Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 38 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

He took her fear at once and came off the ladder to console her. “No, no, Daria. It is not possible for our kinds to produce young.”

“How do you know?”

“Because…” He let his hands fall from her shoulders and looked up at the stars for strength, invisible behind their curtain of blue. “Because it has been tried,” he said, and sighed. “Daria, there are things I have not told you.”

“It’s not just the drug, is it?” Her voice was soft, numbed by understanding, but the anger he feared most did not come. Her fingers slipped through his and she came close against his arm. “He’s taking us back, isn’t he? He’s taking people.”

Tagen looked at her hand in his, her cunning little fingers, so slim and graceful. He looked into her eyes—green and blue and white—all the colors of her Earth.

“What does he do with them?” Daria asked.

“All that can be done,” he answered, as gently as possible. “He…and others like him…sell humans to become…I do not know the word. They are forced to work.”

“Slaves,” she said. Her gaze drifted from his, staring in horror at some empty point in space. “The word you’re looking for is slaves.”

“It is a crime,” he said. It was very important for him to make that distinction, and for her to understand it. “As serious in its way as murder. When we find them, the criminals are imprisoned for all their lives. The humans are…removed.”

“But you don’t bring them home,” she said in her quiet voice. “No, how could you?” She shivered, despite the warmth of the air, and looked at him with eyes bright with hurt. “What happens to them?”

“There is a place for them,” he said. “We have cities built. Most choose to build their own. There is farmland, livestock. At one time, we stationed doctors among them, but they were not…well-received. Now we let it be known that medical care is available upon request. To my knowledge, such requests have never been made.”

“But they’re happy?” she pressed.

Tagen hesitated, thinking of the few times he had been present at the delivery of recovered humans to the preserves. He remembered them, a shambling, wary lot, hobbled and muted, crippled and scarred, looking as if they had known only hatred and fear their whole lives. The children might laugh—children could be happy anywhere—but even their small, filthy faces had been pinched with suspicion.

“I’m sure you do your best,” Daria said softly, and turned away.

“It will all end soon,” Tagen told her. “The Gate that brings our criminals to your world will be destroyed. It had been hoped that some peace could someday be forged between our two peoples, when your race had matured.”

“Or when yours had,” she said, still without looking at him.

“Yes.” He sighed. “But the cost of life is too high. The Gate will come down.”

“Then why…?” She turned and searched his face intently. “Is it the only one?”

Gods, she was quick.

“For now,” he said. “We do not know for certain, but E’Var may be building another. This is why we must take him. This is why we cannot allow him to come away from Earth with Vahst that he can sell.”

She nodded, stared at her feet, and nodded again. “You’ll find him,” she said.

There was no doubt, not even the slimmest reservation, in her words. Her conviction was a thousand times more strengthening than any Magistrate’s praise or guarantee of promotion. Tagen put his arm around her and she pressed against his chest at once, letting him hide her in his protection.

“I can see why you didn’t tell me,” she said. “I don’t blame you. I kind of wish I still didn’t know. It’s so hard to think that…that it could be true. It’s been Earth’s nightmare for so long, it’s almost a joke. But it’s been real the whole time.”

It was every world’s nightmare, rekindled on Jota each time the Far-Reachers encountered a new world. The Kevrian had been the first to actually engage them, and that had been the death-knell for the Far-Reacher program, but see how it had ended. Jotan, who themselves feared domination by alien forces, turning a blind eye to the slow enslavement of the human race. Daria was right. It was a joke, one so cruel, it could not be acknowledged by any power on Jota.

“You’ll keep me safe,” Daria said, her arms tightening around his waist. “Won’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

He felt her chest hitch once in soundless laughter. “You didn’t even hesitate,” she said.

“Some things do not require thought.” He cocked his head. “Don’t require thought.”

“You’re trying so hard.”

“I must impress a great woman.”

She looked up, smiling at him with her sad eyes. “You know, for a guy who doesn’t speak N’Glish very well, you sure know all the right things to say.” She twined her hands around his neck and rose up on her toes to touch her mouth to his. “Take me inside, Tagen. Make me feel safe.”

Tagen lifted her easily into his arms. “I wish that I could be here only for you,” he said. “I would give anything to keep you from every harm.”

“Show me,” she said.

