Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 31 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

He lay crossways on his stomach on the bed, the sheet around his hips, one arm dangling over the side and his hair in limp strands across his face. He didn’t move when she said his name. She could hear him breathing, but the sound was shallow and uneven.

He said he couldn’t die from this. He said.

Daria went to him. She picked up the empty glass that lay close to his hanging hand and put it on the tray. The arm itself had a horrid feel, hot and slick and heavy. His skin, thick and perfectly hairless, didn’t even feel like skin. It probably never did, really. She’d never touched him before.

She rolled him onto his back with effort, giving the sheet a tug to preserve his modesty. He groaned, kicking slowly and curling his claws into the mattress, and finally opened his eyes. They were glassy, unfocused. He spoke, a hoarse and incomprehensible string of alien words that ended in a question.

“Can you stand up?” she asked.

He looked down at himself and then up at her. “No,” he said. He sounded confused.

“Hold on to me,” she said, offering her arms.

He drew back at once, his nostrils flaring.

“Come on,” she said softly. “Ten steps down the hall to a cold shower. I’ll change your bed for you.”

He dropped his eyes to the sheets wrapping his waist and dragged the back of his hand across his brow. His shoulders straightened, but he still would not meet her gaze. “No,” he said, sounding as though he’d scraped the dignity for that one word from the dried-out bottom of his soul.

She let her arms fall to her sides and just stared at him, feeling helpless. “I can bring dry sheets in,” she said. “And you can change them.”

His jaw ticced. Long minutes crawled by.

He sighed. “Very well. Then leave me.”

Daria retreated to the linen closet and returned to find him sitting up and drinking straight from the pitcher. Most of the ice had melted.

“Leave them,” he gasped, letting the pitcher rest against his stomach. “And go.”

“Are you sure you don’t need help?”

He laughed. It was a singularly harsh and humorless sound. “Help?” Out came another stream of his own language and when it ended, he was sagging forward and out of breath.

Daria set the sheets at the foot of his bed.

“Go,” Tagen said quietly. “I do not require your help.”

“I’m really worried about you.”

“Yes,” he said, and only that. It was the most passive answer she could have imagined, and the most ominous, but there was no way to counter it.

“Okay then,” she said lamely. She backed toward the door. “I’ll…bring up more water in a few hours. And if you need anything…”

He shut his eyes.

Daria let her voice trail away, her eyes burning. All this because of the weather. All this because he’d had the dumb luck to hook up with someone who didn’t have an air conditioner or a swimming pool or the goddamn nerve to just sleep with him already.

So do it. Strip down. She probably wouldn’t have to do more than unbutton her fly before he got the idea. The thought of having sex with an alien was probably abhorrent to a straight-laced military man like Tagen, but she didn’t think he had it in him to object for long. And then…and then it would be done. It wouldn’t be that bad. She was no vestal virgin, for Christ’s sake. She knew where all the parts went. She’d thought about it. Why couldn’t she do it?

The silence seemed to register with him at last. He looked up at her wearily and tried to smile. The effect was heart-rending and he must have known it because he stopped after only a few seconds.

“I have endured Heat before,” he said with a sigh. “I think this is no worse. It only seems so because I am on Earth.” He scowled briefly and then composed himself again. “I know you are concerned for me and I do appreciate it, but I do not wish you to see me like this.” He paused, searching her face, and then added, “And you must never touch me, Daria. Never.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I know you’d never hurt me.”

“Yes,” he said softly. His eyes never wavered. “I would.”

Eyes welling, Daria stepped into the hall and shut the door. She said nothing more.

There was nothing left to say.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Turn us in, ichuta’a.”

“What, here?”

Raven dragged herself out of the bored doze that kept her occupied for the long car ride. She rubbed at her eyes, pushing herself out of the fetal curl that fit her into the backseat and looked around, blinking until the sunlight no longer blurred her vision. Not that there was a lot to see. There were trees on every side of them, and only a few other vehicles in sight, most of them long-haul trucks. Back in the boonies. And Kane wanted to pull over.

“There.” Kane extended a claw, pointing to a pair of parallel ruts leading away from the road.

Sue-Eye slowed and turned in, but she just couldn’t leave it at that. Some people were like that. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, Kane,” the blonde said now, her tones faintly tinged with exasperation. “What do you expect to find?”

Kane aimed a dark glare at her and Raven had the distinct feeling that if Sue-Eye weren’t driving, she’d be catching one upside the head right now. “I expect,” he said sharply, “to find the riders in the two cars that turned up that way. I’ve been watching the road, ichuta’a. What the fuck have you been doing?”

