After trying to penetrate the gloom for several moments, she finally decided that she was simply too disoriented with sleep to figure it out. Feeling her way back, she climbed onto the mattress, curled on her side and drifted off again.
She woke up when she felt the pallet vibrating beneath her.
For several moments, she couldn’t figure out what was happening. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind when the ship left the ground, however.
The G’s the thing was pulling plastered her to the pallet for what seemed an eternity. Abruptly, it ceased. She’d already begun floating toward the ceiling of the cabin when the artificial gravity kicked in. She hit the pallet and bounced off of it. Fortunately, the mattress absorbed most of the concussion of the fall, but she managed to bite her tongue.
She was still wondering how she’d managed to catch her tongue between her teeth when the door opened.
“Did you fall?”
Elise gave Ja-rael a drop dead look. “There’s a very good reason they make take-off harnesses,” she growled, getting to her feet with an effort.
“The ship only has one seat,” he said uncomfortably.
“Which means it should only be carrying one person! I can’t believe you took off with me still here!” She braked the moment the words left her mouth. “Wait a minute! How did I get here? Why am I here?”
Ja-rael looked uncomfortable. “You do not remember?”
Elise’s eyes narrowed, but not altogether because she was struggling to remember. She knew he wouldn’t be looking guilty if he hadn’t done something. After some prodding, her mind finally began to yield up snippets of memory. As the dots connected, Elise felt anger take hold. “You did it on purpose!” she said accusingly.
“What?” he asked evasively.
“Don’t you even try to act innocent! You know I’m not in my right mind when you hit me with your super charged pheromones. And I distinctly remember you insisting on coming back to the ship. You did it on purpose!”
His gaze slid away. “I feel desire or not. I can not make it happen.”
“Maybe not, but you knew exactly what you were doing when you held out until we got back to the ship.”
“I did.”
If possible, Elise was more outraged by the admission than the denial before. She gasped at his audacity.
“You had already agreed to be my mate.”
“I did no….” Elise broke off. “I was under the influence,” she ended testily, “and you damned well knew it!”
“All the same.”
“It’s not all the same, damn it!”
His eyes narrowed. “I asked more than once. Each time you insisted. You said ….”
Elise held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t tell me what I said. I don’t even want to remember what I said, and certainly not what I did.” She thought it over. “And I suppose that … that marathon last night just happened?”
He studied her for several moments, his own anger aroused at last. “No. I knew you would change your mind the moment you’d had what you wanted.”
Elise gasped at him in outrage. “Don’t you dare try to make me the bad guy! I was completely honest with you.”
He held up one finger. “One cycle. If you still wish to be free, I will return you to your people.”
Elise blinked. “Is that supposed to be a negotiation?”
His lips tightened. “By both Tor and Meeri law, we are bound. We have mated--thoroughly. I know that it was wrong to steal you away, but you were willing to mate. You can not deny that. I did not force you to accept me. I do not have to offer to release you. The laws will support my claim. But I want ….” He stopped abruptly, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging. “If you will agree to try to learn acceptance, then I will agree that if you can not, I will return you to your people and set you free.”
Elise studied him, trying to think calmly. The truth was, she really wasn’t in any position to negotiate. She would’ve rather had her fingernails pulled out than to have to admit that she’d not only been perfectly willing, she’d practically raped him--not that she could help it--but she couldn’t lie to herself no matter how badly she wanted to. Beyond that, he’d taken off and she didn’t have a clue of how to pilot any ship, let alone this thing that hardly deserved the name.
She wasn’t going to get back on her own steam.
It was possible that she might be able to persuade someone on Meeri to take her back, but that was a long shot and she had a bad feeling that Ja-rael wasn’t lying about the laws.
“Exactly how long is one cycle?” she asked suspiciously.
“The circuit of the world around the sun.”
“A year!” Elise exclaimed, outraged. “A year!”
He drew in a long suffering breath. “There is only one--very brief--time a year that the worlds of Tor and Meeri are close enough for the trip.”
He didn’t look like he was lying. There was also the fact that she’d never seen a Meeri on Tor before, which seemed to support his claim.
Lifting the robe to keep from tripping over the hem, she stalked to the pallet and sat down. A year--a year by the cycle of the Meeri world, which could be anything. They were still counting days by the Earth calendar.
“I don’t understand the Meeri customs, but what I do understand, I don’t like,” she said sullenly. “I could never fit in.”
He crossed the room and knelt in front of her. “You are intelligent. You can if you try.”
“You don’t understand at all.”
“I will try.”
“I don’t want to fit in! I don’t want to be like those women I’ve seen in the market in the Torrine city, swathed in veils, guarded like a bird in a cage! I’m a person! I’m used to being treated like one--not a--thing that some man owns, damn it!”
His lips tightened. “I am Meeri, not Torrine. We are not like them. How can you judge when you do not even know us?”
