Storm clouds were gathering overhead. It would be another wet and miserable day in Rexel. The weather swung from blistering heat in summer to monsoon rains in winter. Even a little snow would have been welcome. It would certainly make a change.
Damian scanned through his handheld trying to find a bounty that was worth his while. The last two bail jumpers he bid on had slipped through his fingers. He was running out of cash.
An interesting prospect popped up.
Noel Freidner. He seemed simple enough. He had usual haunts. No history of violence. And he was cute—for a human. Never a bad thing when you found yourself in someone's company for a few hours transporting your bail jumper to the penal colony on Luna 1.
He didn't mind heading off-globe on occasion—to take bail jumpers up. At least it didn't rain on the furthest moon from the planet. He might even stay a few nights. Take in the sights. Chow down on some Luna delicacies—visit a few brothels.
Definitely, that last one.
It wasn't necessarily a habit of his, visiting brothels. Never more than twice a month. He had his favorite locations—his favorite males. Maybe three times a month when money was good.
Damian pushed ENTER and submitted his bid on the human and waited for the approval. The system had been down earlier. Even now, it was taking longer than it should.
He rolled his shoulders. Yesterday's trip to the capital had pulled a muscle. His left wing was irritating him. Tight—knotted. He stretched it out then folded it back against his body. He would need to make an appointment to see a chiropractor in the morning.
His handheld dinged and he scanned through the details of his target. He would have to fly to Kerek, the city where the human had last been spotted. He cringed as he lifted his wing.
There was no way he could fly.
He sighed. Public transport it was. His snazzy coupe had been impounded last week and he hadn't had enough money to bail her out. She was safe for now. If he could complete this job by day's end tomorrow, he could head back to Rexel and set her free before he incurred another thousand dollar fine for the lovely stay she was having at Moto-lock.
He climbed onto the bus and took a seat. Everyone always stared at him. He was marked as a bounty hunter. It was the law to do so. Which was stupid. It gave the bail jumpers an unfair advantage if they could see you coming.
Damian's face was decorated with red and black flames, his lips coated in gold, and his hair tipped a frosty white and gold. It all gave him away. His hands—one white, one black, and on his shoulders, his skin was painted in golden emblems denoting his family.
And his wings … red as flames.
A bail jumper could spot him a mile away.
He tucked his wings closer to his shoulder blades. There was barely enough room for him to sit on the seat beside someone, his wings took up so much space. Not everyone had wings. Life would be easier if they had. Things like buses would be designed to accommodate them.
No, Damian came from a long line of bounty hunters. Erichs to be exact. They made up less than one percent of the population. He rarely ran into others of his kind. Other winged species only made up another three percent. The cities weren't designed for their kind.
His physique was common for an Erich; his body similar to that of a human's. He wasn't overly muscular but he was tall. Standing at nearly seven feet. He towered over most other species.
Damian checked his handheld again. No new updates. It should take another hour to reach Kerek. Hopefully, the human wouldn't abscond from the city before then. He should have no trouble tracking him down once he got there. Along with wings, Erichs had a fantastic sense of smell. And humans smelled funny—meaty, like pork rumps. Finding the human should be an easy task. Humans made up less than one percent of the population as well.
Most had been killed in the great war.
After an hour, the city that sprung up around him was Kerek. Dark—derelict. The perfect place for a bail jumper to hide out. Damian stepped off the bus. A gust of air blasted his backside as the bus took off. It had dumped him in the middle of an unpopulated area. He was going to start there. Work his way into the center of the city. Track his prey down and capture him.
A deluge of pelting rain decided to fall. He had been right about his forecast for the weather. It was going to make tracking miserable. He avoided a peppering of puddles as he decided which direction to go. Damian inhaled a deep breath. There was nothing remotely human filling his nostrils. Onions, cinnamon, and musk assaulted his brain. Gerlacs.
He started walking. If he'd had his coupe, he could've been cruising around with the top down tracking his prey. Being on foot was going to slow him down.
A completion by tomorrow might be optimistic.
Then he caught whiff of it. Pork. Damian followed it down the street. It was coming from an abandoned building. One of many. He would start at the bottom, search room by room. If he was lucky, it would be the human he was looking for.
If he was unlucky, he might at least enjoy a high-protein snack.
