“I appreciate your candor as well as your concern for my safety, but you will not be tested beyond the limits of your endurance. What you will do is remain still and quiet, and accepting of what you asked for. Is that understood?”

“You’re making it an order that I have to control myself?” she asked incredulously.

“I see you do understand,” he said gravely.

But Tedra could have sworn he was fighting to contain his own control-not to laugh. She turned back to face the table. The cooling food spread out there should have disintegrated, her look was so hot and murderous.

“Get on with it, damn you,” she snarled low.

“As you wish.”

His open hand came down of her bare bottom with that last word, and stayed there to await her reaction. That he was awaiting her reaction should have stirred her suspicions, and if not that, then the measly strength behind that first smack should have. It didn’t. She was just annoyed that it didn’t hurt, when what she still wanted was the pain that was going to permit her to hate him.

“Give me a break,” she said slowly and with thick scorn, trying to prod him to anger. “A mosquito bite carries more impact than that love tap. I thought this was to be a punishment, not an insult.”

“Is this better?”

The next blow was a little harder, but still nothing to blink at. Again his hand remained on her backside until she commented.

“Will you stop with the kid stuff and get serious?”

“As you wish.”

The next wallop had quite a sting, but wasn’t even close to drawing forth the tears.

“Why don’t you try your right hand?” Tedra suggested dryly. “You’re obviously lacking strength in the left.”

“As you wish.”

She gritted her teeth now, expecting quite a difference, but all she got was another sting identical to the last. Now both his hands rested on her only slightly warmed bottom, again awaiting her reaction. That reaction was quick and furious, and with no hand pressing her down, she twisted half around to give it to him full blast.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing? I dust my bracs off harder than that!”

“When you have had enough, woman, you need only say so, since this was your idea, not mine.”

“What?!”

“You asked to be beaten,” he reminded her and could no longer keep from grinning. “I thought it a strange request, but since your punishment was not to begin until after I had finished eating, I decided to grant your wish.”

She screamed in pure rage and swung at him, only to miss completely from such an awkward position. “You miserable son of a diseased sa’abo! You knew what I thought! How dare you play on my assumptions like that?”

“When a woman has such silly assumptions, a warrior cannot resist teasing her with them.”

All those “as you wishes” took on a different meaning now, the literal meaning, and she screamed again, and swung again. This time her wrist was caught, and with total ease on his part, he rearranged her until she was positioned exactly as she had been before he decided to play games with her.

“Now you will be still, woman.”

He released her wrist to see if she would obey him. She did for the moment, though she wasn’t done frying him with her eyes.

He had the nerve to laugh at her anger. “Do you now begin to accept the truth that a warrior does not give actual pain to a woman? Such is not needed to teach proper behavior when there are ways to punish that cause little harm. I told you this when first we met. You should have remembered.”

“Just what do my terrible misdeeds warrant, then? A night on my knees facing a blank wall?”

“Again you make assumptions and mistake the seriousness of what you have done.”

His humor was gone now. His hand came to her cheek, and this time she saw the regret in his eyes. It frightened her as nothing else on this world had.

“No, kerima,” he said softly, sadly, using his pet name for her for the first time that night. “Make no more assumptions. Before the next rising, you will swear to obey all rules. You will not only beg for mercy, you will cry. But your tears will not be heard by a warrior bent on his duty. A warrior’s control forbids it.”

She shook her head, denying his words, knowing by that word “control” exactly what he meant to do to her. But it wouldn’t be like before. This time he wouldn’t stop until she did beg, did cry, did swear to anything he wanted, and he probably wouldn’t stop even then. What he was going to do was designed to humiliate, to smash her pride, to turn her into a malleable, obedient Kan-is-Tran woman. It wasn’t going to hurt her. No, it was just going to drive her crazy.

Chapter Twenty-six

Tedra lay perfectly still on the narrow couch inside the closet, wishing she could go back to sleep to escape her discomfort. But she’d already slept the morning and half the afternoon away. Sleep wasn’t ready to come to her rescue again.

It was hot and stuffy inside the closet, but she had discovered the very moment she awoke that the nightmare wasn’t over. Her skin was still so sensitized from her ordeal that even the slight breeze today inside the bedchamber was an irritant. She had immediately shut herself away in the closet, where the air didn’t stir, quickly finding that the only relief she could get was in lying perfectly still, keeping even her breathing shallow.

Stars, what she wouldn’t give to have Corth there for five minutes. She was so primed for sex-sharing, she could likely experience a dozen orgasms in that short a time. Five minutes in the Rover’s meditech would do just as well.

She wasn’t going to get these wishes short of a miracle, or the hundreds of others she had made, most of them dealing with the disposal of the barbarian. But one in particular she had made she was going to accomplish on her own. At the first opportunity she was going to find her communicator and get out of Kan-is-Tra. There had to be warriors in other countries on Sha-Ka’an whom she could deal with more easily than Kan-is-Tran warriors. And the next time she wouldn’t make the colossal mistake of losing her phazor to one of them, or of giving, accepting, or even discussing challenge.

Stars, she was hungry, but she’d rather lie there and suffer the hunger pangs than go into the other room, where food had been left for her. Maybe she would starve herself. That would stick a bone up his nose but good. The thought gave her only a moment’s satisfaction before reality intruded to spoil it.

The barbarian wouldn’t let her starve. He’d just order her to eat, and refusing orders wasn’t an option she had, and not because of her honor. That got damned last night and wasn’t a part of this anymore. No, she’d do whatever he ordered because he’d punish her again if she didn’t, and she wasn’t going to go through that again, not ever.

She shivered with the memory of it, then moaned as that brought her nerve endings to life again. She had done a lot of moaning last night, and everything else he had said she would do. He’d wanted her to finish feeding him first, and she’d wanted to, just to buy time. But knowing what he was going to do to her had started it happening before he even touched her. She became so bothered from sitting on his loins, her hands started trembling and he had to finish the meal on his own. But once he was done…

It really was the most horrible experience of her life. Challen had brought her again and again to the point of hysterics, to where her need for him was so great she would have raped him if she could, to where she would have done anything, promised anything, for just one moment of the relief he could have given her. But relief wasn’t part of the deal, only the constant need for it, and he never let that need diminish even a little. He’d leave her alone for a few minutes while she prayed and prayed that it was over, but then he’d draw her back into his arms and start all over again.