Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 32 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

“Show me what direction Corky and Owen left in,” he said. He put both his hands on her shoulders, turned her bodily around, and gave her a little push back in the direction of the clearing.

She went ahead of him, rubbing at herself as she walked. The Bake was good and fucking with her now. She kept seeing things at the corners of her eyes—birdmen in the air and frogmen hiding in the bushes, all of them sporting gigantic erections and beckoning—and the only parts of her body she could feel were the ones burning with lust. But somehow, she managed to focus on the narrow path that led, if one were inclined to follow it all the way, out to the foot of Ranger’s Mountain. She brought Cain down it until she stumbled on Owen and Corky’s sweaty grope-fest. They were so wasted, they didn’t even look up. Just kept sixty-nining, oblivious even when Kati stomped her foot and whined, “Okay, okay, here they are! Now what do you say, stranger? Let’s dance already!”

“This is everyone?” Cain took the pack he was carrying off his shoulder and opened it.

“Yes!”

“Go lie down.” Cain knelt beside the writhing, four-legged heap of sex and started picking through Corky’s hair as she bobbed on Owen’s dick.

“Oh, come on!”

Cain’s head came up sharply and the look in his all-black eyes was enough to momentarily freeze all the Baked-out sensation in Kati’s body. She found herself thinking, just for one confused instant, that her folks were having a barbeque today and really…maybe she should have gone.

“Go lie down,” Cain said again. Below him, Corky languidly looked up, took hold of his hand and started sucking on one of his fingers. “Go on.” He glanced down at Corky briefly and then met her eyes again and said, “I won’t take long. Kati. Go lie down.”

“Okay, fine.” She trudged away up the path until she found a grassy place where she could sit. She put her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands and waited. Something popped down where Owen and Corky were. Not a pop, exactly. She wasn’t sure what it was. It sounded like a carrot being snapped in half, only thicker somehow. Unpleasant. There it was again. Gross.

Kati lay back and rubbed restlessly between her legs, looking at the patterns the trees made on the empty sky beyond. She was getting sleepy. She’d wasted her fucking Bake. What a fucking dead party.

Footsteps at last. Cain came up into the grassy place, his pack back on his shoulder, playing with something that looked a lot like a shiny, chrome vibrator. It was even humming like one.

“Is that for me?” Kati asked.

“Maybe.” Cain pushed a button on the side of the vibrator and it spat out a chewed-up wad of gum. He unslung his pack and set it on the ground, then took off his long coat and then his hat, dropping them indifferently. He looked her over, his mouth twisted with speculation, and finally he knelt beside her. He put the vibrator down and opened his pack again.

Kati picked up the vibrator and licked it suggestively.

“Don’t do that,” Cain sighed, and took it away from her. He reached into his suitcase and pulled out something that looked a little like a ballpoint pen and a lot like a scalpel. He took her arm. “Hold still.”

“What’s that?” Kati asked, holding excitedly very still. She was always looking for the next Mr. Good-drug and the Bake was almost gone. Her eyes drifted to his hand on her arm. Three fingers. Claws. Well, the Bake wasn’t entirely gone.

Cain didn’t answer. He gave her a poke with the device, flicked at a recessed switch, and then took it out and inserted the tip of the scalpel into the laptop sticking out of his case.

Oh, this was bullshit. Kati tried to get up and Cain reached down absentmindedly, his eyes still on the screen of his computer, and unfastened his pants. She changed course immediately, rocking onto her knees and latching onto him with both hands—it took both hands!—to close her mouth rapturously over the head of him. He leaned back to make room for her, but otherwise did nothing. He was waiting.

His computer chimed, and Kati raised her head dazedly and looked around at the trees. Cain uttered a grunting sound and shut his pack up, then put his hand on the back of Kati’s head and guided her back down to his rigid cock. She could feel the pricking of sharp points through her hair, and she burst out laughing.

“I’m so high! You feel like you have claws!” She lost her balance and fell back, giggling.

He laughed with her, then seized both her ankles in one of his hands and pulled her legs straight up into the air. He flipped her skirt up, got hold of her panties and pulled them up and off in one crisp yank.

“Oo, so forceful!” She would have said more, but he opened her legs, tucked them under his arms, and pulled her up and onto his lap. She gasped, absolutely motionless, staring blankly at the sky as he fit the head of his huge cock to her. Then he gripped her hips and yanked her all the way against him, impaling her on that amazing spike. Every woman’s magazine in the whole world was a goddamn liar; size mattered. She’d never felt anything like this. It made every other fuck she’d ever had wash out to kiddie-colored play-dates. It was the first real fuck of her entire life.

