“Yes, but that was weird,” I said. “It was okay on the spur of the moment, but to come right out and ask her… I don’t know about that. It’d be different if I didn’t have to be there so your dick would get hard.”
“Yeah, but maybe with you in the room, I could actually fuck Scalia—though you’d have to stand pretty close, because my nose isn’t all that good. There was a guy in our unit who just had to be downwind of a woman to get an erection, but I have to be a lot closer, myself.”
“Do you really want to have sex with the Queen?” I asked. I mean, she was a lizard! Refdeck obviously didn’t mind, but he was reptilian, too.
“Well, no,” Trag admitted. “I like her, but you’re the only one around here who does it for me—and it isn’t just because of the way you smell, either.”
“You might remember that the next time Scalia introduces you to someone,” I said dryly.
“What?”
“You know, smile? You didn’t smile when I first met you. Tychar did.”
Tychar smiled smugly. “Yes, I smiled, but I already knew you would be my mate,” he said.
“Oh, yeah, right,” I said. “Forgot about that vision thing—which I still find hard to believe. Are you sure it wasn’t just some line to get me into bed?”
“It’s the truth!” Tychar insisted. “And, if you will recall, I had already gotten you into bed.”
“Oh, yeah. Forgot about that, too,” I admitted. “You see what you guys are doing to me? Addling my brains and making me downright senile! Pretty soon, I won’t even be able to play the piano and then Scalia will kick me out, and you guys will have to find someone else to get your dicks hard.”
Trag nudged me in the ribs. “But if I get you addled enough, you might actually fuck me before she kicks you out.” He took a moment to gaze down at my chest. “And I still believe you should rethink the clothing issue. You’ve got some truly fabulous tits there. Nobody on this whole planet has tits like that. You should show them off more.”
“Nindala’s are better,” I asserted. “Even if they are blue.”
“I don’t give a damn about Nindala!” he declared. “I’ll probably never get to meet her anyway, because I’ll bet money that Scalia locks us up if she ever does come around. Jack me off or suck me, I don’t care! I just need to get rid of some snard. It builds up, you know.”
“For twenty years?” I asked incredulously. “It’s a wonder your balls haven’t ruptured.”
“Well, it’s mainly since you’ve been here,” he admitted. “I think it has something to do with the smell thing.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Hey, on Zetith, once a guy was old enough, he was doing his utmost to entice women all the time—the drive to find a willing mate is really strong—which is one of the reasons I went back home. This not having a woman around to catch even a whiff of for twenty years—I don’t know if that ever happened before the war.”
When consulted, Tychar couldn’t remember having ever heard of anything similar to their own particular situation before, either, but thought that perhaps, without a woman nearby to stimulate them, Zetithian males didn’t produce any sperm.
“That’s interesting,” I commented. “Human males produce sperm all the time, and when it builds up, they have wet dreams or just get themselves off if there aren’t any women around.”
Tychar shook his head. “I just don’t understand how that’s possible!” he said. “Sex without a woman would be like trying to—” He paused there, as he attempted to come up with something similarly impossible.
“Eat rocks?” Trag suggested.
Laughing, I said, “Well, if that’s the case, Trag, maybe you should stay away from me instead of hanging around all the time. Doesn’t Scalia have anything for you to do?”
“Aw, we never did much in the way of work anyway,” he said. “Mostly, we were just bored out of our minds.”
“So, is that all I am? A diversion?”
Trag appeared to consider this for a moment. “Well, you’re much more than that, obviously, but I’ll have to admit, things have been a lot more interesting since you showed up.” He put an arm around me and squeezed. “Thanks for coming, by the way.”
“Must have been fate,” I replied. “But I’m glad I came, too.”
Then I got this vivid mental picture of me lying in bed with two purring, naked tigers and nearly had another orgasm. Why, oh, why, didn’t Tychar tell his brother to get lost before I gave in to him? He’d let me kiss Trag but probably drew the line at group sex. Whoa! It hit me then—hard.
“Hey, are you all right?” Trag asked worriedly as I doubled over.
“She’s fine,” Tychar stated firmly. “She’s thinking about having us together.”
“And just how did you know that?” I demanded hoarsely. “Another vision?”
He smiled seductively. “I know one of your orgasms when I see it.”
Trag let out a sort of whimper. “That was an orgasm? Oh, fuck! Do it again!”
“You only know what it was,” I said to Tychar, “not what caused it!”
“Perhaps,” he admitted, “But isn’t it logical that you would be thinking such a thing at this time?”
“Does that mean you wouldn’t mind if I did?”
Tychar regarded me with a steady gaze from his luminous blue eyes. “You love me, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah!” I replied. “That’s what this whole thing is about! If I didn’t love you, it wouldn’t matter that your brother was giving me fits. I’d do you both and never think a thing about it.” Which wasn’t entirely true, but still…
Trag’s response to that was a long, tortured groan.
“And you care for my brother as well?” Tychar went on.
“Well… yes,” I replied cautiously. “But it’s not quite the same way that I care for you. It’s hard to explain.”
