It came to Ruiz that they now had more privacy than they had enjoyed in days. He kissed her again, more urgently, and felt her tongue flicker along his lips. He found that he was breathing hard, and his heart thumped.
She pushed him away, slowly, and he released her. Her eyes seemed a bit glazed, her lips were puffy. She looked at him for a long motionless moment, then, still looking into his eyes, she lay back on the bench.
He wondered if it was safe, to so distract himself. He decided he didn’t care, though some ancient scarred part of himself was horrified at this carelessness.
He touched her knee lightly with trembling fingers. Her face relaxed, and she turned her gaze up to the starlight. He pushed up her tunic, slowly, admiring the texture of her skin, the strong beautiful muscles of her thighs. He unfastened the garter that held her little knife and dropped it to the deck.
As his hands moved higher, she sighed and let her thighs fall open. He knelt beside her and kissed her knee, and then trailed kisses up the inside of her thigh, until she gasped and lifted her hips to meet his mouth.
A long time later she knelt on the bench, naked, clutching the railing, damp tendrils of hair tangled across her lovely back, head thrown back, moaning in time to his thrusts. His hands gripped her hip bones, and he looked down at the upside-down heart shape formed by her buttocks and slender waist, marveling at her beauty.
He increased the tempo of his movements and she bucked against him, her voice hoarse and ragged.
Just before they came for the last time that night, he looked up and saw the huge perfect face of the trailing barge. Perhaps it was only the delirium of the moment, but in that moment he had the overwhelming sensation that the face watched their coupling and that the eyes glowed with a strange intensity, as if it approved of the heat between Ruiz and Nisa. There was some great perversity in that gaze, but at the same time it seemed a fiercely erotic regard, and Ruiz surrendered to it, shuddering, pushing himself as deeply into Nisa’s body as he could, pouring himself into her in wave after wave of joy. She thrashed beneath him, cried out wordlessly, reached back to claw at his hips, to pull him deeper yet.
After, they lay on the bench together. Ruiz had pulled their discarded clothing over them, to hold in the heat they had generated, and then had given himself entirely to delightful sensation. He found an almost-suffocating pleasure in the tiny movements of her sweat-slick flesh against his. He was intensely aware of the subtleties of her body where it touched his: the softness of her breasts, the slightly different pressure of her nipples against his chest, the feathery touch of her hair, the coarser hair and the slippery warmth where she held his thigh between hers.
It came to him that something about her lovemaking had been different. The reserve he had sensed in her, that first time in the bathing pool — the reserve that seemed to define the act as a casual exchange of pleasure — was gone.
She had given herself without restraint. He wondered what had changed.
When finally they began to speak, at first it was of inconsequential things: the softness of the night air, the beauty of the stars as they slipped through the passing branches of the trees, the relaxing throb of the barge’s engines.
Nisa propped herself on her elbow and stroked his chest idly. “Did you know that women on Pharaoh bear children when they wish? Every month, when they’re done bleeding, they take a tea of dalafrea root — and then, until they bleed again, they may take pleasure without consequence. Do pangalac women do the same?”
Ruiz was unprepared for her question and spoke without thought. “They have other ways; so do pangalac men. But you needn’t worry, Nisa. When you were captured, the doctors gave you this.” He touched the skin at the back of her left arm, where a tiny contraceptive implant made a barely detectable bump.
She fingered the little hard spot curiously. “Ah,” she said in a voice of sad discovery. “To keep the slaves in salable condition?”
He nodded, sorry for his tactlessness. He pulled her closer and she made no resistance. “It’s easily removed,” he said. “Whenever you wish.”
A silence fell between them.
Finally she spoke again in a breathless whisper. “I’ve never asked you this, but I’ve wondered. Back in your pangalac worlds, is there a woman who wishes you were there? Would you rather be there with her?”
“No,” he answered. “No one.” He grinned. “I admit: I’d rather be there than here, but I wouldn’t wish to change companions.” It was true. He was going to have to stop wondering what was wrong with him.
He knew what was wrong with him. “No, I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else,” he said. Even, he thought, if it means I’ll never get home.
“Oh,” she said, and somehow managed to feel even softer against him.
Long peaceful minutes slipped away.
He hovered in that pleasant interval between wakefulness and sleep until he heard Molnekh cry out.
“Ruiz Aw!”
He jerked upright, almost spilling Nisa to the deck.
Molnekh shouted his name again, but there was no overtone of panic to the skinny mage’s voice, so Ruiz took the time to dress before he went to the ladder. “Wait here,” he told Nisa, who was obviously still sleepy. She nodded, stretched entrancingly, and bent to gather her clothes.
Ruiz climbed down the ladder and trotted forward to the place where Molnekh and Dolmaero stood. He found them staring down at something on the deck.
When Ruiz looked, he was astonished to see a stainless-steel tray, bearing several glass flagons, two loaves of crusty bread, a wheel of cheese, a basket overflowing with small golden grapes, a small green porcelain vase with three red flowers. To one side was a stack of plastic cups and a dispenser full of paper napkins.
“Where did it come from?” Ruiz asked.
Dolmaero shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been getting up and walking about the barge — my legs get cramped. A few minutes ago, it wasn’t here. Now it is. I called Molnekh; he called you.”
Ruiz turned to Molnekh. “And Flomel?”
“Securely tied,” Molnekh said. “But recovering — his complaints are incessant. His head hurts, he’s sore all over, his dignity is fatally injured, he’s hungry.”
“Too bad,” said Ruiz absently. He looked again at the deck, could find no seams, no hatch through which the food might have appeared.
His own stomach rumbled, sending him an uncomfortable message. They were all hungry. Was the food safe? He picked up a flagon, unstoppered it, sniffed. Wine.
“This is what you must do,” he told Molnekh. “Take Flomel a flagon, bread and cheese, a handful of grapes. Tell him we’ve already eaten; does he want any? If he asks where the food came from, tell him I discovered a cache of picnic goodies on the upper deck and broke into it.”
Molnekh nodded. “He’ll believe it. And if he survives his meal?”
“We’ll all eat.”
They all ate, and the mysterious food did them no harm. Ruiz and Nisa again went to the upper deck, where Nisa leaned against the rail and watched the passing forest. Ruiz sat beside her and tried to puzzle out the meaning of their odd circumstances.
What were the possibilities? The simplest explanation — that they traveled with generous and benevolent hermits — seemed a farfetched absurdity. Why would hermits travel in such extravagant style? And if their habit was to provide free food, wine, and excursions to the general public, why were the barges not thronged with guests?