Rogue (8 page)

I said briskly, choosing to ignore the innuendo. "It only means that you're very nice and thoughtful, not that you actually taste good."

Regarding me with heavy-lidded eyes, he said, "You may find that I'm even sweeter when you've tasted me."

I happened to be chewing on an exceptionally juicy bit of fruit at the time, but my mouth went dry anyway.

"You taste sweet?" I asked hoarsely. "That's funny, I would have thought you'd be salty."

He blinked slowly, seductively. "That depends on which part of me you taste."

I choked slightly as I tried to decide which part of him would be sweet. Perhaps there was more than one...

"Tychar?" I said when I could talk again.

"Yes?" There was an eager lilt coloring his voice as he looked at me expectantly. He was getting to me, and he knew it. I couldn't see his groin from where I sat, but I'd have bet his cock was already rock hard. "It's much too early in the day for that sort of thing."

His full lips stretched into another smile. "But I am locked up at night."

"Which is a damn good thing, if you ask me!" I declared. "It's bad enough having to sit across the breakfast table from a naked tiger, trying not to—"

He leveled a knowing look at me. "If you feel desire for me, Kyra," he said reasonably, "then why do you resist? Is it because I'm a slave?"

"I'm—I'm not resisting anything," I protested weakly. "I just don't think Scalia would like it if I went around tasting her slave boys."

"So it
is
because I am a slave." I thought he seemed disappointed in me—as though he'd thought I'd be more liberal in my thinking, perhaps.

"Someone
else's
slave," I amended. "I wish Scalia had been a little more specific about what she wanted you to do here. I mean, attending to all of my needs could be a pretty broad range of duties, and I'm sure there are a few 'personal services' that she'd much rather you didn't provide."

I'd done my best to couch the idea in obscure terms, but he still knew exactly what I meant. Looking at me directly with his brilliant blue eyes boring into mine, he said evenly, "Perhaps she wishes for us to mate."

"Mate?" I squeaked. "Oh, surely not! We're not even of the same species, Tychar! How could we mate?" It was a stupid question, and I knew it, because there was absolutely no physical reason why we couldn't, though whether we were
genetically
compatible remained to be seen.

"She wanted a human woman to teach the Princess to play the piano," he said with a nonchalant shrug. "Perhaps she was told that a human would be able to mate with one of us."

I thought that was a bit of a stretch, but I'd heard stranger notions. "Well, she
did
say she wanted to breed more of you," I conceded. "But are you saying that this is the reason she hired me?"

"I'm sure it's not the only reason," he admitted. "She is very anxious for the Princess to learn your music."

"Now, wait just a doggone minute! Did she actually
tell you
any of this? It seems sort of... well, I don't know what you'd call it." I was stunned into silence.

Part of a breeding program? That was worse than being a slave—downright dehumanizing, in fact.

"Kyra," he said gently. "She has not said this, and you do not have to do anything you do not wish to do.

You are not her slave, as I am."

I nodded, but my suspicions had been aroused, and Scalia would have had a difficult time convincing me she'd never had any intention of using me to breed more of her precious tigers. It wasn't that I didn't
want
to mate with him, as he put it, because in actual fact, I couldn't think of anything I'd like more, but I sure as hell didn't want to do it as part of some lizard queen's bizarre hobby! It made me mad just thinking about it.

Then an even more chilling thought occurred to me.

"What would she do if I had a child? Take it from me? Sell it into slavery?"

"She has said nothing of the kind," Tychar said soothingly, "but I don't believe she would take your child.

She may only want to see if it's possible. She was very distressed when she learned that our race was nearly destroyed. She seems interested in preserving it."

"So I'd be rescuing an endangered species, huh?" I said, unable to keep the irony out of my voice. "Well, then I guess I should just quietly submit so you don't all become extinct."

An already upswept eyebrow climbed even higher. "If we were to mate, Kyra," he said confidently, "I would hope you would do more than merely 'submit.'"

