by George Olney
There was a momentary surge of disorientation, then things snapped back into place and her only feeling was elation. She jumped to her feet, her body expressing an unconscious aggressive self-confidence in its pose. She looked around herself, assessing her surroundings with a new attitude.
She wasn't in trouble, she was in a fight. Frenchy knew how to fight... and how to win.
She went back into the sleeping compartment in search of the mirror. The careworn, slightly washed out blonde that looked out at her a little while ago wasn't there anymore. The girl in the mirror was lively, aggressive, bawdy, and just about ready to take your head off if she thought you needed it. JoAnn was gone. Frenchy was here.
She swept her hair back with both hands and grinned at her reflection, pleased with herself. Look out Galaxy! Here comes Frenchy!
#####
By the third day, Frenchy was aware of a problem she didn’t think she was going to have: Grae wasn’t trying push sex on her. Oh, they slept in the same bed together. In the nude, too. But nothing happened. Nada. No sex. Strange as it seemed, she was beginning to feel offended. Thousands of guys had wanted her, why not this jerk? Hell, he’d kidnapped her for just this reason, hadn’t he? The waiting was starting to bother her. She was desirable. She knew it. Hell, she made a living exploiting the fact. So why wasn’t he trying?
Finally, she decided to get it over with and waited until he was coming out of the shower, nude as usual. When he came out, she was on the bed in one of the gracefully seductive poses she remembered from her days as a skin model, with the most sultry up-from-under look she had in her armory. He just looked back at her for a moment then walked out without a change of expression or a word. He didn't even physically react.
He was sitting calmly in the wardroom when she came storming out a few moments later, completely furious. What the hell was wrong with the bastard? Was he gay? No man passed her up like that!
As she started to storm past him, he reached over and caught her wrist, stopping her and gently pulling her down to sit next to him on the long sofa. He looked at her enraged scowl for a moment then said in his dry voice, “I don’t like fakes, Frenchy. Don’t forget it.
“One of the reasons I like you is that you aren't.”
He liked her? Sure, for her body! She turned away from him to stare furiously at the opposing bulkhead, fuming about his rejection. It didn’t dawn on her this was the first time they’d ever sat next to each other, she was still too mad.
After a moment, she felt his finger on her chin as he gently but firmly turned her head to face him. “There’s no reason to scowl. Besides, it doesn’t become you.”
With equal gentleness, he leaned over and kissed her softly. Her eyes flew open wide in surprise. She was just as surprised to realize she was returning the kiss.
After a long moment, he leaned back from her with another unreadable – almost pained - expression and inhaled a deep breath loudly through his nose. Then he abruptly stood up and walked a few steps away from the sofa, to stand in the middle of the room, facing away from her.
She stared at his back, her fingers lightly on her lips. She still tasted the kiss. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what had just happened. It was like he didn’t even want to get physically involved with her, never mind sex.
Finally, she got up and walked hesitantly over to him and put a tentative hand on his arm, looking at him with a quizzical expression. What was happening?
He took another deep breath then turned slowly to face her. He looked at her for a few moments. Just looked in her eyes. She felt something pass between them with that look. Then he raised his hand and gently touched her cheek with his fingers. There was a little wry smile on his face now as he saw the surprise and wonder on hers. In a soft voice she could barely hear, he murmured, "Oh, hell. I give up."
Slowly, he ran his hands up her arms, his fingertips trailing gently across the bare skin. The sensation gave her a thrill up her spine, something she’d never experienced. His hands met and cupped her face then he kissed her again, deeply. He didn’t break the kiss when his arms slid down to wrap around her. She could feel his hard muscles as he held her tightly and she involuntarily surrendered to the embrace. One of his hands began lightly stroking the base of her spine with feather delicate fingers. For the first time in her life, she felt she was becoming fully aroused. So was he.
She leaned back from the kiss, looked him in the eye and said softly, “I hate you, you bastard.”
He gave her a little smile. “I know that.”
With no apparent effort, he gathered her up and began carrying her to the back. No need to waste the trip, she decided. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled his head down and kissed him again, taking her time.
What followed in their bed was long, slow, gentle - and again, nothing like she'd ever experienced before.
#####
She kept busy for the next week, a time of discovery and frustration. It was taking a while to learn the language, but the hypno-learner was a big help. It was getting to where she wasn't uneasy about falling into the trance, either. She was beginning to feel secure about Grae and the ship.
During the process of learning the language, she was learning more about herself and the world around her. Her growing fluency with Rembaud, as well as her ability with the various machines around the ship, would have surprised the teachers she frustrated back in her long-gone school days. When she dropped out of school and left home, part of the reason was a consistent record of academic failure. She couldn't keep up with school, living from foster home to foster home. After she hit Hollywood, nobody was interested in her ability to think, only her body.
But, in a strange way, she was prepared for the challenges she now faced. She worked nights and had lot of time on her hands during the afternoon. TV and movies opened her eyes to a lot of new worlds and the best place she discovered for learning more about them was the public library. Even in the throes of post-drunken depression she often went to a library and lost herself in a dream world, prettier, nicer and brighter than her own. She even gained an unexpected skill with library computers, able to find anything or do anything she wanted. To her, the Internet was a wonderful playground.
