The Alien Trace [Cord 01] Read Online Free Page B

air while he began thrusting in earnest.
        His tail curled up under him and probed her anus while hers did the same to him. He felt the ache in her loins, the contractions of delicate muscles. She felt the moist, hot friction and his delight in piercing her soft flesh. His tail began thrusting in matching rhythm while her tail pressed incessantly upon a most important gland, the pressure driving him to frenzy.
        The reverberation of emotion peaked as they reached fulfillment together. They lay there gasping, while their spiking ecstasy subsided.
        "I wish you would come to a passion party sometime," Bird murmured later, when they lay close, unmoving.
        "You know how it is," he answered. As a sex partner, he was not desirable to many because of his occupation.
        "I went to one last week where one of the guests filled eight girls, one right after the other. He had fortified himself with several cups of that"-nodded at the jug-"before he arrived-or should I say 'came'?-and drank more afterward. Someone told me today that he's still out of commission. Serves him right for showing off. He wasn't the only one. The award for the most acrobatic performance must go to the young lady who contrived to have herself plugged front and back, while stimulating a third with her tail and a fourth to greater heights with the only available orifice. Though, I suppose if she hadn't needed her nose to breathe…"
        Cord shook with laughter. "Oh, stop it, Bird! Tell me how she did it."
        With unexpected swiftness, Bird sprang to her knees and leaned over Cord. His sexual apparatus had retreated into his pouch, but Bird's tongue found the opening and obligingly followed it in. After an interval during which Bird demonstrated some rather advanced techniques, she stopped and said suddenly:
        "You're certainly happy tonight."
        "I'm always happy around you," he replied. It wasn't wholly true, and both of them knew it. But he tried to tell her of his family's good fortune and felt her withdraw slightly, as she always did when he mentioned the source of his family's income.
        "I'm pleased for you," she said carefully. "I know you aren't-well provided for. But it's not an appointment to be proud of, is it? If your work were the arbitration of disputes, or entertainment, it would be wonderful. But it's almost as bad as being a criminal yourself. You use force, you hurt people-and you enjoy it."
        Cord sat bolt upright. "I don't enjoy hurting people!" She was accusing him of being a deviant!
        "I'm sorry," she said, a backlash of remorse washing over him. "I didn't mean that, exactly. You like hunting them, though. It excites you. I've felt it, Cord. You can't hide it completely."
        He felt a stab of alarm: he could think of no response. He had been able to deny truthfully any pleasure in others' pain, but he-could not deny the second accusation, because it was true. The chase thrilled him. And it did border on forbidden behavior.
        "Don't worry," she reassured him. "I won't tell anyone. But I can't help remember the time you caught that… that child mutilator."
        Cord plainly felt her psychic shiver. It was the proper response to a violent crime. Anyone who was not sickened by the idea of hurting others would have to be a hardened criminal himself. To any normal person, the victim's anguish and fear would be as painful as if they were his own.
        And emotional backlash could be bad, very bad. Cord dismissed the case of the mutilator of children: she had been vicious, but her capture had presented no great challenge. Of many pursuits, the one Cord remembered was that of a murderer whom Fyrrell, with Cord's assistance, had cornered in a walled garden in the wealthy section-not far from Bird's home, in fact.
        Their quarry expected to duck through and out another entrance in the dark, only to find that his means of escape had been locked. Cord