in her words made him look up, and in her eyes was enough horror to shock him back to sanity. He was naked. He was naked, Heat was coming, and she was right there.

“Leave me be,” he said hoarsely, and tried to shut the door.

Her hand flew out to stop it. “Come downstairs!”

“When it cools—”

“It’s not getting any cooler!” she shouted. “You can’t do this, Tagen, you’re going to die!”

“I cannot die from Heat!”

“You can die from dehydration, dammit! When did you last drink anything?”

“I…” His anger waned, became confusion. He knuckled sweat from his eyes and his hand shook. “Last night.”

“You never came downstairs last night,” she argued. “You haven’t had anything to eat or drink for almost a whole day. You’re scaring me.”

“Everything scares you.” Tagen tried again to shut her away. “Go, Daria. I am not dressed.”

“You’re not dressed?” She uttered a high, incredulous laugh. “I don’t care! Tagen, if you could see yourself-“

“Later, I have told you! Later!” Tagen took a breath, let it out slow, and said, “Please. I cannot bear to climb your stairs.”

“I’ll help.” She started forward, one hand outstretched to him.

Heat surged, and Tagen swung blindly. His hand struck her on the breastbone and sent her crashing to the floor with her legs wide apart. He sank his claws into the soft wood of the door frame to keep from leaping on her, and his last thread of temper snapped. He fell back on Jotan, knowing she would not understand, but unable to keep silent a moment longer.

“Back, woman!” he roared. “Stay back, or by hell, have me! I have only so much will!”

She screamed, making him think disjointedly that he’d said it in N’Glish after all. But her legs drove out to catch his slamming door and she wouldn’t let panic budge her.

“Damn you!” Tagen’s voice cracked on frustration. “I have tried and tried to woo you and you wait until now not to run from me! Now! Look at me now!” All his body was Heat. He seized the door in both hands and heaved, snarling.

Daria lost her half-upright position, but kept her legs rigid and the door open. The tendons of her slender throat stood out in strain and she screamed again, this time with pain.

The sound of it broke his anger and without it, he had no strength. Tagen let go and the room spun, as if the door had been his only anchor in space. He sent out his claws blindly, dug them into wood, and slid down to his knees. Grey stars burst and swirled before his eyes, in rhythm with his pounding heart. He could not stop shivering. He could not catch his breath. He sagged forward onto his hands, trying to get blood to his head before he lost consciousness.

‘I cannot die from Heat,’ he thought, over and over, until his senses stopped swimming and his arms finally steadied.

“Tagen?”

He sighed. “Bring me drink.”

“Promise me you won’t lock me out if I leave.”

He raised his head, but the look of worry in her face stilled his irritation. “I do promise,” he said wearily. “As an officer and a son of Pahnee. Does that satisfy?”

She nodded and gained her feet, rubbing at her knees. Then she only lingered above him, looking fearful. “Do you need help to lie down?” she asked. “You could lean on me if you—”

“Please do not touch me.” He looked at her. “Please.”

A tear slipped from her eye—the blue one—but she nodded and turned away. She was limping as she walked. He had done that to her.

He watched her until she disappeared down the stairs and then he rose, climbing the wall and digging his talons into the carpet until it tore. He was ruining this room. He was ruining the human who had given it to him.

He returned to bed, curling on his side and wrapping himself again in sodden sheets to disguise his throbbing erection. He could still smell her, the fragrance of female sweat, young and healthy and faintly spiced with musk. The thought came to him that he truly must be as dehydrated as Daria believed, because if he’d had his full strength about him, he’d have taken her when she fell.

When he struck her and she fell.

“Tagen?”

He roused, rubbing at his face in a daze. It seemed only seconds since he’d seen her on the stair and yet here she was again in his doorway with a laden tray. “I’m losing my mind,” he muttered, and dropped onto the pillows.

