Telepaths Don't Need Safewords, by Cecilia Tan (4 page)

I
turned back to Danton, who had watched the whole thing with his arms
crossed. A little smile came onto his face, and then he turned away,
too. In that way, he reminded me of myself ten years ago. No, not
even that long ago. Young, his straight dark hair cresting his
shoulders, he spoke very little. There was a time when I didn’t
speak so much, when I didn’t have so many questions to answer,
when I didn’t have as much to say.

Our
prize hissed at me when I went to check on her and bring her some
meat. She eyed me suspiciously, but eventually took the mutton I
offered. Then she slept curled up upon herself, peacefully, which is
more than I can say for the fellow whose eye she put out. That night
he broke out in a raging fever. By the time it became light enough
for Danton and two others to travel with him back to the Keep, he
could no longer speak but for incoherent jumbles and would not answer
his own name. Danton arrived back while I was watching her pacing in
the clearing to inform me that he was dead. I bit my lip and wondered
how Hillard fared. The she-cat batted an insect out of the air.

* * * *

By
the end of that week, she would accept meat straight from my hand,
always well-encased in leather to prevent her scratching me. Soon
after she would let me touch her, gentle strokes on her shoulders and
the back of her head. The hair on her head was long and straight like
Dara’s, only black as midnight. Of course it was my own
impatience that did me in. Unable to resist the feel of her fur any
longer, I pulled off my right gauntlet and luxuriated in that hair,
so much finer than any I’d held before. And then she’d
batted down my hand and bitten it. I knew better than to pull back
and enlarge the wounds. She regarded me as she sank her teeth a
little deeper, and then her jaws relaxed. She seemed almost to
approve as I drew my hand away and she turned to grooming her hair
herself, combing it out with her claws in a wholly womanly gesture. I
regarded the red lines and punctures on my skin, and then called for
some hot water.

Within
hours I was feverish, my red skin tender to the touch. I imagined the
water would steam off of me as Aston plied it on with a cloth, but it
did not, only sent me into fits of shivering. Danton sat by me
muttering and occasionally saying “Calidare” to see if I
would respond. And then he began ranting about a damn fool’s
errand for a man’s pride. I tried to stop him, tried to explain
why I’d taken the risk, but my words began to slip from me. It
seemed to me I slept after that and dreamed of cats and goddesses.

* * * *

In
the morning I was still alive, dehydrated, queasy, unsteady on my
feet. But I pulled on my clothes, and marched out to the center of
the wagons. She was still awake, waiting for me. I crouched down at
her level, and held out my hand. She smelled it cautiously, and then,
assured it was me, bit down just a millimeter into the skin. I
withdrew my hand with a nod, “I thank you, my lady, and now my
I fetch your breakfast?” She sat back on her feet, tucking her
tail around them.

I
was half delirious most of the next few days, unable to keep much
food down, and sleeping between fragments of dreams only. Aston began
tearing out his hair every time I went near her. But I went near her
more and more, until I began to spend every evening sitting on a
stump near her, singing to her and telling her the stories of my
childhood, waiting for her to wake up from her diurnal sleepiness.
After all, what else was there to do out in the middle of nowhere?
The men were beginning to question my sanity, I think, but men are
often more like wolves than cats. A few well-placed arm-wrestling
bouts and some biting commentary kept the pecking order straight. The
time wasn’t right, not yet. I wasn’t even sure what it
was I had to wait for, I only hoped it wouldn’t be too long. I
watched the moon rising over the tops of the trees.

She
was still purring. I rested my hand on her head and realized she had
wrapped her tail around my ankle. I knelt down next to her and began
scratching the base of her neck, under her long mane, and the purring
became a mewling in her throat and she began to rub against me.
Without thinking, I cooed back some sweet nothing, the kind of babble
Dara called baby-talk, even though it hadn’t produced any
babies for her yet.