“Watching the moving cars on the road,” Sue-Eye said, mildly enough, but with a certain hard set to her jaw. At times like these, Raven had real trouble understanding how she could have lived so long with a gang as nasty as the one Kane had killed back at that bar.

Although she wasn’t sure whether she’d be defusing the situation or exacerbating it, Raven cleared her throat and said, “There’s probably a boat launch out there or something.”

“Yeah? Then they’ll all be out on the water and not up where we can get at them.” Sue-Eye winced as the car bounced over the uneven ground. Kane must have hit her someplace pretty bad. And he was going to hit her someplace even worse if she didn’t shut up, couldn’t she see that?

“So?” Raven asked in her best peace-making voice. “We’ll go swimming until they come out.”

Kane sent an amused glance back at her, but his faint smile vanished when he saw her hand at her belly. She took it away fast, but she knew the damage was done.

“I’m feeling a little better,” she said quickly, hoping to avert a total disaster.

“Then why are you sleeping so much?” he countered, baring his teeth at her. “Don’t lie to me, Raven, I’ll know it every time.”

She supposed she ought to let it be. He had to be hungry. Thirsty. Tired of riding around in cramped cars with nothing to do but listen to Sue-Eye’s passive-aggressive complaining and think about how hot it was outside. He was in an itchy mood and well past ready to start smacking, so it was just safer to sit still and leave him alone.

Of course, all that being true, he wasn’t likely to calm down on his own. He’d just sit there, simmering his way up to a full boil, and when he got there, well, Raven was the only one in reach he could hit without crashing the car.

She leaned forward and slid her hand down his chest in a gesture she hoped was a placating one. Or at least, distracting. “I’m not lying,” she said in his ear. “A little better means just that. Better. A little.”

He growled, but the hard muscles under her palm relaxed. “I want you well.”

“So do I.” She curled her fingers to scratch at him ever so slightly, watching his face intently in the rearview mirror to see how he received it.

His expression never changed, but he closed his hand over hers and guided it down to his crotch. He rubbed her on him, growling low in his throat, and then let go suddenly and pushed her back into her seat. “No, leave me alone,” he said, but not in a mean way. “I need my head on straight. Stop us, ichuta’a. We’ll walk from here.”

“We can’t stop here, we’re blocking the path.”

Raven winced preemptively (all that calming-down wasted) and Kane roared out at full voice, “Stop the fucking car!”

Sue-Eye stopped, and in the same instant as the engines died, Kane’s fist flew out, socking the blonde a damned good one in the ear and knocking her into the driver’s door.

“If I have to cut out your tongue to get you to stop arguing with me, then that’s what I’ll do,” he snarled. “I want to block the path because I don’t want to be interrupted. I’m going to be killing people and unless you want to be one of them, you’d better confine your words to me to ‘yes, Kane’ until I’m goddamn well done! Do we have an understanding, ichuta’a?”

“Yes, Kane.” She didn’t look at him. She stayed huddled against her window, staring straight ahead and holding her ear.

“Good.” He yanked the car’s keys from the ignition and kicked his door open, admitting a billow of suffocating heat as he left. “Charak tiven kha y soc-se ichuta’a!” he spat and slammed the door with a rifle-like bang.

Sue-Eye didn’t move. She was breathing steady but hard and her eyes were fixed and unblinking.

In the interests of peace, Raven supposed she should say something, but all she could think of to say was ‘idiot’, and that wouldn’t help. She opened up her door instead, and Sue-Eye slowly did the same.

Walk. Ugh.

The heat of day, even here in the shaded woods, was staggering. Raven swung her legs out and set her feet on the sun-cracked earth, but then had to just sit there and work up the strength to stand. Her stomach was doing flip-flops and the cramps just made it worse. Walk from here? How far? The road curved out of sight a few dozen feet away and Raven could hear the muffled thump of a heavy bass beat somewhere in the distance, but no other people-sounds. And Kane wanted to walk? Raven figured she had about a quarter mile in her before she barfed everything up but her toenails and then died.

A shadow fell over her. She looked up into Kane’s narrowed eyes and stood up fast. Too fast. The blood dropped from her face, cold sweat prickled up all over her brow, and she stumbled against the side of the car, waiting to see whether she was going to faint or just throw up.

“Say it again,” she heard Kane say darkly. “Say how normal this is.”

