The thoughtful someone had also provided a comb, and she raked the tangles from her wet hair when she’d dried off. Unfortunately, that was the extent of the little gifts. She could put her robe back on, or the swimming suit she’d left drying across the sink. Natara had taken the other robe with her when she’d dressed for the celebration.
She stared down at it but finally decided it didn’t look as rumpled as she’d first thought.
The question was, did she feel up to joining everyone in Linda’s quarters and facing the music now? Or would she rather wait until later?
She’d rather wait until never, she decided. It dawned on her abruptly, though, that Raen had looked downright furious when she’d leapt from the bed and dashed out.
Would he come looking for her, she wondered?
And, if he did, did she want to be found?
She decided she wasn’t currently up to a confrontation with Raen and left her room.
As she’d expected, everyone knew what she’d been up to instead of ‘talking’ to Raen, and everyone eyed her with disapproval when she went in. Tamping her embarrassment and guilt, she glared at them. “Ok. Anybody here that didn’t fuck their guard, raise your hand! Because I
know
you did, because they were sent in specifically to seduce you!”
Everybody exchanged vaguely guilty glances.
Jimmy raised his hand.
She ignored Jimmy. “Then you can stop looking at me like I just committed the crime of the century and you’re all innocent!” she snapped.
“What did he want to talk to you about?” Jimmy piped up.
Linda uttered a snorting laugh and clapped a hand over her mouth when Cassie glared at both her and Jimmy. “I don’t know,” she said crossly, feeling a smile abruptly tug at her lips as she continued, “We didn’t get around to that.”
Carl frowned at her thoughtfully. “How do you know they were sent to seduce us?”
Cassie sighed, glanced around for a place to sit, and finally just settled on the floor since there was only the bed and one chair and both were occupied—Linda and Shelly sitting up in the bed with their backs against the wall, Mark sprawled length ways along the other end of the bed, and Carl in the chair. “They had knowledge they wouldn’t have had if they weren’t listening to us. And Linda and Shelly had been trying to talk me into trying to seduce Raen. Then eight guards came in—five females and three males—and separated us. I
deduced
it.”
“They’re listening to us?” Shelly gasped indignantly.
“Watching, too, I imagine,” Cassie retorted irritably.
98
Shelly and Linda exchanged uncomfortable glances. The men looked uncomfortable for that matter—except for Mark.
He was probably ‘in’ to exhibitionism, Cassie thought irritably.
“We should have thought of that ourselves,” Carl said with disgust. “It’s not like they don’t have surveillance cameras everywhere these days.”
“Maybe I would’ve thought about it,” Linda said tartly, “except I’m not used to being spied on.”
“Yeah!” Shelly seconded her. “I hope to hell they enjoyed the show.”
“I’m sure they did,” Mark retorted.
Shelly grabbed a pillow and threw it at him. Catching it, he propped it beneath his head and smiled at her provokingly.
She glared at him for several moments and finally, apparently, decided to ignore him. “I guess this means we should just forget about the plans we were discussing earlier.”
Carl shrugged. “Guess so. It’s just as well. If they weren’t sure we couldn’t leave they would never have allowed us to roam around.”
“So we’re still basically prisoners even though that guy said they were satisfied and we could leave?”
Cassie studied Shelly sympathetically. “We didn’t magically become Atlanteans, and I don’t think they’ve ever liked or trusted humans. They’re not going to start now.”
Linda looked like she might cry for several moments but finally mastered the urge. She cleared her throat after a moment. “Do you think that means they really aren’t going to let us go?”
Cassie frowned. “I guess if they wanted to kill us they would’ve already. I don’t know why they’re keeping us, but they must have some reason. Maybe they think they’ll find out more about us by observing us. When they’ve learned all they want to, I guess they’ll let us go.”
“The old guy said they were trying to fix the Atlantis and when they had it fixed they’d let us go. You don’t think he was telling the truth?”
Cassie shrugged. “He’s a politician, Shelly. They
never
tell the truth.”
“I never thought I’d miss being alone,” Linda said presently, “but I do now. At least I had privacy and I only had to worry about burglars and serial rapists and that sort of thing.”
“I think we should try to stick together as much as possible,” David said. “No judgment on what happened tonight, Cassie. Like you said, we all fell for it, but I still think it would be best to try to avoid that kind of situation.”
“I didn’t fall for it,” Jimmy volunteered.
Everyone glanced at him irritably. “David’s right,” Carl agreed, “It isn’t much protection, but it’s about all we can offer each other. At least, if we stick together, we’ll know if anyone goes missing, and I don’t see making it easy for them. All in favor?”
Shelly was the first to raise her hand. Linda and Cassie and Jimmy held theirs up next. Ben and Mark exchanged a long look and finally lifted theirs, as well, though more reluctantly.
Carl nodded and pushed himself up from the chair. “I guess here is as good a place as any—unless you object, Linda?”