Did I mention Erichs eat humans?
As it turned out, it wasn't Noel. Just a vagrant. Too sinewy for Damian's liking. Plus, it was illegal to eat humans. They were, after all, a protected species.
Damian stood outside the building. East or West? The sun would be at its height soon. Not that you could see it for the cloud cover. He wiped a hand across his face to clear the wet from the rain off his skin. If he had been thinking, he would have brought a coat with a hood.
He checked his hands. They were free of paint. It was supposed to be water-proof, the paint. But sometimes—just sometimes, it ran. He had been locked up and fined the last time that happened. It had not been pleasant. The other inmates had blindfolded him and plucked at the feathers of his wings, yanking handfuls out. It had taken months to grow them all back in.
The obvious choice would have been to have the markings tattooed on his body, but he was yet to amass enough money to do so. For now—it was body paint. He had only been bounty hunting for ten years. He had time yet to establish himself.
He was young. Thirty-two. Of breeding age. Not that he wanted offspring. Life was complicated enough without little Erichs creating chaos in his life. Asking questions, attacking humans—thrashing about with their new wings. It wasn't for him.
Damian caught a light odor hanging in the air. He looked toward the docks. Any further west past them and he would end up in the water. He crept up alongside a warehouse. It smelled like fish and pork—definitely pork. Now it could just be pigs. That sometimes happened, but there was something else about this scent that caught Damian's interest.
It was almost seductive.
Undertones of musk and pine permeated his senses. Very outdoorsy. Like being holed up in a cabin in the woods with a very sexy male. Damian halted his advance.
He shook his head. What had gotten into him? Cabins. Woods. Sexy males? This was a human he was stalking, not a Luna 1 whore. Unless the human was indeed a whore. Possible.
Most were.
He peered inside. Sure enough, there was a human seated on the cold concrete, a small fire in front of him. He was warming his hands and he was soaked through to the skin.
Damian looked down at his handheld. It was the human he was looking for. The image on his file didn't do the human credit. He bordered on gorgeous.
He gave his wings a quick beat. The easiest way to catch a bail jumper was to swoop in on them before they had a chance to react. Pulled muscles be damned. He needed this money.
He took off, his feet leaving the ground, and shot forward. Three beats of his wings and he was on top of the human, knocking him over, and pinning him to the ground.
"Jeez …" The human struggled beneath him. "You're fucking heavy."
Damian inhaled the scent of him. There was that seductive undertone again. Like a breath of fresh air. He was slow to release the human, wanting to inhale all he could.
"Noel Freidner?"
"Who's asking?"
"You're nicked." Damian rose to his feet and grasped the human's arm. The cuffs went on without him struggling. He locked them in place. Now to find a bus to take them back to Rexel. There were no moon shuttles out of Kerek. He hauled the human out of the warehouse back to where the bus had dropped him off. He kept the human close to him as they waited.
If fortune was on their side, it wouldn't be long.
Three hours later—still waiting, and the human wouldn't shut up. He was the chattiest human Damian had ever run across. He wasn't sure if he was nervous or just naturally annoying.
"So, you have to paint yourself like that every day."
"Yes."
"Why don't you have it tattoed on?"
"Money."
"What age were you when you had to start painting yourself?"
"Twenty."
"Is that the usual age or was that early or late?"
"Usual."
"Now, what if that paint was to accidentally wash off?"
"Jail."
The human tipped his head to one side. "Well, that's not good."
"Why?"
"Because you're running." The human reached forward and touched Damian's face. Actually touched it. The human had no fear. He retracted his arm, red paint coating his fingers.
"Dammit." Damian pulled a mirror from his coat pocket. The human was right, he was running. He needed to get back to Rexel fast and patch himself up.
Just as he was about to panic, a bus pulled up. He bundled the human onto it and found them a seat together. The human was pressed against the window, crowded into a fraction of his seat.
"Those wings are a nuisance." The human squirmed beside Damian trying to make himself comfortable. "When did you get them?"
"Five."
"When did you learn to fly with them."
Damian rolled his eyes. "Six"
The whole ride was like that. By the time they arrived in Rexel, the human knew every aspect of Damian's life in one-word answers.