Tychar nodded as though he understood. “On Zetith it would have been very rare for two men to have the same woman,” he said. “But the situation is different here.”
I was feeling less and less special by the second. “Do you mean that Trag’s only interested in me due to a lack of options?”
“No,” Trag said firmly. “That’s not it at all. It’s just that on Zetith, we could be as enticing as we wanted toward a woman we liked—and I do like you, Kyra!—but most of the time, they just didn’t care—no matter how many of us were after them! Eventually, a man would find a woman who would take him, but finding one woman who would actually want both of us would be—” He paused there, running a hand through his curly locks, trying to come up with an apt simile “—a fuckin’ miracle.”
“You’re kidding,” I said seriously. “You have to be. You guys are irresistible.”
“To you, perhaps,” Tychar admitted. “But not to our females. We were all alike to them.”
“Your… um… fluids didn’t work on them?”
“Sure they did,” Trag replied. “It’s just that we all had the same equipment, so they could be as choosy as they liked, and if they weren’t in the mood—which they hardly ever were!—they just didn’t smell right.” I was now being gazed at with luminous green eyes, which were every bit as attractive as the blue ones. “You, on the other hand, smell just exactly right all the time.”
Which explained quite a bit. “Trag,” I said gently, “this is a big palace. Why don’t you just keep away from me?”
“I should,” he muttered. “And I tried! Believe me, I tried! But the scent of you is just so compelling… and that’s aside from the fact that I’d like you, whether you smelled good or not.” He stopped there, throwing up his hands in despair. “I just plain can’t help it.”
“Do I leave my scent on Tychar?”
Trag nodded. “Yes. If you’ve had sex recently, I can smell you on him.” He let out a de
ep sigh. “And you must be doing it an awful lot.”
Which was true. If we were alone, Tychar and I were in each other’s arms. We must have been feeding off one another’s desires; he being enticing and me smelling like sex personified. We must have been driving Trag up the wall—constantly.
My head started to spin as the strength of my emotions and confusion threatened to overwhelm me. I might have had a better understanding of the problem, but the pressure was getting to me. I needed time alone to think without the two of them clouding my mind with desire. Excusing myself, I got up from the piano and pushed past Tychar and, before I knew it, I was practically running from the room. Passing through the doorway to my bedroom, I began running in earnest; out the door into the corridor and continuing nearly the full length of the palace until the stitch in my side became so severe that it forced me to stop.
Leaning out a nearby window, I gulped in the air, which at that hour was hot and oppressive. I would probably faint dead away in another moment or two, thus paying for my headlong flight, which had probably been pointless anyway. Sure, it might have given me a little breathing room, but at best, it had only postponed my inevitable decision. The dilemma I faced was a difficult one; I cared for them both, and being true to the one I loved meant that I would have to deny the other, who I was convinced needed me—which also meant that I would wind up feeling guilty no matter what I did. At that moment, it became almost too much for me to bear, and all I could think of was that I needed to get off of this world and never come back.
Dissolving into tears, I sank to the smooth stone floor, leaning up against the wall. I would tell Scalia to keep her tigers away from me. If I needed a personal attendant, the guy with the octopus fingers would do nicely. I would have to find out what his name was, though, because I couldn’t very well call him “Octopus Fingers” forever, and I hoped that he had a name I could at least pronounce—or I could call him Fingerpuss, which sounded a bit kinky, really.
Running a hand through my hair, I felt something I’d rarely felt since I arrived—sweat—and if I was sweating enough to feel it, I was losing way too much water! I was wondering if I could even make it back to my room when Wazak rounded the corner.
Stopping short when he saw me there, he demanded, “You are ill?”
“Nope, just needed to run,” I gasped. “Probably ran too far.”
Bending down, he scooped me up in his arms without ceremony. “I will return you to your quarters,” he said. “Do not run anymore.” Having solved any problems I might have had with those few short sentences, he set off down the corridor with his curious, tail-swinging swagger.
“If only it were that simple,” I sighed.
“It is not?”
“No.” I hesitated a long moment before asking, “Ever been in love, Wazak?”
I didn’t think he would ever reply, but, after a bit, he did. “Yes,” he said shortly.
“Ever been in love and, at the same time, felt very strongly about someone else, too? Not instead of the first one, but in addition to them?”
“No,” he replied. “I have loved only one.”
Trust Wazak to keep even something as complex as love simple and straight to the point. “Then I guess you can’t help me,” I said hopelessly. “Oh, shit! What am I gonna do?”
“You are in love with the Zetithian slaves,” he said, correctly interpreting my dilemma.
I looked up at his stoic, impassive face. If he’d ever loved anyone, it certainly didn’t show, but perhaps I didn’t know the signs. “That’s a pretty good guess, Wazak. What was your first clue?”
“You do not appear to love me,” he said, as though the slaves were my only other options. This wasn’t quite true, because I’d gotten to know a few of the guards, particularly my own and the ones who were posted at The Shrine. However, aside from them and the children I was teaching, I really didn’t know very many of the other people who lived and worked in the palace. Perhaps I should try to get on good terms with some of the women, because if I stayed away from the tigers, I’d need someone to talk to.