Her brows knitted at the Jotan words, but she didn’t ask for a translation. She set the tray at hand beside the bed and poured him a glass from the pitcher of iced water. It was cool in his hand, but too heavy to hold steady. Much of its contents spilled down his chest, but even that was a blessing. He could feel his tissues swelling with moisture.

“Thank you,” he said, when the glass was emptied.

She took it from him and gave him a bowl. The food within was bright orange, cut into large chunks, and smelled of fruit. He put one to his lips and tasted sweetness. Chilled juice trickled down his throat. He closed his eyes and chewed, pausing often just to breathe.

“You’d know if you were really sick, right?”

He couldn’t look at her. The anxiety in her voice was hard to hear, but the sight of her was devastating. “It is only Heat.”

She filled his glass for him again and set it at the edge of the tray. “Can I do anything to help?” she asked.

He opened his eyes and looked at her.

Her cheeks colored and she dropped her gaze. “S-sorry.” She stepped back, twisting her hands convulsively in her shirtfront. “I’ll check on you in a little bit,” she said. “I’ll…knock first.”

Tagen ate another piece of fruit and closed his eyes again. There was a misery in her voice and it was not fear of him, but shame. He had made her ashamed because she could not bring herself to mate with him. He despised himself.

Daria retreated, closing the door quietly behind her. It seemed to Tagen that she stood a long time just outside, but eventually, she moved away. She went, not downstairs, but to her room and closed that door as well.

He could hear nothing after that, so he doubted she was cleaning. What then, in the middle of the day?

Tagen’s imagination immediately presented him with a vision of her undressing in her shadowed, ocean-cool room. Sliding between her soft, grey sheets, her creamy skin enveloped imperfectly in folds of loose fabric. Taking herself and her distress to bed, a natural enough reaction, but Heat would not let him stop at that. He could see her moving as the females in the late-night tee-vee programs moved when the urge was on them to mate. Touching herself with maddening slowness. Her teeth biting at her lip as she moved her hand between her legs—

A hoarse cry escaped him and Tagen reached for his hated stimulator and fit it over his aching shaft. He gripped the sheets, his eyes tightly shut, and let himself go to fantasy. He could still smell Daria’s sweat heavy in the air; it amplified the sensations assailing him. He lost the will to reason and the understanding of the need for silence. Mating growls ground out of him, hunting for harmony in his non-existent partner. They gave way to ragged groans as his tsesac continued to swell, indifferent to the mechanical pull of the stimulator.

It went on and on, a timeless crossing of intense pain and friction without pleasure. At last, he could feel the first jets of quick-cum pulsing out into the sleeve that gripped him. The pace increased with excruciating slowness, and more and more often, his rusty groans drew out into cries as he tried to will his body to empty.

She had fallen before him in the hall, landing on her back with her legs wide apart and looking up at him with fear that was for him and not of him. Tagen seized on the image and in his mind, he went to his knees to take the clothes from her body. The lingering trace of her musk became her scent as her flesh was bared to him. She welcomed him, brought him to her, and even if there was no truth in his imaginings, the violent rage of Heat seemed to ease, just a little. He felt the churn of true-cum blooming low in his belly at long last. Tagen shouted relief and let spill. Then he collapsed, his vision graying out yet again as he fought for breath.

‘I cannot die from Heat,’ he reminded himself. From thirst, yes. If there was anything at all the matter with him (and he would not admit that there was), it was only that.

He reached for the water condensing beside his bed, watching with an exhausted eye how his hand shook. He drank some, poured the rest out over his chest, and moved to set the glass back on the tray. The distance to the stack of boxes on which the tray waited seemed to stretch out, and the empty glass to take on an unreal weight.

‘I cannot…die…’

The glass slipped from his fingers. He buckled and fell facedown on the mattress, feeling a distant pain somewhere in the great wasteland of his body. His hand, he supposed, striking the floor, or his other shoulder, trapped at an awkward angle beneath him. He struggled once to rise, and then passed out of the grey and into black.