He carried her into the house and up the stairs. He took her to his bed, in the room where her unhappiness nested, but she did not object and there was no reticence in the way she reached for him. He undressed her, pressing his mouth to every piece of her as he bared it, tasting her soft skin and feeling her shiver in response as he explored all her graceful curves.

Her hands found his head, combing lightly through his hair before cupping his face and guiding his questing lips to her breast. He suckled carefully, his fingers flowing along the hollows of her throat, her round shoulders, her sloping ribs and the valley of her waist. Her body, her beautiful alien body, undulated beneath him, arcing to meet his touch and falling away to savor it. Her pleasure gave him confidence. There was something he wanted to try.

Tagen kissed a trail between her breasts and down to her soft belly. He sipped teasingly at her navel and then moved down, over the cushion of musk-rich down. She gasped as his tongue flicked tentatively at her sex, her hands clenching in his hair. The nub crowning her cleft tantalized him; it stiffened under his careful touch, and Daria’s hips rose and fell in rhythm as he tested its responses. The scent of musk flowed, maddening so near to him, and he slipped his hands beneath her, tilting her up so that he could drink her juices. The taste of her—dizzying and wild—invaded him with all the strength of pure Heat, but with none of its fury. His tongue stabbed deeper, bringing dazzling cries from his writhing partner that only seemed to thicken the fog surrounding him. He could not seem to be satisfied; her musk grew and grew as she came, and he made himself drunk on her pleasure.

At last, his entire body seared with urgent need, Tagen rose and stripped himself of his clothing. Daria’s eyes flashed wide, hungry, and she reached for him, pushing his hands away so that she could tear away the final barrier between them. Tagen forced himself to stand immobile as she pulled his jacket and shirt free, her mouth and tongue a torture on his bare flesh.

“Trust me,” she whispered. Her hands scoured down his stomach to tug at the fastenings of his pants. “I need you to trust me.”

“I do.”

She took his rigid shaft in her hands and then closed her mouth around him.

Tagen’s breath hissed explosively out of him, only partly in the shock of the unexpected action. The sensation was beyond description, almost beyond his ability to feel. He had heard of such a thing but he could never have imagined such resounding pleasure. Her tongue, her lips, her breath, her teeth—all these things in every combination, moving over and all around him. It was ecstasy, enough to be anguish.

She pulled away at last, trembling as she pushed his pants down and helped him step free. She took his hand, smiling at him with passion and with trust, and pulled him down on the bed beside her.

To enter her was a celebration of the soul. She rose above him, her arms outstretched and her head thrown back, flying somewhere in her own mind as she moved with him. Her body swayed and arched, surged and ebbed; she danced with him, the act of sex made into art so pure it hurt to see. His hands could not keep from her, touching her, proving her reality to himself again and again. She was a god in her element. She was a star at the universe’s creation. And she was his.

They climaxed together and Tagen felt this release for the first time as a joining. He thought he could almost reach out and touch her soul; he thought he could see her heart like a glow around them both. They were one. They were truly one.

She folded over, lowering herself with that dancing, dreaming grace until she lay atop him. His arms came up and closed around her waist, holding her against him, holding them joined.

“I love you, Tagen,” she breathed. “Do you know that word?”

“Yes,” he said.

He did now.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It took most of the day to work the dopamine into Vahst and by the end of it, Kane was ravenous and his eyes were smarting from staring at the dark screen at tiny numbers. But he had five new vials of finished product in the preserving compartment and that made it impossible to feel too pricklish. Filling forty vials with concentrated Vahst was a hellish undertaking for a single man, but he was beginning to think he could actually pull it off.

He stood up, sealing his pack and dropping it on the floor, and stretched out all his cramping muscles. “Let’s see it, Raven.”

She handed him several sheets of writing and he studied them with a pride that was almost fatherly, a feeling that struck him as being profoundly disturbing. She’d written out the alphabet, his name, hers, the word ichuta’a, and, he saw with a smile, the word thal. The letters were childishly uneven. He needed to show her better how to form them. She could write well enough in human, there was no excuse for sloppiness.

He let the papers drop to the tabletop and ran his eyes over her instead. Her clothes were dry, but he hadn’t let her up to dress yet. He liked her this way. Glittering. He was proud of the overall effect of her naked body and gleaming ornaments, but there was nothing fatherly about it this time. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Better.”