He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t paw at her or anything. He touched nothing but her hips, and that only just to keep her moving on him. It was just sex. No slobber, no groping, no nothing but this incredible fucking, filling her and scorching her with every new thrust. Kati couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t feel enough or move fast enough. The sensations were too overwhelming and too shocking to even let her cum. She just kept building, rocking and shuddering in his grip, getting so hot and so wet that soon, everything he did to her felt so good it actually hurt.

She thought he was cumming. Hard to tell. She kept thinking she felt him shooting off, but she had to be wrong, because he kept fucking, if anything, even harder and faster. His eyes were shut tight, his brow furrowed as with concentration, and his teeth were bared. Sharp teeth. Monster teeth. Like the claws pricking at her hips. This wasn’t real.

Kati reached up through fathoms and space and touched his chest. Slick and hard. Like wet stone. She slipped her hand between them to feel the reality of his cock pushing in and out of her, and his eyes finally opened. “I’m not…here,” she told him. Her voice sounded watery. She closed her eyes as sexual heat bloomed sickly in her stomach, and ground herself helplessly up at the cock that invaded her with such magnificent force. “I’m not…not…”

Cain let out a sound Kati could only hear as a monster-movie special effect-a dinosaur growl or a lion or something. He spread his thighs, bumping her into a slightly different position, angled her hips up and suddenly Kati was in a whole new world of fucking. “Are you here?” she heard him ask coolly, from somewhere out beyond the blindness of this wrenching carnal fire.

Kati felt her first orgasm, her first real one. Not just a little shiver and a gasp, or that rosy warm glow she’d always thought were orgasms. No, this was a clenching, stabbing furnace-blast, every bit as painful as it was pleasurable. Kati writhed helplessly in its grip, fighting to escape it as much as to hold on to it, her mind blasted white by sensation.

Above her, Cain snarled out that monster-movie sound again and he hooked her again in those hands that did not have claws, did not have just the three fingers. His entire body locked up rock-hard. He thrust three times more, each more brutal than the last, and finally came. Katie felt the jet of it drumming up inside her and experienced a full-body sexual explosion, something so unreal and intense that for a while there, she felt eerily as though her soul had floated completely out of her, hovered around for a while looking at the trees, and then sank back down and sewed itself back to flesh.

She lay limp. Spent, as they say in bad books, but that was such a temporary-sounding word. Spent was something that happened to money, and it only took a trip to the ATM to get it back. Kati wasn’t spent. She was wilted. She was hollowed-out and burnt. She wasn’t dead, maybe, but she was in that soap-opera coma that leads there. Spent, ha. She was fucking bankrupt.

A scraping sound off to her left provided just enough motivation for Kati to open her eyes. Cain was up, dressed, and getting his suitcase packed again.

“What’s your hurry?” she asked sleepily, and stretched out an arm to tug at his boot. “Come on down here, baby.”

He glanced at her, smiling thinly, and pulled his foot out of her grip. “Baby,” he echoed, as though tasting the word, and then shook his head. “Heat’s done. It’s time for me to hunt.”

“Aw, come on, be a nice guy.”

“I’m such a nice guy—” Cain dropped to his hunkers and gave her a chuck to the chin that made Kati giggle. “—I’ll even leave you alone. I know, I know, I’m too sentimental. Stay here, Kati. Get some sleep.”

“I’m not tired,” she mumbled, rolling onto her side to play with his boot laces. “Will you take me with you when you go?”

“Why?”

“This is a dead party.”

Cain laughed, shouldering his pack. “Yes,” he said. “It will be. But I have all the flesh I need. More, in fact, than I even want.”

“I’m better than either of them.”

“No, I hate to hurt your feelings, but you’re really not.” He hunkered down again, pinched her chin between his thick thumb and fingers and gave her head a playful little shake. “Friendly advice, little fuck-mate. Get away from that shit you’re taking. The only door in that long hall opens on men like me.”

“I like you.” She caught his wrist and tugged at it hopefully, giving him her best bedroom eyes from the dry woodsy ground.

He smiled again, but it was a distracted thing. His attention was wandering back up the path to the clearing, and he stood up, pulling easily out of her grip. “Close your eyes, Kati,” he said, turning his back on her. “Count to a thousand.”

