No Other Love (16 page)

“I’d like to take another look at your
Gathering Hall and at the garden, too,” Herne said.

“As you wish.” With a polite bow, Dulan left
them. The moment they were alone, Herne turned to Merin.

“This isn’t real,” he said. “It’s all a trick
of some kind. Did you notice there’s no entrance to the grotto from
that garden?”

“So you are convinced the appearance of an
entire city is Ananka’s doing, perhaps with the conniving of this
Saray whom Dulan knows?”

“I think there isn’t any Saray, just as there
isn’t any Dulan. I am going to find Ananka and force her to free us
from this illusion so we can go home.” Herne took a step toward the
door to the alley.

“I’m going with you.” Merin was right behind
him.

“She may not appear to me if you are
present,” Herne objected. “Stay here, Merin. Investigate this house
and look into those guest quarters. If Dulan returns before I do,
try to glean whatever information you can that might help to end
this illusion. You’ve done better than I so far. I’m too impatient
and I try for direct answers. You are more subtle, so you may
ultimately be more successful with our mysterious host. And you may
find it necessary to disguise my absence.”

“From a telepath?” She almost laughed at that
idea.

“Osiyar claims that all telepaths observe the
rule of not entering anyone’s mind without permission,” Herne
reminded her. “But it doesn’t matter because this Dulan isn’t real.
Do as I ask, Merin. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise.”
Before she could draw away, his lips brushed her cheek. Then he was
gone, pulling the door shut after him, barring her exit.

Merin considered following him, until she
realized he was probably right about Ananka only appearing if he
was alone. She began to examine the sitting room and after it the
kitchen, both inch by inch. She could find nothing unusual about
either room, nor any sign of advanced technology. They were just
simple, comfortable places in which to eat or sit and talk with
friends. If Dulan’s house was an illusion, it was a remarkable one.
Whatever she saw or touched seemed completely real to her.

Having finished with the main rooms, she
decided to investigate the guest quarters as Herne had suggested.
There she found another plain white room with a large bed topped by
a brightly striped coverlet. There was only one window. Leaning out
of it, Merin could see on her right the curving shore of the
harbor. The house was set on a slight rise in the land. Directly
before her, a garden of blue and white flowers sloped down to the
wide salt marsh, which had as its farther boundary a row of sand
dunes. She watched a herd of long-legged antelope-like animals
browsing among the waving marsh grasses that shone green and gold
in the setting sun.

Turning from the peaceful scene, Merin
discovered a door that led to a bathing room. A white stone tub was
set into the floor and next to it a bench with a red and blue
striped cushion. At one side of the bathing room was a tiny,
high-walled courtyard filled with green plants. There was no sign
of any other person, and only the faintest sounds penetrated from
outside the house.

She looked at the tub with yearning.
Oressians were a meticulously clean people, trained to bathe at
least once a day, and she had just spend four days aboard the
Kalina,
where water was rationed and the crew had to use
automatic cleansing chambers that cleaned by sound waves. Dulan had
said to refresh herself….

Nearly overcome by another wave of the
curious lightheadedness she had periodically felt since leaving the
shuttlecraft, Merin sat down on the bench near the tub and put her
head between her knees. When she felt better she lifted her head
again, her eyes slowly focusing on the tub.

The longer she looked, the more enticing
became the prospect of a bath. She knew perfectly well that the
strangeness of her situation was affecting her judgment. Normally
she would not even consider taking a bath in an unfamiliar place.
For an instant she felt giddy again, just as she decided that
whether her surroundings were real or an illusion, she was going to
have the bath she needed and wanted so badly. She turned the
handles that opened the pipes.

While water poured into the tub, she hastened
back to the main room. Dulan had not returned and there was no sign
of Herne. She made certain the door to the guest chamber was closed
before she went into the bathing room once more.