She looked better, at last. He could still smell blood on her, but not as much as there had been, and she’d stopped griping at her belly. Soon, he’d be able to have her again, and he meant to enjoy her fully. He touched the tattoo on her arm that marked her as his, and then traced a claw lightly down to the rings in her nipples, then to the gems he’d set around her navel, and lower still, to her cunt. His next breath was nearly a sigh. He stroked along her metaled folds, remembering how it had been to take her, to make her cum for him, to feel that wild body writhing and sucking at him in her throes.

She was watching him now, her face guarded and delightfully solemn. He bent and nipped at her jaw, giving her hip a friendly slap before stepping back. She smiled faintly but it didn’t touch her eyes. There were times when Kane wondered if some humans might not be just a touch psychic.

Time to eat.

Kane fetched his pants from the bathroom where they hung, along with those of his humans, over the curtain bar. He dressed and came out to put clothes in the hands of his females. It was a shame to have to cover Raven’s jeweled body, but a pleasure to watch her do it. The way she moved…

“Ichuta’a,” he said, and snapped his fingers as he sat on the foot of the bed. Sue-Eye was at his side in an instant and he pulled her comfortably down onto his knee, giving her a little bump when he noticed her wince. “And how are you feeling?” he asked solicitously.

“Fine.” Her voice was strained, although she fought not to show it in her face. She kept trying to tilt her hips forward on his thigh so that her bottom didn’t take her weight, and he made a point of repositioning her roughly every time she did.

“Fine,” Kane echoed. He bumped his knee for her a few times playfully and nipped at her shoulder when her face puckered up. “Good. Get dressed and find us food.”

She sprang up, and then walked stiff-hipped to the phone. Kane flexed his claws, watching her, restless but lazy.

His eye fell on Raven and he snapped his fingers. She came readily enough, but with far less enthusiasm than his blonde ichuta’a. He pulled her down to straddle him, fitting her legs aside of his and pulling her tight to him. He locked his arms around her waist to keep her there and put his face very close to hers. “Bite me,” he growled.

She lifted her brows. “Where?”

“I don’t think I care.”

She leaned into him awkwardly and closed her teeth on his chin. She bit, lightly at first, and then harder, until Kane groaned with pleasure. He opened his eyes as she pulled back and caught her frowning.

“I’m having the weirdest feeling,” she said, averting her gaze.

“Like you’ve done this before?” He laughed and cupped her head, guiding her to his chest.

She bit, and then, without any prompting, twined her arms around his neck, licked up to his throat and bit again. Her hips rocked slightly, just once, an instinct she quickly stifled.

Sue-Eye was watching from the table, her eyes dark and face tight. Kane waved her over, growling his desire. She was on the bed beside him in an instant, digging her little claws into his chest and sinking her teeth into his shoulder. Her aggressiveness was eerily familiar to him and made her suddenly very appealing. He wrapped an arm around her waist and gave her lead.

He wasn’t going to let this get out of hand. The food was coming and he wanted to eat without rushing, but it felt good to unwind in the grip of these twin pairs of hands, to feel teeth on him in restrained savagery (very restrained, as far as Raven went), and to have the scent of them ripe in his nostrils. He lay back slowly, letting them braid with him, the three of them uniting into a single coil. Even with his eyes closed, he could tell which was which—Raven was gentle, caressing, and Sue-Eye, brusque and demanding.

At the moment, he preferred Sue-Eye’s kind of touches, although he hated playing into her game. But it would be nice to smooth out the evening hours with some rigorous sexplay, the kind that spilled a little blood—his and hers both—and kept the body burning for a few hours afterwards. And Sue-Eye, fool that she was, would be grateful for it, no matter how rough he got. She’d probably even see it as some sort of personal victory.

Ah, what the hell. Kane had never had a personal slave before, but he considered himself well-schooled in the way of keeping them, having watched his father do it all his life. One of the greatest lessons his father had taught in that regard was that once in a while, whether they deserved it or not, you had to give slaves what they wanted or else they’d sour. A sour human was a dangerous thing. A sour human lost its fear, lost its training, started thinking that long life as a slave wasn’t necessarily preferable to dying and that as long as one was dying anyway, why not blow the ship up and kill everyone?

Sue-Eye had never been all that scared of him to begin with and hitting her didn’t seem to do much. Every now and then, old Urak had run into a slave that reacted like that and it had proved necessary to train them with reward rather than punishment. Urak didn’t like to keep them, but in the short term and with the proper incentives, they could be astonishingly loyal. And Kane knew what Sue-Eye’s prime incentive would be, didn’t he?