Damian bundled him up the stairs to his cramped, one-room apartment and flicked on the television. Wheel of Misfortune was on. He locked the human to the bed on a long tether and handed him the remote.
"Behave."
The human laid back on the bed. "You gonna fuck me?"
Now, Damian would be lying if he said he hadn't considered it. The human was his for the next couple of hours until a shuttle was scheduled to leave for Luna 1. The human was more attractive than the photo in his file. And that scent—that undertone of musk and pine was playing on Damian's desire. Human whores were hard to come by. Expensive.
"Maybe later." Damian headed for the bathroom. He would need to shower and start again with the paint. He shoved against the door to close it once he was inside the tight space, but it wouldn't budge.
He exhaled an irritated sigh.
His apartment was all he could afford. Grimey, moldy, and cockroach-infested. The dingy furniture wasn't even his. It had come with the apartment. Or more truthfully, it had been abandoned by the last tenant, deemed unworthy to take with them. The covers on the bed consisted of a single grubby blanket. Stained mattress. No sheets. Those would have been a luxury.
The human was stretched out on his bed, fixated on the show. He would have a clear view into the shower stall from where he was sitting. Damian grunted.
There were more important things to worry about.
Damian turned on the water. The best he could hope for was lukewarm. He stripped off and stepped into it. He was on his last bar of soap. Washing paint off every night and re-painting himself every morning ate through a significant amount of his money.
Clean, he pulled a towel off the rack, dried himself, and wrapped the towel around his waist. He wandered into the main … and only other room. The human was sitting up, grinning.
"I was wondering how you were going to manage that shower with those wings."
"It's a process."
The human licked his lips. "I liked what I saw."
Damian emptied the coffee carafe into the sink and started a new brew. He turned to face the human and leaned against the counter. "Nice try. I'm not letting you go."
The human shrugged. "Didn't expect you to."
Damian took a step toward the bed. "You want me to fuck you."
"Let's talk first."
For a second time that day, Damian rolled his eyes. "Haven't you talked enough already?"
"I'm sorry about that." The human patted the bed beside him. "I was trying to annoy you. I figured if I pissed you off enough, you might let me go. I'm not usually that talkative."
"You're doing a pretty good job right now."
"I was explaining myself." The human reached out and touched Damian's hand. He had joined the human on the bed, sitting beside him.
"You're a strange human—Noel."
Noel exhaled. "Perhaps, but I'm drawn to you for some reason."
Damian had to admit, Noel was doing things to his insides as well. Sitting there beside him, gazing upon his face, one might forget Noel was human. He reached up and touched his cheek.
"Where did you come from?"
Noel smiled. "I'm an Earther."
"Your family survived that?" Damian's brows rose. He had a newfound respect for Noel. Very few humans found their way off Earth anymore. Most were born in Rexel or Kerek. Finding someone who had been born on Earth was extremely rare.
"How did you get here?" Damian relaxed against the pillows.
"Supply run stowaway."
Damian reached for his handheld. Sure enough, that was Noel's offense; stowing away on a Rexel cargo ship that had been on Earth collecting water. Hardly seemed appropriate to lock him away on the Luna 1 penal colony for such a minor infraction.
"Do you have family back on Earth?"
"Two sisters and a brother."
"Why did you leave?"
"I was in search of a better life. Things are tough on Earth. The Rexelians take our crops—our water. Even a few people on occasion when the whore traders land."
Damian crossed his arms. It didn't sit right with him, the taking of people for the whoring trade. Most of the males he slept with were there of their own choice. He preferred it that way. They were there to have some fun and make a little cash. He had never been with a human.
His chest rose and fell, strained.
And this human—he was extraordinary. Perhaps he might fuck him after all. They still had another hour before they would need to leave for the shuttle bay. He stared at the time on his handheld. That wouldn't be enough time. He still had to paint himself.
Damian hauled his ass off the bed and headed for the table and mirror at the far end of the room. The tabletop was covered in an assortment of paints and brushes. He let his towel drop. No point in being modest. A significant portion of his body needed to be painted. He caught Noel staring at him in the mirror's reflection from across the room.
"I wish we had time." Noel slipped a hand behind the fly of his pants. Sometime between when Damian had been sitting beside him and when he arrived at the mirror, Noel had undone them; unlatched the button and unzipped the fly.
He was stroking his cock.