“You have returned to yourself,” came Tammad’s voice, and I pulled my fingers away from my eyes to see him standing in the now-opened doorway. His mind was under its usual strong control, and I’d been so deeply immersed in my own concerns that I wouldn’t have known he was there if he hadn’t spoken. “How do you fare?”
“Oh, I’m just fine and dandy,” I answered, staring straight at hire. “What’s the matter, did you stop by because you were afraid I’d be unable to strip for the rest of your men? I know how unfair it is, asking me to do it just for two of them. The rest would undoubtedly be insulted.”
“I see you have indeed returned to yourself.” He nodded, coming farther into the cabin and closing the door behind him. “Once again you feel yourself unjustly treated.”
“Why, whatever would make you say that?” I wondered aloud, expecting the flash of anger I felt in him. “Just because you’ve turned my entire life into an insane asylum? Just because you feel you have the right to direct every breath I take? Just because one minute everything is over between us, and the next we’re right back where we started? Don’t be silly.”
I laughed lightly, knowing it would annoy him, but the annoyance he felt never reached his face. He stood there tall and magnificent, broad and strong and handsome and more desirable than any man of all the worlds of the Amalgamation, his mind showing nothing but agreement with what I’d said.
“You have spoken the words I, myself, meant to say,” he put in at once, then folded those massive arms. “Perhaps with more sharpness than I care for, yet the words are not untrue. The fault for this—insanity—as you call, it is indeed mine, for I committed the folly of believing other men were perhaps wiser than I. I shall not do the same again.”
“What are you talking about?” I snapped, fed up with roundabouts and hidden meanings. “If you have something to say, say it!”
“There, my point has just been proven,” he said. Then he came very close to stare down at me. “When you were yet my belonging on Rimilia, what would have been done to you had you had the temerity to speak to me in such a way? And above that, would you have spoken to me so?”
I stared up at hard, unamused blue eyes and shaggy blond hair, wondering exactly why it was that I hard spoken to him as I had. It was hard not remembering what he was like, but for some reason the thought hadn’t stayed with me.
“Maybe I’m more interested in suicide these days,” I shrugged, looking down at the wrinkled caldin I wore and smoothing at the creases. My voice had been somewhat faint, which brought a chuckle to his mind.
“You still have not answered my first question,” he persisted, looking at me in a way I could feel. “Had we been upon Rimilia, what would have been done to you?”
“You would have beaten me,” I mumbled after a minute, keeping my head down, knowing when I really was beaten. If men like Garth couldn’t stand up to him, what chance did I have?
“Nothing quite so dramatic, as you very well know,” he corrected, his voice not giving an inch. “You would have been switched for the insolence, punished to teach you to curb your tongue. Is this not true?”
I nodded reluctantly without saying anything, still looking at my lap, by then convinced I’d never be able to look up again. Feeling brave when I was all alone or just talking to Garth wasn’t hard to do; with Tammad standing over me, giant-sized and without a hesitation in his mind, it was just about impossible.
“The men of your worlds will accept insolence from their wendaa, thinking they achieve peace by doing so,” he said, still in that same, remorseless voice. “They plead and coax to attain their goal, forgetting their manhood in their frantic search for a manner in which to appease their females. They forget that appeasement is not necessary with one who obeys you to keep from punishment. You were taught to obey me, wenda; was the condition as confining as you first believed it would be, as damaging to your sense of dignity?”
I hesitated even longer over that one, remembering bow wonderful my time with him had been, once we began really working together. I had done everything be asked, had lived to please him—but I bad been in love with him then, really in love. I’d had no doubts, no worries, no insecurities over what he was after—but that was all behind us.
“It’s not the same now,” I muttered, wishing I had the courage to look up at him. “I couldn’t do it again, not the way it was.”
“You will find that it is more than possible to do again,” he said, and his hand finally came to touch my hair. “Once we are upon Rimilia, among our people, you will recall what others have allowed you to forget. You will recall that it is I to whom you belong, not the darayse of your worlds. Once we have returned to our home, we will again find happiness.”
“Going back to your old attitudes won’t change anything,” I told him, terribly aware of the gentleness of his touch. “You speak of our people and our home, but that’s not what they are and we both know it. The good time you remember was when we worked together, not when I was your obedient servant. Forcing me to obey you won’t bring those times back.”
“Such remains to be seen,” he answered, sitting down behind me on the bed. “I may do no less than make the attempt.” His bands came to my arms and I was gently turned sideways, then lowered to my back to lie across the bed. He sat beside me, looking down at me, the hum in his mind growing stronger the longer he stared. I didn’t want to lie there in front of him like the living sacrifice in a pagan ritual, but sitting up again was out of the question. He didn’t want me sitting up, and his thoughts made that abundantly clear. He continued to stare silently for a moment, then his hands came first to my left wrist and then to my right, untying the thin leather ties holding the sleeves of the imad closed. After my wrists his hands went to my waist, opening the leather ties there, turning the imad into even less of a covering than it had been. I could feel my breathing increase to match my heartbeat, both uncontrollable as my mind floundered around, trying to think of something to do to stop him. He had no right to open my clothing like that, he had no right!
“Remove the imad,” he said, a faint grin on his face for the wide-eyed, frantic expression I could feel possessing me. “I would look at the woman who is my belonging.”
He made no attempt to remove the imad himself, undoubtedly demonstrating his right to command me—and demanding an example of how well I would obey. I hesitated a very long moment, trying to tell myself I didn’t have to do it, watching his mind closely to see how he took my hesitation. I intended refusing if I could get away with it, but it didn’t take long to see that refusal wasn’t going to be allowed. His faint grin faded to nothing as his thoughts took on a tinge of anger, the muscles in his wide shoulders beginning to tighten at the same time. I swallowed at the instantly growing hardness of his thoughts and began to sit up to do as I’d been told, but his hand came to my throat to press me back down again.
“Remove the imad without rising,” he said, his voice nearly a growl, his hand heavy on my throat. “You have not been given permission to rise.”
I swallowed a second time against the pressure of his hand, wilting under the weight of his stare. As soon as he removed his hand I hurried to squirm out of the imad, pulling it off over my bead and out from beneath me as quickly as I could. I had never in my entire life thought of myself as a coward—until the moment I had first been taught what a true barbarian was like.