He caught the blonde’s chin as she scoured his chest with her teeth and brought her up so that he could nip at her cheek. Her smile was immediate, dazzling, and only brightened when Kane grazed his fangs lightly down the slope of her throat to bite at her shoulder. A knock sounded at the door and Kane gave Raven a push in that direction, both his hands slipping up beneath Sue-Eye’s shirt to scratch teasingly at her thin skin. “We’re going to eat,” he told her, in between careful testing of her fragile flesh. “And then I’m going to use my ichuta’a. How does that bite you, human?”

“Use me,” she hissed, and gave him a bite to the chest hard enough to draw a few beads of blood. Her hand cupped him through his coverings and he uttered a growl that was only half-warning. “Use me now.”

“I said, first we eat.” He pushed her off him, but not out of reach, and gestured for the waiting Raven to bring the food to the bed.

Humans ate the strangest things. Dinner came in a wide, square box and seemed to consist of hot bread topped with sauce, meats, and less identifiable things, all of it pressed into a round shape and cut into wedges. Kane had to watch his humans for clues as to how to eat it. He found the taste indefinably unpleasant, but both humans ate their share with unfeigned zeal. Kane had only the one wedge. His hunger dulled, he was content to wait for something better. His appetites at the moment were more for flesh than for food, anyway.

“Tomorrow we go north,” he said, settling back on the bed to watch his females feast. It struck a primal chord in him to see them devour what he had provided, if only obliquely. “I want another hunt. A good hunt.”

Raven lowered her food and looked at him. Sue-Eye helped herself to another wedge.

“How ‘bout a motel?” his ichuta’a asked lightly. “We could get the passkey, flip on the No Vacancy sign and go room to room, no problem.”

The words, predominantly meaningless, flowed through him and left only an impression of possibility behind, like a footprint in mud. He glanced at Raven and raised an eyebrow.

“I guess we could.” She looked down at her unfinished food and put it aside. “I wouldn’t want to hit one too close to the highway, though. You do that too many times and they start putting up roadblocks. We can’t afford to let any cops get too good a look at you.”

“Oh bullshit,” Sue-Eye said. “You have to kill, like, a hundred people right on the road before they go trolling for you like that.”

“Lady, we have killed a hundred people.” Raven’s voice faltered on the last word. She swallowed hard and looked away, her face shadowed.

This was interesting. Two voices, one of ambition and one of caution. It was like being a bystander in his own brain.

“A hundred people,” Raven muttered. She was still staring blankly at the opposite wall. “Jesus Christ.”

Kane reached out and rubbed at Raven’s thigh to bring her back to the here and now. She leaned into the touch for a second, then stood up and moved away to the table. He let her go, turning his attention to Sue-Eye. She responded at once, dropping the dinner box with its few remaining portions of food onto the floor and crawling to him on her hands and knees. She smelled of spiced sauce and sex musk, an appealing combination.

“Continue with your thought, Raven,” Kane said, as Sue-Eye’s teeth resumed their work on his flesh.

Raven glanced at him. It seemed to Kane that her gaze lingered where Sue-Eye teased him, but then, his blood was getting high and he couldn’t exactly trust himself to be objective. “There’s only so many roads going back and forth,” she said. “That’s pretty much my only point. We have to use them. I don’t like…hunting…on them so much. It’s risky, Kane.”

“We—” Sue-Eye began.

“Quiet. Your mouth is busy. Raven, look at me when I’m talking to you.” He waited for her to turn, waited for Sue-Eye to engage her mouth along his chest and stomach, and then said, “What risks are you worried about?”

Raven hesitated, biting at her lip. The sight of her little teeth exposed, even in an expression of anxiety, gave him a pleasant sort of jump. She said, haltingly, “We’ve left so many witnesses…”

“The female at the bar where I collected my ichuta’a, you mean.” Kane caught Sue-Eye’s hand and led it to the front of his pants. She slipped beneath the tight material, caressing the stiff length of him. “She won’t tell a tree, Raven. Her mouth is as good as capped with steel.”

“Not just her.”

“The female in the woods.” Kane shrugged, recalling with a smile the glazed and wondering shine in that human’s drug-addled eyes. “I don’t think she’ll tell anyone, either. She had enough shit in her blood, I doubt she’ll even remember me.”

“Not just her, either. Everyone, Kane. Everyone at every motel we’ve stayed at. People at gas stations. Food delivery guys. Everyone.”