She had been taught to remove her clothing,
lather herself with cleansing liquid, then to rinse, dry herself,
and replace her clothing as quickly as possible. Shampooing was to
be done with equal dispatch. Under no circumstances was this
process to be enjoyed. Bathing was a hygienic necessity, no more.
But today, whether because of the unusual circumstances in which
she found herself and her doubts about the reality of everything
she saw, or because she was still unnerved and a bit giddy after
piloting a powerless shuttlecraft into a safe landing, Merin found
herself sinking into the warm water with a sigh of relief. Her
tense muscles relaxed and the headache that had begun to pound at
her temples blurred and faded away.

There was no efficient cleansing liquid, just
a bar of flower-scented soap that burst into bubbles when the water
touched it. The water itself was silky-smooth on her skin. A tiny
wisp of steam curled upward into the cool air of the bathing room.
Merin dipped her shoulders beneath the water, splashing soapsuds,
and then began to wash her hair.

* * * * *

Herne returned to Dulan’s house in a state of
increasing frustration and with a pounding headache. In the
deepening dusk he had been unable to locate the grotto entrance.
The garden was surrounded by a smooth white wall, its only openings
the door to the alley that led to Dulan’s house and the wide double
doors into the hall where the Chon statue was. When he hurried to
the main entrance of the hall he had found it locked, so he could
not leave the hall to go into the square in front of it. With
growing irritation, he had searched the hall from end to end,
carefully examining the golden statue and its pedestal before
returning to the garden to hunt again for some indication of where
the grotto was. Nowhere in garden or building did he see another
person or hear any sound but his own footsteps. Convinced that he
and Merin were the victims of an elaborate illusion, he retraced
his steps, regretting that he had left her alone, hoping he would
find her unharmed.

Dulan’s sitting room was empty, as was the
guest bedroom, but he could hear someone moving in the room beyond.
Cautiously, he pushed the door open to look within. A faint mist
hovered above the sunken tub, a mixture of steam and a delicious
perfume. The last traces of bathwater bubbled gently down the drain
as a woman stepped away from the tub, her every movement flowing
with unaffected grace.

At first he thought it was Ananka, and he
took a purposeful step into the room, intending to accost her, to
demand an explanation for what had happened to the shuttlecraft as
well as for why she had made an entire city appear where only ruins
should be. Then he saw Merin’s orange treksuit and her coif, both
neatly folded on a bench beside the tub. Unaware of his presence,
Merin was drying herself with a thick, white towel.

Herne watched, enchanted by the sight of
slender arms and legs and a perfectly formed body. Her rounded
breasts were tipped with small, rosy nipples, her neck was a smooth
column of sculptured ivory, her pale, sharp-boned face, softened by
the tender warmth of the bathwater, was lightly flushed with color.
And her hair….

Herne had never seen such hair before. Thick
curls the color of the richest, finest-brewed dark brown qahf
drifted to below her waist. When she moved, the lamps embedded in
the bathing room ceiling struck gleams of gold and deepest red from
that hair. How could any woman bear to cover such an asset, to keep
it hidden from the eyes of all men?

He wanted her. All during their days aboard
the
Kalina,
he had been tormented by his growing desire for
her and now, with a heavy, imperative need, Herne knew he had to
have her. She had admitted that she wanted him. It was possible
that it would not take much persuasion to make her his. He watched
her rub the towel down the outside of one long, beautifully formed
leg, over thigh and knee and calf to ankle, then back up the inward
side of her leg, stopping at her thigh. Herne’s fingers itched to
follow the same path, to stroke that smooth, soft skin, to touch
her and then to place his mouth
there,
where she was drying
now. At the thought of her moist warmth beneath his lips, his
common sense deserted him. With that desertion all his sense of
danger from their present strange situation evaporated. He could
think of one thing only.
Merin.

Stepping back into the bedroom, he stripped
off his clothing as quickly as he could, knowing he must hurry
before she had time to replace that wretched loose treksuit and her
ridiculous coif, to hide her incredible beauty from him or from
anyone else who might see her. When he returned to the bathing room
she had just finished toweling her hair and was reaching for the
treksuit.

* * * * *

Still slightly disoriented and feeling a
little dizzy, lulled into drowsy relaxation by the unfamiliar
sensuous delights of warm water and perfumed soap, Merin thought it
was appropriate that Herne should materialize before her while she
was thinking of him. He looked just the way he had when she’d
dreamed of him the first time.

