“Belongings?” Jack echoed in confusion while trying to get his wrist loose. “What belongings? What are you talking about?”
“I do not belong to you,” I hissed at the great hulking beast, but he paid no attention to me.
“The green-eyed woman was my house-gift,” he explained in the mildest of tones, watching as Jack struggled uselessly against his grip. “She will belong to me until her mission is done and she is returned to your embassy I will have your apology for touching that which belongs to me.”
Jack stared at him in disbelief, his face pale, beads of sweat on his forehead. He also had to look up, which couldn’t have been a very familiar experience for him. Finally his eyes dropped and he cleared his throat.
“I apologize,” he muttered tonelessly. “I didn’t know.”
Tammad immediately released his wrist, and I looked at Jackson Randall with disgust. “You make me sick!” I snapped, but he just turned away, rubbing at his now free wrist. I moved past him without another word, went through the doorway to Sandy’s central hall, flung the front door open, then headed home.
What was left of the beautiful day didn’t reach me at all, and I was almost to my own front door when I realized that Tammad was right behind me. I could feel my lips draw into a thin, hard line, but I controlled my temper and simply ignored him. I swung through the door without caring who it hit on the way back, and went directly up the ramp to my bedroom and on through to my bathroom, slamming that door closed behind me. When the lock was firmly in place, I dialed a nice, hot bath, then got out a towel and a clean sleep suit.
The bath began relaxing me as soon as I was in it. I leaned back on the tub’s headrest and closed my eyes, letting my hair be gently washed and dried. I’d looked at myself before getting in the tub, and the bruises weren’t as bad as I’d thought they’d be—but they were still there.
Among all the men I knew, there had never been one like the barbarian. So self-assured, so easygoing, so—confident! As if everything within his reach could be his if he decided to take it. And he’d decided to take me!
I had to force myself to relax again, force myself to open my clenched fists. I was helpless to do anything about it, helpless to avoid it. I’d thought that Jackson Randall might have been able to stand up to him, but Jack had been as useless as Sandy had been damaging. How could a man stand to be shamed like that? I’d always thought that it was part of a man to defend his pride as well as his life, but one look from Tammad and Jack had folded like a quadriwagon partition. I wondered if the action would haunt him, or if he would put it out of his mind as if it had never happened. I splashed some water over my shoulders and thought about it for a minute, then decided that it would be both.
And Murdock McKenzie! The man was a fiend of the nether regions, just as I’d always known. He’d trapped me into doing what those of his own Bureau weren’t able to do, and he didn’t care what I had to go through as long as the job was done. He didn’t care that that barbarian would hold me down and use me until he was satisfied, bruise me with fingers of steel, bite me like the animal he was. If Murdock McKenzie could experience that, just once, then I would be satisfied.
I promised myself the pleasure of revenge on Murdock McKenzie, and that helped to slow my breathing a little. I was still too upset to relax as I should have, so I thumbed the switch that transparented the wall in front of me, and looked out at a darkening sky. The pink and purple streaks of the sky told me that it would soon be night, soon be time for people to go to their variously earned rest. I watched the trees wave gently against the pink and purple, remembering that I was still at least one night’s rest short. The warmth of the bath water reached through to my muscles; the peace of the sky reached through to my mind; I lost myself in thoughts of else-when.
I jerked awake and just caught myself from sliding under the water. I climbed wearily from the tub, feeling the inner strands of my once-dry hair clinging to the wetness of my back, then toweled myself off well enough to be able to put on the sleep suit. Body lotions and powders would have to wait for my next bath. I plodded past the view of an all-dark sky fumbled through the door into my bedroom, found my bed with half-shut eyes, then slid beneath inviting covers. My eyes closed the rest of the way but I was already asleep.
2
I woke from the strange dream, still faintly annoyed. I’d been called in to mediate a disagreement between Murdock McKenzie and a giant, and I’d been determined to do the best I could. I’d felt the hostility between them as soon as I sat at the table, and I’d begun speaking soothingly projecting peace and harmony. Suddenly, the hostility had disappeared as if it had never been, and Murdock and the giant were grinning at each other in a brotherly way ignoring me completely. Feeling slightly put out that I’d wasted my time, I’d tried to leave, but the two of them turned quickly and grabbed my arms, forcing me back down in my seat. They turned away from me again and began talking, ignoring me as long as I stayed where I was. Then my annoyance had started to build...
The dream was stupid and meaningless, and it made me mad. I would not have mediated a dispute that Murdock McKenzie was involved in for anything imaginable. In the hopes that he would be destroyed in the resulting war, I would lift not a single finger to help. Pleased with the idea of Murdock McKenzie destroyed, I turned away from the cobalt blue, flounced lace of my bedroom wall dress—directly into Tammad!
“What are you doing in my bed?” I demanded furiously as his arms started to go around me. “Get out of here this minute!”
“The bed is of my belonging,” he answered, grinning faintly at my useless pushing against his chest. “What belongs to what belongs to me is also of my belonging. Have you had your rest?”
“Get out of here!” I repeated desperately, suddenly realizing that I was no longer wearing the sleep suit, and his swim trunks were gone, too ....
“Your hair is long and fine,” he mused, stroking it where it lay down my back. “The other women of your world that I have seen have not such hair. They wear it short so that a man would have difficulty enjoying it. I am pleased that you are not one such.”
“I didn’t do it for you.” I told him, trying to slide down and out of his grasp. “Most of the beings I deal with prefer long hair on a female. It makes my job easier.”
“And your long legs and full breasts and small waist?” he pursued, grabbing a handful of my hair to keep me from sliding down any farther. “Do these, too, make your burdens lighter?”
“At one point, the answer to that would have been yes!” I snarled, doing my best to resist the slow but determined tug on my hair that was pulling me back up to him. “I have a lot of things to see to before I can leave with you, so you’d better let me go if I don’t see to them, I won’t be able to leave on time!”
“All things are done when they are destined to be done,” he murmured, starting to nuzzle me. “A woman must always see first to him to whom she belongs. It is her place to do so.”
“My place is out of this bed!” I insisted, using every ounce of strength trying to get away from him, but his arms seemed to be muscled with steel. He had no trouble holding me where he wanted me, just grinned as he put his hand on me, then laughed at my gasp.
“Your body desires the presence of mine,” he teased, proving the point easily “Your body speaks more truly than your words. It is often thus with a woman, and a man must learn to see beneath the words.”
This time I tried desperately to move his hand away, but he pinned my wrists above my head as he’d done the day before, then proceeded to drive me insane with his fingers. I moaned and squirmed in spite of myself, hating myself for reacting to him, cursing my body for betraying me. No matter what I wanted, my idiot body was obviously aching for his touch. I’d never been that way with a man before, and it made no sense! Didn’t my body know that a civilized man was preferable to a barbarian? That a civilized man would never rape it, never take from it what he wanted? A civilized man would wait to be given, and never simply take!