She could hear him walking away before she even got to five, but that didn’t matter. She’d show him she was good and he’d come back and get her. When he was done hunting big game in northern Nevada, that was.

Forty-one. Forty-two. Something popped, like a pine-knot in a fire. The boys, dumb shits that they were, making that damn bonfire now that she wasn’t there to stop them. (To wonder how she’d be able to hear a popping pine-knot from where she now lay did not and would never occur to her.) It wasn’t gunfire. Gunfire was louder, Kati knew that. She went to the movies.

Seventy-nine. Eighty. Eighty-one. Pop-pop. Someone screamed. Sounded like Tabby. Cumming from her toes, most likely; that wasn’t a splashing-in-the-river scream. It made Kati smile, thinking of Cain. That first thrust, splitting her, filling her.

One hundred and five. One hundred and six. Another scream, this one masculine. She couldn’t tell who. Probably one of the cousins or whoever was with Tabby. God, she wished Cain would come back. She was ready for round two.

No more screaming all through the one hundreds, all through the two hundreds. Kati was so good. She didn’t get up, didn’t lose count, didn’t fall asleep.

At five hundred and thirty six, Riffer’s CD ran out of music. No one started it up again.

Eight hundred, and Kati got up to pee, keeping a steady count as she crouched in the bushes and keeping her eyes tight shut to hold to the spirit of Cain’s command.

The nine hundreds were the longest, and she kept getting distracted by little sounds—trees creaking, leaves fluttering, bird calls. Where were all the big sounds, the people sounds?

One thousand. Kati got up and wandered back up the path to the clearing. Owen and Corky were still in the grass, sound asleep where they’d finished, still head-to-toe, although Corky had rolled onto her back at least. Her arm was dangling out into the path. Kati had to step over it.

Nothing moved in the clearing. The boombox was silent. Riffer was lying on his back just staring at the sky. Danny and one of the cousins were stretched out and stone drunk nearby. They’d torn their legs up in some blackberry bushes or something. Pretty bad, too. They’d gotten blood all the way up into their hair.

“Guys?” Kati called. She got a beer out of the cooler and squeezed the top off. There was no splashing by the river, no nothing. And Cain and his two girlfriends were gone.

“He’ll come back,” she said. She sat down on the party log and drank her beer. It was a really dead party. Summer sucked.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Twenty-Three

Daria spent the morning alone and filled her empty hours with cleaning. The obvious stuff first—sweeping, mopping, vacuuming—which led to the less obvious stuff—washing the cupboard faces, scrubbing the kick plates, wiping down Grendel’s food mat—and finally to the ridiculously obscure stuff—polishing doorknobs and switchplates. She was dusting her DVDs when the depression caught up to her and she stopped where she was, right in the middle of the Lord of the Rings collection, and sat down on the sofa.

The silence of the house was claustrophobic. She’d been living here alone for six years. Why hadn’t she ever noticed how claustrophobic silence was? She picked up the TV remote and switched it on.

It was a news channel, which was refreshing for the second it took to absorb what she was seeing. A young girl, maybe in her twenties, in the midst of about a thousand reporters, was being taken up some steps into a very official-looking building. One of the journalists, a fella who looked even younger than his disheveled subject, thrust his microphone out and shouted, “Miss Markham, Miss Markham, did you do it?”

‘Sure, fella, like she’s going to admit it on national television,’ Daria thought heavily.

“I guess so,” the girl said, at virtually the same time. The clamor of voices died at once and cameras started clicking madly away. The girl looked dazedly around her, oblivious to the two men in suits who were frantically hissing at her. “I dreamed that bible guy came to me. Maybe he told me to.”

The screen cut to a nice, neat newsroom, with a nice, neat newscaster behind a desk. “Markham’s lawyer has not yet indicated the line of his defense, but the District Attorney’s office has stated that they will be seeking the death penalty if she is convicted. Authorities in the area surrounding Sugarush have issued a warning on the dangers of drug abuse following the killings. Suspect Katrina Markham was allegedly under the influence of alcohol and other drugs when she was discovered with the bodies, including gamma-hydroxymethlyene, colloquially known as Baked Alaska, a powerful hallucinogen known for its euphoric effects.”

Just another sterling example of how Earth didn’t need an alien like E’Var to make its murder quota. Daria started surfing restlessly through the channels.

