She hadn’t known her body could be played like that, that it could be made to override her will, her instincts, her pride. Another part of it was that Challen made her think there would be an end, that relief would come before the night was over. His kisses said so, passionate. His caresses said so, in no way indifferent. She had assumed he himself was aroused and merely using his phenomenal control. But she finally came to understand that was just another aspect of the punishment, hope raised and then destroyed.
He hadn’t been aroused by what he did to her, not even a little, or by anything she did or said. She flamed with shame every time she thought of how she had crawled all over him, kissing him, begging him to join with her. But nothing she did could shake his control. That was perhaps what hurt the most, not the agony of sexual frustration he put her through, but the fact that she just didn’t have what it took to play the same game. To want a man so desperately but be unable to make him want her back was worse than demoralizing. It made her feel inept as a woman, worthless, totally undesirable, and so miserable she could cry again, remembering it.
Stars, how she wanted out of there, and immediately, before she had to face the barbarian again. She couldn’t bear the thought of that, especially with this need still upon her.
But even if movement wasn’t still a physical reminder of what she had experienced, she couldn’t go searching for her communicator yet. Her punishment wasn’t just finding out what hell was like for a single night. Sometime during those many hours that Challen had devoted to her, he informed her that she was also confined to his bedchamber for a week. And an added little bonus to that was that she was to remain in the room without benefit of clothing.
She supposed this was to make her long to wear the chauri she claimed to hate. At the very least it was to keep her regret for earning punishment uppermost in her mind. But that wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t ever going to forget what had been done to her. Challen had the results he wanted out of the punishment. She wasn’t going to break any more rules. But she had what she wanted out of it, too. She had thought she needed a bad beating with lots of pain to make her hate him. He had accomplished it without a single blow.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Challen rode his hataar deep into the woods before dismounting. Fog was trapped in pockets low to the ground, making it a gloomy place well suited to his mood. He wasn’t there to hunt, though the area teemed with animal life. Two plump gray curaki, likely mates, cooed down at him from a nearby tree. A karril slithered around the limb of another. Kisraki bolted when the hataar grazed too close to their warren, but the well-trained animal merely swished his tail.
Challen chose the tree the karril was hunting in to sit under, almost hoping the slimy thing would drop down in his lap. He watched its slow progress along the tree limb without really seeing it, looking inward instead and not liking what he saw, any more than he had when his thoughts and lack of control had driven him from the castle earlier.
He had come so close to challenging the shodan of Shalah for some ridiculous reason he could not even remember, and all because a woman had his emotions twisted in coils of regret, anger, confusion, exasperation, guilt, frustration; and, Droda help him, it was not lessening one bit. Half those emotions had been with him since the previous rising when Tamiron first told him of the woman’s misconduct.
He had felt anger, more anger than he could ever remember feeling, that she had put herself in danger by the use of her strange skills. Also present, but more unusual still, was a feeling of strong annoyance that she had not worn the colors that would proclaim her as his, regardless that he had not explained the necessity to her. It was a rule meant to avoid confusion and keep warriors from claiming protected women if they should happen to become separated from their escort for any reason. But Challen realized it was more important to him that Tedra De Arr simply not be bothered, that he wanted no other warrior getting close to her.
Confusion came next, because he was feeling things he did not understand, but mostly because his duty was suddenly abhorrent to him. The woman had to be punished. There could be no exceptions in this, and it was his responsibility to do it. But he wanted not to do it. And this reluctance was also something he had never felt before.
He had been punishing women since he had become old enough to be responsible for them, mostly for behavioral reasons, not for the breaking of rules. Women obeyed the rules that pertained to them because they knew those rules were for their protection and benefit. They also did not like punishment and tended to avoid it with proper behavior, so he had not punished many women. Doing so had never bothered him before. It was simply something that had to be done. But he had punished only a few women in the way he had punished his Kystrani, and only because they had been sharing his bed at the time.
Yet it was the most common form of discipline for a warrior to give his own woman, the one he most preferred to use if he felt more than normal concern for her, since it in no way did her harm, and it was quickly over with. Denying sustenance only made a warrior worry for his woman’s health. Giving total solitude only made them both suffer, as did other punishments such as Darasha labors, which caused exhaustion, discomfort from rarely used muscles, and any number of other lingering adverse effects. Arousal without release was the punishment women preferred, too, if given a choice, and for the same reasons, but also because they knew if their need had not diminished by the next day, it would be seen to, to their complete satisfaction.
Because it was preferable to women, he had thought Tedra would think so, too, but still he had not wanted to do it. That reluctance had led to his stupidity in thinking a double dose of dhaya juice would make punishing her easier. It did. It also affected his mind somewhat, and now his memory, in that there was little he recalled of the actual punishment other than that he had been totally lacking in concern or mercy during the administering of it.
He did remember that, and not even caring that it was so, when both feelings were a prerequisite of discipline. But also absent had been all sense of time, only he did not know it until the dhaya juice had let go some of its hold near the new rising, enough for him to realize the punishment had continued much, much longer than it should have. And therein lay a guilt so strong, he wondered if he could ever face the woman again.
The karril dropped suddenly from the tree, landing a few feet from Challen’s bent legs. It was best not to startle the poisonous thing as it had startled him, so he remained still until it slithered off into the brush. But it had brought him back to an awareness of his surroundings, and to the Kystrani voice box he held in one hand.
He was not sure why he had brought the box with him. He fully intended to examine it, but there was no hurry to do that. Perhaps he had hoped it would speak to him, that he might learn from it a better understanding of his woman. But he knew not how to make it speak, or if it even would speak to anyone other than Tedra.
The box was white, with small gray things rising on its surface, some round, some rectangular. There was a smooth square black surface on one flat side, with a circle below it that contained many holes. In one end there was a deeper hole like an inverted cone, and all over the box were tiny raised markings similar to the scribbles in the scrolls kept by the Guardian of the Years.