baby, and maybe that was why it was happening, as punishment. I would have done it again even if I knew the price I would be paying, but that didn’t change the fact that I would be owned by a man I both loathed and feared horribly, a man who would give me nothing but pain for the rest of my life. That had to be why I couldn’t belong to the man I loved, the reason why this null who held me had terrified me from the first moment I saw him. Some part of me had known he would own me, and there was nothing I’d ever be able to do to get free again!
15
I sat on the bed with the top of my brown uniform open and the cloth shoved down to the middle of my arms, bared to the sight and touch of the null. His left hand fondled my breast just as any man’s hand would, but he wasn’t just any man. He’d already hurt me once for being too slow in getting the uniform open, and my flesh still ached under the hand that now gently stroked and caressed it. He was deliberately giving himself enjoyment without giving any to me, and I didn’t know how long I could take being treated like that without going insane.
“Most people would have trouble believing how really easy it is to train a woman,” he said as he touched me, the words not only casual but downright lazy. “First thing you do is teach her what pain is, and then, once she learns, you give her a very small amount of pleasure or even kindness. After a while you find she’ll do anything to get that small amount of pleasure, anything to get even one kind word. At that point she’s completely yours, and you’ll never have trouble with her again.”
Or you can give her all the love and understanding you have, and give her pain only when she forces you to it, I thought. That’s the way Tammad had done it, and his way had also made me completely his. That was the difference between Tammad and Kel-Ten, I realized, the difference that had brought me to love one while I hated the other. Tammad had done what he had for my sake rather than his own, and would never have done even half of it if I hadn’t forced him to it. I’d tried to reach the mind of my beloved for one last touch, but even though the room wasn’t shielded I hadn’t been able to find him. I hadn’t, in fact, been able to reach anyone in twenty minutes of trying, which had told me I really was lost for good.
“You know, if I didn’t know better I’d think you were ignoring me,” the null said, the gentleness of his stroking unchanged. “Are you telling yourself that if you close your eyes I’ll just go away?”
I shook my head and then did close my eyes, finding the truth of what he’d once said to a doctor in that place. With my eyes closed he wasn’t there even if I did still feel his hand, a hand without a mind behind it and of someone who wasn’t there. But of course he was there, I knew he was there, I just couldn’t see him with my mind. He was hidden away and out of sight somewhere, on another frequency or in another dimension . . . .
“Don’t!” I screamed, trying to bend forward with the pain his fingers were giving me, his hands keeping me from pulling away. “Don’t hurt me like that!”
“In what way would you like me to hurt you?” he asked in the same lazy tone, not easing up at all. “You won’t ever be allowed to ignore me, you know, and closing your eyes will never make me go away. You can’t see me any more than those imbeciles could see you were awake, but that only means you’ll never be able to touch me. I’m the one who’ll do the touching, and you’re the one who’ll feel it.”
I cried out again as his fingers twisted harder, but part of the scream held the possibility of triumph rather than the ring of pain. He’d been trying to torture me with how impossible it was to reach, him, but instead he just might have given me the key to where he was! I struggled my arms up despite the uniform holding them down and beat at his face in an effort to make him let me go, knowing my mind-tool would help me do what I had to if I could just stop the pain long enough to reach it. He cursed at me as he blocked my fists, and then the room was spinning and clanging from the slap he gave me, my cheek flaming to fire as I went over sideways on the bed. The next instant his fingers were twisted in my hair again, and I was pulled to my back to see him looming over me.
“You’re not picking up on this very well, pretty girl,” he said hoarsely, the look in his dark eyes so cold I shivered. “I’m the one who does the hitting, you’re the one who does the getting hit. Here, let me show you again how it goes.”
He raised his left fist angled back and down, giving me more than enough time to see where he was aiming. He was going to hit me in the stomach, probably to keep the bruises from annoying him by showing caring nothing at all about what damage he might do. I needed time to try the idea I’d had, but he wasn’t giving me time—and then I nearly screamed again at the sound of the door shattering. He let me go instantly and threw himself from the bed, and when I managed to struggle half erect I saw
Tammad, standing in the room with pieces of door scattered on the floor behind him, that giant sword in his fist, kill-lust in his mind. He’d seen what Adjin had been about to do to me and knew what had already been done, and all he wanted was to end the life of the man he stared at. I couldn’t believe he was there, couldn’t believe he had found me, couldn’t believe it was all over
“Don’t come any closer, savage,” Adjin said in a very cool, very unexcited voice, obviously talking to my beloved. When I turned my head furiously to look at him, the words I would have said froze on my tongue. Adjin had something small and round pointed at me, and the faint smile on his face was no bluff.
“If you so much as think about taking another step, I’ll kill her,” the null said, his hand absolutely steady on the weapon. “Then you’ll be able to kill me, but she’ll still be dead. If you don’t want it to happen, put that sticker back in its nest, then get rid of the whole belt.”
“Don’t listen to him!” I shouted as quickly as I could, looking at the barbarian, but I was already too late. Knowing men and what they were capable of far better than I ever would, Tammad was wasting no time following instructions. His light, furious eyes were locked to the dark ones watching him, his teeth showed in a silent snarl, but his hands were already empty and reaching for his swordbelt. I’m sure he knew he would be dead at most only minutes after he disarmed himself, but that didn’t matter to him as long as I lived.
Well, congratulations, Terry, you managed to get rescued, a voice inside me said, sounding sickeningly sweet. Now that Tammad’s started the ball rolling, do you think you might make the effort to give him a hand?
“Damn!” I said under my breath, immediately reaching for my mind tool. Talk about your softheaded, helpless females! The big hero arrives, and she just sits there and watches him die. That could have been the meaning of the conviction I’d had, that I’d never belong to Tammad because he would soon die, but if it happened it would not be because I just sat there!
Putting my mind-tool into use always seems to make time stretch, as though everyone but me has slowed to a crawl. That time I really needed the edge, as I had no true idea of what to do to make my guess work. Adjin had said something about me not being able to see his mind any more than the complex people had been able to see I was awake, and that had to be the answer. No one had known I was awake because I’d been shielded, that being the only way to keep an empath from a living mind. It had suddenly come to me to wonder if it were possible that nulls were born shielded, and not being empaths had no way of ever banishing that shield. If that proved true then their emotions were right where they could be easily reached-by someone who knew how to get through a shield.
But I’d had the time to examine Firmer’s mind closely, and hadn’t been able to detect the gaps an ordinary shield contained! If my theory was true, then it had to be an impenetrable shield that enclosed their minds, and there was no way to get through one of those. All it was possible to do was go around it, and I hadn’t been able to get around Rissim’s shield or Irin’s—