“No! Do it now! We’ve got to do it on our wedding night. Everyone knows that. Just rape me. I promise not to resist. I didn’t before.”
Even Nona could see that this was just about as appetizing as a slab of wormy meat. What an attitude to bring to the nuptial night!
“No,” Darius said with deep regret.
Colene kicked off the sheet, pulled up her nightie to expose thighs, torso, and breasts, and spread her arms and legs in the manner of a scarecrow. “Do it, Darius! No resistance. This is as far as I can go.”
“I have desired you from the outset,” Darius said carefully. “When you first came to me, as I lay beaten on the ground. But I would not take you, because you were not ready. I desired you as we came to know each other, and you tempted me with your tight trousers—”
“Jeans.”
“And your sheer nightie. This nightie. I wanted you more than anything. But I did not take you, because you asked me not to. I desired you when we were together on Oria, and you asked me to take you, but then I knew that you were too young, so I did not. I desire you now, more than ever, but—”
“Take me! Take me!” Her eyes were closed, her teeth clenched, as if she were expecting to be tortured,
“But you are afraid. I will not do it when you fear it. Relax and sleep, Colene; I will let you be.”
Her face twisted into the semblance of anger. “What is it—I’m inadequate? Not enough body for you? Would you hold off if it were Nona?”
Nona jumped.
Darius took the taunting question seriously. “Yes. I would not do it with Nona, because it is not her desire, and it is not your desire that I do it with her.”
Nona relaxed. He had spoken the exact truth. But her respect for him was increasing, because she knew the strength of his desire and the agony of his decision.
“You didn’t answer the right question,” Colene complained. “Is my body too immature for you? Not like Pussy?”
Pussy? Nona wondered.
A female feline of the DoOon Mode who tried to seduce Darius. He found her quite interesting.
“A car?” Nona asked.
A Null. A human slave, called a feline, with a feline face, but in other respects an extremely well-endowed human woman. The DoOons have many such slaves, with the aspects of cats, dogs, horses, pigs—
“Pigs!”
The Emperor’s Nulls are pigs. They command great respect.
Nona decided to let it pass, lest she miss the dialogue on which she was so guiltily eavesdropping. Darius had tried to demur, but Colene insisted that he answer the question of bodily endowment.
“You are adequate,” he said, with his precision. “In fact I like your slender little body very well. But you must truly want the interaction.”
“I do want it! I just can’t do it! Rape me, and maybe I’ll loosen up. Just get me past this hurdle, Darius.”
“No.”
“I’ll make you do it!” she cried. “Seqiro! Make him do it!”
No.
“Damn it, whose horse are you, anyway?”
Darius smiled grimly. “Seqiro loves you, Colene, as do I. He will never hurt you, for the same reason I will not.”
Colene lay there crying, the picture of misery.
Darius paused, then spoke. “I am going to touch you. I am going to bring you to me. I am going to kiss you. I am going to hold you close. I am going to love you. I am not going to coerce you into sexual expression. This is the way it will be, until such time as you truly wish it otherwise.”
She remained frozen. Carefully he reached for her, putting his hands on her shoulders. He brought down her nightie, so that it covered her body again. He brought his body across and brought his head down to hers, kissing her. Then he turned her to face him, and clasped her to him. He stroked her sodden hair, and her back, gently.
“Oh, Darius, I’m so ashamed!”
“No. You have been hurt, and the hurt has not yet healed. I did not properly understand, before. Now I do. We shall heal you, Colene. In time. In time.”
“In time,” she agreed, relaxing at last.
Nona shook her head. “I did not know how bad it was. How she was hurting.”
She did not wish to share it.
“I can heal a person physically, but emotional hurt is beyond my power. I can not help her in this respect.”
Neither can I. I can only help her to block it out.
“Is it this way for every girl who is raped?”
I do not know.
“It must be, at least to some extent. Some rapes must be worse than others. Some girls must be more sensitive. But it is a terrible thing, regardless.”
Regardless, the horse agreed.
Regardless, Burgess agreed.
“But we will all help her to recover, however we can.”
There was agreement from horse and floater. And, perhaps, Darius, whose disappointment was second only to Colene’s own.
Nona returned to her bed. “Help me to sleep,” she asked Seqiro. Then she slept.
IN the morning Burgess was so much improved as to be almost at full strength. Nona was somewhat logy, having remained awake too late, to snoop on Colene. Yet she was glad she had done it, though she had not learned what she expected. She had discovered the girl’s true weakness, so now knew what was needed. Colene needed the support of the hive, in much the way Burgess did. She would have it.
Late in the morning Colene’s father drove his car to the motel to pick them up. Nona cleaned up the tent, getting things organized so that they could travel again. They all knew that Colene wanted to get on with the journey to Darius’ home Mode. Nona suspected that Colene would be better off with more delay, while she worked out her scrambled feelings, but it was not Nona’s province to make that decision. They would go to Darius’ Mode, and then see. Perhaps the others—Seqiro, Burgess, and Nona—would remain there for a while, to be sure that all was in order, before deciding what to do.
Colene’s mother came back to the tent. “Nona—may I talk with you?” she asked hesitantly.
“Of course.” What could the woman want?
“I know you are not exactly what you seem. That none of you are exactly what you seem. Not even Colene, now. But I believe you are good people.”
“I believe we are,” Nona agreed cautiously.
“It was a nice wedding.”
“It was very nice.”
“We really do want what is best for Colene. After she disappeared, before, we realized how poorly we had served her. When my husband had an affair, it drove me to drink. I just didn’t think of the effect on Colene, to my shame. My husband loves our daughter too. We were both blind to the effect on our child. We resolved that if God should grant us another chance, we would do better. Then Colene returned, with an older woman, and a strange story of a Virtual Mode. We concluded that she had fallen under the influence of an evil cult, and that the strange woman was preventing her from escaping it. We tried to save her from that. Then she disappeared again, right before our eyes, and we realized too late that she was involved in something beyond our understanding. When we learned the story of the gangster and the little girl, we saw that Colene had done something good. So we believed her, too late. We swore to God that if we should ever have yet another chance, this time we would trust in our daughter and do whatever she wished to be done. We swore to lead perfect lives until we had our child back again. And we did so—and Colene did return again.”
The woman stopped, overtaken by emotion. “You did what Colene wished,” Nona agreed. This family had been dysfunctional; now it was trying so hard to recover. Nona remembered again how her own family had been lost. She was still using magic to stave off the horror of that.