He leaned over me with a good deal of satisfaction and pressed my fingers to the print-plate in the table, then called up a menu for himself. The dial for the table’s chef was disguised amid all the glitter and sparkle, but he had no trouble finding it and using it once he’d made his selection. By then my own meal was being delivered, and I couldn’t stop the surge of fury that rose in me over the continuing fact that he ate what he pleased while I ate what was given me. I hated it, all of it, especially when I felt a sharp twist of hunger I should have been too out of sorts to feel. I knew at once I was being manipulated again, either by something that had been added to my breakfast or by something in that injection, and it was all I could do to keep from jumping up and running out of there. If there hadn’t been a promise of escape . . .
But, as slim as it was, there was a promise of escape. Kel-Ten chattered away while I ate mechanically and silently, finding nothing of any interest in the meal. This time I’d been allowed a small cup of kimla to be drunk after I’d finished my glass of swed, and I took a small amount of grim satisfaction in ignoring it completely. I neither needed nor wanted their version of treats for the little child, the thrill of being allowed something normally reserved only for grown-ups. I was willing to bet they’d also approved a taste or two of wine for dinner, and was looking forward to refusing that as well.
As was to be expected, Kel-Ten’s meal lasted longer than mine. This time he didn’t offer me any of it, and when he’d discovered I wasn’t answering any of his conversation he’d stopped talking and spent his time simply watching me. By the time he was through I could see he was really amused, and the glare I sent him only added to his fun. I’d been uncomfortable while I’d been eating, but once the food was gone there was nothing to distract me from the results of the injection I’d been given. I’d thought the shot from the day before had been bad, but right then I was learning the true meaning of bad.
Everything touching me was sending flashes of heat through my body, even the brocade of the chair against the bare part of my thighs, the brush of the tablecloth against my leg, the very movement of the air around me. My breathing was ragged and I couldn’t sit still no matter how hard I tried, and the music playing was more sensually suggestive than anything I’d ever heard. By rights I should have been in pain, but pain would have been too distracting so I felt nothing like that. Only desire and need, desire and need, over and over and only just short of whispering in my ear. I swallowed hard as I fought to hold it down, then grunted when Kel-Ten reached over to tug at my ear.
“You look like you could use a little dessert,” he remarked, the laughter heavy behind his voice. “Why don’t you come over and sit in Kel-Ten’s lap, and tell him what you’d like in the way of dessert?”
“I’d like to see you drop dead for dessert,” I whispered, keeping my eyes away from him. “Could you arrange that, please?”
“See, I knew a little food would put you back in better spirits,” he said, this time laughing out loud. “You’re going to have to say please, you know, so why don’t you say it now and get it over with? If you don’t, you’ll find yourself sitting and watching me do it to somebody else. Do you think you’ll be able to stand that, watching me take another woman in my arms, kissing her as I put her to her back, entering her . . . ”
“Stop,” I moaned, closing my eyes in a useless effort to block out the picture he was deliberately painting for me, my hands clamped tight to the arms of the chair. “Stop that, Kel-Ten, it isn’t fair! You don’t know what you’re doing to me!”
“Of course I know,” he said with a chuckle, and then his fingers were stroking the back of my hand closest to him. “I’m teaching you that if you want what you need, you have to be a good little girl and ask me the way I prefer being asked. Even if I did pick you out of the rest of the herd, my services aren’t automatically yours for the wanting. And you’d better understand that if you pass on it now, your next earliest opportunity will be very late this afternoon. Do you have any idea what you’ll be feeling like by then?”
The shivering darting through me from the mere touch of his fingers to my hand, told me exactly what I’d be feeling like by late afternoon. I’d be ready to crawl to him and kiss his feet and beg for his favors, mindless from the terrible, burning need consuming me. Waiting would only make everything that much worse, as though it weren’t already bad enough. Bad. Again. Just like everything I touched that also touched me.
“Please, Kel-Ten,” I whispered, my eyes still closed and my hands wrapped tight around what they held to. “You want me to say please, so I am saying it. Please take me somewhere and make this stop.”
“Why, that was very nicely said, sweet thing,” he answered, and I could see his grin even without seeing it. “I think you’re learning to appreciate Kel-Ten. Well, you did what I asked you to do, so you’ll get what you asked for. As soon as I finish one more cup of kimla. ”
I just sat there in the chair after that, hearing the music and the sound of voices all around, seeing nothing in the darkness behind my eyelids. I felt no surprise that he was making me wait even longer after I’d done as he’d demanded, it was something some part of me had apparently been expecting. I couldn’t sit still in the chair or let go of the chair arms, couldn’t breathe normally or stop feeling what was rapidly overcoming the ban against pain, but the one thing I didn’t feel was surprise. And all I could do about it was sit there and wait.
It takes forever for a cup of kimla to cool enough for you to drink it, two forevers for you to be led by the hand through a room full of people, some of whom start conversations with the one leading you. The trip from a dining room, up a lift, and over to an apartment is five forevers in duration, but walking through that apartment to the bedroom is only three forevers long. I made the last part of the journey carried in Kel-Ten’s arms, and when he put me down on the bed he was breathing almost as hard as I was, but not from exertion.
“I don’t know what it is about you,” he panted, already thrusting the shirt up to my armpits as I lay on my back in the middle of the bed. “I can have any woman in this complex and have had most of them, but ever since I first saw you you’ve become the one I most want to do it to. Say please again, and tell me you want it.”
“Please, Kel-Ten, please, please, please,” I moaned, wrapping my arms around his neck and trying to pull him to me. I barely knew what I was saying or doing, and when I pressed my lips hungrily to his, he forgot about everything but what wed come there for.
It was quite some time before it was over, quite some time before our minds could think again rather than simply feel. I lay curled up on the wrinkled bed that had been neatly made up when wed gotten there, trying to memorize the sensation of bodily satisfaction. Without knowing how long it was going to last, I didn’t want to chance taking it for granted and then finding it gone before it could be appreciated. Kel-Ten stirred where he lay beside me, and then he lifted a strand of my hair.
“I think you just had a harder workout than I had in exercise class, sweet thing,” he drawled, heavy satisfaction in the words. “I’ll have to send you off to your own exercise class in a few days or they’ll start to scream, but for now you’ll make do with being ridden. You can’t deny you enjoyed the ride, but I’m not enjoying all that sweat it left you covered with. Looks like it’s time you got a bath. ”