In the process, she learned more than was ever taught her before she dropped out of school. She was fully capable of learning anything, if there was a good reason. Now she had two good reasons for her assault on her electronic teacher: innate curiosity and survival.
Survival was driving her to learn the language and gain control of her environment. Besides, the ship had a large stock of interesting magazines and books, all in Rembaud and her curiosity was rampant. To satisfy that curiosity she needed the fluency she was now developing.
It was hard, but it gave her something to do with her mind. There was a bonus, also. Since the ship's teaching programs were also filling out her knowledge of the on-board equipment, she was gaining a measure of control over her surroundings, something she badly needed. In fact, she was quickly becoming an expert with the machines she used.
She could already do some tricks, she thought proudly. She was a permanent blonde now after trying on brunette and not liking it. A real one, she giggled as she looked down at her lap, courtesy of Irine's materials fabricator and a small pill.
To her mild surprise, she even found herself even getting used to constant nudity. Funny what the human mind will accept as normal. Grae's attitude helped because he appeared to attach no special importance to his unobstructed view of her body. He seemed to look on her state of nature as something normal. He was just as casual about clothing, frequently going about his business nude. If she didn’t hate the bastard, she would enjoy that. Well, hell, she admitted to herself, she did enjoy looking at him.
The frustration was something else again.
Despite her best efforts, she was getting nowhere with Grae. She knew he was from Lycanth, because of the conversation on her first day. That about summed it up. That son
ofabitch would never say anything except in answer to a direct question. Then his answers were so minimal he was really telling her nothing!
And his casually superior attitude towards her still stunk.
Then she caught herself. Whoa, girl, play it cool. Getting mad at this guy was like punching a tiger in the nose. By now she knew enough about Grae and the Tribes to warrant careful second thoughts on how she did things. She still had every intention of telling him to shove it where the sun didn't shine, but there was such a thing as common sense in the telling.
Something odd, though. In bed, he was gentle and caring and that was unusual in her experience. He never forced her, either. Even the first time, it was almost as though he wasn’t sure he wanted to have sex with her. The fact that he waited so long was a surprise and he seemed almost reluctant when it did happen. When he held her that first time, it took her a second to realize he was actually trying to seduce her. He wasn’t forcing her and it was clear to her that she was controlling what was happening. It was a gentle seduction, and, to her amazement, she found herself very willing to go along. Once they got past the initial stage something else, she wasn’t sure just what, started happening. As they got more passionate, there was a feeling she’d never had before, a sensation of emotional joining that came out during the most intense moments. She was sure he hadn’t been with a woman in a while and... well... she hadn’t really enjoyed sex for a while either. She did with him. He made her feel special. All of a sudden things were changing - for both of them.
Puzzling, but satisfying too, she had to admit. She wasn’t really sure what was going on behind that eyepatch. Men were themselves in bed even if they wore a mask the rest of the time. What happened in bed didn't match what happened out of it. That bothered her. Time to do some research and see what the hell was really going on here. Back to the library. She wanted to review what she’d found out about him.
Grae said he was from Lycanth, and the library information on Lycanth was revealing. Judging from his dress, Grae was a tribesman from one of the wild areas away from the civilized central region. He was far from being a primitive savage, though. The tribes produced galactic level individuals and products. Tribes were known for everything from microelectronics to sophisticated chemical products and their people spanned the spectrum from soldiers to scientists. On the other hand, they preferred a simple, barbarian lifestyle.
They were also excessively violent.
Grae had probably lost his eye in some clash with an animal or warring tribesman, but the probable replacement, according to a file she had chanced upon in the computer, was a sensing device that told him as much about the world around him as another eye.
The loss of his eye and its high-tech replacement symbolized the two conflicting faces of the Lycanthi civilization.
From her reading, it appeared that the Lycanthi didn't start out to be the Comanches of the galaxy but they enjoyed the role and loved their beautiful, wild planet. Their way of life developed after the collapse of a previous interstellar civilization destroyed the original colonial culture. She read where a mass evacuation took all the colonists that wanted to go to a fate no one remembered. The tough ones stayed.
The tough were now very tough. Also very smart.
She pulled up the section she wanted and reread a passage that went a long way towards explaining her current situation. It seemed that Lycanthi tended towards a permanent man-woman relationship, but there were three different accepted styles. They had bondage, marriage, and bonding, in ascending order of importance to the culture.
The bondage part continued to outrage her. She was no man's property but the Tribes said she was and galactic law went right along with them. Among other things, bondage meant she didn’t have possessions, even clothing. Galactics even expanded the concept, adding buying and selling to what was originally a version of an old tribal wife-stealing custom. That got her a little disgusted with this gloriously advanced civilization she was joining.
Marriage was just that. Not too much change from the homegrown version.