An euphoric hallucinogen. Tagen hadn’t said what this drug E’Var was making did, but seeing as its main ingredient came from the pleasure center of the human hypothalamus, an euphoric wasn’t out of the question. She considered asking him, but abandoned the idea. Even if she knew how to put the question in words he might understand, what would be the point of knowing? It didn’t have anything to do with her, and it would only put more pressure on Tagen to go out and find his fugitive.

More pressure was something Tagen did not need right now. He looked so much worse than yesterday. Oh, he was moving around more—due in large part, she was sure, to her forcing food and water on him whether he wanted it or not—but he looked horrible. Despite everything he said (and the increasingly hostile way in which he said it), it was impossible for Daria to look at him and not see a dying man.

Right on cue, she heard his door open. His step was slow and disturbingly heavy, and his claws scraped at the walls as he made his way to the bathroom. Daria watched the clock on the wall above the TV. It took him two minutes and ten seconds to walk ten feet. The door closed. A moment later, the shower came on.

She fought hard against the urge to go up and check in on him. He wouldn’t appreciate it. He might need it, but that didn’t matter. The more he needed it, the less he’d appreciate her help. She knew all about the paradoxical effects of pride.

But maybe it wasn’t that simple. Her mind kept going back to the look on his face when she’d asked if there was anything she could do to help him, and to the sound of his ragged voice telling her that she must never touch him, that yes, he would hurt her. These were things that should be filling her with panic. God knew, she’d freaked out more over a whole lot less since he’d come here, but all she felt was sorry…and sorry wasn’t enough.

Daria refocused on the TV, scrolling down through blips and bits of half-glimpsed images until she came to the movie channels. There, she slowed, brooding on the sound-bites Hollywood fed her while her mind occupied itself. Guns and explosions and snappy retorts and trenchcoats and car chases and sex.

Sex.

It wasn’t a big deal. It really wasn’t. She didn’t have to get all edged up like this. Because it was very simple, really. He needed help and she could help him. She couldn’t fix her air conditioner or change the weather, but she could sleep with him and he’d get better.

She’d had a whole night to consider it. A whole night and all of today to think about his hand on her back that day in the kitchen, so cautious. A night and a day to ask herself just what she was afraid of and to realize that when all was said and done, it really wasn’t him. Not even now, when he was probably at his very worst. It wasn’t him.

The water shut itself off, and Daria had time to channel all the way back up to the news before the bathroom door even opened. Tagen came downstairs, moving slow and climbing the banister in reverse, putting one hand in front of the other with a mountaineer’s caution until he stood unsteadily on the floor. He glanced into the living room, his eyes lingering on her before flicking to the TV. The newscasters were discussing with great seriousness the problem of rising gas prices. Tagen said, “Use plasma focus fusion cells,” in a dull voice and then shuffled away toward the kitchen.

She let him go, huddling on the couch and rubbing legs which felt too weak to hold her. In her mind, she heard the words she knew she’d use repeating and repeating themselves in a calm and sensible one-sided argument. She would not allow herself to imagine his reaction.

Something thudded heavily in the kitchen. Not heavy enough to be his body falling to the floor, but the sound was still alarming enough to force her to act, now, before she lost her nerve.

She stood up, smoothing her shirtfront over her waist and thinking of his hands and how they would feel on her bare skin. Knowing that she might just find out in the very near future made her feel flushed and faint-headed, but in fairness, not all of it was dread. The wholly dreadful part lay in imagining how she’d have to bring the matter up, but like everything else in life, it would probably get easier once she’d actually started.

She walked down the hall, her hands in nervous fists at her sides, silently moving her lips though her opening argument. He’d say yes or he’d say no, it was really just that simple, but she’d reached the point where she couldn’t live with herself just ignoring what was happening to him.

Tagen was sitting at the little table in the corner, in the seat he’d turned into his own, slumped over with his head on his arms. He was bare to the waist, positively glowing with sweat. His hair clung in wet lengths to his skin, outlining the precise dimensions of his skull. The day that she’d first caught him coming into Heat in her kitchen, the day he’d only looked a little sick, seemed like it had happened to someone in a past life. It was all of five days ago.

“Tagen…” Daria gripped the kitchen doorway for strength and took a deep breath. On any planet, the next words she was about to say were bound to be ominous ones. “Can we talk?”

He didn’t move, and for one awful second, she thought he was dead. Despite all his assurances that he could not be killed by the awful strain that ravaged his body, his heart had given out and he was dead.

