“Wenda, what has happened here?” Tammad’s voice suddenly came, and I turned to see him standing in the doorway, staring around at the wreck I’d made. “Has a storm blown through, or have you been attacked by savages?”
“Attacked by savages is more like it!” I snapped, ignoring the mess he was looking at. I’d thrown just about everything that could be thrown, the cushions, the tray and bowls, the small tables. “And they said it was what you told them to do!”
“Lenham and Garth caused this chaos?” he asked, in disbelief. “Did they find it necessary to pursue you about the room, battling each step of the way, before they were able to see to your needs? Are they less than the men I thought them?”
“They’re not men at all!” I snarled, dropping the curtain to take a step toward him. “Garth forced himself on me while Len twisted my emotions to suit their mood! You’re quick enough to jump on me when I tamper, but with Len doing it it’s perfectly all right! But why shouldn’t it be? Len’s male and I’m not!”
I turned back to the window and pulled the curtain aside again, my hand trembling from the fury I felt, the frustration and rage so thick that I had no idea Tammad had left the doorway until his hand gently touched my shoulder.
“No, it is not proper that Lenham has done such a thing to you,” he said, calm and quiet dominating him as always. “That you invite such treatment by treating others so has no bearing, for I will not see it done to anyone about me. As you were punished so will he be punished.”
I turned back slowly to look up at him, not really believing what I’d heard even with the verification so clear in his mind. My expression put a grin on his face, but very little amusement reached his pretty blue eyes. Beneath his usual calm were sharp, uncontrolled flickerings of somber determination, fading the grin after no more than a moment of life. He touched my face with one big hand, then took my arm.
“There is a decision I have come to which you must be made aware of,” he said, drawing me away from the windows and toward our fur-pile bed, the only thing in the room I hadn’t thrown every which way. We both sat down half facing one another, I wondering what painfully hard decision he had made. I could feel the pain of it even through the calm of his control, a pain he was making no effort to rid himself of.
“Wenda, it has come to me at last that my thoughts have been more concerned with myself than with the woman who is my beloved,” he said, stroking my arm once before taking his hand back. “My love for you is very deep, and when I learned that your love for me was the same I thought we would face eternity together, yet now I know this cannot be. My love has failed to convince you of its reality, and this lack brings you greater pain than I had thought it possible for a woman to bear. I have felt the pain, and now know my failure for what it is; it is for this reason that I have decided to give you up.”
The bleakness of his thoughts was loss-sharp and tears bitter, and for a minute I sat stunned, not knowing what to say. He wasn’t simply trying to impress me with well-advertised nobility, he really meant it. He was going to give me up.
“Well,” I said at long last, taking a deep breath to calm the quaver in my voice. He was staring straight at me, watching for my reaction, but I wasn’t sure exactly what that should be. “So you’ve decided to return me to my people after all. It’s undoubtedly the best decision you could have made. We never were really right for one another.”
I stood up from the bed and turned away from him, wrapping my arms about myself to fend off the chill of still being unclothed. It was his fault I wore nothing, and I’d be well rid of him. The only thing I still didn’t know was when he was taking me back.
“Terril, you misunderstand,” he said from behind me, a faint puzzlement touching him. “I said nothing of returning you to your people. Among my people, seeing to the well-being of wendaa is required of a man. Should he know that returning her from whence she came will bring greater hurt upon her than keeping her where she is, he cannot, in honor, return her. Should he have no feelings for her himself he will see her with another, yet he will not return her. Though I have deep feelings for you which often cloud my reason, I am nevertheless able to know what fate awaits you among your own people. I will therefore find another, upon my world, to band you.”
Again I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I turned back to stare down at him where he sat, so deep in shock that my mind had ceased to function. All I could make of what he’d said was that he was going to sell me. He was going to sell me!
“Wenda, how pale you have become!” he said in concern, standing quickly to put his arms around me. I slumped against him dizzily, barely knowing where I was, my inner voice demanding that I do something—anything!—to get myself out of that nightmare.
“You can’t mean that!” I husked, my voice producing itself without benefit of mind to direct it. “You can’t just—sell me, as if I were an animal or a piece of clothing! You can’t sell me, you can’t!”
Even as I said it over and over again, I knew well enough that he could do exactly that, sell me or give me away or any damned thing he pleased. Women were possessions on that world, and selling them was not only legal, it was routine.
“Hush, wenda, and do not concern yourself,” he soothed me, stroking my hair as he held me to his chest. “You need not fear the one I shall choose, for he will be worthy of you in all ways. I will begin looking about here, among Cinnan’s l’lendaa and dendayy, and perhaps will need to look no further. It is happiness I seek for you, hama, and I will find it.”
“No,” I moaned, shaking my head in a metronome sort of way. “You can’t do that to me, you can’t. It’s too barbaric.”
“It is our way and will prove to be the proper way,” he reassured me, concern still coloring his thoughts as he took me back toward the bed furs. “There will be a great emptiness in my life once I have found another to band you, therefore must I fill my memories to overflowing with the taste of you before that time. I shall use you at every opportunity, hama, against the time I may no longer use you at all, this instance being the first. ”
He took me down to the bed furs with him, his arms tight about me, his lips blocking off the incoherent sounds I was making. I still felt mentally numb, totally overwhelmed by what he had said; little wonder I was unable to consider and protest what he was doing. His hands caressed my body, relishing my nakedness, his mind humming and completely devoid of impatience. He fully intended taking his time, and that’s what he did. My body took a long while to acknowledge the presence of his hands and lips, but such an acknowledgment was inevitable. He had trained me to respond to him, and my body finally recalled that training, despite the absence of the mind that carried such memories. True awareness of what was happening came to me only when he spread my thighs and entered me, plunging deep in his usual manner of full possession. Even as I squirmed involuntarily to his presence within me, I blankly wondered what had happened to his swordbelt and haddin; I hadn’t even seen him take them off. He gathered me close to his chest and began to stroke slowly, his mind savoring the pleasure he felt and experiencing every bit of it as if it were the last time he would have me. I moaned and tried to struggle out of his possession, blurrily convinced that he should be listening to my words rather than using my body, but I would have had as much success freeing myself from a landslide, if not more. He tightened his hold enough to keep me where he wanted me and continued caressing me internally, his lips touching me wherever they were able to reach, one hand roving freely. I moaned again and lost the moan to a kiss, but I, myself, was not fully lost to the sensations being given me. Normally I would have been, but normality was a good long way behind me.