Retribution (16 page)

When Dominic nodded at the familiar phrase, I
returned to sit on the bed and patted the place beside me. If
Dominic didn’t want me to see what he had done to Reynaldo, if he
was on some level ashamed of his inventive talents in the field of
torture, I was equally unenthusiastic at the prospect of
confronting the results at this ungodly hour. We could spend a few
precious minutes in talk.

“Dominic, we have to.” I abandoned the
pseudo-military speech with its inappropriate eroticism, but I
couldn’t look my husband in the eyes while I confessed the intimate
details of Reynaldo’s assaults on my consciousness. My reasons for
keeping it secret seemed trivial in the face of such serious
consequences. I stared at the inch of bedspread between us,
focusing on the white tips of the marten fur’s winter coat, as I
described what I had seen and felt during my “dream” at Lady
Ladakh’s, and the subsequent mental interference I had been
enduring. I spoke rapidly in Terran, as if Reynaldo were with us,
listening. “He’s been jerking me around, getting inside my head,
and you must have some sense of what he’s been doing to you.”

When I dared to look up, Dominic was staring
at me expressionless, as if he had not heard a word. After such an
uncomfortable narration, I had not expected this. “I’ll take care
of it, Amalie,” he said.

“You can’t!” I lowered my voice. “Not alone.
What I saw just now proves it. We’re both vulnerable.” I watched
Dominic’s face, prepared for the worst. “Dominic, please don’t take
offense, but he’s violating you as well as me. Neither one of us
can handle this alone. We have to do it together.”

Dominic sighed, lifted his arm to put around
me, thought better of it and rested his hand in his lap to cover
his nakedness. “You have not offended me, beloved,” he said. “You
must never be afraid that you’ll offend me by telling me the truth.
But I’m not letting you go down there.” He was as implacable as if
I were Jana stating my intention to ride Topaz, alone, to the edge
of Aranyi and beyond. “And I’m not going down there myself, not
right now.” He shuddered, and I stroked his arm.

“I’m sorry, my love,” I said. He had no need
to visualize the thought that had filled him with such horror, the
abomination that Reynaldo had created in his mind. “Of course you
don’t have to do it now. We’ll wait until you feel better.”

“It’s I who should be saying that to you,”
Dominic said with an apologetic laugh. “But I promise you, I’ll
deal with it tomorrow.” He noticed the faint light in the window.
“Later today.”

“First thing after breakfast,” I said, rising
to go back to my room for the remainder of my interrupted night.
“Then we’ll have the rest of the day free.”
Free!
I thought,
a sense of rejoicing welling up inside me. I hadn’t been free, not
since the ambush on the trail, despite Dominic’s heroic rescue and
my return home. I kissed Dominic on the forehead. “Free to do
whatever we like.” I sent him a few explicit thoughts of what we
could do with all that freedom.

This time my thoughts penetrated. “Don’t
leave me alone,” he said. “I promise not to touch you.” He had
heard my confession after all and remembered more of his own
transformation than I had realized, even if he was not yet able to
accept it. He caught my hand before I had taken another step, held
me at the edge of the bed. “Just don’t leave me alone.” His voice
was pathetic, pleading.

“Of course not, my love,” I said. I sat down
close beside him, no space between us. “But I can’t promise the
same thing. I can’t promise not to touch you.” With my free hand I
reached for Dominic, where he had so recently been aroused. It
would not take much to make him ready again. The nearness of
danger, the fright, had excited me, now that I was safe. It is why
people copulate after earthquakes and sieges, when the heart is
still beating too fast and the body is already primed for exertion.
Seeing my own Dominic again after such terror had also made me
genuinely amorous. I wanted him now, as a kind of talisman, a proof
that he was mine.

Dominic captured my roving hand, held me in
gentle but uncompromising restraint. “No, Amalie,” he said. “Better
not. Who knows what you’ll stir up.” Oh, yes, he knew more than he
was admitting. But he too was in the same wild mood. He looked in
my eyes, saw what was in both our minds, and let my hand go, to
explore where it would. He removed my gown to examine my body, as
the demon had. Dominic, by contrast, looked at me with love, a
softening of the stern face that was unmistakable. “Such a perfect
little woman.” He ran a trembling hand along my naked contours.