"You mean you'd want me to enjoy it?" I would have been lying if I'd said I'd particularly enjoyed it in the past. In fact, quite frequently sex had left me feeling cold and ever so slightly used. However, something told me that it would be different with him—a
lot
different.

He nodded. "And I would like it very much if you could love me," he said quietly. "I have been Scalia's slave for nearly twenty years, and in all that time—"

"Twenty years!" I exclaimed. "How old are you?"

"Forty years, perhaps," he replied. "The length of a solar cycle is different on each planet."

"Well, you certainly don't look it. Of course, if you don't ever go out in the sun, you wouldn't age as quickly."

Tychar looked at me as though I'd lost my mind. "My species is very long-lived, and I have not yet reached my prime. My age is insignificant."

"Maybe," I said uncertainly. "But twenty years? Do you mean to say that it took Scalia that long to come up with this crossbreeding scheme of hers?"

"There is no scheme," he insisted. "At least, none that I am aware of, but in all that time, her slave traders have never brought her any Zetithian females."

"Zetithian?"

"Trag and I are natives of the planet Zetith," he explained.

"Never heard of it."

"It was very distant," he said, "and it no longer exists."

I sat staring at him for a long time. If any of my suspicions were true, they were already quite enough to make me feel used, manipulated, conned, coerced, and tricked; now he was playing on my sympathy and sense of duty. He was making it seem as though if I didn't mate with him, I'd be responsible for the extinction of an entire species—which was a hanging offense if I'd ever heard one. It seemed unlikely that Scalia would be so underhanded as to get me here under false pretenses and then spring something like this on me, but you never know with queens. The promotion of the greater good doesn't always go over so well with the individuals directly involved.

"Tell me something," I said finally. "Just how long have the two of you been hanging around here wearing nothing but fancy cat collars?"

"We have always worn them."

I thought he phrased that a bit oddly because it didn't truly answer my question, though his accent led me to believe that Stantongue wasn't the first and only language he'd ever spoken. Perhaps he'd misunderstood me. "And what else did you wear?" I believe I was tapping my foot at that point, much the way Wazak had been tapping his tail the day before.

He hesitated, but when it came, his answer seemed truthful enough. "We sometimes—though not always—wear clothes, though we wear them less now than we did in the past because the Darconians don't. We have... acclimated," he said, adding, "It's hot here."

"No kidding?" I said dryly. "I hadn't noticed. So, what you're saying is that your style of dress—or lack thereof—wasn't just for my benefit."

"No, it was not."

I hoped he was telling me the truth, because if he wasn't, I would have been a bit miffed with my new employer. "Well, I certainly hope not, but you've got to admit, it seems a little fishy. I mean, Scalia flies me clear across the galaxy, scares me half to death with Wazak, gets me drunk, and shows me her two incredibly sexy naked tigers—and
then
tells one of you to take care of all my needs! The surprising thing is, if I understand you correctly and you haven't smelled anyone's 'desire' in nearly twenty years, that you didn't take advantage of the chance to break that dry spell last night. I mean, you missed a golden opportunity there."

"It would have been glorious," he said—and I had no doubt that he was being perfectly honest. "But it wouldn't have been right. You were too... vulnerable."

"And you'd rather I be fighting mad?"

"It would be more like mating with one of our own females," he admitted with a quirky little grin. "They didn't always like to mate—or admit that they wanted to."

"You mean you had to take them by force?"

"No, as I told you before, we had to be able to smell their desire and be... enticing."

"Enticing? How?"

He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and, with a frankly seductive smile, began to purr.

"Oh, I might have
known
you could do that!" I said acidly, feeling a sudden urge to throw one of those fuzzy kiwi fruits at him. It had been hard enough to control the rising passion that was coursing through my body, and now he was purring! "Okay, you're right. You look good enough to eat."

His smile broadened, revealing his sharp fangs. "Then eat me."

A lightning bolt of desire sliced through me, and I nearly had to bite my tongue to keep from gasping. I wanted him so badly that I could almost taste him from where I sat. Clearing my throat and making a vain attempt to change the subject, I asked, "What else can you do?"

