“I love you, Callista. But I think you’ve built this thing up in your mind, out of all proportion. I think we were wrong to wait then, and the longer we wait the worse it’s going to be.” He felt the familiar touch on his mind and he knew, now, that she welcomed it, as in that time of loneliness and fear. She said, “I wasn’t afraid then.”
He said, firmly and surely, “Nothing has changed since then except that I love you more.”
He didn’t know all that much about sexual inhibitions, but he did know there was such a state as pathological frigidity, and what little he had been told about a Keeper’s training confirmed his suspicion that this must be what had been done to her: a total conditioning against any kind of sexual response. He was not naive enough to believe that a gentle seduction would ease all her fears and turn her into a passionate and responsive wife, but it seemed that was the only place to start. It might, at least, reassure her.
They were deeply in contact now. He sensed that she felt no trace of the physical arousal which was so strong in him, but he knew that she hungered for the closeness which could end this cold constraint between them. He drew her gently to him. He wanted her, yes, but not unwilling. He wanted her to share the tempest of passion that made him tremble. There was no need for words. She drew his face down to her, laying her lips against his in a shy hesitation, and he felt a sudden disquiet. He had never known an inexperienced woman before. Yet he could feel — they were deeply in contact now — the tremendous effort she was making not to shrink from his touch. It seemed that he would burst with tenderness. She was pliant in his arms, shyly touching him, not trying to conceal her lack of response. It was not the passivity of ignorance — she evidently understood what he expected of her — but there was not the faintest hint of physical arousal.
He reached out again for her mind. Then, through the familiar presence which was hers, he sensed a confusion, something else, alien yet familiar, strongly sexual. Ellemir? Damon and Ellemir? His first reaction was to withdraw, slam down mental barriers — I’m no voyeur! — but then, hesitant and still tentative, he could feel Callista drop into the fourway fusion, the old link among them reestablishing itself as it had done when they were all linked together within the matrix. And for the first time he felt a yielding in Callista, not a mental yielding alone, but a physical softening. She was less apprehensive, as if this was less frightening for her, shared with her twin. As he was drawn into the fourfold link, into intense participation in the lovemaking of the other couple, it seemed for an instant that it was Ellemir in his arms, that it was she who embraced him, opening herself wholly to him, warm, responsive — No, it was only that Callista had submerged herself in Ellemir’s response, and through it he could feel Callista’s shy surprise, the reassurance of Ellemir’s excitement and pleasure. He pressed his mouth to hers, in a long, searching kiss, and for the first time felt a flicker of actual response. Callista was no longer passively permitting him to do what he would, she was actually sharing in the kiss for the first time.
Had she needed this kind of reassurance, then? At his urging whisper, she pressed herself warmly against him. He knew she was deeply merged now in Ellemir’s consciousness, sharing Ellemir’s response, letting it take over her own body. He could feel Damon too, and that was disquieting, or was it only that he could also feel and share Ellemir’s response to Damon’s strange, provokingly sensual mixture of gentleness and violence?
For a moment it seemed to him that this was enough for now, to drift on the surface of their passionate embrace, to seek no more, to let himself merge in this warm, welcoming multiple consciousness. But it was still too strange for him, and his own body, demanding now, urgent, insisted on completion. Like a swimmer coming up for air he gasped, trying to disentangle himself from the multiple mind-link, to narrow his consciousness down to Callista alone, Callista in his arms, fragile, vulnerable, wholly pliant, wholly yielding.
Suddenly, with unimaginable violence, the fragile mesh of consciousness shattered. All at once he felt a tearing, burning pain in his genitals. Shocked, crying out, he heard Callista scream in despair and wild protest and felt himself torn from her arms, hurtling through the air. His mind spun dizzily. This couldn’t be real! His head struck something sharp, and in a blaze of pain, crimson lights exploding like bombs inside his head, he lost consciousness.
Chapter Eight
He was lying on the floor.
Before consciousness came fully back, he was aware of that, and of the fuzzy protest, How the hell did I get here? There was a sharp pain in his head, and a worse one in his groin. Someone lifted his head. He made a noise of protest as his head exploded, and opened his eyes. Damon, stark naked, was kneeling beside him.
“Lie still,” he said sharply, as Andrew struggled to rise. “Let me wipe the blood out of your eyes, you idiot!”
Andrew’s main emotion, displacing even pain, was outrage. He pushed Damon’s hand violently away. “What the bloody hell are you doing here? How dare you? Callista and I—”
“So,” said Damon, with a wry half-smile, “were we. As you damn well know. Do you think we wanted to be interrupted like that? But better us than the servants, man, rushing up to find out who’s being murdered. In hell’s name, didn’t you hear Callista screaming?”
All Andrew could hear was a sobbing whimper, but it seemed that somewhere in his mind was an awareness, not quite a memory, of shattering screams. He struggled to his feet, disregarding Damon’s steadying hand.
“Callista! I must go to her—”
“Ellemir’s with her, and I don’t think she can face you just yet. Let me look at this.” His probing hands were so impersonal that Andrew could take no offense. “Does this hurt?”
It did. Damon looked grave, but after some more probing, said, “No permanent damage to the testicles, I guess. No, don’t try to look, you’re not familiar with wounds and it will look worse to you than it is. Can you see all right?”
Andrew tried. “Fuzzy,” he said. Damon mopped at the cut on his forehead again. “Head wounds bleed like hell, but I think that needs a stitch or two.”
“Never mind that.” Callista’s sobs tore at his consciousness. “Is Callista all right? Oh, God, did I hurt her?”
“Did you hurt her?” Ellemir said waspishly behind them. “She didn’t quite manage to kill you, this time.”
“Let her alone,” said Andrew, fiercely protective. All he remembered was passion, and violent — terrifyingly violent — interruption. “What happened, an earthquake?”
Callista was lying on her side, her face swollen from crying. Naked, she seemed so defenseless that Andrew felt heartsick. He picked up her robe and spread it gently over her bare body.
“Darling — darling, what did I do to you?”
She broke out into the frantic weeping again. “I tried so hard… and I nearly killed him, Damon, I thought I was ready and I wasn’t! I could have killed him…”
Damon smoothed her hair away from her wet face. “Don’t cry any more, breda. All the smiths in Zandru’s forges can’t mend a broken egg. You didn’t kill him, that’s what matters now.”
“Are you trying to tell me that Callista—”
“An error of judgment,” Damon said matter-of-factly. “You shouldn’t have tried without asking me to monitor her first and see if she was ready. I thought I could trust her.”
Andrew heard the echo of Callista’s words in his mind: “It isn’t you I don’t trust.” And Damon, saying, “The man who rapes a Keeper takes his life and his sanity in his hands.” Evidently Callista was still guarded by a set of completely involuntary psi reflexes, reflexes she could not control… and which made no differentiation between attempted rape and the tenderest love.