It was as if he’d never really seen me, never
noticed the difference in size between us that had worried me so
when we’d met. Once we had been together in communion it had ceased
to matter. But Dominic was experiencing it now with all the force
of novelty, afraid to touch so delicate an object with his large
hands and strong body.

“It’s all right,” I said, lying back and
stretching my legs wide to wrap around his waist. “We’ve done this
before, remember?” I pulled his head down to my breasts.

Dominic sighed then, with the loud exhalation
of relief one feels upon finding that a fragile, priceless
possession has come through a jostling journey undamaged. He took a
nipple in his mouth, pulling and sucking at it like a starving
calf, and inserted two fingers between my legs, thrusting them in
and out.

From one extreme to the other. “Gently,” I
said. “Take it easy.” I never had to tell him. He always knew, in
communion, what I was feeling, and tempered his actions
accordingly. But now he was going at me, not with cruelty, but with
a kind of ignorance. There was no merging of minds, no exchange of
sensations. Dominic was deliberately shielding himself for fear of
what was at work within him, nor had I attempted to meet him
halfway. After all that had happened I was wary of full communion.
This purely physical connection was easier for me than the total
surrender of telepathic love.

Crypta
can make us lazy; experience is
not always a teacher. We had always relied on full communion to
make love to the other. Now Dominic was going through mechanical
steps—sucking at my breasts, stimulating me with his fingers,
guiding my hand to touch him—things he knew were supposed to make a
woman ready for love. The result was similar to what I had
experienced on Terra, attempting to make love with an ungifted
partner, although mercifully without the nausea. Closed off from
our mental connection, Dominic had little idea of how to make love
to me. His instincts were all to the male body.

I laughed. “Dominic? What are you doing?”

Dominic lifted himself from me, stopped his
actions for a moment. “Making love to you,” he said. “If you will
let me.” But he was the one who allowed me to guide him, to show
him how to touch me, until he proved that he could, if pressed,
make love very well to a woman, with nothing to go by but words,
and sounds, and the occasional helping hand.

I had never known such purely physical
pleasure. Dominic’s smooth skin slid over mine in a slick sheen of
sweat. I tongued his small brown nipples, savored the salty tang
and the sharp aroma, discovering the uncomplicated joy of using all
five of my other senses to know my husband. For the first time I
was aware of the sounds we made, now that there were no thoughts or
voices in the mind to drown them out. Dominic’s grunts and heavy
breathing, my whimpers and cries, became an expressive, erotic
language of their own.

It was a new experience, exhilarating at
first, but empty somehow, better than stimulating oneself, but only
just. Still, it was not fair to compare it to the sickening
attempts at love I had endured on Terra. This body I had embraced,
had breathed in and tasted, had heard and seen and taken inside me,
was Dominic—not all of him, but what was there was all Dominic, no
one else. I was glad to have been given that much. It had to have
been strange for him too, to be with my body while I withheld my
full self.

When we settled down to sleep, Dominic’s arms
around me were cool and firm; the bed was clean and sweet when we
pulled back the covers. I slept easily for the short time left in
the night, and Dominic, exhausted by his emotional upheavals, dozed
well past his usual dawn awakening.

We woke to giggles and rustling as Jana and
Val joined us in the bed. It was their happiest moment of a new
day, to find Papa and Mama in bed and create an impromptu family
reunion. Their hot little bodies crowded in with us, plenty of room
in this enormous bed, but they pressed against us as if they were
in imminent danger of falling off the edge.

Dominic opened his eyes and seized Jana in a
strong embrace. “Aha!” he said. “I’ve caught a marauder. Will you
fight me honorably, or must I force you into submission?”

Jana took the bait. “Fight!” she shrieked.
“Fight to the death!”

Dominic let Jana swing her fists at his palms
a few times, then wrapped her in his arms, holding her immobile
while he kissed her and tickled her, until she was near hysteria
with laughter. “Are you ready to surrender?” he asked. I watched
nervously, wondering if I should intervene, unsure if Dominic was
able to control himself, even with Jana.

