Heat by R. Lee Smith

His Raven was nothing like that other human. She was strong. She was a survivor. She was going to be a pain in the ass until she was trained up, but once that happened, Kane thought she was going to be pretty useful, and for more than just mating.
    He touched her hair again, picking dirt and tree-needles out of the waves of purple, and examined her face. In her fitful rest, she appeared to him to be very young. Ah, but experienced enough, however young she might look. Those things she did with her mouth, for example. That took schooling.
    Kane put one careful claw on Raven’s lip and pulled, exposing her blunt human teeth.
    She moaned and turned her face away at once. “I dunno why,” she muttered in drug-thick sleep. “Quit askin’.”
    Kane growled low in his chest, coaxing her deeper into sleep. When her face finally relaxed and smoothed, Kane turned her back to him and looked again into her amazing mouth. He saw only the single row of teeth that all humans had, and they did not fold back when he pushed at them experimentally. Her tongue, too, hardly looked as though it were capable of the acrobatics it had played out over him. Kane bent and stole a breath from her mouth. He tasted bile and the faint minerals of his own seed.
    His human. His Raven.
    Despite all the humans Urak had kept, it occurred to Kane that he’d never really gotten a good look at one. They were merchandise when they were on the ship, nothing more, but if he was going to be spending a lot of time with this one, he thought he’d better get to know her.
    Beneath the short coat, she wore a top of woven string, tight as a second skin, that couldn’t possibly afford her protection and which served only to display the body it was meant to cover. That was all right. Kane wanted her on display. He tried to find the opening in the string-top, telling himself it was only to answer his idle curiosity right up until his temper flared and he ripped his claws down and cut it open.
    Fascination briefly overwhelmed his other thoughts as he examined her bared flesh. Raven was slimmer than Urak’s human, but she didn’t appear starved; this was a tendency of human females, like Jotan, to be smaller than the males. Another difference: High on her chest were two fleshy bumps, each with a circle of brown at their center. Kane was quite sure Urak’s male slave hadn’t had the bumps, although he’d had the circles.
    Kane put his hand over one of the bumps and squeezed it carefully. Soft, but firm. He wondered what they was for. It had to be a female thing, because when Urak had dissected his male, he hadn’t found any corresponding organs in that place. Kane had seen plenty of naked or nearly naked humans in his life. Seen them. Not really looked at them. Now he was beginning to wish he had. He hated the feel of uncertainty.
    Kane squeezed again, rubbing his thumb over the circle at the bumps center to make it stiffen and stand out. Urak had found this the most amazing thing and had installed firedims in his slaves to make the circles stand out whenever he wanted, but Kane couldn’t see what the big deal was. He pricked lightly at the hard bump with his claw, and Raven whimpered in her sleep and pushed at his hand.
    He let himself be moved. His eye had been caught by her belly, where humans, like Jotan, had a dimpled placental scar. Raven wore a loop of gold in hers. Kane tugged at it lightly, but it was stuck tight. Bizarre. Maybe she clipped something to it. Maybe it was purely decorative.
    Raven muttered again, distracting Kane from his inspection, and when he looked down again, it was with appraising eyes at the wrap she wore around her waist. He pushed it up.
    She wore a thin scrap of a loin-cover, but it was already torn from Kane’s rough handling earlier. He started to pull it down, but the strands holding it together snapped under his claws and exposed her completely.
    Dark hair grew in a patchy triangle over her sex, rich with the fragrance of her