“Now, that is an insult you won’t be getting away with,” he answered, turning his head to give me a hard look over his shoulder. “When the day comes that I’m defeated, it won’t be by a low-class incompetent like him. And even if everyone in this facility gets to the point of being able to walk all over me, he still won’t be anything like my kind. My kind is human, and Jer-Mar doesn’t qualify. As soon as the tub is full, get out of that window pane and start soaking.”
His finger poked at a stud on the wall, and water began pouring into the tub from four separate spouts, each one shaped like a golden pitcher set on its side. The faint scent of perfume began rising into the room on the warm air shimmering up from the rapidly filling tub, a scent very much like that of flower petals.
“I don’t like having perfume added to my bath water,” I said, noticing that he was walking over to a dry-chair rather than leaving. “And I also don’t like having an audience while I bathe. If you’re afraid I’ll try sneaking out with the washing only half done, you can set up a guard post and inspection station at the front door. This isn’t . . . ”
“That’s enough,” he said as he settled into the chair, loosening the golden ascot at his throat just a little. He hadn’t raised his voice to anything like a shout, but the way he was looking at me turned the two words into a flat-voiced order he didn’t seem prepared to have ignored. “I know I’ve been letting you say just about anything you cared to, but that doesn’t mean you’re in charge. I’m the one who’s in charge, so stop telling me what you do and don’t like. You haven’t been here long enough to have an opinion, and even if you had been, mine comes first. I’ll be very upset if these facts of life do anything to ruin the beautiful friendship that’s started between us, but I’m also certain I’ll survive. Now, get out of that thing and into the water.”
Once he’d said his piece he turned his attention to flipping open the arm of the dry-chair to reach the drinkorder pad, and a moment later a glass of wine rose up on the small stand put out from the right side of the chair. I turned my back as he reached for the glass, having no interest in waiting until his eyes were on me again, and then began getting out of the transparent green robe. If bathing hadn’t meant I’d be rid of that still-burning pain I would have turned and walked out of there, but I knew well enough I’d need all the help I could get once he sent me back to the women’s section. Which would probably be in a short enough time, if his annoyance meant what annoyance usually did. I felt nothing in the way of desire to be sent back, but that permanently angry, stubbornly refusing part of me would not let me do anything to make sure that I wasn’t.
The robe part of my outfit came off easily enough, but when I tried unhooking the golden metal girdle, I found myself with something of a problem. I’d apparently been too out of sorts to notice that Jer-Mar had reattached the short chain to the front of the thing, and I couldn’t quite see the way of opening it again. Because of that I had to reach around to the back of the girdle rather than slide it to where I could see what I was doing, and had to try getting it open by touch alone. Since it hadn’t taken long to put on it must have had a relatively simple catch, but all my fingers found were rounded links with nothing that seemed made to be opened. I worked at it long enough to begin wondering if I could slide it off over my hips once I was wet and soapy, but before I could decide definitely to try it, an alternate suggestion was put forward to me.
“Come over here, and I’ll get that open for you,” my audience said, sounding as though he’d been watching my struggles for a while. I didn’t have to think about it very long to know I didn’t like the idea, but when I tried pretending I hadn’t heard it I was firmly disagreed with.
“I said, get your tail over here,” he repeated in a harder voice, but not one that seemed totally out of patience. “If I have to come over to you, you won’t like what happens.”
“I’m not likely to enjoy it either way,” I pointed out, still not turning back to look at him. “The question I’m wondering about now, though, is which one will turn out to be the worst of the two. Since I have my suspicions, I think I’ll stay right where I am.”
I’d been fighting with that stupid girdle even as I’d spoken, hoping I could get it off and solve the problem that way, but nothing had worked out right for me since I’d opened my eyes that morning. Instead of finding the catch I was looking for, I suddenly found myself being pulled into two strong arms. A hand came to my face to turn it upward, and then I was being kissed with an odd kind of full attention, as though something in particular was being looked for. I was given two or three kisses of the same sort, and then Kel-Ten raised his brows.
“That’s strange, you do taste like a girl,” he said, sounding as though he thought I wouldn’t. “If you taste like one you probably are one, but I didn’t think there were any girls like you left in the entire universe. Backtalk instead of breathless agreement, thinking for yourself instead of expecting me to do it for you. I’d love to be able to get used to that again, but I’m afraid my enjoyment would be your eventual pain. You can’t act like that around here, soft and lovely, or they’ll take everything from behind your eyes and leave nothing but the shell. We both know they’ve tried delivering that message to you, but until now you’ve been refusing receipt. We’re going to have to work on teaching you how to be a good girl before sending you back, or you’ll end up just like all the others. And that is something I won’t allow.”
He finished his speech on a more sober note than he’d started it with, and the look in his light eyes had developed a stubbornness to match. I still didn’t understand what he was after—or trust him in any way at all—but he wasn’t waiting for a show of cooperation. As a matter of fact, he didn’t wait for anything at all. Before I knew what was happening I was turned around, the girdle was opened, and then a smack to the bottom sent me forward toward the tub.
“Now you can get into the water,” my volunteer assistant said, the amusement back in his voice. “I added the perfume to discourage myself from joining you, but if you take much longer perfume won’t be enough of a discouragement. Of course, if you want company in there . . . ”
Glancing over my shoulder showed he was grinning as he let the words trail off, but that didn’t mean he ryas joking. His one-piece, gold formal suit would not take long to get out of, and his fingering of my bottom while opening the girdle had definitely been deliberate rather than accidental. My answer to his uncompleted question was to quickly climb the tub steps and then move down into the water, and by the time I’d lowered myself into the wet, delicious warmth, he was already on his way back to the dry-chair.
I hadn’t been completely sure he’d been telling the truth about the water easing my pain, and for the first couple of minutes it didn’t. The smack to the bottom he’d given me hadn’t been gentle, and that combined with the remnants of the liquid treatment I’d had made sitting on the tile of the tub uncomfortable. I was trying to figure out what I would do if the water didn’t help, when I noticed that what had been left of the glitter on the ends of my breasts was just about all washed away. Right after that the pain began thinning in a way I could feel, and once started the withdrawal didn’t stop until there was only a shadow left of what it had been. I took a deep breath and moved myself over to a headrest, able to relax for what felt like the first time in a thousand years.