Tanderon (12 page)

He smiled as he said that, but the smile didn’t mean he was fooling around. The steady look in his eyes showed how seriously he meant it, and I felt so shocked I couldn’t say a word. I stared at him openmouthed for a minute, not quite able to believe he would dare, and then he lost his smile and lowered his lips to mine to kiss me in that full-attention way that he had. The kiss caught me by surprise at first, but then I remembered I really ought to make some attempt to stop it. He had no right to talk to me the way he did and then expect a warm reception.

“Stop squirming around,” he murmured, lifting his head briefly so that he could speak. “The more you struggle, the more likely it is that you’ll hurt those wrists again.

Just lie still and be quiet.”

My jaw dropped open again, this time in outrage, but I still couldn’t get a word in.

As soon as he said his piece he was back to kissing me, and ignoring one of Val’s kisses is about as easy as walking in zero gravity. I hadn’t noticed it earlier, but Val hadn’t touched my wrists once since Jane’s visit, and his comment showed that she’d blabbed about what had happened.

I stirred in annoyance at the thought, wishing she’d minded her own business, but the annoyance faded almost at once. Val’s arms were around me, holding me close, his lips were on mine, soft yet demanding. His body was against mine, warm and strong enough to satisfy any woman, and I hadn’t lost the sensation of a metal chain around my ankle. Val was nothing like Jensar and yet he was just like the conqueror. Val enjoyed having me there and unable to escape, enjoyed the thought that I belonged to him, no matter how temporarily.

And then I laughed to myself, pleased that he’d admitted to wanting me. There would be no childish fantasies between my partner and me; we would both be able to admit to an adult relationship without having to lace it with infantile romance. I moved my body closer to his and paid attention to returning the kiss, and he released my hands so that he could be held too. The feel of him under my palms and fingers heated my blood even more, so I returned the favor by running my fingernails lightly down his back.

Val moaned at the tingle along his back, and his kiss quickly grew less gentle and more demanding. For my own part I was trying to devour him, trying to swallow him whole. It was a pleasant job but not very easy, at least until he moved me to my back and shifted to a place between my thighs. When he entered me I did swallow him whole, and his was the sweetest taste in the universe. I began to move with him eagerly, demandingly, and he answered the demand with one of his own.

Sex with Val is a never-ending delight, something I couldn’t imagine ever getting enough of. We moved together as though we were made for each other, and my last coherent thought was that I felt glad Val hadn’t been in the mood for preliminaries.

When just being near Val made me want him, foreplay was almost always a waste of time and effort. And a frustrating waste of time and effort at that. I was always ready for Val… sometimes even when I happened to be angry with him…

It was quite some time before we were ready to sleep, and Val made me chuckle after he turned off the light.

“No two ways about it,” he yawned, holding me in his arms with my back up against his chest. “There’s another benefit in having a woman chained in your bed that I hadn’t seen before.”

“What benefit?” I asked, snuggling up to him in a sleepy and satisfied way.

“Compliments,” he murmured, his voice growing heavier. “You can compliment a chained woman without finding trouble. She’s already in your bed. Go to sleep, luscious armful.”

He tightened his hold on me and drifted closer to sleep, but I smiled awhile and listened to his breathing before following suit. He was as crazy as I was but in a totally different way, and it looked like it might be a good thing if I got to know him a little better too.

The next “morning” Ringer was up first, coming in to wake Val and me with a suspiciously neutral expression on his face. I tried to move away from Val to stretch, expecting to be unchained, but my partner told Ringer to put the key back in his pocket for a while and kept his arms around me. Ringer guffawed and headed out of the bedroom again, but he might as well have stayed. Val was ready to try his usual methods on me, but I convinced him that if he put so much as a single finger on me, he’d be wearing teeth marks for a month.

Val gave up trying with a laugh, knowing it was Ringer’s reaction to his comment that had done him out of his jollies, but for some reason he didn’t seem to mind. I stayed in bed and punched my pillow around while he went to the bathroom, but he stayed in there longer than usual and then took his time getting dressed. I didn’t understand why until he went to call Ringer, and then I nearly exploded.

