At least he did not simply ravage her, as one man had the second the door closed behind him. He stood quietly, watching her, letting her look him over. Sighing, she stretched herself out flat on the mat. “Come ahead; let’s get it over with,” she said in Chinese, her weary voice full of infinite bitterness.
He stooped beside her. She tried not to cringe. He said something in his own language. She shook her head. He tried what sounded like a different tongue, but she understood no better. She expected him to get on top of her then, but instead he let out hisses and grunts which, she realized after a moment, were words in the Lizards’ speech: “Name-is.” He ended with the cough that showed the sentence was a question.
Her eyes filled with tears. None of the others had even bothered to ask. “Name is Liu Han,” she answered, sitting up. She had to repeat herself; the accents she and he gave the Lizards’ words were so different that they had trouble following each other. Once she’d given her name, she saw she ought to treat him as a human being, too. “You-name-is?”
He pointed to his furry chest. “Bobby Fiore.” He turned toward the doorway by which the little scaly devils had departed, spoke their name for themselves. “Race-” Then he delivered an extraordinary series of gestures, most of which she’d never seen before but all obviously a long way from compliments. Either he didn’t know his picture was being taken or he didn’t care. Some of his antics were so spirited, almost like those of a traveling actor in a skit, that she found herself smiling for the first time in a long while.
“Race bad,” she said when he was done, and gave the different cough that put extra stress on what she said.
Instead of answering with words, he just repeated the emphatic cough. she’d never heard a little scaly devil do that, but she followed him well enough.
No matter how they despised their captors, though, they remained captive. If they were going to eat, they had to do what the scaly devils wanted. Liu Han still didn’t understand why the Lizards thought it important to prove that men and women didn’t go into heat and could lie with each other any time, but they did. She lay back again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad this time.
As far as skill went, Yi Min was three times the lover the foreign devil with the unpronounceable second name proved to be. But if he was rather clumsy, he treated her as though it were their wedding night, not as if she was a handy convenience. She hadn’t imagined foreign devils had so much kindness in them; few enough Chinese did. She hadn’t known any kindness since her husband died in the Japanese attack on her village.
To thank him, she did her best to respond to his caresses. she’d been through too much, though; her body would not answer. Still, when he closed his eyes and groaned atop her, she was moved to reach up and stroke his cheek. The beard there was almost as rough as a bristle brush. She wondered if it itched.
He slid out of her, sat back on his knees. she drew up one leg to hide her secret place-foolish, when he’d just been inside her. He pantomimed smoking a cigarette with such nimble gestures that she started to laugh before she could catch herself. He raised a bushy eyebrow, took another drag on the imaginary smoke, then made as if to crush it out on his chest.
He’d so convinced her the nothing between his two fingers was real, she exclaimed in Chinese: “Don’t get burned!” That set her laughing again. She groped for words in the Lizards’ tongue, the only one they had in common: “You-not bad.”
“You, Liu Han”-he said her name so strangely, she needed a moment to recognize it-“you-not bad also.”
She looked away from him. she didn’t know she was crying till the first scalding tears ran down her cheeks. Once she started, she discovered she could not stop. She wailed and keened for all she’d lost and suffered and endured, for her husband and her village, for her very world and her own violation. she’d never imagined she had so many tears inside her.
After a little while, she felt Bobby Fiore’s hand on her shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “Hey.” she didn’t know what it meant in his language. she didn’t know if it meant anything or was just a sound. she did know his voice held sympathy, and that he was the only human being who’d shown her any since her nightmare began. She twisted around and clung to him till she’d cried herself out.
He didn’t do much but let her hold him. He ran a hand through her hair once or twice and quietly said “Hey” a few more times. She hardly noticed, so consumed was she by her own grief.
As her sobs at last slowed to gasps and hiccups, she felt his erection pressed against her belly, hot as the tears she’d shed. She wondered how long he’d had it. It didn’t surprise her; she would have been surprised if a naked man in the arms of a naked woman failed to rise. What surprised her was that he’d been content to ignore it. What could she possibly have done to stop him if he’d decided to take her again?
His restraint made her want to cry again. She realized how desperate she’d grown when simply not being raped became a kindness worth tears.
He asked her something in his own language. She shook her head. He shook his, too, maybe angry at himself for forgetting she couldn’t understand. His eyebrows came together as he looked thoughtfully past her shoulder toward the blank metal wall of the chamber. He tried the scaly devils’ speech: “You, Liu Han, not bad now?”
“Not so bad, Bobby Fiore.” When she tried to say his name, she botched it at least as badly as he had hers.
“Okay,” he said. she did understand that; a city person in one of the films she’d seen had said it. People in the city picked up foreign devils’ slang along with their machines and funny clothes.
He let go of her. She looked down at herself. she’d held him so tight, the smooth skin of her chest had the marks of his hair pressed into it. His erection started to droop now that she no longer lay against him. She reached out and closed her hand around him. The Lizards had taken everything she’d ever had, leaving her with only her body with which to thank him.
That eyebrow of his went up again. So did what she was holding. Somehow, the heat of it against the palm of her hand brought comfort. If it was good this time, if she lost herself in her body, sheer sensation might let her forget for a little while the metal room in which she was trapped and the scaly devils who kept her here to satisfy their own perverse curiosity.
She moaned softly as she lay back on the mat once more. She wanted it to be good, hoped it would be. Bobby Fiore moved beside her. His lips came down on hers; his hand roamed her body. A bit sooner than she would have liked, his fingers found their way between her legs. They didn’t go quite to the right place. After a few seconds of frustration, she reached down and moved them to where they belonged.
He frowned for a moment. She hoped she hadn’t angered him. Who could say what might anger a foreign devil? He didn’t put his hand back where it had been, though. And now it was better, now her eyes closed and her buttocks clenched and her back began to arch. As if from far away, she heard him laugh, deep in his throat.
She was at the edge of the Clouds and Rain when he took his hand away. Her eyes opened. It was her turn to start to frown. But his weight pressed her against the slick surface of the mat. His tongue teased her left nipple as he guided himself into her. Her legs rose, clenched around him. With her inner muscles, she squeezed him as hard as she could. “Ah,” he said, in surprise or delight or both at once. Then she stopped listening to anything but what her body told her.
Afterward, they were both sweaty and breathing hard. The only thing wrong with making love, Liu Han thought as the afterglow faded, was that it didn’t really help. All the troubles pleasure had let her ignore were still here. None had got any better. Ignoring troubles was not meeting them. She knew that, but what else, here, could she do?