Blade could not doubt the man's sincerity. But he was no more willing than before to be tamed. «Very well,» he said coolly. «I shall wait while you try to convince the other Councilors that I can be trusted. But if you cannot, do not expect me to sit around in this hut forever. I will go out into the forest and live there, and be damned to you and Rilgon and the city and everybody else in Brega!» The flare of anger in that last sentence was genuine; Blade did not like this kind of game-playing.
Himgar left him, and the hours passed on toward night. A meal was brought-a thick stew of game and the yellow tubers in a wooden bowl, and sour, purplish wine in a wooden cup. Blade emptied both cup and bowl with a ready appetite, then lay down on the bed. It was not much cleaner than the pile of straw back among Rilgon's people had been, but it was a good deal warmer and more comfortable. He pulled the blankets over him and drifted off to sleep.
Tired as he was, Blade let himself sleep so deeply that nothing short of an earthquake could have wakened him. He did not wake until morning. When he did, he noticed two things. A pale pink light was already creeping in through the chinks in the logs. And there was something warm and soft and gently breathing snuggled up against him in the bed. Very slowly he turned to look at that «something,» one hand creeping toward the knife under his pillow.
He was not surprised to see Melyna. She had managed to wash some of the filth of Senar captivity from her skin and hair. The hair now gleamed pale gold in the dawn, spread out on the pillow.
As though Blade's eyes on her had been a caress, Melyna stirred. Blindly she turned her head toward Blade, then opened her eyes. They were dark blue, and stared up at Blade without fear or even timidity. And why should she be fearful or timid? She had undoubtedly seen and even done things that would turn Blade's stomach in the past two years. Slowly, as though he were reaching out for a shy kitten he didn't want to frighten away, Blade laid a heavily muscled hand on one bare, tanned shoulder.
It was like ice melting. Melyna seemed to flow up and over on top of Blade. He felt a long, slim body pressing hard against him. He felt his own responding to the warmth and the pressure and the movement. He threw off the blankets, and his arms went around Melyna. She stiffened for a moment, then became even warmer and pressed even harder against Blade.
Melyna was really not soft at all. Under the tanned skin there were muscles toughened into whipcord by two years' back-breaking labor for the Senar. Her breasts and hips and buttocks were firm and solid, but spare of flesh, barely breaking the outline of her bones. It was almost like making love to the sketch of a woman.
But it was a warm, living, breathing sketch. And it was breathing harder and harder, as it wriggled and writhed and heaved under the movement of Blade's hands. He was being as gentle as if Melyna had been made of sand that would crumble away under too rough a touch. Before long, it was clear that he didn't need that kind of gentleness. Melyna was too ecstatic over making love to a civilized man after two years of barbarians to care very much.
So Blade's hands roamed all up and down Melyna's body, and hers did the same on his. He felt his own erection tightening into a solid, burning rod as small hands stroked and caressed, small, hard nipples traced patterns on his chest. She wriggled up on him even farther, and his lips brushed across her throat and over the bones that stood out in her thin neck. He kept on kissing her, down across the shoulder blades, down under one breast and up onto its long, jutting brown nipple, across to the other nipple, then back and forth between them for a long time. By the time Blade's lips moved away from her breasts, Melyna was whimpering and sobbing deep in her throat, and her breath was coming with a rasp.
Again Melyna shifted up-and this time as she settled down, she placed herself squarely on Blade's upthrust phallus. She stiffened for a moment as the solid rod of flesh drove upward. Her mouth opened in a tremendous gasp. Then Blade pushed his own hips up, Melyna pushed hers down, and his solid, swollen member drove all the way into an already slick-wet canal.
For a moment after that Melyna did not move. Then she began to rock slowly back and forth, occasionally shifting from side to side. She was not tight, but her movements kept a continuous friction on Blade and a continuous arousal in him. He found his own hips beginning to move up and down. Occasionally his upward thrusts would meet Melyna coming down, and her eyes would widen as she felt him driving deep within her. Other times he would sink down as Melyna rose up. Then her face would contort with a feeling of loss, and she would promptly sink back down, trying desperately to recapture what seemed to be slipping out of her.
This went on long enough for Blade to lose all track of time, and for a good long while after that. Melyna's movements became faster and faster, until she was practically swinging herself around in a circle centered on Blade's maleness. Her hips gyrated wildly and then all her pelvic muscles began jerking convulsively. Her head went back, her eyes closed, her face contorted from the delicious agony pulsing through her, while she gulped for air like a dying fish. Below, Blade felt a hot, warm gushing all over his groin and the frantic contractions of the canal embracing him.
Blade held on for a little while longer, although it seemed like a very long while indeed. But eventually he could no longer do anything except thrust frantically upward to make a desperate final few strokes.
Then he felt the beginning of his release, the frantic, furious pumping, and after another incredibly long time, the final fading away. He sagged back on the bed, every part of his body going limp and for the moment useless.
After a little while the fog cleared from Blade's head and the limpness left his muscles. He sat up, patted Melyna on her flat, hard stomach, and rolled himself out of bed to start the day. There was a large jug of water on the table by the bed, and Blade spent a long time splashing it on his face and chest. He was conscious of Melyna watching him from the bed, the erotic glaze slowly fading from her eyes. Then he heard the pad-pad-pad of bare feet on the floor, and felt two slender arms creeping around him from behind, two small hands creeping down toward his groin.
He laughed softly. «What, more?»
She laid her head against his back, and he felt her hair brush the base of his spine. He laughed again. «Really?»
The hands continued their downward motion and stopped in the obvious place. When they arrived there, they got the normal response.
Blade laughed a third time. «All right, Melyna. You want to get back into the habit, right?» There was a small murmur from behind him, which Blade took as a «Yes.» Then he felt the hands on his body grasping him firmly by the hips and trying to turn him around. Blade chuckled deep in his throat and braced himself firmly. It would have taken a block and tackle to turn him around.
After a moment Melyna realized Blade wasn't going to move. So she did. With a quick wriggle she slipped under Blade's wide-spread legs, giving the insides of his thighs a playful pinch as she did. Another quick wriggle, and she was kneeling in front of Blade. Then her head thrust forward, like a bird darting at a particularly juicy worm. Her lips closed around Blade's half-awake erection. In a moment it was no longer just half-awake.
Eventually Blade and Melyna reached the point where they couldn't have conjured up a single erotic impulse between them if their lives had depended on it. Melyna used the rest of the water in the jug for her own washing, and together they went out into the morning.