Heat (60 page)

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.