Linda shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
99
“We might as well make ourselves as comfortable as possible. Volunteers to get mattresses and bedding?”
“My room’s next door,” Shelly said.
“And mine on the opposite side,” David added. “I think two extra mattresses are about all we’re going to get in here. This is going to get cozy.”
Carl shrugged. “We ought to take turns as look out anyway. Two to a bed and somebody will have to take the floor, or one bed can be a
really
cozy threesome. Cassie, Linda, and Shelly can grab the bedding and we can get the mattresses.”
Cassie rose stiffly from the floor as Linda and Shelly slid off the bed and they headed down the corridor to start collecting what they could for comfort.
“I wish we at least had doors on the bathroom and the outer room. I know there wouldn’t be any real privacy if they’re watching, but it would feel like we had some anyway—besides not having them stare at us when they walk by like we’re part of the freak show,” Linda said when they’d returned and piled the bedding up.
The comment reminded Cassie that she’d caught Natara coming out of a hidden door. “Does your room have a hidden door?”
Linda stared at her blankly. “Not that I know of.”
“I didn’t know about the one in my room, either, until I saw Natara coming out of it. We should check.”
They split up, each taking a wall, and moved along it carefully examining any cracks they found and finally began to move along the wall tapping on it and listening for a hollow ring. Cassie found the door, not surprisingly, in almost the same position as the one in her room.
“Does it swing in or out?” Carl asked when he discovered what they were doing.
“Neither. It slides into the wall.”
“There’ll be no blocking it then,” he said in disgust. “Unless we can figure out how to jam it.”
They decided to move the mattresses as far from the opening as they could and then took the chair and settled it so that it was more or less facing both the door to the corridor and the hidden door. Cassie had collected her ‘curtain’ and pins from the door of her room, and she and Linda covered the bathroom door with it.
“Nothing says prison like no privacy,” Linda muttered glumly. “If I ever get back home, I’m never, ever going to complain about living alone again,” she added.
Shelly nodded. “I’ll bet my mom’s worried sick. She was convinced as soon as I moved out to my own place I’d be murdered. I guess everybody thinks we were lost at sea.”
Cassie stared at her, unnerved that she’d voiced that aloud when she knew
they
were listening. “Search and rescue would be out looking for us when we didn’t get back as expected,” she said pointedly. “I imagine they would’ve spotted the boat before the Atlanteans pulled it in. They will have figured out we’re here.”
The comment went right over Shelly’s head. “I doubt that’ll make her feel any better.”
“Maybe not, but a
lot
of people will know we’re here. They’ll be expecting the Atlanteans to let us go, and, if they don’t, they’ll hold them accountable.”
100
“I think we should all take a walk out to the boat first thing tomorrow,” Carl interjected before Shelly could say anything else. “The walk and the fresh air are bound to be healthy for us,” he added pointedly.
Cassie nodded but frowned. “I’m supposed to talk with the councilor tomorrow,”
she reminded him.
He shrugged. “He didn’t mention a specific time, did he? You could do that after we get back.”
She forced a bright smile, relieved that they meant to help coach her on what she should and shouldn’t say. “That’s actually a great idea,” she said with forced enthusiasm.
“It’ll take our minds off our troubles. Maybe we could even take lunch and have a picnic?”
It felt strange bedding down in one room with so many people, but it was oddly comforting, too. Deep down, she knew they were probably no safer at all than they had been before. They were in the midst of beings they knew nothing about, and they had no weapons to defend themselves, but the primal sense that there was safety in numbers still made her feel more secure.
She hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on what had happened between her and Raen, but the moment she lay down and tried to compose her mind for sleep the thoughts crept into her mind.
It would’ve been nice if she could’ve just taken it at face value, considered it no more than a ‘heat of the moment’ sort of thing that had been mutually gratifying even if it wasn’t meaningful sex. Unfortunately, she couldn’t delude herself that it had been either one. He’d meant to have sex with her when he’d separated her from the others, she decided. That was why he’d been so insistent that they needed to be alone.
She just wished she understood the way his mind worked well enough to figure out what his motives had been.
101
Raen stared at the ceiling after Cassie had gone, wrestling with his temper until the urge to go after her finally left him. He’d already fucked up royally, he thought in disgust. There was no sense in making matters worse by creating a scene and making more of a fool out of himself.
Horrendous disappointment settled in his gut in a knot, and wounded pride. It didn’t comfort him one iota to try to blame his behavior on the
fermentè
he’d consumed.
He’d still made a complete fool out of himself
and
flouted convention by trying to push her into choosing.
Not that he gave a gods bedamned if everyone looked down their noses at him!
Wryly, he finally admitted that he wouldn’t have if he’d succeeded. It was going to be a little harder to take since he hadn’t.
Anger welled inside of him again at that thought. She’d helped him make a fool out of himself, allowing him to think she had agreed to consider him when she’d only been interested in a casual coupling.