Ringer walked in with a big grin on his face, convinced that Val had gotten whatever he’d wanted. That, of course, meant it was at least ten minutes before it was safe for Ringer to come close enough to unlock the chain on my ankle. Once free I stalked into the bathroom and slammed the door in Ringer’s laughing face without bothering to try to set him straight. He’d believe whatever he wanted to, and nothing I could have said would have changed that.

Breakfast and lunch surrounded a century of boredom and lousy temper, made twice as bad by the chain which kept me either in bed or very close to it. Just before lunch was brought I spent a few minutes loosening up my muscles, but Ringer walking in with the tray ended it all. He stopped on the far side of the bed, frowned at the light sheen of sweat on my face, then put the tray down on the bed.

“How long have you been doing that?” he growled, his eyes narrowed as he looked me over.

“Not long enough,” I answered, rubbing at my left shoulder. I still had the faintest memory of tearing skin there, a carryover from the first days before the surroskin had bound itself to me. I shouldn’t have had that pain, no matter how faint it was, and exercising hadn’t done much to get rid of it.

“You look almost three shades paler than you did at breakfast,” Ringer said, his hands at his hips as he continued to look me over. “Get back in that bed and stay there, or I’ll shorten the chain to take care of it.”

He stood there staring at me, tan leather shoulder holster strapped over his light blue shirt, slug gun nestled ready at his armpit. A man who had promised to shoot me if I tried to get away from him, and now he had the nerve to –

“Would you like to know what you can do with that chain?” I exploded, moving one step closer to the bed. I was mad as hell that he kept switching back and forth between hate and tender concern, driving me crazy, but that wasn’t all that was making me mad. I’d only been at it fifteen or twenty minutes and my arms and legs were already shaky, I was just short of being winded, and a faint dizziness was threatening to make the room spin. I hadn’t expected to find myself in such lousy shape, and I didn’t need Ringer’s observations to add to it. I wiped the sweat off my upper lip and said, “You can take that damned chain and – ”

“Shut up!” Ringer snapped, suddenly pointing a finger at me with a hardness in his voice and eyes. “You were told what to do and you’ll do it! You won’t get another warning!”

He turned then and left the room, and strangely enough he didn’t seem to be angry. I sank down onto the bed and sat there, slowly pushing hair out of my eyes as I tried to figure out what was wrong with Ringer. The only time he sounded at all familiar was when he was taking precautions against me, but despite the fact that he still approached me coatless, his attitude wasn’t what it had been the day before. It was almost as if –

I cut the thought off and groaned, resisting the urge to bang my head against the wall. Ringer was seeing me as a little girl again, and that was why he kept giving me those ridiculous orders. I looked at the tray of food he’d brought, then stretched out on my side of the bed. I wore a white shorts outfit and was barefoot, and I could just imagine what Ringer saw when he looked at me. It sure as hell wasn’t what Val saw, and I wondered why Val could see me as a woman when Ringer couldn’t.

Then I absentmindedly crossed my ankles, and managed to whack my left foot with the chain before remembering that it was there. Suddenly I was up off my back, cursing and pulling at the damned chain for too long a time before I got control of myself again. I hated being chained and I hated being considered a child, and I buried my face in the ice-blue bed cover, right near the foot of the bed, almost to the point of tears. I rarely cried, rarely found the need for tears, but the whole damned thing was so frustrating!

Every time I turned around things got worse instead of better, and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong! My mind was almost as tired as my body from constantly poking and prodding at the problem of breaking loose from the insanity Ringer and the Council had me pointed toward. But there was no way out, unless I found a way to open that chain and lose Ringer and Val.

I rested my cheek against the cool blue cover, my body curled up at the foot of the bed, my eyes closed in an attempt to gather strength, and I must have fallen asleep for a short while. The next thing I knew Ringer was standing at the foot of the bed, right in front of me, and his hand was pushing the hair out of my eyes and away from my face.

“The food hasn’t been touched,” he said, taking his hand back when he saw my gaze on him.

