Page 29 of On A Rift’s Edge (Riftworld #2)
Lyall pulled his mouth off after one last lick and rolled on his back. Kat scrambled for the condom, his face flushed and his lips wet and red. He stretched it over Lyall’s erection.
“Wow.” Kat crouched over him, knees splayed to either side of Lyall’s thighs. “You’re big.”
Lyall started to say that Kat could take it as slow as he wanted or they could try other different and pleasant ways to get off, but Kat slid himself down, and the tight, hot heat encircling Lyall’s cock left him unable to form words, let alone coherent sentences.
He reached out to support Kat’s hips as the friction increased, the impossible tightness wringing out more gasps from his lips.
Their steady rhythm devolved into chaotic jerks.
Lyall felt his balls drawing up and then saw stars, his vision momentarily lost as the force of his orgasm hit him.
Kat cried out a moment later, spilling over Lyall’s stomach, and the two of them collapsed into a comfortable, if sticky, tangle of limbs.
It was a while before Lyall could even catch his breath. The sex had been that good. “You’re fucking amazing, you know that?”
Kat flopped off of him and onto his side. His voice was soft and drowsy, as if all of the stress and exertion of the day had caught up with him. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
Lyall rarely slept deeply or for long, but when he blinked himself awake sunlight was streaming in through the bedroom window. He glanced at Kat’s side table, where an electric display monitor sat with a dead black screen as a back-up vintage alarm clock ticked merrily away.
That was odd, since Lyall could sense that the rift storm had passed. Maybe there had been damage to the fragile electrical grid humans didn’t like to live without.
He glanced down at his bed partner and forgot all about clocks and human tech. Kat was sound asleep, the lush black fringe of his eyelashes matching his tousled hair. He looked even younger and more innocent sleeping than awake, more beautiful than anyone, human or riftperson, Lyall had ever met.
And that was the problem. Kat was sweet and trusting, and Lyall was neither of those things.
The human was too vulnerable to get mixed up with Lyall, a clan exile with a lot of enemies and few friends.
Kat wanted to go to school and learn how to heal Earth and Riftworld animals, and Lyall hurt people for a living.
The best thing for Kat would be to never see Lyall again.
And not seeing Kat again would be the worst thing Lyall could imagine.
A sensation twitched inside Lyall’s chest, like a vibration propagating through a spider’s web. He was out of bed with two knives in his hands and his armor crawling over his skin in seconds.
Something powerful had tripped Lyall’s wards and was trying to get into Kat’s apartment.
He burst out of the bedroom into the main room, both knives flying toward a figure crouching next to the open door leading to the balcony.
It was Teo.
Damn it. He knew that stupid balcony was a weak point.
The two knives divided into four, then eight, and finally sixteen projectiles. Most of them shuddered in the air and dropped to the ground before striking the hopper, but a few barely missed him and slammed into the apartment walls.
Teo rose to his feet, but instead of attacking, he threw a spherical tangle of plant branches on the floor.
“Parlay.” Teo raised both of his hands above his head as he said the word. He had altered himself into human form and now wore casual athletic wear and a pair of new-appearing sneakers.
Lyall paused, two more knives in his hands. He could refuse the offer of negotiation and fight the hopper, but this particular Riftworld custom between enemies wasn’t invoked lightly.
“You first,” Lyall said.
Teo bobbed his head yes, then crouched down and held his hand over the clump of plant matter. A thorn shot up and hit Teo’s palm, drawing blood. Several glowing lights lit up inside the plant as the reddened branch retracted into the mass of thorned sticks.
The plant tightened into a perfect sphere and rolled forward, doing an excellent imitation of an Earth tumbleweed.
Except the Earth variety wasn’t used to start peace negotiations and didn’t feed on blood. Humans called this Riftworld species seymours, for some damn reason. Lyall had never cared enough to look up why.
Lyall crouched down as well, keeping a close eye on Teo, and held out a finger to the plant.
Another thorny branch shot out, stabbing into the tip of Lyall’s finger and then sliding back into the main body of the seymour.
Lyall winced and sucked at his stuck finger.
He hated the damn bloodsucking plants, but they established inviolable rules for negotiation.
If either he or Teo attacked each other, the poison in the thorns would incapacitate the aggressor at best and kill him at worst.
The seymour vibrated, making a rattling noise, then rolled backward to rest at a point equidistant from Lyall and Teo.
“I don’t know what the fuck you want, but you’d better explain it fast.” Lyall hated to take his eyes off the hopper, but he couldn’t help a quick glance toward the bedroom door.
Kat could hear their voices and wake up, and he didn’t want the damn hopper to be the first thing Kat saw when he got out of bed.
“I’m here to help you.” Teo smiled at him, flashing dazzling white teeth.
Either Arimanius had given him pointers on maintaining a human alterform, or Teo had abducted a human to help his transformation, as he had threatened to do with Kat.
The hopper tilted his head in the direction of the bedroom.
“Did you tire your little gatito out last night? I take it he’s still sleeping. ”
“Last night is none of your fucking business.” Lyall couldn’t understand why Teo had taken the risk of breaking through the sigil wards and setting up this parlay. He didn’t like unpredictable enemies. “Why the hell would you want to help me?”
“Because I don’t need you as competition.” Teo gestured around at the room. “You’re good at acting human, and you know what my new capitán wants from his officers. That’s why he wants you back. Far better for me if you run off with the pretty human the Matchmaker chose for you.”
The words hit Lyall like a blow. This wasn’t possible. How had Teo found out? If Zale had somehow figured it out and passed along the information to the Colony, he would rip every tentacle off of him, one by one.
Teo laughed, obviously pleased he had shocked Lyall into silence. “Yes, the capitán knows about Kat. He’s planning to use him to force you into another indenture contract.”
“I’ll kill Arimanius if he goes anywhere near him.” Lyall put a deadly emphasis on each word, but the hopper only smiled.
“He’s already quite close to him.” Teo ruffled his black hair and looked thoughtful. “What does he call his Earth shape? Ah, yes. Paul. Paul Cicero. Has your gatito told you about him?”
Lyall wanted to believe Teo was lying or this was all a plot by Arimanius, but the pieces fit together too well.
The don of the Colony had tech that allowed him to display a human form, although it had limitations.
Anything more intimate than a brief touch with a human would disrupt the effect, and during a rift storm he would settle into his Riftworld shape of a massive humanoid rodent.
That was why “Paul” had told Kat he wasn’t ready for physical intimacy or whatever the fuck he had said.
Arimanius must have also set up the kidnapping by asking for Kat to give him a tour of the petting zoo.
After that had failed, he had pretended to hide out in the ranch’s sauna.
Teo and the twins had likely been driven away in the “venture capitalist’s” private limo as everyone had been searching for them around the ranch.
If it hadn’t been for Kat figuring out how to trick Teo into changing Lyall into his hellhound form, the whole operation would have worked perfectly.
“He has another love conference set up with your gatito tonight.” Teo scrunched up his face in concentration. “Is that the right way to say it? Anyway, I’ve told you everything I know. Take your human back to your clan. Even the capitán isn’t going take on an entire clan of hellhounds.”