I tried to look up at him and found that I could, discovered that he was letting me do it. But there was something else that was happening, something I could feel although not understand or fight back against, something that was taking me over. I hadn’t cried in a while, hadn’t really wanted to cry, but his last words and that sudden, terrible feeling had brought the tears out to roll slowly down my cheeks.
“Please don’t do this to me,” I begged, the sobs already beginning to shake me, feeling so terribly, terribly small in the circle of those mighty arms. “I don’t know what you’re doing to me, but you have to stop it! You have to!”
“Wenda, I do no more than reassure you of my love,” he said with gentle sadness, wiping at my tears before cradling me in his arms again. “Do you not feel the same love for me, the same burning desire I have ever felt for you?”
As he said the words I did feel it, the bottomless, insatiable need to have him again, to be held in his arms and kissed fiercely, to belong to him with every part of me. My tears increased as I shook my head yet again, trying to beg him to stop, but he would not. His hands were already moving slowly over me, his mind clearing to the growl of desire, his eyes demanding my very soul. In an instant I no longer sat in his lap but lay on the carpet fur beside him, his lips brushing mine, his hand moving up beneath my gown to slide to my thigh. I put my own hands to the broadness of his shoulders, shuddering at what his stroking touch was doing to me, closing my eyes to stop the useless flow of tears. I had to fight him but I couldn’t, couldn’t and was rapidly reaching the point where I didn’t want to, couldn’t even remember why I had to. He was so strong and hard under my hands, stronger and harder even than the fur-covered marble floor I lay on, warmer even than the fur carpeting itself. His lips came to my lips again and I accepted them hungrily, moving against his hands even as I tried to touch all of him with mine, whimpering when his swordbelt and haddin kept me from it. His mind chuckled but his lips refused to leave mine, one broad fist going to my hair to hold me still. Whatever was done would be done the way ’ he wanted it, and allowing me my way wasn’t what he wanted.
By the time he let me up long enough to pull my gown off, I was almost in tears again. I struggled out of the wretched thing as quickly as possible and lay back down on the carpet fur, then had to wait while he slowly removed his swordbelt and haddin. His eyes touched me all over as he rid himself of encumbrance, as slowly as his hands had moved, as thoroughly as he had taken my kiss. I burned so terribly that I wanted to writhe where I lay, moaning for what I knew he would soon give me, certain I would die before he decided he had tortured me enough. I closed my eyes and tossed my head back and forth, holding to the fur to either side of my body, and then he was lying down beside me again to take me in his arms.
“Do you doubt that you are mine, hama?” he asked very softly, his hands on me setting the flames to leaping and crackling. “Are you able to oppose my will?”
“No,” I whispered with a violent headshake, knowing I spoke the absolute truth, clutching at him with a frenzy beyond my control. “I am yours beyond doubt and denial, hamak. Take me now, I beg you to take me now!”
“You have only to ask, sadendra mine,” he answered, his mind glowing with the pleasure of my having spoken to him in Rimilian. “You shall never find the need to do more than ask.”
In no more than a heartbeat he was thrusting inside me, gathering me to him and taking my lips even as he began to stroke deep. I held to him as he took my soul, mindless with the joy he gave, trying to make him know that I never wanted him to stop. It went on for a time that was just short of forever, to that place of total fulfillment and shuddering ecstasy, and then, when awareness returned though the glow still remained, I looked up to see him crouching beside me. I hadn’t even completely come out of it yet, but he had already replaced his haddin and swordbelt.
“I go now to speak further with Cinnan and Dallan, concerning the journey we begin tomorrow,” he said, one wide hand smoothing back my sweat-soaked hair. “Rest yourself now and regather your strength, then plan what you do not care to leave behind you. When I return we will take a meal, and you may ask for what you wish then.”
He went to one knee and gave me a quick but very definite kiss, his mind thoroughly appreciating me, and then he was up and striding toward the door and out. By the time I was able to do more than just lie there on the carpet fur he was long gone, but by then my mind was beginning to creak back to functioning. I rolled to my side and forced myself to sitting, put my head in my hands to ease the dizziness, then managed to wonder what the hell he had done to me.
After another couple of minutes I was able to get unsteadily to my feet, but I didn’t even look toward my discarded gown. The first thing I needed was in a silver pitcher on one of the side tables, a light, pretty wine I had come to enjoy. I stumbled over to it, tried to get as much of the wine as possible into the cup, then held the cup in two trembling hands. I had always been told that wine wasn’t made to be gulped, but the fools who had told me that had certainly never experienced what I’d just been through. I gulped down everything I’d poured into the silver cup, closed my eyes and took a deep breath, and only then felt ready to try standing without leaning or holding on.
“I don’t believe it,” I muttered to myself, grateful for the way the wine was starting to force my blood into moving again. “I absolutely and completely don’t believe it.”
The small, wavery image in the silver goblet I still held didn’t believe it either, and I was glad there were two of us. Somehow-some how-Tammad had overwhelmed me with his mind, a mind that wasn’t anywhere near as strong as mine. How the hell had he done it?
The same way he did it the last time, the wavery silver image answered, sounding smug and know-it-all. You tried to force him into taking you back to the embassy, and he nearly blew your circuits. This time he refused to let you disobey him.
That’s stupid, I retorted with ridicule, not quite up to gesturing such nonsense aside. Last time he used the strength of anger and outrage. This time he wasn’t even annoyed. And wouldn’t I have felt him attacking? Why didn’t I understand what he was doing until it was way too late? And what happened to my filter curtain and my shield’? Why didn’t one of them activate to bail me out?
If you didn’t know you needed help, how do you expect unreasoning defenses to have known it? the image sneered, just short of laughing at me. He isn’t of Centran stock, you know, so why does his talent have to be like yours? Even identical twins have differences, and he got you with one of the differences.
There’s got to be a defense against it, I came back with more desperation than certainty. There’s got to be a way to keep him from doing that to me. I can’t spend the rest of my life being nothing more than a—a
Rug? the image suggested helpfully with a snicker, and that absolutely finished it. I threw the goblet across the room with every ounce of strength I’d recouped, then sank down to the carpet fur with my hands in my hair.
“I just had an argument with a reflection,” I said out loud, wondering if that’s what it felt like to lose your mind. “And I don’t even think I won. What am I going to do?”
This time there were no answers handily available, which wasn’t quite as comforting as it should have been. I didn’t know if I would rather be crazy, or forced to do everything Tammad’s way. He loved me so much he was even going to protect me from thinking for myself.
By the time Tammad came back, I hadn’t so much pulled myself together as scraped the scattered shards into some semblance of neatness. After I’d gotten into my gown again, it suddenly came to me that I’d been told I was going after Aesnil whether I wanted to or not, and definitely not as one of the chief searchers. Something inside me laughed hollowly at that, with nothing resembling real amusement. There would be trouble if I went, certified and guaranteed, but what good would it do just saying I “knew” it? Lately I was beginning to know a lot of things, and one of them was that whoever said “knowledge is power” was an idiot.