Bonding, on the other hand, was something really special. She wondered if the concept could be understood by any non-Lycanthi or even if the writer of the computer's information had it right, but the outward signs were clear cut. Bonding was a joining, not only of physical selves, but spirits as well. The couple were actually one individual, spiritually and psychologically. They bonded for life and both wore brands burned into their skin to signify the fact. The man wore his on his wrist and the woman on her hip.
That made her wonder about the leather wrist band Grae never removed. If it covered a brand, that meant he was one of the rare souls that bonded. The lack of a bondmate on the ship told her that his female partner was dead. Nothing else separated a bonded pair for long. She wondered if his bondmate was the woman that modeled for the stone carving.
She couldn't ask him about it. He never talked about anything with her. Matter of fact, he talked to the computer more than he did to her. That rankled. She was making no headway on him. She was hoping to achieve at least civil conversation by now. All men eventually talked in bed, but not Grae.
She finally shrugged and decided to take out her frustrations in her usual manner, the gym. At least one thing was going right. With her workouts, she was beginning to tighten up and lose those extra pounds. She was even getting her old flexibility back, courtesy of dance exercises and training routines she remembered from years ago. She might even go back on the legitimate stage when this was over, she fantasized. She could still do a pretty good chorus line kick.
All though the workout, one thought gave her a head of steam to keep going. No matter what all the computers in the galaxy said, she was no man's property. Grae might think that, but be damned if she'd ever let it be so. Every time she did a high kick, she imagined she was booting his head.
Frenchy came back from the gym sweaty, tired, and still irritated every time she thought of the bondage business. Stopping at the door to the cabin, she used her towel to mop up some sweat then touched the entry plate. The door didn't open. Touching it again produced the same result. Addressing her question to the air, she asked in Rembaud, "What's wrong with the door?"
The bland voice of the computer answered from the air behind her ear. "Grae is inside asleep and he desires that he not be disturbed until the next waking period."
That started her fuming. She wanted a shower. "And just when will that be?"
"The time I have been given to wake him is nine and one half hours from now."
That did it. She boiled over and began banging on the cabin door. "Open up, dammit! Open up! I need to get a shower!"
The door flew open with a snap. She found herself face to face with an angry steel gray eye. Fine with her. She was ready to match him two angry eyes for one.
"I gave instructions not to be disturbed," he snapped. "Go somewhere else until you're told to return."
Not fluent enough in Rembaud, she switched to English. "Look, Lord and Master, you sonofabitch! I've about had enough of this! I'm not about to be locked out of my bed or the shower because you aren't in the mood tonight! Here's where I sleep and here's where I'm going to sleep, damn it!"
At this point, she lapsed into a highly flavored description of every aspect of him including his ancestors and his personal life. She was experienced, so it took a little while and involved a considerable vocabulary, apparently impressing Grae in spite of his anger.
Finally, she started to run down and returned from a vulgar explosion to merely heated conversation. "Furthermore," she barreled on, "I don't really give a damn if you want to sleep or not! The only thing it means to me is that I have a night in bed without exercise! I would like to be given the same things you give a pet frog... a place to sleep and a place to clean up! I'm a person! Even if you do consider me property, I still happen to be a thinking breathing human being!"
As she ran down for a second, he broke in with the dry quiet voice he perpetually u
sed. "All right, enough of the demonstration. You can have your place to sleep and wash. I won't lock the door again, just don't bother me when I'm asleep."
She glared at him. "You bother me when I'm asleep!"
He nodded, smiling. "Point taken. I'll still bother you, yes, but for now, go find a cup of coffee and cool off. Coffee's one of the few bad habits I picked up on your world."
She wasn't interested in his other bad habits. Spinning on her heel to leave, she was almost lifted off her feet by a stinging slap on her bare bottom. As she whirled around, she caught a glimpse of his grinning face. Her reaction was purely instinctive, accounting for its success. As she spun, she balled her fist into a powerful uppercut that connected just on the point of his chin. She was a big woman and the blow had enough force to it to knock him back against the doorjamb and drop him to the floor. She took a deep breath, cursing her reactions, even though she felt a small glow of satisfaction. It felt good, but it was premature. She was going to have to fight before she was ready. Her fist was sore, too.
He staggered to his feet, slowly rubbing his chin and shaking his head. Eyeing her fighting stance, he waved vaguely down the passageway. "Go," he said. "Get your coffee and come back for your shower. Just let me get some sleep." The door closed in her face.
Despite his words, Grae found that sleep wasn't all that easy to come by. He’d locked the door from unthinking reflex. Any Tribal girl in bondage to him would have simply gone to the wardroom and showered later. Not Frenchy. It struck him she’d never accept any sort of arbitrary restriction. Frankly, he approved of that attitude. He found himself pleasantly mulling over the big blonde that now shared his ship and his life. Bondage was in no sense a permanent condition. He had every intention of letting her go when he could honorably do it. It was only a rightness that he do so. Still, he liked having her around.
Rubbing his sore jaw, he decided he liked her feisty personality as much as anything about her. Taking her was turning out to be one of his better spur of the moment decisions. In fact, he realized he hadn't been this attracted to a woman since Yelen.