Of course, he wasn’t really there. She was
only dreaming again. He would take a step or two toward her, as he
had done in her earlier dream, and then he would vanish. And since
he wasn’t there, and no one but herself could possibly know, she
ought to take advantage of the opportunity to study him. He was the
only unclothed person she had seen since she was ten years old. She
was unlikely ever to see anyone else undressed, real or imagined,
because after this lovely dream was finished she would force
herself into the most rigorous forms of Oressian discipline, so
that she would never dream again. But for the moment, in this
strange and unreal place…in this time out of all time….

He came toward her, as she had known he
would, and even though it was only a dream, and she knew she could
make herself wake up whenever she wanted, she began to tremble. But
then he touched her. His hand brushed along her cheek and reached
into her hair. She knew the touch of his hand on her face. She had
felt it before. She had felt his kiss, too, so it was not
surprising that she should dream of it again now. He gathered her
into his arms, his flesh warm against hers, and she shuddered at
the contact, half rousing from her dreamlike state, then sinking
back into it. She did not want to face reality yet. Not yet, not
until after he had kissed her.

“Merin.” His mouth was in her hair, at her
throat, against her ear. “It’s you I want, only you.”

Overwhelmed by unfamiliar sensations, her
inhibitions dangerously frayed by the lightheadedness that would
not go away, Merin half fainted into Herne’s arms.

“Let me love you,” he whispered. “I’ve wanted
you for so long.”

Her hands moved around his neck, her head
rested on his shoulder. She knew by then that this was no dream,
but she could dredge up no feeling of appalled horror, which would
have been the appropriate Oressian reaction to what was happening.
All she knew was that she wanted Herne to go on holding her.

“Please,” she whispered into his neck,
“please kiss me.”

Herne lifted her face, holding her so they
were almost mouth to mouth.

“Hold me close.” Her voice was a breath, even
lower than a whisper. “Let me feel all of you against me for just a
moment. When I’m alone again I want to be able to remember
you.”

She watched the rugged harshness of his face
soften into tenderness. He pulled her closer, his arms holding her
gently but firmly. Merin trembled under the touch she had ached to
know, yet had for so long refused to admit wanting. His body
imprinted itself upon her mind with a vividness possible only to
one who for all her life had been denied tactile pleasures.

The heat of his mouth on hers brought with it
the memory of the other times when he had kissed her. Under his
tutelage she had learned a little of that art. She opened her lips.
When he did not respond at once as she wanted she pushed her tongue
toward him, across his lips and into his mouth. She tightened her
arms around his neck, pulling her body upward and harder against
him.

His hands were on her hips, moving them
forward. At the same time she felt a stiff, hot part of Herne
probing against the place where her thighs joined. She did not
understand what he was doing, but she instinctively shifted her
position a little, allowing him the access he sought. She stood
there for a breathless eternity, pressed so tightly to Herne that
she could almost believe they had become one being, with his tongue
searing her mouth, her breasts crushed against his chest, their
thighs together, and that hot, hard part of him thrust between her
legs. Merin tensed, quivering, shaken by previously unknown, yet
now absolutely undeniable needs.

“Help me,” she moaned when he freed her mouth
enough for her to be able to breathe again. “What do I want? Why do
I feel - ? Herne, Herne, don’t let me go.”

She was lifted in his arms, swept off her
feet. She was unaware that he was carrying her until he laid her on
the bed in the guestroom. Half-blinded by uncontrollable sensation,
she reached toward him, to pull him back against her. He came
willingly, to put his mouth over the tip of one of her breasts
while his fingers played with the other. Merin gave a cry that was
part scream of alarm, part moan of pleasure. Erotic desire,
ruthlessly repressed for all of her life, came fully awake under
Herne’s searching hands and mouth. By the time he carefully
separated her thighs she was beyond thought or words. With her eyes
closed she felt his touch, and recalled vaguely that no one was
ever supposed to touch another person in that spot. But his fingers
were gentle. Too gentle. She wanted more, wanted pressure and
friction and heat. She opened her eyes just in time to see what he
was going to do.