And then he stirred, raising his head as though it weighed a thousand pounds. He shifted to meet her eyes, knuckling sweat from his brow. He was having difficulty focusing. “Daria,” he said, his voice a croak. Then he covered his eyes with both his hands and slumped forward once more.

“It’s not working, is it?” she asked. She got the bag of peas from the freezer and laid it on the back of his neck.

A groan, rusty as a barn nail, tore out of him as he leaned into her. There was agony in his face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She took his hand, placed it over the peas, and then went back to the freezer for more ice. “I really thought it would help.”

“It does.” He accepted an ice cube and rubbed it over his chest, his teeth bared. “I thank you for thinking of it. And for taking me to get it. I know it was difficult for you.”

She didn’t know how to feel, seeing him in this state and hearing him half-apologize for making her drive him to the Luv-A-Lot’s. She took a breath to nerve herself and said, “It doesn’t help enough. Tagen, you’re sick all the time. You’re not drinking enough. You’re not eating at all. You’re not sleeping very well. And you’re not getting anywhere in your search.”

“I know.” He pulled the peas away from his neck and placed them on his chest instead. “But it does help. It is a matter of an hour’s effort, not four. For that alone, it is worth it.”

Daria sat at the table and took Tagen’s hand, squeezing until he dragged his eyes up and looked at her. “This can’t continue,” she said.

“It must.” He met her gaze tiredly and without emotion. “I will not leave Earth without E’Var, and so there is no choice.”

“Yes.” Daria was surprised at how steady her voice was, at how calmly she was able to sit and face him. “Yes, there is.”

It seemed that he looked at her for a long time before understanding bled into him. His hawk’s eyes narrowed, very slowly. “I do not know what you mean,” he said quietly. ‘Stop’ was hammered into every word.

“I’ve been thinking,” she continued doggedly. “And if I understand correctly what this…Heat thing does to you…then I think I can help you.”

His eyes shut and he turned away, his mouth tightening to a thin line. “No,” he said. “I will not force you.”

That was oddly encouraging to her. It was ‘No, I will not force you,’ not ‘No, that won’t help’. Daria took another deep breath. “Tagen—”

“No!” He shoved his chair back and rose, letting the peas fall with a smushy sound to the floor. “I have disgraced myself since this mission began, but there are still things I will not do!”

She had been ready for some protest, but this vehement denial of her offer shook her. She looked down at her hands and made them lie flat on the tabletop. “Is it me?” she asked finally.

“You?” He backed up a step and stared at her. “Is it you?!” he repeated.

“Am I…so…” She closed her eyes. “Ugly…”

“No!”

He could not have sounded more aghast. It helped.

She looked up at him again. “Then why not?” she asked. “Why not, if you need me and I say it’s all right?”

“Because it is not all right,” he retorted, his voice rising. “And saying it will never make it so. Mere days ago, you sat just where you are sitting now and told me you knew what I would have you do and you could not do it!”

“I—”

“No!” he said curtly. “I have done enough to hurt you. I will not inflict this Heat on you as well. It is enough, Daria. It is goddamn well enough!” He swung around and struck out blindly, leaving a crater in her wall where his fist found a target.

It was the first time she had ever heard him really swear in her language. She looked back down at the table for a second or two, listening to his ragged breath as he pulled himself back under control. Finally, she got up and crossed over to the sink. She wet a clean dishtowel and brought it back to him.

He flinched when she took his hand and then stood immobile and unspeaking as she dabbed at his knuckles.

“I apologize,” he said quietly, “for breaking your wall.”

“I always wanted to hang a picture there, anyway,” she said, shrugging.

“I frightened you.”

“Big deal. I’m always frightened.” She tried to smile and then had to bite her cheeks hard to keep from crying. It was several minutes more before she could trust herself to speak. “But I’m not scared of you, Tagen. And believe me, I’ve tried to be.”

He didn’t smile. Not even a little bit. She could feel his eyes burning down on her as she focused all her attention on his hand.

She said, “You came here to do a job, Tagen. And you’ve been trying so hard to get it done. And you’ve been slipping a little more every single day. Because of the weather. And that’s…that’s a stupid reason, Tagen. That’s the worst reason in the world I can think of to let someone like E’Var get away.”

“Yes.” There was loathing in his voice. He looked away at the hole in her wall and was silent.

“You can’t help what’s happened to you,” she continued.

“Enough,” he said.

“But I can,” she said firmly.

“No!” He pulled his hand from her grip and backed away from her again. “You swore once to be a friend to me. If ever you meant it, then stop this.”