“Easy, ichuta’a, we haven’t started yet.” Kane chased Sue-Eye’s fingers away from the fastens of his clothes, but then rested his hand comfortably on her thigh. He considered Raven thoughtfully while his over-eager mate of the moment indulged herself in what he’d allow her of his body. Raven’s face was striving to be stoic, but there was frustration in it she could not hide and it seemed genuine enough. “Why are you concerning yourself with people who haven’t even seen me hunt?” he asked at last, knowing there had to be a prudent answer.

“All it’s going to take is one tee-vee report asking who’s seen us and where and these roads are going to turn into a death trap for us.” Her voice slipped, admitting a thin note of exasperation through to stain her next words. “We stand out, Kane. We’re the kind of people other people remember.”

Far-thinking Raven. Such thoughts had probably never been far from her mind. And she was right. He was killing in large groups, leaving bodies right out where they could be found. What passed for the Fleet here on Earth must know someone was slaughtering their kind. The only question was, how easily could they focus in on who?

“We’ll watch for these tee-vee reports from now on,” he said at last. He pushed his hand between Sue-Eye’s thighs and she opened readily to his touch. He stroked at her in the same rhythm she used on him and was not surprised when she immediately quickened her pace. “And if we see anyone asking after us, we’ll leave.”

“We have to assume we’ve been seen already,” Raven said stubbornly. Her face had gone tight with the effort of not looking at Sue-Eye.

“Agreed. And so I’ll let you pick the towns where I hunt.”

She recoiled, but Kane noted this from the distraction of pulling Sue-Eye up into position for mating. When he looked around again, his ichuta’a seated and rocking wildly atop him, Raven was once again stone-faced.

“But part of hunting smart means bigger kills. I’ll fill up faster and we’ll leave all the sooner, so keep that in mind when you’re choosing your towns. And don’t—” He broke off, snarling as Sue-Eye did something unexpected and acrobatic with herself, and then resumed the thread of his thought somewhat hoarsely, “Don’t hesitate to tell me when you have thoughts like these. They’re useful.”

He dismissed Raven with a flick of his claws and then seized his ichuta’a and threw her down on the bed beside him. Foreplay was done. He took her now without restraint, drawing howls of equal parts pleasure and pain from her arching throat. A sweet sound. He relished her cries, rapidly losing himself in the natural give of female flesh.

Some people were just made for rough fucking. Kane watched his blonde ichuta’a thrash and cum deliriously beneath him, making no effort whatsoever to please her and yet, here she was. He teased it out for a while, contenting himself with teeth and claws and the rising scent of her musk, all the while wondering idly just what he was going to do with her once Raven was well again. He supposed he must have at least some subconscious plan to carry her around, or else he wouldn’t care if she went sour on him or not. If not, it seemed like an awful lot of trouble just to ensure her obedience for a few more days.

“But you will be obedient now,” he growled, striking hard at that soft female place and sending Sue-Eye into gales of shrieking pleasure. “Won’t you? My good little ichuta’a.”

Sue-Eye’s entire body clenched tight and she shuddered hard, bringing him violently to climax. He fell over her, snapping spastically at her shoulder and grinding his hips into hers as he emptied. He stayed there, fit close, until his breath evened, and then he rolled to his back and stretched luxuriantly. His human came in under his reaching arm and he let her stay curled against his side. He shut his eyes, dozing to the scent of blood and musk and the sound of both their heartbeats.

Raven. He roused himself to look her way and she instantly sat at the table with her back to him and picked up her stylus. Scratching letters in Jotan columns across her paper, just as though she’d been doing it all this time. He was tempted to call her over, break the mask of that indifference with a few well-moved fingers, but no. She was still having her period and he, well, he had a tendency to get caught up in the moment.

“Thank you, Kane,” Sue-Eye whispered. The arm that lay over his chest, bruised and bloodied, squeezed him in a hug.

He licked at the nearest wound, her shoulder, and settled his chin comfortably on her hair. He thought of Raven, well again and ready for mating. He thought of tomorrow’s hunt. He thought of the ship that he would have when he finally got home. He smiled and he slept.

*

Daria woke up.

It wasn’t easy. Just opening her eyes brought her no closer to clarity. It only took her from one surreal setting to this one. Dan’s old room, awash in the flickering orange fire of sunset, with towers of boxes looming all around her and another man sleeping in the bed beside her. Daria stared up at the ceiling, watching shadows cast by swaying branches and wondering if she was really awake at all or if this were just some bizarre continuation of her dream.

