“Celebrate a little,” added Pandasala.

They gave her a push toward Zabb. Even just walking to the dance floor, their heels struck music from the parqueted wood floor. Tis’s chest was tight with nerves.

All Takisian dances were intricate, the footwork complicated, but ‘Crystal Flowers’ surpassed them all, for there was one entire line of the music missing from the orchestration – it was to be provided by the dancers’ shoes.

The base of the heel striking the floor was one note, the crystal tap on the toe another, and there were five more notes in ascending order on the high heels. It required precision to tap one heel against the other at precisely the proper level to elicit the necessary note and complete the music.

While Zabb and Tis hung to the side waiting for the music to figure back to the beginning, Tis nervously played scales, reminding herself of the placement of the notes.

“Relax, you’re a good musician. This is all in the ear,” Zabb said.

“And the feet,” Tis said bitterly, as Zabb led her in and they were into it.

For the first few measures the music was her biggest worry. Then the pattern of the dance intruded with burning clarity. During an intricate side movement Zabb bent and brushed her wrist with his lips, Tis closed her eyes briefly. Bobbled and missed a note.

“Oh, shit!”

“It’s only one note.”

“It’s this whole dance!” she said bitterly.

It had its origin in country peasant dances. A spring dance, the historians thought, to celebrate the return of life and the running sap. And not only in trees and flowers, but men and women as well. Its country incarnation was bawdy and sexual. The Zal’hma at’ Irg had refined it over the generations, but it was still a wildly romantic dance. Tis had loved it as a young man. It was an excellent barometer of a women’s interest.

They had progressed past the fingertips and wrist and graduated to the temple and the corner of the mouth. Zabb smelled of spice and musk. Forcing a detached academic interest, which she really didn’t feel, Tis noticed that it was much easier to steal a kiss when you’re taller than the woman. Her mind pursued the trivial, hoping it would still the torrent of emotions and sensations rushing through her body.

I ought to just quit. Leave now. I ought to. Goddamn hormones!

Music and motion, and that white chiseled face. The skin on his upper lip was paler than the rest of his face. Ideal, he shaved his mustache! His hand closing on hers. Final figures now. Zabb brushing light kisses onto her mouth with each pass. The final kiss. This was the acid test. This was where the woman told you if she was interested or not. This was…

He captured her. It was questionable if she’d ever really meant to flee. Arms closing around her in tight embrace. A long, deep kiss to last the final measure. The music stopped. Zabb pulled back. Rivulets of sweat matted his sideburns and beaded his forehead. White blond elf locks hanging about that narrow face. And a look in those pale gray eyes.

No wonder women flee from us. The hungry pressure from those eyes. All the anguished wanting!

Tis began to back away. Zabb thrust a hand at her. Control snapped, and she fled from the dance floor, her shoes making a wild ringing as she ran. The murmur of the crowd rising like a wind storm from behind her. She had done it again. Caused another scene at a family ball.

A stitch in her side finally brought her to a gasping halt. Footsteps coming. Her heart lifted – rescue… from herself. Tall, but not tall enough. Blond, but the wrong blond. Dangerous not safe. Zabb not Mark.

Tis slumped against the wall. Zabb thrust his hands into the pockets of his duster-like coat and offered support to the other wall of the corridor. They eyed each other across a three-foot chasm.

“Don’t you think we ought to do something about… this.” She shook her head, a quick, terrified gesture. Zabb ran a frantic hand through his hair. “Ideal! You are driving me mad!”

“This is insane. You hate me.”

“Not true. You stood between me and ambition. That impediment has now been removed.”

“Impediment to what? Fucking me? You’ve done that very well, thank you, for a very long time.”

Zabb grabbed her shoulders. “You talk too much, Tis. You have always talked too much!”

She watched as her terror slammed into him. His hands leapt from her shoulders as if shocked. He clutched his elbows. Retreated again to the opposite wall.

“I’m sorry. I frightened you. I’m sorry.”

For a long moment they regarded one another. “How can I sleep with you? How? I’m wounded in ways you can’t see, and I don’t fully understand,” Tis said.

“Then let me try to heal you.”

That drew an incredulous laugh. “Heal me? Sex is about trust and vulnerability, and a little like dying. How can I trust you?”

The crooked little smile couldn’t quite cover the desperation huddled in the back of his eyes. “Think of it as sublimation. I’ll get this gnawing need to kill you out of my system.”

Tisianne studied Zabb with growing calculation. A reluctant smile broke. “Think it will work?”

“Ancestors only know.”

“Are you a good lover?”

“The best.”

“All men say that,” Tis said dismissively. “I even said it.”

Planting a foot on the wall behind her, Tis pushed off. Stopped directly in front of him. Almost touching. She caught his chin between her fingers. Pulled his face down. Kissed him. Retreated back to her wall. No pockets. She buried her hands in the folds of her gown. Regarded him. There are many things to be said for telepaths. One is they know when to keep silent.

“All right,” Tis said. “Prove it.”

They had been at it for an hour. Fumblings, groping, awkward kisses from Tis, expert foreplay by Zabb. None of it worked. Each time he attempted to enter her, the terror returned. Tis lay on her back in Zabb’s bed and felt tears tangling wet and hot in the hair over her temples. Zabb wiped them away.

“Tis, do you remember your first toy?”

The question startled her from her internal pain. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at Zabb seated cross-legged on the foot of the bed. “Yes, Roxalana selected her, and father auditioned her.”

“And you had learned to play with her.”

“Yes.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“And what did she teach you?”

“About a thousand positions.”

“No, what’s the first and most important lesson a toy teaches you?”

“That sex is a state of mind,” Tis replied slowly.

“And what happened to you at Blaise’s hands was not sex. It was violence.” He stretched out next to her again. His skin was cold against her. He lifted her hand and laid it on his cock. “Now, you make love to me. Arouse me the way the male Tisianne liked to be aroused. I will not touch or caress you until you tell me to. You’re not powerless now, Tis. In this bed, at this moment, you control me.”

Hesitantly she began to explore his body. Zabb lay supine and helpless beneath her, and she liked the looming sense of power it gave her to look down at him as she knelt between his outflung legs. Under her delicate ministrations she soon had him at rampant attention. His excitement began to communicate with her borrowed body.

With a mouth gone suddenly dry she said, “Now, Zabb, now touch me.”

He laid a long forefinger against his temple, then against hers. “Touch me here first, Tis.”

Emotionally she retreated, though the body didn’t move. Lovemaking between telepaths was a total sharing. For almost fifty years Tachyon had been forcing the joining. With Zabb it would be a merger. She opened her mind to him and found no violence there. She read his arousal and pleasure, and for an instant he had returned to her the sensation of a penis. He gently stroked her labia, nipped at her nipples, and she fed back her pleasure to him.