She could feel herself wanting to give in, just let it drop and move on. Then she made herself look at him, and she saw all over again what the weather was doing to him. She saw him shaking, she saw the dark rings of exhaustion sinking his eyes, she saw the paleness of him beneath the flush of anger and sweat. “You’re dying,” she said softly.

“I cannot die from this!” he shouted, and staggered. He caught himself on the dining table and stayed there, breathing hard and not meeting her eyes.

“Yes, you can,” she said. “Maybe not on your planet, but you can here. And I think I know why. Because I think on your planet, if it ever got this bad, I think there’s someplace you can just go, and there would be people there who would…help you.”

He said nothing and continued to glare down at the table, but she could tell that he was listening. More, she could tell that she was right.

“I could help you,” she said.

He ignored her.

Daria mustered up her courage and touched him again, resting her trembling fingertips on his shoulder. It was like touching a furnace, hot and hard and utterly inanimate. But he wasn’t shoving her away, so Daria moved her hand to his back, testing the breadth of him. The thought struck her that this was where her hand would be as she lay beneath him, this was where and how she would touch him. She felt something then, and it was not fear at all. “I want to help you.”

He shuddered, so fully and violently that she thought for a split-second he was going into convulsions. Then he raised his head, his golden eyes blazing beneath the limp spikes of his hair, and her words froze in her throat. There was nothing in his gaze but hunger, nothing but a single, searing need. “Get,” he said, very quietly, “away from me.”

She stayed where she was.

His nostrils flared and for just an instant, that furious hunger grew brighter, and then he wrenched his gaze away and pushed himself upright, backing out of her reach. “I will not do this,” he said. “I must go home with some honor. I will not force you to oblige me.”

“I don’t see you twisting my arm,” she said.

He bared his teeth at her, snarling with a sound like an animal, and then turned away from her. “I have done nothing but twist your arm since I invaded your house! Nothing! But this, this I will not do!”

He began to walk away, half-falling into the doorjamb as he tried to leave the kitchen.

“Tagen, I’m trying to be your friend.” Daria started to follow him, then stopped and picked up the peas. She put them back in the freezer and then had to run to catch up to him as he staggered down the hall. “Doesn’t my opinion matter?”

“No!” he snapped over his shoulder.

“No?”

“You know nothing of Heat. You know nothing of what you are agreeing to!”

“I know you’re suffering,” she countered. She got ahead of him and slapped her hand down on the stair rail, blocking his retreat. She met his furious gaze without fear, her voice calm as she told him, told both of them, some of the truth in her heart. “Tagen, if you were human and if I wasn’t so fucked up, I’d have gone to bed with you already.”

He recoiled, looking dazedly back to the television as though it could tell him if he’d heard her correctly. “You’re mistaken,” he said, wiping sweat from his eyes.

“Oh no. No, I’m not. You’re attractive. You’re strong and noble—”

“Noble,” he echoed, looking pained.

“And you’ve been incredibly patient with me when I have been at my very least lovable,” she admitted. “I’ve felt like I’ve been drowning for so long…and then you walked into my house and dragged me out of the water kicking and screaming. Even though your motives weren’t entirely selfless, it was still heroic and I’m still grateful.”

“And because you are grateful—” he began, his hands clenching into fists.

“Oh stop it, I’m not sacrificing anything,” she interrupted. “Tagen…some part of me wants to help you this way. And all of me wants to see you stop hurting. I know you’ve thought about it.”

He took a hard, jagged step away from her, his eyes going wide before caution narrowed them. He was silent a long time, grimness settling into every part of him. “You know,” he said at last.

“You look at me,” she said. “Every time the people on TV tumble into bed, I feel you looking at me.” A prickle of irritation came to her, a defense against the embarrassment of having to admit this, and she added, “You were doing that even before you ran out of your medicine.”

He dropped his eyes. His jaw was tight, his expression unreadable. “What I think,” he said quietly, “and what I will do are two very different things. You have been a friend to me, despite your fear. I will not exploit that.”

“You have a very strange notion of what exploitation is,” she retorted. “You are perfectly okay with busting in my spare room window and injecting me with alien drugs so I can show you what channel Law & Order comes on. You’re fine with forcing me to feed you and clothe you and bring you bags of frozen peas. You have no qualms whatsoever about drafting me into looking for your escaped convict. But when I stand here and tell you it’s okay to come to bed with me, that’s exploitation. I can only do one thing to really, really help you, and you won’t let me!”