When her lips touched his face, however, she could feel his mood shifting. By now, she was so attuned to him that she realized immediately what he wanted. Sure enough, when she pulled back, he was regarding her with a heavy-lidded golden gaze. “This is why I don’t normally stay in bed with you,” he muttered before his lips descended on hers and his hand ventured lower between her thighs.
And for the next hour, they forgot all about Orlando, caught up in their own wild ride.
* * *
Two hours later, they were whizzing down the highway at over a hundred miles per hour. With anyone else at the wheel, Mia would’ve been scared out of her mind, but Korum’s reflexes were better than any race car driver’s and she felt utterly safe with him. For the first twenty minutes of the ride, he drove with the top down, but Mia’s hair kept blowing into her face, and they had to pull over to put the top up.
“I should really cut this mess,” Mia grumbled as they got back on the highway, trying to smooth down the curly explosion on her head. It was futile. Wind and her hair didn’t mix.
“Don’t even think about it,” Korum said seriously. “I love your hair long.”
Mia sighed. “Fine. Maybe I’ll just get it straightened . . .”
“Why? Your curls are beautiful. Leave them just as they are.”
“You’re weird,” Mia told him. “Most men like straight, silky hair, not this rat’s nest I’ve got going on here –”
“I don’t care what most men like. Leave the hair as it is.” His tone was utterly uncompromising.
Mia smiled to herself, mentally shaking her head. Even in this small matter, he had to be in control. It was strange that she didn’t mind it quite as much anymore, though nothing had really changed. She was still his charl, and he still had way too much power over her life. The difference was that now she knew that he loved her, that she wasn’t just a human toy to him.
A little tidbit from her encounter with Leslie nagged at the back of her mind. “Korum,” she said tentatively, “what exactly is this blood addiction you’ve warned me about before? Leslie said something about it yesterday . . .”
Keeping his eyes on the road, Korum asked, “What did she say?”
Mia struggled to remember the girl’s exact words. “It was something like her brother was addicted and he was walking around begging Ks to bite him every hour until they killed him . . .”
For a few seconds, Korum remained silent. “That sounds like a particularly unfortunate case,” he said after some time. “It must’ve happened not long after we first arrived here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember how I told you that we no longer require blood to survive? That it’s now basically a pleasure drug for us?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, it turns out that there’s a side effect to getting too much of this drug. The pleasure is so intense that it’s addictive for us – and for the humans we’re drinking from. However, for a Krinar to become physically addicted, he or she has to drink from the same human more frequently than a couple of times a week. Essentially, the Krinar gets addicted to the specific DNA signature in that human’s blood. It’s a peculiar side effect of the genetic fix that allows u
s to survive without blood. Some of our best scientists are currently studying this phenomenon and trying to figure out why it’s happening and how it can be stopped.”
Mia stared at him in fascination. “So what happens when you get addicted? Is it physically painful?”
“When the Krinar is separated from their human for whatever reason, yes. They can’t go longer than a few hours without getting their fix – and that’s a problem both for the human and the Krinar.”
“So is that what happened to Leslie’s brother? I’m not sure I fully get it . . .”
“No, it works differently for humans. Your species gets addicted to the substance in our saliva, but any Krinar’s saliva would work. I don’t exactly know what happened to Leslie’s brother, but I can venture a guess. It sounds like he might’ve been involved in some of the early x-clubs –”
“X-clubs?”
“X-clubs, xeno-clubs – that’s your slang term for nightclubs where humans go to interact with our kind.”
Mia blinked. “I’ve never heard of this before. Is it like the websites where humans advertise to have sex with Ks?”
He looked vaguely amused. “Pretty much. The websites are usually for those who are just curious. Very few people posting there would consider actually going through with their fantasy. The ones who are serious about it go to x-clubs.”
“Really?” Mia was amazed that she’d never come across this before. “Where are these clubs located? Are there some in New York City?”
“No, they’re actually close to our Centers – we generally don’t like going to major cities. That’s probably why you don’t know about them. There are a few in Costa Rica, some in New Mexico and Arizona, some in Thailand and the Philippines . . .”