I needn’t have worried. Jana went limp at
Dominic’s question, nodded her capitulation, and kicked him sharply
when he relaxed his guard. “Oof!” Dominic groaned as the air was
knocked out of him. “Treachery!” But his eyes were silvery and
merry with laughter, and he lay languidly on his back while Jana
took her revenge, kissing her papa on face and neck, until she grew
weary of the game.

Jana looked from my sleepy face, suffused
with love, to Dominic’s, and back again. A bad thought occurred to
her. “Did you make another baby?”

The gods forbid
, Dominic thought to
me. “No, cherie,” he said, dragging Val out from where he was
burrowing energetically under the covers. “Don’t worry. This one
will do for years yet.”

“I’m not a baby!” Val shouted, standing up
and glaring down at Dominic. “I’m the young lord.”

Dominic smiled at Val, lifting him up to
bounce his feet on his chest. “That’s a relief,” he said. “A man
can rest easy, knowing his realm is in such capable hands.”

“I’m capable!” Val said. He knew when a
concept was desirable or not, even if he didn’t know the meaning of
the word. “I’m very capable. I’m the air.”

Jana followed me to my room where she showed
me her doll, restored to life, resplendent with a new plaid dress
and touched-up features. “Flavia’s going to be a lady when she
grows up,” Jana said when I admired the doll’s dramatic makeover.
“She likes staying home.”

Why should Jana be returning to her former
self with her father, while remaining the subdued, traumatized
child with me? No doubt I set her a poor example, not yet fully
recovered from illness, weak and unsure of myself—all the
attributes of frail femininity that Jana would never have to
emulate.

I found myself wishing for the old Jana, the
fearless adventurer who had had to be grounded for sneaking off
alone on Topaz, and who had been scolded repeatedly for using
weapons indoors. “Maybe Flavia will feel like going riding
tomorrow,” I suggested as Jana nodded uncertainly.

This morning I went downstairs for breakfast
and at last received the longed-for welcome home. Breakfast in
Aranyi is served buffet style in its own little room. Dominic and I
usually help ourselves to plates and carry them to our places at
the table. There was the usual bustle of activity and normal
conversation, no creeping around or whispering. But today people
were eager to serve me. While Dominic led me to my seat, Magali
filled a bowl of fruit from the abundant late-summer selection and
Ranulf brought me a mug of hot coffee. “It’s good to see you
looking so well, my lady,” he said. I could sense his hope that,
with my return to health, so Dominic would regain his
composure.

We had a larger party than usual. The miners
and smiths who had accompanied us back to Aranyi were here, the
representatives who would negotiate their people’s promised reward
of land. Only Val seemed happy to see them, speaking to them in his
eerie imitation of their sing-song voices, picking up their unique
words and phrases. When the miners had finished and left the room,
Magali cleared my place, telling me of several unfortunate
“incidents” as the men, unused to running water, and with no
experience of indoor plumbing, had experimented none too
successfully with their bathroom facilities. Here was proof that I
had been restored to my place as ‘Gravina Aranyi: only the lady of
the house could deal with such a problem.

My brave resolution of a few hours ago hung
over me like a crucial test I had not studied for. I stood up at
the end of the meal, dreading the thought of what Dominic and I
must do. “No, Amalie,” Dominic said. Like last night, he had
anticipated me, had beat me to the door where he stood unyielding.
“I meant what I said. I will not allow you to expose yourself any
further to that filth. I can do this very well without you.”

“I meant what I said too, Dominic. It’s
affecting us both. We have to end it together.” We were still
nervous about using
crypta
and were speaking, albeit softly,
but the breakfast room is much smaller than the great hall. Those
members of the household who had lingered over breakfast were all
watching, fascinated and somewhat frightened, to see Margrave and
‘Gravina Aranyi at odds.

Dominic didn’t move. He stood blocking the
doorway, forcing me to surrender or to fight him. I had only the
one weapon, my
crypta
, which I did not dare use, not after
what all these people had seen. “You’re my wife, Amalie,” Dominic
said, loud enough for the others to hear. “You swore an oath to
obey me.” The men in the room mumbled inarticulate agreement at
Dominic’s words, taking it on faith that the ‘Graven Rite of
marriage included such an absurd vow.