Part 8 (1/2)
”I'm not 'listening' to them,” I protested, turning my head soon enough to see him sitting down next to me. ”That particular lesson was one I learned on my own - and if you need to sit down that badly, find an unoccupied chair. This one is taken.”
”What are you afraid of?” he asked very mildly, one hand having pushed the side of his blue robe out of the way. ”Didn't you say you could best me even without the Learning? And I'm not threatening you in any way, all I'm doing is sitting here. Is that anything to be afraid of?”
”I didn't say I was afraid of you,” I answered in what was almost a mutter, forced to look away again from those very blue eyes. ”I - don't like having anyone - this close to me. It - goes against all the training I've had, and - I told you how my senses have been heightened, made sharper-”
”I believe that means you can tell I didn't come here just to talk,” he said, a gentle amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice as his right hand crossed me to lean on the lounge to my left. ”Your senses must be very sharp, but there's still nothing for you to be afraid of.”
”Not wanting something doesn't mean you're afraid of it,” I said, the words coming out fainter than I liked. ”If I'm the best you can do, High Master, then your strength must be a lot less than you claim. This city has to be filled with women who would fight for your attention, so why don't you - ”
”By all the G.o.ds,” he exclaimed softly, and his hand came to my face to turn it more fully toward him. ”I couldn't quite see it happening, but somehow you're uglier now than you were five heartbeats ago. Nothing about your face has really changed, but - Were you able to do this while you were a slave?”
I made no effort to answer him, d.a.m.ning the fact that his ability had helped him to notice, but he nodded just as though I'd spoken.
”Yes, of course you were able to do it,” he said, absolutely certain. ”You're not the kind of woman who could have been forced to constantly serve guardsmen and still have stayed sane.
You made the ugliness so intense they never came near you - but something about that bothers you.”
Those blue eyes were so sharp they seemed to be boring straight through my head. He was searching for the answer to his not-quite question, and it wasn't long before he found it.
”Now I understand,” he said, his hand leaving my face to stroke my hair. ”You were able to keep yourself untouched, but couldn't do anything to help the women around you. It must have felt as though you were buying your own safety at their expense.”
”That's exactly what I did do,” I confirmed his guess, this time making no effort to look away.
”My ... partic.i.p.ation would have eased the burden on them, but I couldn't make myself do it.
And at one time I actually boasted about how brave I was.”
”You must have been a child,” he said, the hand on my hair gentle. ”Only children think strictly in black and white, with no shades of gray. The bravest fighter I ever knew had one point of fear he couldn't handle, and that no matter how hard he tried. He was terrified at the thought of being stung by an insect, and would break and run at the first sight of a bee or wasp.
If you put a dagger to his throat he would laugh at you, but one small bee...””Is that supposed to be the same?” I demanded. ”How many people suffered because he ran from an insect? And even if he hadn't run, would that have guaranteed his being stung rather than someone else? It didn't - ”
”Stop enjoying all that guilt,” he interrupted sternly, much of the air of understanding patience gone. ”You saved yourself without being able to do the same for others, but that makes you fortunate, not guilty. You didn't sacrifice the others, not when your being brutalized wouldn't have kept the same thing from happening to them. The ones you took unfair advantage of were the guardsmen, but if that bothers you you're beyond all hope. And besides, it was their own fault for being concerned with nothing but appearances.”
”Is that supposed to mean you're better than they are because you're not?” I asked, letting the subject be changed from a situation he didn't understand as clearly as he thought he did.
”You're far superior to those guardsmen because you can see the beauty of my heart and personality?”
”Beauty isn't exactly the word I would have chosen,” he said with a grin, showing nothing of the insult I'd been hoping for. ”Just because I know you're being abrasive on purpose doesn't mean I can keep myself from reacting to that abrasiveness. No, the attraction I feel has nothing to do with beauty, and I can't really tell you what it does have to do with.”
”I can,” I said with as much of a shrug as it's possible to perform when half lying down. ”I said the bunch of you were crazy, and that obviously goes double for you. Please move out of the way so I can get up.”
”Women always think men are crazy,” he said with a soft laugh, deliberately leaning closer rather than moving away as I'd asked. ”You don't understand us any more than we understand you, but that doesn't mean we're crazy. There's something about you that draws me the way my summons draws Power, Aelana, and I want to show you that I'm serious about this. You say I can have the most beautiful women in the city if I want them? Well, I say - maybe some other time.”
His right hand moved under my back to pull me closer, his left hand tangled in my hair, and then he was kissing me. I'd been braced against the hard press of an intrusive mouth against mine and was all ready to fight, but his kiss was enough of a shock to keep me from reacting immediately. Rather than hurting me in any way he was being exquisitely gentle, his lips soft, his hold no more than firm, even his beard silky against my face. His mouth tasted mine and shared the taste of his own, more of a giving than a taking.