*

Daria went into her room and closed the door behind her. She lay down on her bed and curled on her side, hugging a pillow to her chest like an armless teddy bear. It was nice and dark in here. Still too warm, but here on the north side of the house, it wasn’t overwhelming. She stared at the far side of the room, with its dulcet powder blue walls, and listened to Tagen scream.

He wasn’t even trying to be quiet, and the sounds he made terrified her more than anything he had ever done. Not because of what he was doing, but because of the noise itself, because it meant his control was fraying. His control, his body…his mind, perhaps. How much pain could a man take before it broke him all the way?

He kept saying he couldn’t be killed by Heat, but she found that hard to remember when she looked at him. Every day, he’d gotten a little bit worse. Yesterday, he’d seemed pretty okay, at least until late afternoon when the weather turned. Then he’d gone from okay all the way to awful in less time than it took to watch one episode of Law & Order. She’d thought he’d looked bad then, when they’d been sitting on the couch together and both of them pretending he wasn’t dripping sweat or shaking. When at last she’d found a reason to wander back into the kitchen, he’d gone straight to his room and hadn’t come out. She hadn’t been able to imagine he could look much worse, but at least he’d been walking. Now he looked like he’d just clawed his way out of Hell. He was falling over now. He was losing his grip on English. He was losing his grip on everything, and it scared the hell out of her.

‘Everything scares you.’ Tagen’s voice, weary and without rancor, as he’d said them just before he’d tried to shut the door on her. The rest of his remembered words followed before she could even feel too bad about the truth in the first ones. ‘Go, Daria. I am not dressed.’

And no, she supposed he hadn’t been, but she’d been only abstractedly aware of it. She’d had eyes only for his face, for the agony etched down to the bones of him, the sweat glazing his skin, the confusion swimming through the searing hunger in his eyes. The rest of him didn’t matter. It was the body of a sick man, nothing more.

What would happen if he did die? It was a ghastly thought, one that actually made Daria feel cold in spite of this rotten, muggy weather. She couldn’t even think about what it would mean to her (finding him slack and stiff, having to touch the dead flesh of him, having to drag him out and bury him), what would it mean back on his world? This prisoner person he was here to track down would get away, that for starters. Big deal, there’d always be criminals. But Tagen had a home somewhere. He’d spoken of his father, someone who would be waiting for the rest of his life for a son that would never come home. And surely there had to be a girl in the picture somewhere. Tagen had that firmly faithful look to him, so there was probably a wife and kids. Daria could easily imagine him kissing someone goodbye on his way out the door to his ship the day this mission of his had been handed to him, and now they’d never see him again. Because of the weather. The weather!

One last anguished cry fractured the air and then silence.

She should go check on him now, while he was…done. Make him drink. Maybe get him to the shower long enough to change his sheets. He’d been swimming in that bed; sweat had pooled, literally pooled, in the folds draping him. It was probably an old wives’ tale that you could get pneumonia from being wet all the time, but it couldn’t be healthy, either.

Daria didn’t move. He’d told her to leave him alone. He was already thoroughly miserable, he didn’t need the humiliation of having her constantly checking up on him. She knew all about the value of pride when a person didn’t have anything else to hold on to.

But she found herself thinking back to her memories, splintered and surreal as they were, of their first meeting. She, drugged and babbling, throwing up in the sink while he held her hair. How he’d put her in the shower and cleaned her up over her wailing protestations. He’d taken care of her, because she needed help and never mind her pride. He’d never brought it up again, and she’d sobered up and hadn’t died of shame. Because pride was fine, but in the end, no one really wanted to be left alone when they were lying on the bathroom floor with pissed pants.

Daria got up.

The hall back to Tagen’s room was eighteen feet long. She’d measured it before, she knew. When she’d nerved herself to come up here before, her heart slamming in her ears, terrified that she would be interrupting him, the hall had stretched out the length of a football field. She’d thought she had a thousand chances to turn back. She’d thought it had taken a whole hour just to get there. Now, it seemed she took only two steps and she was there. She tapped timidly to no reply, and then pushed the door open.