“Getting all huffy and offended won’t accomplish much, Terry,” Len’s voice came after me, annoyed rather than contrite. “It’s time you stopped acting like a sullen child and got around to making an adult commitment. The people of this world are offering you a life with meaning, and all you have to do to accept it is offer your abilities in exchange. Garth and I have already accepted; the longer you wait to do the same, the bigger the fool you make of yourself.”
I raised one hand to my head as I stared out through the moving curtains, wishing there were less heat and humidity in the breeze that rippled them. I still had enough of a headache to find the heaviness of the air painful, a dull pain which fit in perfectly with Len’s laughable suggestion. I knew all about the meaning of the life I was being offered, a meaning considerably different from the one Len and Garth saw. They’d found freedom on that world of barbarians, but they were men on a world run by men. I was nothing but a woman, a mere wenda, one whose sole purpose was to give pleasure and obedience and comfort to those men. Hand over the power of my abilities for the priceless gift of a life like that? Sure, why not.
“It’s comforting to know your stubbornness was undamaged by what you went through,” Len said dryly. “Tammad, especially, will be relieved to learn that. Ever since he found out you weren’t badly hurt, he’s been anxious to discuss your little experiment with you. You ought to find the time most absorbing—as well as instructional.”
I closed my eyes as I cursed feebly under my breath, half sick at the thought of having to face that barbarian. He’d punish me for trying to control him, as strictly and horribly as he always did. He continued to want to use my abilities as a Prime, but refused to accord me the privileges those abilities made mine by right. He violently resented the thought of being controlled in any way, most especially by the power of the mind. The thought of what he would do to me this time made swallowing difficult and weakened my knees. I hated myself for being such a coward, but he never failed to affect me that way.
“Terry, why do you keep fighting him?” Len demanded, but gently, from right behind me as his hand touched my shoulder. “You’re afraid of what he’ll do and you’re right to be afraid, but all he wants is to be gentle with you. His greatest joy is to share laughter and love with you, but you refuse to allow him that. He’s a man and you’re a woman; why can’t you relax and let nature take its course?”
I felt my head drop even lower than it had been, wishing it were as simple as Len was trying to make it. We weren’t discussing a man and a woman, we were discussing a barbarian and a Prime, a man who would use anyone and anything to achieve the goals he had set himself, and a woman who was tired of being used. Nature didn’t intervene in affairs like that; nature wouldn’t dare.
“I can see Tammad was right the way he usually is,” Len sighed, taking his hand off my shoulder. “He maintains that if a man and woman are right for each other, no one can prove it but they two. If it can be worked out, it’s now up to you and him. I’ll see you later.”
Len’s footsteps moved away from me across the floor, his bare feet whispering against the carpet as he made for the door. I was suddenly aware of the fact that I wasn’t wearing sandals any longer, and that foolish revelation somehow made me want to turn and call out to Len to keep him from going through that doorway. I was half turned and ready to call out when I realized that delaying the inevitable would not stop it from being inevitable. Tammad could not be kept a room away from me forever, not by any power then at my disposal. I turned completely back to the windows then and just stared out, waiting for the inevitable.
If I thought I’d have something of a wait, it didn’t take long to disillusion me. Len could barely have cleared the doorway when other feet, heavier feet, made their own sound across the carpeting coming in. Before I knew it he was standing right behind me, and I didn’t have to open my shield to know him. There was usually something electrical in the air when he was around, and that time was no different from any other.
“I see, wenda, that you have recovered,” he said after the briefest of hesitations, his voice filled with its usual calm. “You suffer from no other ill-effects, no hurt you have neglected to mention to Lenham?”
“I have a headache,” I answered, still not turning around. “Compared to the condition I’m usually in on this planet, that’s equivalent to being in the best of health. You needn’t worry that you’ll have to put off the beating.”
“Good,” he said, and his immediate agreement made my eyes widen. “When I might be able to beat you was, of course, my sole concern. ”
I snapped my head around to look up at him, but no expression showed on his rugged, masculine face. I opened my shield and probed at his mind, then wished I hadn’t. There was no light-hearted, good-natured humor behind his comment, just a thick, dark cloud of anger and more anger. I winced at the intensity and strength of it, and he slowly nodded his head.
“It is as I thought it could not be,” he said, folding his arms as he stared down at me. “Not only did you attempt the outrage of invading my thoughts, you now have the temerity to attempt the same again. Woman, does my rage mean nothing to you?”
“Touching your mind is like looking at you,” I answered in an unsteady voice. “If you don’t like it, of course I won’t do it again. ”
“Ah, you now understand that the action displeases me, and will therefore refrain from indulging in it,” he nodded, his eyes still not moving from my face. “How obedient a wenda you have become, and how easily the obedience was brought forth. I hesitate to estimate the length and breadth of your obedience when once you have been punished.”
A thrill of fear washed through me at that, but not the simple sort of fear brought on by the presence of a hungry predator or a danger-filled, imminent accident. The barbarian was worse than any predator, more dangerous than any accident, and he had just given me his word. I backed up right into the central window brace, my knees weaker than they had been, and his right hand shot out to my left arm to steady me.
“I hear no words from you, wench,” he said, his voice still as unwarmed as it had been. “Have you no interest in estimating how deep your obedience will be once you have been punished?”
“There’s really no need for that,” I quavered, stepping back, too aware of that giant-sized hand on my arm. “I am, after all, a civilized woman, and capable of understanding when I’ve committed a breach of etiquette. I’m sure you know you deserve an apology, a deeply sincere apology, one which will be immediately forth—”
“Silence,” he quietly interrupted, cutting off my half-hysterical babble, gently drawing me toward him. “There is no matter of etiquette between us, no matter so light and unimportant that simple words of apology will suffice. Once before you entered my mind unbidden, not to soothe or share but to tamper, and much did I believe that the punishment you received then was enough to keep you from attempting the same again. It appears I was mistaken, but will take care that the same mistake does not appear a second time. Should this current punishment not deter you, you have my word that I will see myself collared and sold as a wenda-graj. ”
Half-hysterics became full-blown panic, but shaking my head and stuttering incoherently didn’t keep me from being drawn gently but firmly away from the windows toward the middle of the room. If the barbarian promised to have himself sold as the equivalent of a ladies’ maid if I ever touched him mentally again once he was through with me, I might not even survive whatever he was going to do. At that point I wouldn’t have minded not surviving, but I was very much afraid that survival would be part of the punishment. I looked up at that massive body in front of me, looming like an avalanche in the making, the hard blue eyes unwavering, the face expressionless, and discovered how close it was possible to come to fainting from fright without actually doing it.