Heat

Raven slid up to her knees, moving like she was poised on a pane of too-thin glass over a sea of spikes. She never took her eyes from him. Softly, she said, “Sometimes it helps if someone else does it. We can do this and be safe. I promise I’m clean enough for that.”

Heat cramped up with devastating force, sending a shudder through Kane so violent, it was nearly a seizure. When he was able to lock down on his muscles again, Raven had come closer. She reached up between his thighs and took hold of him again. This time, Kane let his hands drop away. He didn’t even know if he believed her and he knew damned well he didn’t trust her, but this was eight days now and he did not care anymore.

Raven squeezed, very lightly, testing him, and when he did not move, she crawled closer and took him into her mouth.

Oh. Blowjob. That’s what they called that here. Kane had never experienced one before. It took a talented female and a very trusting male, and the life of an off-world criminal did not lend itself to either.

She was licking at him, sucking as she stroked her fist up and down his length. No doubt she meant to be winsome in some way, but his tsesac was burning with acid seed, and he was almost insane with the need to be rid of it. He covered her hand with his and squeezed hard, snarling, “Faster!”

Raven could be obedient when she wanted to be, clearly. She adjusted her grip at once to that of steely enclosure, milking him in movements that were ecstatically brutal, and she was right—just the fact that it was someone else was a help.

And then there was her mouth. She sucked at his glans and slid her tongue beneath the thin slip-skin there, sometimes hard and sometimes gentle, drooling copiously to coat her hands with slickness. Every so often, she would nip at him very carefully, bringing a pleasure so immediate, it came almost as a physical blow.

Kane felt his quick-cum bursting out of him—once, twice, and then in gratifying rhythm. He curled around her without thinking, his hands rising to rest on her bobbing head, too tired to even thrust at her. She sucked faster, her whole upper body rocking with her pumping motions. He was shooting quick-cum into her mouth at nearly every squeezing pull of her human hands, and she kept trying to draw back and swallow. He didn’t know the word for ‘drool’, or he’d have roared it full into her face. He could only clench her by the hair and keep her moving, grinding against her mouth as he felt climax nearing.

She struggled up suddenly and let a mouthful of his own quick-cum and her drool spatter in ropes over his thighs and belly. She seized him in both hands and worked the mixture into his cock, and that, finally, brought on the explosion. Heat took him, and Kane threw back his head and screamed agony and ecstasy at the tree-cloaked sky.

Raven sputtered back as his true-seed erupted out of him, spraying her jaws and her clothing with gouts of white. Kane slid his eyes open to watch her swipe at her face and then closed them again.

Quiet fell. The rustle of branches, the distant drumming of insects, and his own ragged, wasted breath were all that Kane could hear. He thought he could sleep.

“Are you okay now?”

Kane smiled wearily. “I heard that.”

He felt her stiffen. “Heard what?”

“Is he sick and am I going to get it?” Kane opened his eyes and his smile broadened when he saw the trapped look in Raven’s eyes. “No,” he said. “I’m not. And no, you aren’t.”

She looked at him a long time before nodding, and then she sat back and brushed at the drying stains on her clothing.

Kane glanced at the timer on his monitor and felt a sleepy sting of surprise. She’d done in mere minutes what would have taken him hours to do on his own, and that with just her hands and mouth. That was good. Almost as good as rolling in the Flesh-halls of Jota, where Heat seasons lasted only a few hours of the day for maybe nine days a season.

And where he had lain, Kane reflected as his eyes slid shut once more. Where he had lain floating on his back in a drift of bedding while one female rode him furiously and others rubbed and reached for him from all sides. Where the oils of mating coated every body to a high sheen, and the scent of musky sex could keep a man drugged for hours while females fought through their own frenzy, mounting his hands in lustful desperation and thrusting their hands between the thighs of his partner to grip at the base of his cock…

Good days.

With a start, Kane realized he was nearly asleep and he sat up fast.

Raven had been quietly bedding down beside him, but at his unexpected movement she jerked away and threw up one hand as a shield before remembering how he rewarded that sort of thing.

He chose to overlook it, although he gave her hand a hard stare to let her know he’d seen it. When he met her eyes again, he said, “How often can you do that?”

She’d been expecting a blow for flinching, and the question caught her off-guard. “As often as you want, I guess,” she stammered.

He was going to need her again before it cooled, he was sure. And when night fell, they needed to travel. Kane growled, thinking.

At last, he lay down, pillowing his head on one arm, and gestured for her to slide right up against him. He put his arm around her waist, able now to feel every breath, every slight movement. He smiled and shut his eyes. “Sleep,” he said. “When I want you, you need to be ready.”

She didn’t answer, but that was all right. Just the feel of her body beneath his arm was all the answer Kane needed. He drifted off to sleep.