”I'd appreciate it if you would kiss me back,” he murmured, now touching his lips to my cheek.
”This sort of thing works out best when it's a joint effort.”
And then his lips were covering mine again, giving me no chance to say anything even if I'd been able to think of something. I could smell his desire clearly, and it was making me feel strange in a way I'd never experienced before. What he was doing wasn't right, but I was too confused to figure out in which direction the wrong lay.
”Come on now, won't you give it even a small try?” he said again, his smile very definitely amused. ”I've always heard it said that a Kenoss Life Seeker never gives up, but you haven't even gotten started.”
His words were like the clang of an alarm bell in the dead of night, waking me into instant action. I was a Kenoss and no Kenossi woman ever just sat there and let herself be taken over.
I stiffened my right hand and sent the edge toward his face even as I began to bring up my legs to use them for kicking, but none of it worked out right. Instead of being taken by surprise Fearin seemed to have been expecting my reaction, and his response was even more immediate than my attack.
The arm that had been around me was abruptly blocking my first blow, and then all of him was in motion. His body s.h.i.+fted to hold mine down, his forearm deflecting another strike, and then his hands were wrapped around my wrists, forcing my arms above my head. I struggled with every ounce of strength I had, cursing the awkward position I'd started from, finding itimpossible not to spit a single word in the language of the Strong and Victorious.
”Now, now, none of that,” he warned, not understanding the word but apparently getting the general idea. ”I told you I had some experience with hand-to-hand fighting, I just didn't mention that I'm considered fairly good. Now you tell me: is this an Earning?”
”You tricked me!” I spat, still unable to break the hold of those big hands of his. ”First you provoked the fight, not caring that you'd forced me into an impossible position, and then - ”
”Never mind the frills and dressing,” he interrupted, the words implacable. ”A Kenossi man can't simply claim a woman, he has to Earn her by showing he's a better fighter. But once he does that he's ent.i.tled to her full cooperation, which she's bound to give. Am I right?”
”You're not a Kenoss,” I pointed out flatly, beginning to feel even more trapped. ”You can't - ”
”But you are a Kenoss,” he interrupted again. ”You're bound to honor an Earning under all circ.u.mstances, not just with Kenoss men. The binding doesn't mention who you have to honor it with, just that you have to do it.”
”I've never heard of a man who wasn't a Kenoss accomplis.h.i.+ng an Earning,” I muttered, trying to find a way out, but there wasn't any. He stared down at me, waiting for me to understand that, knowing I simply didn't want to understand. My people had twice sent me away from them, but I couldn't forget or ignore what they'd taught.
”Say it out loud,” Fearin directed, obviously reading my expression. ”If I've won, I want to hear you say so.”
”You've won,” I conceded flatly, hating the need to say the words. It didn't really matter that he'd caught me off-balance. I shouldn't have been off-balance, but since I was I deserved whatever I got.
”Your hearty congratulations are modestly accepted,” he said with a grin, finally letting me go.
”Now we can both get comfortable and do this the right way.”
He stood up to take off his robe, then began to open his s.h.i.+rt. His chest was covered with fine blond hair, lighter than his beard, and the muscles in his arms were deeply creased. It was unexpected to find a man of Power in such good physical shape, unexpected and hardly pleasing. If he'd been even a shade slower...
”All you've done so far is sit up,” he pointed out as he did his own sitting in a nearby chair, the better to pull off his boots. ”Get rid of that tunic and by then I ought to be with you.”
Hearing that left me less than delighted, but it wasn't possible to argue. He'd achieved an Earning, and I was the one he'd Earned. I lifted up to get the bottom of the tunic out from under me, pulled it off and tossed it away, then lay down flat and just waited.
Fearin hadn't been rus.h.i.+ng madly to get out of his clothes, but he also hadn't been dawdling. All too soon he was lying down to my right on the lounge that was no longer as wide as it had been, and his right arm came to cross my body again.
”You've regained some of the roundness girls are supposed to have, but you're still too thin,”
he said, examining me with his eyes. ”Lokkel's healing spell did most of the work so far, but now you have to help it. I don't want to catch you refusing any more meals.”
He paused as though waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to say. He might have managed to corner me, but the rest of what I did was none of his business.
”Even so, you really are looking a lot better than when we first found you,” he finally went on, his tone softened as his hand slid beneath my back. ”Are you this reluctant because it will be the first time for you?”
”No,” I answered, staring at the rain past the line of his arm. I just wished he would stop all the talking and simply get it over with.