As
she ran her head up my thigh, I realized she’d put my boot
between her legs. Her tail waved from one side to the other as she
continued rubbing against me, her head on my thigh, her stomach on my
shin, and the tender part between her legs against my boot. I turned
her chin up with a finger, and looked into her eyes. There was a
flicker there, an intensity I hadn’t seen before. I might have
imagined it, but I could swear she gave the slightest nod. Dara will
tell you, at great length even, about how I never let an invitation
go unanswered.

I
took her shoulders in my hands and gently rolled her onto her back,
the chain on her neck clanking. As I lowered my weight on top of her
I felt my erection press between us. She growled, but did not fight
me. I hesitated a moment, not sure what kissing her would do. I
rubbed my nose against her nose—she writhed and the purring
began again. I licked her lips and let my tongue into her mouth. I
felt the extra sharpness of her teeth but other than that it was like
any other woman’s mouth, wet, warm, and inviting. I felt her
claws through the cotton of my shirt, the points grazing my skin,
digging a bit deeper when I took to nuzzling her neck. Am I going to
have any back left? I wondered. I hadn’t built up a perfect
tolerance to her scratches, yet, and I knew she could seriously
injure me. For just a moment I considered whether this was some ploy
on her part to get rid of me. But deeper down I could not even think
that. Lifting myself up on my arms, I nudged her to roll over.

I
settled back into place on her back and she writhed even more.
Perhaps, I thought, this is the way Cats do it. I buried my face in
her thick, black fur, surprised at the sweetness of it, but that’s
pheromones for you, I guess. I drank her in. Now, with her legs
spread, I could smell her desire as strong as my own. I stroked her
underside with one hand while fumbling with my pants with the other.
My erection was almost painful as I sought to free it. She bumped me
with her hips again and again, pushing her tail up into the air.

The
night air was cool against me as I slid my pants down to my ankles.
She purred and mewled and thrashed and would not stay still enough
for me to enter her. I had to use both arms to hold her under me, and
then I did not have a hand to guide myself. She bucked and nearly
threw me off as I reached back with one hand, anyway. I dug my teeth
into the fur of her neck, waiting for her to thrash, but it seemed to
paralyze her. In her throat she whimpered, shivering, her hips still
moving slightly. I fingered where she was wettest and led my penis
there, pressed it against her. She moved a little and I bit down
harder. She froze again and I slipped inside her, falling against her
as I did so, gasping.

Inside
her was a heaven I had only dreamed of. We moved together, stroke
after stroke, until I could no longer tell where her growls ended and
my grunts began. I could see nothing but flashes of black by the
moonlight, yet I felt every curve of her body, every muscle
responding to my every motion. For all her thrashing, I had expected
it to be rough, but it was smooth, now slow, now rapid, but smooth. I
do not know how long we were like that, I never wanted it to end and
I prolonged it as long as I could. But then she was beginning to
thrash again, she cried out and arched against me—I felt
contraction after contraction ripple through her, squeezing me from
deep inside and pushing me closer to climax myself. Now she cried out
with each thrust, throwing her head back in a frenzy—I feared I
would slip out of her as she bucked. I clamped my teeth down on the
back of her neck again and held her still as I drove the five long
hard strokes into her. That was all I could stand before I began to
fly in and out, unable to control my own hips, until at last I
matched her cry and emptied myself into her, holding her furred frame
against my chest as I shuddered with the last waves of it.

She
rolled out from under me immediately. She licked a little sweat from
my upper lip and shivered, yawning. I swear she almost smiled. And
then, after making sure I was watching, she undid the clip on her
collar with her deft fingers, and let it fall to the ground. While I
blinked, aghast, she curled up against my stomach and went back to
sleep. I had no doubt I would return to the Keep with her. But I
wondered, now, whether she was still mine, or if the tables had been
turned. With her fur filling my senses, I decided it didn’t
make a difference. And I slept, too.

Heart’s Desire

Sometimes,
looking around my bed chamber before I sleep at night, I am awed by
what I have. Could I really have achieved, garnered, realized all of
these desires? Around me the largeness of the house seems to grow,
twenty or more empty rooms between mine and the nearest servant,
filled up with the silence I have hoarded. It seemed like hardly any
work at all. But thinking deeper, before dreams begin to creep up
under my eyes, I realize that while it may not have seemed to be such
a conscious effort, subconscious desire is always at work. What was
it that made me invite Glinda to that party?