Thinking back, I decided that Cernada could probably relate to my problem better than anyone. I wondered if she liked Trag, too—of course, she might have had a thing for Wazak—who was turning out to be a pretty decent guy, despite my initial impression of him.
“No, I don’t love you, Wazak,” I said with a sigh, “though it might be easier if I did.”
“No, it would not,” he said. “Our species are too dissimilar. It is best that you love the Zetithians.”
Suppressing a chuckle, I said earnestly: “Yes, but at least there’s only one of you! There are two of them, and they’re driving me crazy!”
“Your kind does not often have two mates?”
“Well, no, not really—hardly ever, in fact. I mean, I wouldn’t mind it myself, but I doubt if they’d see it that way! I have to choose—and I already have, actually—it’s just that Trag is so…”
“So—what?” Wazak prompted.
“Well, if I’d never met Tychar, I probably would have been just as taken with Trag, but the fact remains that Tychar is the one I love. The trouble is, Trag wants me, too, and while I’d like to say yes, I know that it would hurt Tychar. But if I deny Trag, then he’s going to be hurt, too—and I don’t want to hurt either of them! It could be that I’m feeling sorry for Trag, because he’s been without a mate for so long, but I honestly don’t think that’s the only reason for the way I feel.”
If Wazak had any difficulty following my little rant, it didn’t show. “So, you would take each of them as your mate if it was acceptable to them?”
“Yes,” I said decisively. “Yes, I believe I would.” It would probably be the death of me, but I would certainly give it a try.
“You are quite a woman, Kyra Aramis,” he remarked.
“Not really,” I said miserably. “I’m a big, fat wuss, is what I am.” He didn’t respond, so I translated it for him. “Coward. I’m a big, fat coward.”
Wazak didn’t appear to agree with my assessment. “To come alone to this world required great courage,” he said. “There are not many who would do so.”
He had a point. “But you scared the piss out of me the day I arrived.”
“It was not apparent,” he said firmly. “You possess more courage than you know.”
“Well, I certainly don’t feel very courageous,” I grumbled. “I feel more like a coward.” Yellow-bellied and lily-livered as the saying goes—though what those things have to do with courage is something I’ve never understood.
“That is often the case with those who possess the most courage.”
Eyeing him curiously, I asked, “And just where did you hear that?”
It was the first time I’d ever seen Wazak smile. “My first commander,” he replied. “I did not believe that I was courageous then.” Smiling more broadly, he added, “But I was wrong.”
I couldn’t imagine Wazak being afraid of anything—ever. “Went toe-to-toe with him, did you?” I prompted.
“With her,” he corrected me. “My first commander was the Princess Scalia.”
“Princess Scalia?” I echoed. “So it was before she was made queen, then?”
Wazak nodded.
“So, does Zealon command the guards now? That’s funny, I thought you did.”
“I do,” he replied. “The Princess Zealon is still too young, but she will take command when she is of age.”
And I’d had no idea. “Well, obviously I need to hang around with you more,” I declared. “I’ve learned more in the past five minutes than I have in all the weeks I’ve been here.”
“The Princess has not been instructing you?”
“Well, yes,” I admitted. “But I’d learn more if I asked more questions. The trouble is, I’m never sure what to ask until something comes up. What I mean is, I nee
d to know everything, not just little bits and pieces. I need to know your history, politics, geography, culture—all those things.”
“I will… speak with the Princess,” he said, and I was certain he would. “But I believe you already understand something of politics.”
“Really?” I said curiously. “What makes you think that?”
“When you spoke to Dobraton,” he said. “You handled her very well.”
I grinned at him. “I did, didn’t I?”
“You showed courage then,” he said. “You were alone among strangers who were at odds with one another, and yet you were able to make your point without being openly antagonistic.”
“Thank you, Wazak,” I said warmly. “I needed that.” I almost felt like hugging him, but he was too big to get my arms around. “You can put me down, now. I’m feeling much better.”
He smiled again. “But I wish to intimidate the Zetithians.”
I chuckled wickedly. “Gonna march right in there with me in your arms, demanding to know who made me run off like that?”
“Yes,” he replied. “It will make them think about what they have done.”
“They’re probably thinking already,” I pointed out. “What I want them to do is talk about it—with each other.”
“I will… suggest it to them.”
We were approaching the door to my quarters, which was still standing wide open. I could hear Trag and Tychar talking from the other room.
“It is not my fault,” Trag was saying. “You could have said something, but you just sat there and let it happen! She’s probably gone to tell Scalia to lock us up again.”
“We will not force her,” Tychar said firmly. “She didn’t say she wanted two of us.”
“Came damn close!” Trag exclaimed. “Had a fuckin’ orgasm when she thought about it!”
They must have heard Wazak’s feet slapping on the floor as we entered, because they shut up after that and rushed over to the door between the two rooms.
Wazak laid me gently on my bed and then turned to face them. He’d obviously had plenty of practice when it came to intimidation, because the pitch of his voice dropped sharply and he cranked up the volume. “You are responsible for her welfare,” he said sternly. “You are not to endanger her again by driving her away.”
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