Her own temper rose and popped like a black bubble. “I’d be fine if it wasn’t so fucking hot!” she snapped.

A stupid thing to say, maybe, but Kane merely grunted and looked upwards, making the sun the target of his bared teeth instead of her. It emboldened her.

“If…If I promise not to go anywhere,” she began hesitantly and he focused on her at once, his black eyes narrowing. “If I swear I won’t leave the car, can’t I just wait here?”

She didn’t honestly expect him to agree, but to her surprise, he actually seemed to consider it. He looked her over, hooking the thumbclaw of his hands through the waistband of his pants and tapping the talons of one foot on the hard-baked ground. Just as he opened his mouth, Sue-Eye suddenly spoke up.

“Are you crazy?” She was staring at Raven with the same disbelief she might have shown if Raven had asked Kane’s permission to juggle chainsaws. “Out here in the woods stinking like blood with wolves and bears running around?”

Raven’s jaw dropped. For a moment, she was utterly incapable of speech, even though she knew it wasn’t the best way to react with Kane studying her so closely. When her voice finally did return, it came with a coarse breathiness, as if her anger were physically choking her. “Wolves? Fucking wolves?”

“They can smell blood and they eat people,” Sue-Eye said sagely. She came around the front of the car to stand at Kane’s side. “They’re all over these woods and you know it.”

Kane glanced around at the trees.

Raven’s mouth opened and closed a few times, her mind spinning with the ridiculousness of this argument. “So I’ll stay in the car,” she said at last.

“You’ll die of heatstroke.”

“I’ll crack a fucking window!”

“And the wolves will smell you,” Sue-Eye said evenly, without hesitation. “Or a bear will. A bear could pull the top right off that car.”

The fact that a bear could indeed do that, coupled with the remote possibility that bears might actually be lurking somewhere in these woods, combined to fill Raven with a shaking, helpless fury. “They will not smell me, you bitch!”

“I can,” Kane said, and that was the end of that. “You’ll stay close, Raven. Both of you, follow me.” He turned and started up the twin ruts, aiming himself at the distant pulse of the music.

Raven swung on the blonde with her fists clenched, letting all her furious disbelief show. “What did you do that for?” she hissed.

Sue-Eye smirked at her.

For the first time in her life, Raven realized that the phrase ‘saw red’ wasn’t always metaphorical. She saw that smirk and then everything else washed out the color of blood. Her heart, soul, and skin caught fire. She swung, and her fist caught Sue-Eye square in her smug little mouth.

Sue-Eye tumbled back into the hood of the car, then came right up with a scream and launched herself at Raven. They went down in a windmill of arms and legs in the kind of no-holds fight that one seldom sees outside of redneck bars and elementary school playgrounds. There was kicking, clawing, hair-pulling, screaming, biting, swearing, and then suddenly Raven’s whole head snapped back in a splintering burst of pain, the red field that had suffused her sight shattering. She was yanked into the air by her hair and suspended, kicking, over the ground.

“Enough!” Kane shouted, and Raven’s struggles stopped at once. “I said, enough!” She was dropped so that Kane could swing, and he slapped the blonde hard enough to send her spinning.

“Bitch!” Raven spat.

Kane glared at her. “You be quiet,” he told her curtly.

She clamped her lips shut and seethed in obedient silence.

Kane thumped Sue-Eye back on her feet. “Behave yourself, both of you,” he said. “I’m not in the mood for this ti inak shit.”

“She started it,” Sue-Eye muttered.

Kane, who had already begun to turn away, now swung back with a look of pure amazement. “What—” he began, and then sighed and relaxed, all over, all at once. He covered his eyes with one hand, shook his head, and then looked calmly down at Sue-Eye.

He slapped her.

Sue-Eye flipped back off her feet and landed in the bushes. Kane covered his eyes again and waited for her to gain her unsteady feet, and then he slapped her again.

This time, he went after her, moving in that light, relaxed stroll that Raven had come to associate with killing. He got a foot under Sue-Eye’s ribs, turned her easily onto her back, and then hunkered down and waited for her to look at him. “I said something like that to my father once,” he said conversationally, once she’d met his eyes. “Although I was easily half your size at the time. It was a stupid thing to say to him and it is a stupid thing for you to say to me.”

Sue-Eye flushed and tried to drop her gaze, but Kane caught her by the hair and twisted her violently around to keep looking at him.