Elise couldn’t prevent the blush that rose in her cheeks, but she was a long way from being convinced. She didn’t know why he was even trying to convince her. It wasn’t like she had a choice.
Finally, she nodded.
Looking surprisingly relieved all things considered, he smiled and her stomach performed a little jitter dance. He had a very nice smile. He was so handsome already it was hard to see how the simple act of smiling could make him more so, but so it was.
“Are you hungry?”
She was always hungry. She’d been hungry since she woke from the hyber unit.
He chuckled at the hopeful look that crossed her face, took her hand and helped her to her feet. When she was standing, he looked her over. “This looks better on you than it does on me.”
Elise was embarrassed and not just for appropriating something that didn’t belong to her. She’d ripped it escaping and soiled it when she’d sprawled in the dirt--and then soaked it in the stream--and finally slept in it, much of the night anyway. “Sorry. I didn’t have anything to wear.”
“When we reach Meeri, I will take you to the market and you may choose whatever you like.”
She had mixed feelings about that, but she kept her thoughts to herself. She was far more interested in the food.
It looked as if Ja-rael had modified the forward cabin to squeeze in a tiny ‘mess’, which explained why there was only one seat--the pilot’s seat. She wondered what the rear cabin, now captain’s cabin, had been before he’d remodeled the ship. The table was about two foot square--not much room even for one. She bumped her knee when she seated herself in the only dining chair.
Wincing, she rubbed it until the pain passed, wondering how Ja-rael, who was a good bit larger than she, managed to get around the cramped ship without beating himself to death. He must be very well coordinated.
Almost the moment the thought flitted through her mind, he banged his head on something jutting from the ceiling as he removed a container from the cooling unit and straightened. Elise bit her lip, fighting the inappropriate
amusement that went through her as he rubbed his head and checked his hand for blood.
“Are you all right?” she asked sympathetically.
He glanced at her in surprise, an expression of embarrassment flickering across his face. Finally, he merely nodded and returned his attention to the food he was heating in the heating unit.
Elise’s stomach growled as the smell wafted in her direction. He smiled faintly as he set the container of food before her and turned away again to draw a container of water.
“You’re not eating?” she asked when he’d set that on the table as well and stepped back.
“There is only one of each. I can wait.”
So he wasn’t in the habit of entertaining while he was on these trips. Feeling a little uncomfortable, Elise picked up the utensil he handed her and tested the food. Whatever it was it was either very good or she was so hungry anything would’ve tasted like ambrosia to her. To her relief, she saw when she glanced up that he’d moved away and settled in the control seat.
Curiosity finally overcame her sense of discomfort as she ate. She glanced at him several times, wondering about him in particular, but also about the strange mixture of technology and what she at least considered archaic customs of the civilization he was taking her to.
“Have you been trading long?”
He seemed to think it over. “I have come three times.”
She looked at him in surprise, then realized that she had no idea of his age. Not that it mattered, she supposed. It was a relative thing. If every world determined a year by the revolution of their world around its sun, then no two had the same length of year. Tor’s, as near as they could tell, was longer than Earth’s by nearly a month. Meeri would almost certainly be further out--Tor was so hot it was hard to believe anyone could survive on a world closer to the sun--which would make its year longer still.
She didn’t want to think about that, though.
“You said you were a healer. Why do you trade? I mean, is everybody that healthy on Meeri?”
He looked uncomfortable. “The poor are less healthy because of the hardships of their lives. They are as willing to pay, but often not able to pay much or even any for care. The wealthy can pay, but they are more likely to be healthy because they live well. I lived well enough.” He stopped, frowning. “I began to trap and trade to fill the time.”
She stared at him for several moments, digesting what he’d said. Finally, she realized he was saying he’d been lonely--or at least bored with the time he had on his hands between treating patients.
It wasn’t something she’d experienced much of since they’d landed on Tor. She hadn’t had the chance to experience much boredom in the last few years she’d spent on Earth, for that matter, but she remembered what it was like--the sense of restlessness, the vague ‘ache’ that seemed in need of filling and the search for something to fill it. In general, one didn’t even know what one needed. There was just a restless quest to find that nebulous something.
She stopped eating this time before she hurt herself. Thanking him, she was on the point of retreating to the cabin once more when it occurred to her that she’d given him her word that she would make an attempt to come to terms with the situation. She didn’t think there was any possibility of it, but she didn’t like to go back on her word, even if she’d been forced by circumstances to give it. Besides, she couldn’t work on getting him to accept the futility of his plans if she spent her time in hiding.
Beyond that, she was scared to death. She needed to assure herself that she had no real reason to be afraid--or find out if she did have a reason to be afraid.
Instead of returning to the cabin, she settled in the chair he vacated and studied her hands thoughtfully. “On your world, does it take many years of study to become a healer?”
He nodded. “I began on my fifteenth anniversary.”
Elise’s brows rose in surprise. “That young? How many years did you study?”
“I study still.”
She frowned. “How many years did you study before you began to practice?”