She’d been dreaming of the hospital, or at least, of a funhouse mirror’s version of it. White walls glowing with sterility and her in the bed. She’d been fastened in place by thousands of wires and tubes; they surrounded her, constrained her, invaded her body, brought her fluids and took them away, filled her arms and her belly and her mouth. But this wasn’t horrible, for some reason, although the memory of it in waking Daria’s mind certainly was. In the dream, it was just Daria in the bed, and it was the way things had always forever-been. And Dan was there, wearing a tux of all things, complete with cummerbund and carnation, playing chess with her. She couldn’t move her pieces, of course, her arms were utterly constrained, so Dan moved them for her. She didn’t tell him how to move, but somehow he always knew which piece and how and in the dream this hadn’t seemed a bit odd.

He’d been a lot like that in real life, she remembered. Sensitive. So marvelously attuned to her little wants and needs. When she didn’t feel like cooking, he always had a way of popping up to suggest going out. When those first restless threads of desire began to weave themselves together, his arms had a way of sliding unexpectedly around her. In bed, he always knew just where she needed to be touched. It was as though there was no part of her life, no part of her body, that held any secrets from him. She’d always told him he was wasted in patent law, that he should have been an artist. He’d say he wasn’t temperamental enough, and then they’d both laugh.

But in the dream, there’d been no laughter. He was breaking up with her again. Calmly. Dispiritedly. She’d given his room away, he kept saying. She was letting another man wear his clothes.

She’d wanted to explain about Tagen, that Dan had already moved out and Tagen needed his things, but her mouth was filled with tubes. She could only look at him, mutely dismayed, and think about which pieces she should move so the game of chess could continue.

To go from that to this—to Dan’s old room, to the unstable glow of sunset, to the smothering weight of this heat—seemed a natural enough progression. Any second now, Tagen would probably sit up and accuse her of using him to replace Dan, and then maybe a nurse would walk in and start pouring oil into her eyes or something.

Why did it have to be so hot? She wasn’t touching Tagen, yet there was a heat pouring off him that was burning all down her left side just as though she was lying next to a furnace. She could feel sweat tickling its way down her skin in a dozen different places, but her mouth was desiccant. The sheet that was her only cover clung to her in damp folds and sent up a misty fume of intimate scent; it was like sleeping under someone’s tongue. It made it hard to lie still, even harder to think about moving, and her mind felt as leaden as her limbs.

The dream stayed sunk into the fore of her thoughts. She’d given away Dan’s room. She’d given away his clothes. She’d given away herself.

Daria turned, running her eyes over the half-covered figure of her alien, who was not quite snoring but sleeping very deeply here beside her. He was lying on his side, faced away and sprawling with that unselfconscious dominion that told of a man extremely used to sleeping alone. His back was broad and smooth. His sweat and the setting sun’s uneven lighting gave his skin an eerie luminescence. His hair cut a black curl into the perfect shape of him, tempting her to brush it away, tempting her to touch him at all. He really had an amazing body. A soldier’s body, carved to powerful dimensions, marked with moments of hard survival.

Watching the shadows slide across and around his muscles with every new breath should have been soothing, but it was hard to look at Tagen with the dream still heavy in her mind. Dan had been lean and workout-trim and wonderful, but there was no mistaking that body for this one. Even the feel of his skin was wholly different. She’d replaced a patent lawyer with a soldier and she’d replaced a human with a Jotan.

The thought fell into a hollow place and stayed there. Daria rubbed unconsciously at her belly, and then reached out and laid her palm against the high plane of Tagen’s back. His slow slumbering breaths never paused. She closed her eyes, feeling the workings of his body, the strange texture of his skin, the heat of him. He felt so real. She was the dream in this room.

Daria followed the shadowed line of his spine down over the sweat-slick country of his back until the rumpled sheet at his hips interrupted her. Not a light sleeper was her spaceman. She’d always assumed soldiers got conditioned to snap in and out of consciousness at the slightest provocation like, well, like the other night, when she’d burst in on him and he’d pointed a gun at her. Oh, it looked more like a flashlight than a gun, but having been on the wrong end of it, Daria could say with confidence that however it looked, what it was was a gun. And really, knowing that he’d done it once should be reason enough to let the man sleep now.