His glowing blue eyes held my gaze for a long moment before he spoke. "I can give you joy unlike any you have ever known."

I stared back at him, my mouth agape. Such a boast should have made me respond with skepticism, but quite frankly, I believed him. My "Oh, really?" came out sounding high-pitched and silly, and if his expression was any indication, he wasn't exaggerating or teasing.

No, he was perfectly serious.

Nodding slowly, his purring grew even louder.

"Tychar," I said evenly. "You're going to have to stop that."

The purring ceased immediately.

Then it hit me. He wasn't going to do a damn thing more than be enticing unless I specifically asked him to.

He hadn't been a slave for twenty years and not learned a few things about staying out of trouble. The reason he hadn't done it the night before was because—stupid me!—instead of asking him to make love to me, I'd told him to go to bed! Obviously it had to be my idea, but I wasn't altogether sure I could say it.

"Look," I began, "it's nothing against you, but I think I'd like to get used to being here for a while before I start fooling around with anyone—and it doesn't matter to me whether you're a slave or not. What matters most is the fact that I only met you yesterday. Just... give me some time." I took a deep breath and settled on a new subject—one that surely wouldn't involve any more purring. "Meanwhile, why don't you show me around this maze so if there's ever a fire I can find my way out.

I'm not sure I could even find my way back to where we had dinner last night. Or should I
not
know?"

If he was disappointed, it didn't show, for he merely shook his head in reply. "There are some areas where I am not permitted, but I will show you as much as I can."

"Great!" I said, blowing out a pent-up sigh of relief.

The trouble was, he was just plain too much man for the likes of me; I wasn't sure I could handle him and still remain sane. He'd already said he wanted me to taste him, eat him, and love him—hell, just looking at him was overwhelming enough. "But first I'd like to clean up a bit. Where does one go to take a bath around here?"

Tychar looked pretty clean and smelled wonderful— and he wasn't a lizard—so I figured he'd be the best one to ask.

"I believe that keeping you clean is one of my duties," he said, his seductive little smile suggesting that he would consider this particular duty to be one of his greatest pleasures.

My throat dried up again. "I think I can probably take care of that myself," I said hoarsely. "All you have to do is tell me where."

"You don't have to
go
anywhere."

"But there isn't a shower or a bathtub in here," I protested. "I know because, trust me, I've looked! There's no running water, either, and the only water I've got is obviously intended for drinking purposes."

"Water is scarce on this world," he said, "and isn't used for bathing."

"Well then, what do you do to stay so clean?"

Rising from his seat, he went over to where the pitcher of water stood and picked up a towel. "You clean yourself with this."

"No water?"

"No water."

I found this hard to believe, but, still, his hair looked fabulous. Then again, perhaps the Zetithians didn't ex-crete oils through their skin—or perspire, either. Maybe they just panted like dogs whenever they got too hot.

"You use this method yourself?" I asked doubtfully, not truly believing it was possible.

He nodded. "It may take some time to become accustomed to it, but it's quite effective."

Still a bit skeptical, I took the towel from him. Upon examination, it appeared to be fairly ordinary, but when I rubbed it against my arm, something odd happened. I could feel a subtle magnetic pull on my skin. I looked at the cloth again, noting that it obviously had gotten something off me because there was now a smudge mark on it.

"That's amazing!" I exclaimed. "What makes it do that?"

"It's woven from fiber called scrail, which is derived from a local stone," he replied. "It seems to have a strong affinity for oils and dirt."

"So, basically, you can clean anything with them."

"Yes," he replied. "And when exposed to direct sunlight, the fibers repel the dirt and oils and the cloth can then be reused."

This was as interesting as the glowstones—and probably just as valuable a commodity for offworld sale, which started me wondering about what else they might have to sell. The deserts of Earth once sat upon rich oil deposits; perhaps the same thing was true on Darconia.

Remembering how much wealth the sheiks had amassed as a result of that oil, I decided that if Scalia was as rich as that, I might have to think about asking for a raise. Of course, I would only
think
about it...