“I wasn’t very hungry,” I answered, closing my eyes once more to block out the sight of him. Ringer was concerned again, and I didn’t know how long I could take it without screaming.

There was a minute of silence and then Ringer said, “I’ll unlock the chain if you give me your word not to make any more trouble or try a fast fade. Is it a deal?”

I opened my eyes again and bent my head back to get a better look at him, and my thoughts must have been printed in iridescent ink on my face. He flushed under my stare, and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Quit looking at me like that,” he growled, his whole manner faintly uncomfortable.

“I’ve known you long enough to know how you feel about being chained, and I don’t like the way you look. Give me your word and I’ll get you out of that.”

“I thought I was the one who wasn’t known for Simon-pure honesty,” I commented, still staring at him. “Now, suddenly, my word is good?”

“Stop being a damned fool,” he said with a snort as he met my gaze. “You’ll lie about anything under any circumstance, but you’ll keep your word if you give it.

Don’t you think I know that?”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t,” I muttered, then raised my voice. “Ringer, don’t go on with this,” I urged, raising up on one elbow. “The more I think about it, the more this whole setup reminds me of Zalento. The Council made up their minds then too, if you’ll recall, and you know what happened there.”

“This has nothing to do with Zalento!” he denied sharply, momentarily sharing the sickening memory. Then his tone softened again. “And there’s nothing I can do to change things now. The Council was ready to skin you alive, and this was the only alternative they were willing to accept. If you’re smart you’ll accept it too, and make the best of it. It won’t be forever.”

“Forever tends to show up different places on different scales,” I told him, then lay down on my back again. I was doing no more than wasting my breath trying to get Ringer to change his mind. He’d fight the Council for something he believed in, but not to get me out of what he considered a well-earned punishment. I wondered if it would have looked the same to him if he were the one being sent back to the Academy as a cadet, but the question was irrelevant. Ringer wasn’t the one being sent back, and my shoes were a bad fit on him.

“Well?” Ringer prompted after another short silence. “Are you ready to give me your word?”

“I’m ready to give you lots of words,” I said without looking at him. “You’re just not ready to hear them.”

“You damned stubborn female,” he growled, an echo of my own frustration sounding in his voice. “You could have been rid of that chain, but giving your word would be too easy. Okay, do it your way. I hope Valdon gets so used to having you like that that he does it on his own!”

I twisted around fast to glare at him, but he wasn’t looking at me any longer. He walked around to the other side of the bed, picked up the tray, then left with a door slam. I kicked at the footboard to agree with his slam, then just sat there on the bed, trying to think of something to do to fill the time. I had more than two weeks of inactivity crowding me at this point, and I’ve never been very good at just sitting around.

I finally settled for a short series of sit-ups and neck bridges, ignoring the tearing in my shoulder in favor of knowing how badly I needed to build up my endurance again. When it was all over I pulled myself back to the head of the bed, lit a cigarette, and tried to relax.

About half an hour later, Val walked into the room. He gave me a friendly nod on the way to the closet, and I watched him pull out a light blue and soft gold sports outfit from the stack of clothes Ringer had gotten him. He frowned at it critically, still not used to Federation clothing styles, but apparently it passed whatever inspection he had given it. He threw it onto a chair, went into the bathroom, and started the shower going.

He was in the shower only a few minutes, and when he came out of the bathroom again he was softly whistling a strange tune. I had worked my way through a large number of cigarettes that day, but the sound of his whistling made me reach for another one.

“I think you’re forming your own cloud in here,” Val observed as he watched me exhale. “How many of those things do you use a day?”

I moved my gaze to him but didn’t answer, and he couldn’t have missed seeing my mood. He hesitated very briefly, as though trying to decide whether or not to make an issue of it, but then he shrugged and turned his attention to getting dressed. I took a second drag on the cigarette and then a third, and Val finished closing his shirt and tucking it in his pants. He went to a dresser for a pair of socks, chose light blue loafers, then carried it all to a chair where he could sit down. He crossed his legs to get ready for the first sock, then glanced at me again.