Not that he had anything against that ordinarily, but he couldn’t pretend, even to himself, that it had been casual for him. If all he’d wanted was casual sex, he would’ve steered clear of Cassie.
He dropped an arm across his eyes after a time, hoping it would help to shut out the images that were plaguing him and making it impossible to think rationally. It didn’t help. The moment he sealed himself inside his mind, it seemed to amplify the images, and he was so aroused by them he couldn’t think of anything else.
Angry, aching with need, and discomfited by the unfamiliar emotions roiling inside of him, he sat up and moved to the edge of the bed after a little while. Should he just abandon the plan, he wondered in self-disgust, since it seemed doomed to failure anyway?
His gut answered that question, twisting in protest the moment it entered his mind. The problem, he decided, was that he wasn’t accustomed to losing. From the time he’d left the academy of learning, he’d managed to get everything he’d gone after—which was why he was the youngest man who’d ever held the position he currently held.
It was also why he’d been set aside, he reminded himself wryly.
Kira had been notoriously fickle even when he’d first seen her and decided he wanted her. He should’ve known better than to set his sights on a woman like that, but he was an arrogant asshole, he supposed. And she’d been beautiful and desirable, more so, he thought wryly, because she’d seemed unattainable. She’d had plenty of lovers, but she hadn’t chosen, and he’d been determined she
would
chose him. He’d finally won her by refusing to be her casual lover, a ploy he’d congratulated himself over at the time.
And then she’d ‘gotten even’ with him for being so difficult by choosing a second and third.
That
had rankled. As commonplace as it was, there were just as many who considered a single union satisfactory. It had not, in fact, occurred to him that she wouldn’t be satisfied only with him—though he realized it should have given her history 102
of taking and discarding lovers. Although he’d come to appreciate his ‘brothers’, though, he’d still resented sharing Kira with them.
It occurred to him forcefully that he was probably hell bent on making as big a mistake as he’d already made, setting his sights on Cassie when she wasn’t even Atlantean. Unfortunately, he didn’t think he was going to be able to rely on the rational side of his brain any more this time than he had the last. He wanted. He’d tried to convince himself he didn’t and he’d been doing a fair job of it right up until he’d seen the interest in the eyes of many of his fellow Atlanteans and watched the way the males of her tribe swarmed around her. The certainty that she was going to chose another without even considering him had made him feel sick to his stomach.
Unfortunately, it had also made him feel desperate and that had made him stupid.
It would’ve been better to have made her want him and withheld his favors until she decided she would have to chose him if she was to get him. It would have been better to have snagged her interest and performed the mating ritual of enticement, flirtation, and display.
Now he had nothing to work with beyond the possibility that he’d so dazzled her with his prowess as a lover that she would not be able to resist another taste—which would allow him to withhold and still ensnare her.
Unfortunately, he had a very bad feeling that he had not dazzled her. He might have been more convinced if she had not bolted from his bed directly afterward and rushed off.
He would at least have had another chance to impress her if she hadn’t.
As it was, all he could think about now was that their coupling hadn’t gone nearly as smoothly as he’d thought it would. It was bad enough that he had been nervous already, and then too aroused himself to think straight, but, added to that, he hadn’t realized until he’d had her in his bed that he didn’t have a fucking clue if the things that worked with Atlantean women would work as well with her. Just because they looked virtually the same didn’t mean everything on their body was the same and that what gave an Atlantean female pleasure would please her.
It also disturbed him that he’d had so much difficulty mounting her—which was where things had gotten really awkward and he’d begun to feel as graceless and inept as an untried youth with his first woman. She was small, and he would’ve liked to think that it had only been that, but he had a bad feeling that she had not been as desirous as he was or she would’ve been wet enough for him that he wouldn’t have had so much trouble.
Time wasn’t on his side. He had a few weeks to either convince her to choose him, or convince himself he didn’t want her to choose him, and he was fairly certain he wasn’t going to manage either one.
He knew damned well he wasn’t going to be able to court her if he couldn’t separate her from the others. He was already at a disadvantage because he didn’t know or understand their customs of courtship; he was, to all intents and purposes, her enemy and alien to her—which certainly didn’t earn points in his favor; and he was anxious to the point of awkwardness.
Maybe, he thought irritably, his time with Kira, and being set aside, had demolished his self-confidence—it certainly hadn’t done anything to boost his ego—but he was fairly certain that wasn’t entirely the case. It was
her
. He couldn’t keep his wits 103
about him when he was around her, and he was so wary of making a fool out of himself that he couldn’t relax enough to try to impress her with his wit and charm.
In fact, charm completely deserted him every time he laid eyes on her and he felt as wooden as a block.
After a time, he pushed himself up from the bed and crossed the room to his computer, calling up the data Mercurios’ department had been compiling. A better understanding of their mating rituals was bound to help him, he reasoned, even if it didn’t help him to understand her better.