[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
"What the hell are you drinking?"
"Fuji plum wine. Smell it?" She held it under my nose. The
aroma was delicious. I wrenched my face away.
"'Shoulder height of thirty-one inches, weight 120 pounds,
rounded ear tips . . . '"
"You're right on the mark about my weight and ears, but a bit
short on my height," Thera said. "I'm twice as tall as-oh, you
mean that position! We call it 'doggie fashion'-or maybe 'hyena
fashion' tonight. Well, since that's the way you want it, we'll put
the shoulders at thirty-one inches." She got down on her hands
and knees and wiggled her posterior suggestively.
It was pointless to react to her come-ons; it only led to more of
the same. I did want to learn about the animal hyena, getting
clues to the philosophy of the human one. "'Keen sense of smell . . .
lives twenty years or more . . . '"
"You mean I have only two years left?"
I resisted the temptation to goose her hard with my foot. "'Distinguished
by an eerie, chattering call, like a cackling human
laugh.'"
"Ha ha!"
"'Unpopular in some areas because it raids graves and digs up
53
and consumes recently buried bodies.'" I waited for her comment
on that, but it seemed I had finally shut her up.
"'Powerful jaws . . . able to crack virtually any marrow bones.'"
I looked up. "That explains the chewed-up bodies! He let the live
animal go at them."
"The one that was watching me . . ." she said, suddenly sober.
"'Feeds mainly on carrion, but is also a formidable night hunter.
No coward-has backed off and even killed old lions.'" I looked
up again. "That's some animal."
Then I discovered that Thera had risen from the floor, set glass
and candle on a bookshelf, and was undressing herself. Apparently
she had given up dialogue as unproductive, so now was turning to
a more basic strategy. She certainly had the figure for it. The flickering
candlelight made traveling highlights along her breasts and
torso, bringing first one rondure into prominence and then another.
Even the shadows were stimulating as hell.
I put my eyes firmly back on the page. However sweetly baited
it might be, I was not going to fall into that trap. "'Prodigious
appetite . . . Leopard forced to protect its kill by dragging it into
fork of a tree, out of reach of hyena . . . '" I shook my head. "That's
some fighter, if it backs off leopards too." But it was dangerous to
take my eyes off the page.
"'Powerful forequarters, but weak hindquarters, so incapable
of running at high speed . . . peculiar skulking movement . . . intelligent
. . . formidable organized hunter.'"
I stopped then, for Thera had blown out my candle and hers.
"Enough of this dawdling, Jason," she said, putting her warm
nude body into my arms. "I let you talk me out of it when you
taught me judo, but times have changed." Her hungry, wine-perfumed
lips sought mine.
"Thera, I don't want to marry you!" I said desperately. "It's
not my kind of life."
She laughed, a bit like the hyena, and I felt her breasts rippling
against me. "And I don't want to marry you, idiot! When I
was a child last year, I spoke as a child, but now I have put aside
54
childish things. You'd be dull as hell for more than a month, with
your prudish ways and your dismal karate-class routine. But I promised
myself I'd have you, and now is the time."
That put me in my place, all right. I had had quite another
impression. But it also released my inhibitions. If all she wanted
was a passing affair . . .
Possibly this was just another artifice, an attempt to compromise
me into marrying her. But that objection was only a small,
distant fling, easily brushed aside. I grabbed her in the dark and
applied a kote waza wrist-lock. With my right hand I took her left
hand, my thumb on her palm, my fingers on the back of it. I bent
her hand inward at the wrist, forcing her lower body against mine.
She was amenable; she yielded to the pressure, though it was token,
and thrust her pelvis forward against mine.
Somehow my neck/shoulder bandage covering the hyena's bite
got tangled in our embrace and ripped loose. I tore it the rest of
the way off and threw it aside, only spurred on by the momentary
pain. Yes, it was time.
"I hear something," Thera whispered in my ear as I loosened
my belt.
"Oh, so now we're being coy!" My pants dropped, and I ran
my left hand over her right breast and squeezed. What sensation!
"No-someone's in the hall!" she breathed urgently.
Then I heard it: a slight noise, as of a hand sliding along a
wall. I let Thera go and dropped into combat-ready stance, somewhat
hampered by the hobbling trousers around my ankles. Of all
times! It wouldn't be Drummond; was it the Hyena again?
Light flooded the room blindingly. My eyes hurt; they had
been adapted to the dim candle and then the complete dark. Evidently,
the power had been restored in the past few minutes, and
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]