And if the maks weren’t allowed to roam the hall in search of food they wouldn’t be pissing and defecating all over the place and adding to the stench.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to clean things up a little?

For his own comfort.

Noelle was torn between absolute fascination as she studied the hall and its occupants and horror and disgust. She’d heard about primitive societal behavior—from Monica—and before that from Grandmother, who’d had an interest in history that coincided with her interest in her family line. She’d even read about some of the customs and behavior of early man, but she’d never imagined what the reality of it must have been like.

Of course this wasn’t Earth and these weren’t the people who’d occupied that time. She was certain there were as many differences as there were similarities, but the filth—well, she’d read about the grossly unsanitary conditions of mankind’s civilization—and apparently mankind weren’t the only ones that had taken a while to elevate themselves from lower animals in that respect. Right up until the twenty first century, in the poor countries, diseases ran rampant because of the horribly unsanitary conditions.

Ignorance played a huge part in that. They apparently didn’t know that living in their own filth would make them vulnerable to diseases and weaken them at the same time. She was inclined to think laziness also played a part, but that was harder to determine since survival depended on finding or growing enough food to eat and that was pretty much a full time job—not really leaving a lot of time or energy for cleaning.

She supposed that could be said to be true about this species, as well. Terl had said they were only able to grow food during a very short growing season and that meant that they must spend a lot of time hunting food to supplement. Men were prone to be more muscular—at least human men and that was certainly true of Drak so she thought she could assume it was true of the others, as well. And muscle required more calories for maintenance.

Of course, they seemed to conserve their energy when they weren’t out hunting.

But maybe that was a class thing? Maybe the warrior class was too good to stoop to cleaning? And there didn’t seem to be much of a servant class.

The women, apparently, weren’t expected to do anything but adorn their beds and breed.

“What do you think?”

Startled out of her thoughts, Noelle merely stared at Drak blankly. “About what?”

He gave her a look. “As an … outsider, what do you think?”

Noelle felt her face heating. “Actually, I’m a scientist—so even though this isn’t really my field, I’m try to just observe and collect data—and not make conclusions until there’s enough data to suggest a trend … if you know what I mean.” She smiled at him with an effort.

“Actually, no. I do not know what you mean.”

Noelle blinked at him. “Well, it’s just guessing, you know, until you’ve gathered enough facts to arrive at a … uh … factual conclusion.”

“So what are your preliminary notes?” he asked with patently false pleasantness.

Noelle cringed inside, frantically searching her mind for an escape. She cleared her throat uneasily when nothing immediately came to mind, struggling to fight down another blush of self-consciousness and trying to figure out if her observations might be construed as insulting to him or not. She supposed that depended, largely, on her tone. It could certainly be taken that way, she knew, if she wasn’t careful, but if she didn’t allow a judgmental note to enter her voice, then he surely wouldn’t think she was being insulting?

Or think she was trying to be.

“Well, as I said, this isn’t really my area. There does seem to be an issue with sanitation ….”

Drak looked at her blankly when she threw in the English word.

Noelle decided she didn’t actually want to explain it to him on second thought. She was pretty sure she’d be insulted if anybody looked at her place and said ‘My god! It’s so nasty!’

Trying to think of something to distract him, she fortuitously recalled her visit to his treasure room and the things she’d seen there. “I was wondering if I might be able to talk to that … uh … teller you mentioned that keeps the stories of the tribe? I was really interested in the legend about the two worlds. I think, if it’s true that explains the regression I see here.

“I mean this stage of development is strongly reminiscent of the medieval period on my home world, Earth, as far as I can see, but that was early in man’s development. Relatively early and it seems to me—from the technology—that your people were much more developed at one time and must have suffered a serious setback.

“I was just wondering, since it seems that must have happened a very long time ago, why it was that your civilization hadn’t caught up again.

“But maybe that’s because the women don’t live here? I’m pretty sure most of the advances we made on Earth was because of women—because women like to have a comfortable nest, if you know what I mean, and men don’t seem to care much about whether they’re physically comfortable or not. Or … uh … they’re able to be comfortable in far less … uh … comfortable circumstances.”

Oh my god! Somebody sew my mouth shut! This is getting worse and worse!

“There were similar incidents on Earth throughout its long history—nothing on this scale, of course, but that wiped out earlier attempts to build a civilization …. So I sort of have some examples to compare this with. Well, what I mean is the people who know far more about this sort of thing than I do would be able to take the data I collected and use it to come to a better understanding ….”

Drak emptied his cup and set it on the table with a resounding thunk, shoved his chair back and got up. Before Noelle could bound to her feet, he reached her, lifted her straight up from her chair and tossed her across one shoulder.

She nearly lost the little food she’d been able to consume when she landed on that broad blade belly first.

Hoot’s and catcalls followed them across the great hall and all the way up the stairs.

Chapter Twelve

Noelle had fully expected something frightening to happen once he had the leisure and privacy to exploit his displeasure over her assessment.

It was certainly unnerving.

But, once Drak had closed and bolted the door, she discovered he had something way more exciting to do to display his mastery over her.

Instead of tossing her onto the bed as he had before when he’d carried up the stairs, slung across one shoulder like a hunting trophy, he merely allowed her to slide down his broad chest until they were nose to nose and covered her mouth in a kiss that was electrifyingly, savagely, possessive.

It could have been hurtful if he’d been of a mind to harm. Instead, it was punishing only in the intensity of it, in the heat it produced inside her that scoured her nerve endings like acid. There was great hunger in the way his mouth moved so possessively over hers and he conveyed that to her, lit her on fire for his touch even though doubts still fluttered darkly at the back of her mind.

When he finally broke the kiss and allowed her to slide the remainder of the way to floor, her toes touched and her legs turned to the consistency of rubber. She thought she would have wilted limply to the floor if left to her own devices. Instead, he swung her into his arms and carried her, climbing onto the mattress on his knees and sprawling over her.

They were both still fully clothed. Worse, Noelle had the damned cloak he’d given her tangled around her. She thought she was going to pass out from the amount of heat he generated that was captured within the cloak and baking her.

Pulling away after a second devastating exploration of her mouth, Drak shrugged out of his tunic. Noelle untied the cloak from around her neck and did her best to fling it off. She was only partially successful, but she managed to shed it enough to give herself a little breathing room.