“Now I am going to tell you one more time to behave yourself and this time, you are going to say ‘yes, Kane’, which—” Here he laughed, very quietly and utterly without humor. “—is also the second time I have had to tell you are the only words I want to hear out of you for a while. And you’d better mean it this time, ichuta’a, because the next time I have to repeat myself, I’m going to put a reminder on you in the way of a broken bone. I’m not kidding. This bone, this one right here.” He picked up her left arm with the hand that wasn’t clenched in her hair, and pinched at part of her forearm. “Snap,” he said. “Just like that. And if you think I’m going to put you out somewhere so you can have it fixed, you are badly mistaken. You are with me for a while, ichuta’a, but I don’t need you whole. Now do we have an understanding?”

“Yes, Kane,” Sue-Eye whispered.

He nodded, and then, in a low voice that was almost a sing-song: “Behave yourself, ichuta’a.” He cocked his head expectantly.

“Yes, Kane.”

He released her and stood up, and then turned around and fixed Raven with his baleful eye. He folded his arms and waited, the tips of two fangs showing.

All the burning glee she’d felt as she’d watched Sue-Eye get her chewing-out froze over in an instant. Raven couldn’t meet his steady gaze for long. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I did start it. I hit her first.” She tried to brace herself for the blow she knew she’d earned.

She saw one of his hands curl into a fist, but then it relaxed and gripped his bicep again. “You’re sick,” he grunted. “I forgive you. But you’re scratching me, Raven. Watch yourself.”

He started moving. Raven and Sue-Eye followed, side by side, filling the heavy summer air with silent hate.

*

It was a dead party. So maybe it beat staying at home, but it was still a dead party. Too hot, for one thing, and the boys kept going on about how great it would be to get a bonfire going. A bonfire, for Christ’s sake. Kati could just see that spitting out of control and eating up the whole damn forest, and even if it didn’t, she kept having to point out that they’d have a ranger out here faster than Domino’s could deliver a pizza, and who was planning on paying the fine? All this common sense made the boys pissy, which in turn made Kati pissy, and which was why she was here, sitting on the fallen tree christened the ‘party log’ and guarding the heap of deadfall the boys had gathered while practically everyone else was down at the river having fun.

Fun. Splashing around in that pathetic trickle and tripping all over the cracked, log-strewn bank that used to be the river’s borders. Just like a bunch of kids. Hell, most of them really were kids, still in high school. Buncha babies. Not like Kati, who’d already put one year of community college under her belt and could put another one there easy if she wanted to. Maybe when summer was over. If she didn’t have anything else to do.

The pounding headache that Riffer called music finally, thankfully came to an end, and Kati helped herself to another bottle of beer to celebrate the silence. She was on her third sip when Riffer came up from the water to put on a fresh disc. Joy. Another one of his amateur DJ mix CDs, all alternative shit with heavy drums and sitars and strange-ass shit with lyrics no one could understand. In Riffer’s mind, anything that actually played on the radio was for sell-outs. He didn’t seem to realize that everyone around him hated this crap and was only too polite to say so because he brought, along with his bullshit CDs, many bags of reefer. It was good reefer, too, but the music gave Kati a headache.

Still…

She gave Riffer a wave, hoping to coax him over and keep her company for a while. He was just a kid—not even a college kid, but just out of high school, for fuck’s sake!—but he was a good-looking kid, and Tabby said he was pretty well hung for a guy with no pubes.

No luck. Riffer waved back and then galloped off over the edge to splash down in the dried-up river. Dumb kid. Who needed him?

Dead party.

She couldn’t even say it would get better later, because they were practically all here now, all except for the ones who were off at summer classes or riding around in RVs with their families. There were even a couple people here who didn’t belong. Ray had showed up just a little bit ago with his kid brother Danny and both their girlfriends, leading a second car full of cousins, none of whom had even looked at her because Tabby had chosen that exact moment to strip off her shirt and run down to the river. And she couldn’t really just say ‘fuck you’ and leave, either, because she’d tagged along with Owen and Corky, and they’d gotten their Bake on and gone into the woods hours ago.

Mmm. Bake sounded pretty good, actually. It was the only thing Kati’d ever tried that never ever took you on a bad trip. No, it was all pretty pictures and great fake sex, although god knew, the fuck-buddies Bake could dream up were often exceedingly strange.

Kati got up and went to the goodie-stash in the red cooler, and fished through Slim Jims, Twinkies, Riffer’s reefer (Mr. Smiley stickers wrapping each and every rolled joint), Doritos, and finally found a baggie of Baked Alaska down at the bottom. She helped herself to a gumdrop of mouthwash-colored delight, popped it in her pipe and sat back down on the party log to get groovy.