“Six.”
“And how many years have you been practicing?” she asked tentatively.
He threw her a laughing look. “I am in my prime.”
She couldn’t help it, she smiled back. “That doesn’t tell me anything.”
He looked puzzled. “Prime breeding years.”
Elise frowned and finally shrugged. “That still doesn’t tell me anything. It could be the same years as it is for us, or not. The human male can produce--well, virtually their entire life. Their sexual peak is around the age of eighteen, but I’ve never been entirely sure if that meant ‘prowess’ or ‘production’. Since I’m not a man, I never was interested enough to find out.”
He frowned, pushing his food away. “You think there is so much difference between us?”
“How can you be a physician and not notice? You’re not seeing it either because you don’t want to, or maybe because you’re seeing what you expect to see.”
He looked away from her. “It is only small things.”
“It’s more than small things, and you know as well as I do that we’re talking external. On a molecular level the difference could be vast.”
He grew angry. “There is a point to this?”
Elise simply stared at him for several moments, wondering why she’d taken the conversation down this road. She hadn’t intended to provoke another argument. She’d just wanted to know more about him. Still, she found her own anger rising to match his. “Maybe I’m scared. I’m sure it never occurred to you to consider anything from my perspective, but from where I’m sitting things are looking pretty damned scary all the way around. It would be bad enough to be taken away by a stranger of my own species, but at least I’d have some idea of what to expect. You’re not only a stranger, you’re of a different culture, a different world, a different species so far as I can tell. And we’re mating here. Yes, I know I seemed willing, but that’s because I was drugged, intentionally or not, and not able to form a rational decision. What if … what if I should become impregnated? What if we aren’t compatible, that way, at all? And, even if we are and everything goes just right, what if I hate your world, and your culture and want to go home?”
She got to her feet abruptly. “Maybe I’m thinking it would’ve been nice if you’d spent a little more time thinking about how I’d feel about all of this instead of behaving like a … just like a typical self-centered human being!”
Chapter Eleven
Elise realized the moment she stalked off toward the cabin that she didn’t feel one iota better having spoken her mind and expressed her concerns. Shouldn’t she feel better, having gotten it off her chest?
Slamming the cabin door behind her, she stomped to the bed and flopped down on it to sulk.
It occurred to her fairly quickly that she’d been so agitated she’d railed at Ja-rael in English, a language he had no grasp of whatsoever, throwing in a word or two of Torrine now and then just to add to the confusion. No wonder he’d only stared at her blankly when she went off on him.
That wasn’t the real reason she didn’t feel any better, though, she realized finally. She didn’t feel one bit better because she felt bad for feeling the way she did when Ja-rael had done nothing at all, really, to make her feel threatened. She felt guilty, as if she were in the wrong--because she was blaming him when she knew she shouldn’t.
The situation wasn’t one where culpability could easily and comfortably be placed on someone else. She knew that she was at least partly responsible for it. She couldn’t blame Ja-rael for something he really had no control over. It wasn’t his fault his pheromones had such an effect on her--she had a feeling he was as stunned and disconcerted by it as she was--and while she was being honest, her own lack of self-control bothered her a lot.
Nervous--worried--she decided that would’ve been a better way to express her concerns. She wasn’t afraid of Ja-rael, or his people
for that matter, and she knew the chances were at least fifty/fifty that the living conditions were no worse than what she had to endure here and most likely at least somewhat better since they were well established on their world.
After mulling the situation over in her mind for a good two hours, she finally pinpointed the real source of her anxiety. She was afraid of the entire ‘family’ thing, worried she would be found lacking. She didn’t remember a lot about what had happened and what had been said the night before, but she recalled more than she was comfortable with.
Ja-rael had decided to take her with him because he felt committed already because they’d had sex. He was disappointed to discover she wasn’t what he’d thought she was, a maned lioness, and worried she couldn’t give him a family, but he felt obligated to take her anyway because of his laws and customs.
It would’ve been so much easier if she just hadn’t known that part. As long as he was worshipping at her feet and she’d known, but he hadn’t, that she wasn’t the same species, she’d been able to feel superior about being human. Now, in the blink of an eye, she’d been relegated to inferior goods and an obligation.
Before, he’d not only thought she was beautiful, he’d been proud of the fact that he’d gotten such a beautiful and rare mate. Now, he was probably embarrassed about his mistake and embarrassed about being stuck with her.
She felt like crying.
It made her angry. It wasn’t as if it was her fault she wasn’t a maned lioness!
She would be willing to bet it was going to turn out to be her fault, too, if it transpired that she couldn’t be bred.
That part, she realized, scared the hell out of her. She’d come from a society that had had rigid birth control for generations. Strict breeding regulations had been implemented when the world population had spiraled completely out of control. The devastation that had followed had only made birth control more critical because food and medicines and even places to live had become harder and harder to come by. Not even the exodus from the dying solar system had changed that, for resources only became more limited.
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