She
and I had never liked one another particularly. We got along well,
based on our mutual respect for one another’s talents, and
certain shared tastes. But we differed in a few opinions and were
never friends. Still, I never wanted to do anything to hurt her. Let
me stop kidding myself and you. I invited her because I secretly
hoped she would bring Corwin.

The
party itself was unremarkable as these things go—the usual
beatings and humiliations, and a good deal of wine was spilled (much
less than was consumed). As host I mostly watched that night,
detached from my guests by my stature. But by the time the fire grew
low, we were five women in the drawing room, myself, three others,
and Glin, with Corwin. Their act had gone uninterrupted since they
first arrived, late, at the front gate.

They
had made a grand entrance into the main hall, her driver announcing
“The Lady Glinda Trisel, Duchess of Alaming.”

She
swept forward into the room, trailing a gold and black dress and a
crinoline almost as stunning as her flaming red hair. She fanned
herself gently and raised her voice. “And may I present my
consort, Corwin, Prince of the Panatans.” She turned back
toward him as the driver shoved him forward into the room. He
stumbled and nearly fell to his knees, chains clanking, but
recovered, eyes smoldering. He was a gorgeous sight to behold in a
blue velvet tunic, the square collar exposing the gentle curve of his
collarbone, his long brown hair bound behind him in a matching
ribbon, and topped by a silver circlet. His hands were bound in front
of him with bright silver chain. She beckoned and he followed her
further into the room, his head held proudly. It was easy to forget
she was a designer and he a programmer—I saw a noble lady and a
prince.

They
greeted me, their hostess, first. Glin and I exchanged some niceties,
and I complimented her on the scenario. We had many people come in
costume, enacting everything from movie characters to wild fancies of
their own. But I have a soft spot for that medieval fantasy period.
And Corwin, the roundness of his face, the fullness of his lips—I
would have thought him beautiful even if he had been a woman. I could
not take my eyes off of him.

Neither
could many others. So even at that late hour, when Glin slapped him
in the face (I missed what he had said to deserve it), they had an
audience. As she forced him to kneel and pushed his head to the
ground, unbuttoning the tunic in the back, Marella turned to me and
whispered, “Do you think she’ll let us each have a turn?”

“Goodness,
I hope so,” piped in Dara, licking her lips.

I
simply nodded, unable to take my eyes off them. She stripped away the
tunic and fastened his hands behind his back, standing him up by his
long hair. Now he wore only in tight black leggings, his perfect
chest exposed. “Cleo? Where shall we put him?”

I
resisted the urge to touch him. “The drawing room archway.”
I led them to the gilt doorway, met Corwin’s eyes as we
chained him into it. I looked away. Hooks the perfect height for him.
They had originally been placed for a woman my size, which is small,
and Corwin was just about my height. Glin put a collar around his
neck, clipping the long ends of the chains to it. He made a delicious
picture like that, the fire backlighting his spreadeagled figure, the
chains shining in the flames. She put a pretty black clip onto each
nipple and stepped back. I could have sat and admired him for a few
more minutes, but she wasted no time, going to work on him right
away.

She
started with a cat-o-nine-tails, passing it deftly from hand to hand
as she worked up a rhythm. She fairly danced around him as she heated
up his skin. The cat was too light to leave marks, his skin began to
glow in the firelight. She switched to a leather paddle, and we began
to hear him. His voice was as sweet and beautiful as his face. In his
pride he tried to choke off the cries, but when she began using a
stiff leather thong he coughed out a note with each stroke. The thong
bit into his skin, raising a blue welt where it fell. I realized as I
was watching his fists clench in the cuffs, I was clenching my own.
She did not stop. He thrashed in the chains, his hair coming loose
from the ribbon and hanging down over his chest.

“Milady,”
he gasped out between blows.