The flames burned green, and Kati watched them distractedly, now tapping her feet along with Riffer’s impossible and obnoxious music without realizing it. Finally, the transformation she’d been waiting for: The Bake went instantly from jelly to syrup and then to vapor, and she sucked in a hot/cold breath of bliss.

Peace was a velvet glove with a horseshoe in it, clopping upside of her head and then sticking there, melting slowly down into her skin and through her blood. Good shit. She felt horny already.

Kati tucked her pipe away and retrieved her beer. She was in no real hurry. Probably as soon as one of the guys wandered up for a beer and saw her all dopey and grinning, he’d come over and get it on. There was nothing more arousing to the male mind than a girl blitzed out of her senses. And hell, she’d probably think she was getting banged by a talking tree by that point. Baked Alaska…fucking great!

Movement at the corner of her eye attracted her attention. She swiveled around and watched as three people she didn’t know came out of the woods. Two girls, one of them definitely too old for this scene, and a guy. Big guy, also no kid, not even a college kid, but no ranger, either. Gym-baby by the looks of him, in his best Matrix costume, all long coat and shiny pants and no shirt on, but he was sure built for it, so Kati wasn’t complaining.

Kati got up and headed over, still in the lazy stages of early high, to check him out close up. He was a big boy, tall and broad and muscles all over. He had a hard, plastic-looking suitcase or something on a strap slung over one shoulder, and he kept one hand resting on it. His chest was hairless, glassy with sweat, and Kati bit the tip of her finger coyly, resisting the urge to walk her hand up and down that interesting road.

“What’s up, stranger?” she said, flipping her hair back with practiced indifference.

The guy looked her over, giving one of his girls—the young one with purple hair—a nudge towards the shade. Purple wandered off and sat down on the ugly old couch Ray had dragged out here at the start of summer. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and curled up, looking flushed and pale and miserable. Neither the guy nor his blonde companion looked too concerned. Bad shit, was Kati’s guess. That happened.

“Haven’t seen you around,” Kati continued, her eyes traveling the intriguingly mountainous terrain of the front of his shiny pants. “Passing through?”

“Hunting,” the guy said. His voice was low and relaxed. Friendly.

Kati made it up to his face at last. Not bad. Weird beard, but he made up for it with good looks and a clear complexion. His eyes were black. Really black. To Kati’s pleasantly-baked brain, they almost looked like horse’s eyes, so black they had no white around them at all. He wasn’t looking at her, either. His gaze skipped around where the music blared out into the empty clearing.

“It’s the wrong season for hunting,” Kati told him. “You bad boy.”

Now he looked at her, his brows rising.

“Maybe you like getting into trouble,” she said, and winked.

His expression didn’t change, but he blew out a short, soundless laugh. There was interest in his gaze, but it wasn’t the kind Kati was used to seeing in a guy. It was more like the interest of a boy for a new kind of bug.

“What’s your name?” she asked, sipping at her beer and licking lightly at the opening of the bottle.

He told her. One word, a word Kati remembered from bible class.

“Cain?” she echoed, laughing a little. “As in, Cain rose up and killed Abel?”

His eyes flickered. He smiled. “Just like that,” he said.

“Well, hi, Cain. I’m Kati. Want a beer?”

He did something strange then, leaning forward and sniffing at the bottle in her hand, making her wonder for the first time if he was really there at all or if this were some Baked Alaska head-trip. Then he looked at her. “No,” he said. He got even closer then, enough for Kati to feel his breath on her cheek, and drew in another breath, a deeper one. He didn’t back away afterwards, either. “What do you want…Kati?” he asked, almost humming the words, or growling them. He sounded like he was smiling.

Kati felt a hot little thrill slide down her body. It was a weird come-on, okay, and more direct than most guys got so soon, but it was also sexy as hell. Well, two could play this game.

Kati held her bottle teasingly up between them, keeping him at bay, but reached down with her free hand and cupped his crotch. Immediately, her sly smile turned to wide-eyed surprise and she looked down, as if trying to see through his clothes to the monster she was petting. This had to be the Bake at work. Guys didn’t really come that big, did they?

And he wasn’t slapping her hand away, that was for sure. Not him, and not his blonde girlfriend, although she looked pissed enough to want to try. Kati gave Cain’s cock another disbelieving squeeze and then backed up, sipping at her beer to try and recover some equilibrium. She sure didn’t think she was fucked up enough already to be imagining this. And come on, if this was just the Bake, shouldn’t Blondie and Miss Purple be coming on to her, too? Blondie looked like she wanted to skin Kati alive, and Miss Purple was still curled on the couch, not even watching.

