“From here we go back to my apartment so I can shower and rest up for dinner,” he answered with a laugh, squeezing me a little before heading us out of the room. “You have to be on the receiving end of that before you learn what tired really is, so don’t be surprised when you don’t immediately find me all over you. I’ll need a short nap before I can do a proper job of assault.”
“I’m glad you told me,” I answered, still pretending to be extremely bored. “If you hadn’t, I might have begun worrying that I was losing my attraction for you. If that ever happened, I don’t know how I’d console myself. ”
“Oh, right,” he agreed with even more of a laugh, heading us directly down the center of the corridor and making everyone else walk around us. “I can just see you crying yourself to sleep—which I just may decide to see that you do anyway.”
He was still chuckling when we reached the bank of lifts, but then he was distracted by a knot of men standing in the area laughing and talking together. He seemed to know what was going on, and when we moved closer to them I got my own idea. Ank-Soh was standing in the middle of the knot being congratulated, and when he saw us approaching he left his admirers to come over to us.
“He didn’t have a chance, Kel-Ten,” he announced with a grin, confirming my guess. “Another challenger met and bested, one who seemed to have overlooked the fact that I’m also growing and improving. What’s your range these days?”
“I’m reaching for forty-seven, Ank-Soh,” my companion answered, the blandness in his voice worse than smugness would have been. “And you?”
“My win was at forty-two,” the other man answered, a faint smile accompanying his own blandness. “A couple of days ago, I began reaching a little higher than that. Everyone says my growth has really improved over the last few weeks, more than they would have expected. And how are you, sweet thing? Have you been enjoying yourself spending the day with the First Prime?”
“It’s been an unforgettable occasion,” I muttered, stiffening as his hand went into my shirt the way it had that morning—but making no attempt to back away. He grinned down at me as his fingers and palm enjoyed my flesh, and then his eyes moved to the man standing to my left.
“Congratulations, Kel-Ten, you’ve made quite a bit of progress with her since this morning,” he said, stroking the pet while he spoke to her master. “I look forward to the time you’re too busy to give her the attention she needs. I’ll check with you again tomorrow.”
He took his hand back without looking at me again, bowed sardonically to Kel-Ten, then ambled away to return to his friends. Kel-Ten dialed open a lift door, pulled me inside with him, and fumed silently only until the doors closed us in.
“That son of Ejects!” he snarled then, his good humor entirely vanished. “He still thinks he has a chance of besting me! And wouldn’t they love seeing that, one of their hot-house Primes besting the wild and captured First! Those of us raised outside of this complex and only brought in later have always been best, but Ank-Soh is more interested in advancing than in being pampered. Damn him and his ambition!”
He lapsed into silence after that, a dark roiling silence that took us all the way back to his apartment. I didn’t have to be told he was in no mood for swapping clever conversation, but keeping quiet didn’t keep me from getting singed on the edges of the flames. The fingers around my arm had grown painful by the time we reached the golden bathroom, and being thrown to the carpeting in the middle of the floor was almost a relief.
“Stay right there until I tell you to get up again,” my owner growled as he kept moving past me, pulling his shirt off over his head as he went. “Belly down and cheek to the carpeting, and don’t let me hear a word out of you.”
The only thing I would have said to him wouldn’t have done any good for me with anyone listening, so it was just as well that I’d been told to continue with my prudent silence. I turned my head from him and put my cheek to the carpeting in accordance with the rest of my orders, then closed my eyes and fought to gain control of my body. Ank-Soh’s touching me had started the burning again, not as badly as it had been earlier but bad enough, and I didn’t want to feel that way. If I couldn’t get it under control I’d have to beg Kel-Ten for relief a second time, and I especially didn’t want to do that. His mood would make it more than simply unpleasant for me, that I knew beyond doubt, and my backing down in front of Ank-Soh had been humiliating enough.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about begging Kel-Ten. He moved around very briefly before the sound of water came, took his shower fast, then strode out of the room. I waited for him to come back and tell me I could get up, fighting all the while with the need that insisted on rising, and finally it came through to me that he wasn’t coming back. He had walked out without paying the least attention to me, possibly even without seeing me, and had gone to take his nap. He must have known I’d have a problem after Ank-Soh’s little gesture, but since he wasn’t up to doing anything about it he’d just gone ahead and ignored it. It was easy to see how really concerned he was about me, just like everyone else.
I suppose it would have helped if I could have fallen asleep, but my body saw to it that I wasn’t able to sleep. Kel-Ten napped for hours and I experienced every minute of the time wide awake, my mind uninterested in thinking, nothing but sensations and emotions occupying it. It was a painful, endless time, but one that somehow seemed very familiar, almost as though I’d gone through the same thing before. Being too alone in an unendurable situation, afraid to let yourself think about what was being done to you, knowing that if you started to think the tears would come, marking the end of all your attempts to be brave. I wanted to give up but I couldn’t afford to, not when giving up would mean much more than simply losing. There are things worse than death, living being one of them, or more properly being forced to live on under certain conditions. I rubbed my cheek against the carpeting, wondering why I kept thinking of it as fur, wondering why my mind took hope from that—then rejected the hope completely. Why did I have to be haunted by supposedly buried memories. . . ?
“Well, now, will you look at what a good girl she is?” a blurry voice said suddenly from behind me, lazy amusement in it. “Put her to her belly and tell her to stay that way, and that’s exactly what she does. I wonder if she did it because she’s hoping for a reward. Did you want Kel-Ten to reward you, sweet thing?”
If my eyes hadn’t already been closed I would have closed them, not far from wishing the man had stayed asleep no matter how I felt. I didn’t even want to look at him, not to mention talk to him, but he had recovered too much of his good mood to let my obvious reluctance bother him. He came over and crouched beside me, used two fingers to get a more direct answer to his question than words, then closed a fist in my hair and pulled me to my feet.
“I really enjoyed that ride you took this morning, so much so that I think I’ll let you do it again,” he said, grinning down at me as he guided me toward the drychair by the hair. “After this, though, we’re going to find another chair. It’s handy doing it in the bathroom if you want to shower afterward, but otherwise the surroundings don’t do much to encourage my mood.”
He chuckled at his cleverness as he seated himself and pulled me into his lap facing him, and then he proved how restorative sleep can be for some people. It was exactly what I needed and I groaned as I inched closer to him, but his casual comment had disturbed me enough to keep the pleasure from being overwhelming. He had said we would probably not be using the dry-seat again, meaning we would not be speaking privately again, but I didn’t know why until he put his arms around me and began kissing my shoulder and face.
“I’ve decided our talking like this is too much of a risk,” he whispered, letting me do most of the work while he simply enjoyed himself. “We’ll end it now, before I awaken you, giving them less to be suspicious about. But we had to have this last time because I’ve been thinking about tomorrow. Being awakened will jar you a little, but you have to get used to the feeling because it will be happening on and off during the entire day.”