*

“Why, baby? Mary, why?”

Those were the last words Raven’s mother had said to her, and now, lying beneath the arm of this…this Devil-thing that had captured her, the girl who had been born Mary Frances Carter realized they would probably be the last words she ever heard her mom say. Of all the loose ends Raven had left behind her in her life, that echoing, unanswered question bothered her the most.

Why had she done it? Why run off to California and join the throngs of teenage runaways? Why change from Barbies to doobies in less than a week? Looking back, even from the tremendous vantage point this horror had gifted her with, Raven had no idea what had prompted her to run. All the other runaways she’d hung out with in L.A. had dramatic stories of rape, incest, drugs, beatings, or some combination of all four. Not Raven. No, little Mary Carter had a dad who believed in barbequing on the weekends and a mom who understood that teens should never be seen at the mall with their mothers. She couldn’t remember ever hearing a raised voice in the house, unless she counted the time Dad set the curtains on fire trying to make waffles. There was no bratty little brother, no bitchy older sister. There was no reason. Mary just left.

And now look at her. Look at her lying under the arm of this inhuman killer. Look at the jizz drying on her shirt and on her face. Look at the bruise on her arm where he injected her, not to mention the other bruises where he’d hit her. Things like this didn’t ‘just happen’. There had to be a reason. There had to be a point where it all went wrong. If she only knew what it was, maybe it would also show her the way out. So why, baby? Mary, why?

She’d said her name was Cindy when she first arrived in L.A. Back then, she really believed the cops gave a damn, and that she’d be arrested and sent home if they found her out. So she kept a low profile during school hours and ran around the city like a wild animal all night. She’d never been scared; the sirens, the smog, the noise, the occasional gunshots, the whackos and crazies, all of it was exhilarating. She fed on the excitement and confusion of it. She met everyone, tried everything.

Her heart was breaking. God, she could feel it breaking, all hot and cold and hurt as it pounded inside her. She wanted this to be a dream. She wanted to be back in L.A., stoned and drooling over the back of someone’s moldy old couch. She wouldn’t even mind if she woke up in the middle of her own gangbang, as long as she didn’t really have to be here.

Did she really think she’d known what a bad guy was? Her first week in L.A., she’d fallen in with a group of Goths and their middle-aged whacko leader. He told her he was a servant of Satan and gave her a mattress in his basement to sleep on. He introduced her to absinthe and bloodletting, told her that her true name was Isis, and informed her that the Devil wanted her to be the blood virgin during their rituals. Raven could even remember feeling a tremendous sense of pride and importance as she’d counted out drops of her blood into the black goblet they all drank from, all the while laughing at anyone who actually believed the Devil was real.

Well, here he was. The Devil’s breath was on her neck. The Devil’s arm was on her hip. The Devil’s spunk was in her mouth, and obviously, her virginity had never been high on his list of wants.

Being a fake vampire got boring after a while, and ‘Isis’ couldn’t help but notice that the little cult’s leader was finding more and more reasons to have her naked during Circle. She left during the middle of the day, while all of them were sleeping in their stupid fake coffins, leaving all of that witchy-crap and the name of Isis behind her. By the time sunset had rolled around, she was dropping Ex and Foxxy on the beach and dancing with glowsticks. At some point that night, she wandered over to where two ladies had started an impromptu school in the art of good head. Seemed like fun, and one thing led to another. So much for virginity.

Not that she ever regretted it. There were guys in this world who would give a girl a few bucks, a joint, or a cheeseburger just for a blowjob. Raven, and she was Raven by this time, never went hungry for long after that.

She told herself she wasn’t hooking unless she had a pimp. The next time she took stock of herself, she realized she’d somehow acquired an asshole who brought guys to her, took half her money, and slapped her around sometimes. So she told herself it still wasn’t hooking unless you were doing it for drugs. But fucking for drugs was easier and a hell of a lot faster than fucking for cash and then going out to buy drugs. Why not cut out the middleman, you know? In the end, she realized that anytime you weren’t fucking for fun, regardless of what you told yourself, honey, it was hooking.

So it was time to move on. Hop a bus, head cross-town, on to better things. She’d called her mom to ask for money, but all she got (apart from that awful, haunting question) was the offer of a bus ticket home.

Home? Fuck that noise, Raven was home! She went to San Francisco, falling easily into the post-modern happy-hippie feel of the place. She tried her hand at face-painting on Fisherman’s Wharf, sometimes bluffed her way through a Tarot card reading, and when money got tight, well, there was always someone with his dick out, and Raven knew what knees were for. In the meantime, there were parties every night, and weed and Ex were everywhere. She was having fun. She was in control. She was up for anything.