Uncertainly, Kati gave Cain another rub-down and then said, “Am I really here? I am, aren’t I?”

Cain took the beer bottle out of her hand and dropped it. He caught her wrist and pressed her hand tight to the bulge in his pants. “Having a little trouble, are you?” he asked, stroking her up and down on him. He glanced at his girlfriend. “Go take care of Raven.”

Blondie pouted. “She’s sleeping. Can’t I—”

Cain slapped her reaching hand away before Blondie could touch him. “I’m going to assume that you aren’t arguing with me. I’m going to assume you’re asking for clarification. So let me clarify. Wake her up. Now,” he said coldly, his lip curling. His teeth…now those had to be Bake. His hand never stopped moving Kati’s. He was hard as rock inside his tight clothing. “What do I want to hear you say?”

“Yes, Cain.” Blondie’s shoulders tightened and she turned away.

“That’s better. Take care of her. Wake her up if you have to, but take care of her. Do it right and maybe I’ll take care of you. Maybe. Behave yourself.” Cain took his hand off Kati’s at last, but she kept rubbing. He played with the tips of her hair in a distracted way, watching his girlfriend walk to the couch. Blondie bent over and put her hand up Miss Purple’s shirt. That was a nice wake-up for you. Cain said, “I know you’re not here alone. Where are your friends, Kati?”

“I dunno. They’re around. And you should know I’m not planning to behave myself at all.” She grinned when he looked down at her. “I hope you’re not too disappointed.”

“You should,” he replied seriously. “I don’t think you’d like me when I’m disappointed. Show me where your friends are.”

Kati slipped her hand beneath the tight waist of his pants and got her fingers around real, rigid flesh. “Wouldn’t you rather be alone?”

He drew back, blinking fast and frowning slow. “Alone?” he echoed, peering at her lips.

“With me.”

“Ah.” His smile reasserted itself. “That depends on a few things.” He took her wrist again, this time putting her at arm’s length. “First, show me where your friends are. Then we’ll talk.”

Okay, this was definitely not Bake. Fantasy fuck-buddies never gave a rip where other people were. They came, they fucked, they came again, and then they winked out. So Cain was real, which meant that fantastic cock of his was real, too, and if he needed a guided tour before he’d pull it, so be it. Kati took his arm and led him over the ridge and down the path to the water.

The sun was just low enough in the sky to turn the diminished river into a ribbon of blinding white running down the middle of a hellish landscape of cracked earth and skeletal logs. Tabby and some of Ray’s cousins were still splashing around and shrieking at each other. Just about everyone else was coupled up on the small sandy edge that was the river’s real bank. Even Danny had his tongue down someone’s throat. Sarah Ann was completely naked and had two more of the cousins feeling her up with that sleepy fascination that said Green Dragon to Kati. Riffer, who was, as far as Kati knew, straight as a ruler, was receiving a blowjob from Tabby’s boyfriend with an expression of pleasant surprise. Good party, in other words. It was almost enough to make Kati want to wander over and join them.

“Is this everyone?” Cain asked. His eyes were skipping over the scene, mentally detangling and counting bodies, completely unmoved by the content.

“I dunno.” Kati looked around, restless and horny, and moved a step or two closer to the action. “Not quite, I guess. I saw Corky and Owen go off in the woods somewhere. I think everyone else is here. I wasn’t taking coats, you know.” She gave Riffer’s slick rod a longing look and inched a little further away from Cain.

“Show me what direction.”

“What?” She glanced back at him, her eyes fluttering. “What direction…what?”

Cain studied her face, her eyes in particular, and then gave his head a short, hard shake. “You saw…Corky and Owen leave,” he said, very slowly and distinctly. “Show me what direction they left in.”

“Why?”

His eyes narrowed, and for a second there, Kati thought she was about to experience the very first seriously bad Bake trip in the whole universe. Then, although it seemed to take some hard effort on his part, Cain smiled at her. “Because I told you to,” he said. He sighed, caught her wrist, and guided her hand back to the front of his pants.

Clarity sparked. Kati looked at the bulge beneath her palm, felt it, squeezed it, and reached up to pinch at one of her nipples. “Come on,” she said, a trifle breathlessly. “Why don’t you show me what you’ve got, tiger? Stop playing around.”