asked. “I haven’t seen her tonight.”
PJ contemplated the floating ice in his highball glass. “She’s been ill for the last two nights, and has confined herself to her room. I haven’t even been allowed to pay her a get-well visit.”
“It must be serious, then.”
He gave her a doleful look. “Quite.” He returned his attention to his drink. His face was a mournful image of what Sula felt in her own despondent heart. “I must say that engagement to Sempronia hasn’t worked out quite the way I intended. I thought, well, a lively girl like that, she’d be fun to take around the city, we’d have weekends in the country, we’d be seen in all the clubs. And instead I see her only rarely, and when Ido see her there are suchcrowds, it’s hard to get her alone.”
Sula cast a glance at Martinez, still with Amanda Taen wrapped around his arm. “I know what you mean,” she said.
I was the one who insisted on returning to the party. This is what I get for not seizing the moment.
PJ surveyed her gloomily. “You’re looking very well, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“Thank you.” She glanced toward the buffet and the open bar. “I’m considering drinking myself unconscious.”
“That would be splendid,” PJ said. “I think you should. You have theright. ”
Sula realized that PJ was himself colossally drunk, and if the bronze maiden weren’t holding him up he would probably be sprawled across the marble tiles.
“You’ve earned the right to do anything you want, my girl,” PJ said. “Anything at all. Not like me—I haven’t earnedanything. I haven’t killed any Naxids, I haven’t managed to become a spy, I haven’t even had a jumble sale.”
Sula suspected that she would have to be drunk herself to follow this train of thought. “It’s not too late,” she said hopefully.
“I trust not,” PJ said fervently. “I trust not. I desire nothing so much as to be worthy.”
He followed this with a rambling monologue on the subject of wanting to participate in the war, and of his general unworthiness until this occurred. He praised Sula extravagantly. He praised Sempronia. He praised Martinez. He spoke of his own misery.
“All I do is give lunches!” he cried. “And what I really want is to be an informer!”
Sula was unable to follow the lurches of PJ’s misery, so she confined herself to making the occasional remark and sharing the all-round despairing atmosphere. Somehow Sula got through the next two hours, trying not to watch Martinez as he got Amanda Taen a drink, as he introduced her to other guests, as he laughed at something she said in his ear. Eventually she gathered the shreds of her dignity and gave her thanks and goodnights to Roland and his sisters. Then, heart in her mouth, she approached Martinez to tell him she was leaving.
“Wonderful meeting you!” said Amanda Taen, her eyes bright. “I hope I see you again!”
He won’t come, Sula thought as she turned the corner that led to her apartment. Why would he? She was irascible and difficult and uncertain—she wasn’t even the person she pretended to be—and Warrant Officer Taen was…was sothere. Soavailable.
Nevertheless when she reached her apartment she lit the scented candles she had ready and adjusted her hair and her cosmetic, actions performed with a growing sense of unreality, as if these rituals were unconnected with her or with anything else.
How pathetic am I? she wondered as she walked through the silent, scented room with the light of the candles fluttering on the walls like nervous butterflies.
He won’t come, she thought. Her nerves were so taut they seemed to sing.
And then there was a chime on the comm from the Daimong doorman, informing her that a Captain Martinez had arrived to see her.
A moment later he stood in her doorway. His tunic collar was unbuttoned and the ribbon of the Golden Orb hung from his breast pocket where the decoration had been casually stuffed.
Sula wondered if she could possibly manage words. “That wasn’t very long,” she said, by way of experiment.
“I waited three minutes. That was all the time I could stand.” Martinez stepped into the room and revealed what he’d concealed behind his back, a mate to the Guraware vase he’d given her the previous day, filled with a tangle of daffodils.
“You said you wanted another one,” he said. “I had it sent from a shop in Tula. I pinched the flowers from the party.”
Sula stepped forward, put her arms around him, and pressed her cheek into his shoulder. His warm scent surrounded her. The anxiety poured out of her in a long sigh.
“Three minutes was too long,” she said. “I kept picturing you with Miss Taen.”
He stroked her back with his free hand. “Amanda’s a jolly girl, but when I’m with her I see you. When I’m withany woman I see you.” He gave a rueful laugh. “I’m glad my mother isn’t on this planet.”
She choked back laughter. He kissed her nape. His fingers brushed the delicate hairs over her spine, and she shivered.
“May I come in?” he said. “The carpet in the hall is distracting.”
“Wait till you see the bed,” she said, and drew him inside.
In the darkness of the front room he placed the vase on the first horizontal surface he came to. Wanting his taste, she opened more of his tunic buttons and licked his neck. His large warm hands enveloped her scapulae. He bent to her lips, kissing her forcefully, and she remembered the last time she’d been with a man. It had not been rape exactly, but it had been violent. Sula remembered Lamey’s stunning slap against her cheek, the fist sunk into her solar plexus, the frantic business on the bed afterward. The money pressed into her hand.
“What’s wrong?” Martinez asked suddenly. He had felt her tension. His eyes were wide in the flickering darkness.
“Nothing,” she said quickly, and then, “Bad memories.”
“We should go slow,” he said. His hand traced the outline of her shoulder. “I don’t want you to have those memories when you’re with me. I don’t want you to run away.”
She took his hand in hers, raised it to her lips. “You’ve been patient enough. I’m the one who’s been unfair.”
“I—” He began a protest, but she silenced him with fingers on his lips. She took his hand and pulled him into the bedroom. His eyes took in the Sevigny bed, the dark wood pillars carved with capering primitive figures, each dancing with perfectly rounded parted lips and spiky hair; the four arching figures, two with bulbous breasts and two with erect carved phalli, that held up the canopy of woven grass.
“The apartment came furnished,” Sula said.
“Good grief,” he said, “they’regoing to be watching us all night?”
“Keep your eyes shut and you won’t see them,” Sula said.
“Ah,” he said, his eyes returning to her, “but then I won’t seeyou .”
Her veins ran with flame at the intensity of his glance, but she forced a more practical mood. Methodically she disrobed him, revealing the long, powerful torso balanced atop the shortish legs, the features which, with his big hands and long arms, had caused the duty cadets in the Commandery to nickname him “Troglodyte.”
The jealous bastards.
With her tongue she tasted Martinez again. This was not Lamey’s taste. This was not Lamey’s scent. These were not Lamey’s hands caressing her, or Lamey’s lips on hers.
She felt his hands unfastening the collar of her dress, and still in her practical mood she said, “You know, I’m not wearing much under this dress. Just stockings and—”
“You can keep the stockings on,” he said a little forcefully, and she felt a spasm of wicked glee at having, so early, triggered one of his fetishes.
Sheets crackled beneath them as they lay on the bed, Martinez unclad and she in her stockings. She pressed herself to him, kissing moistly, ardently. His hands floated over her flesh.
This is not Lamey’s bed, she thought. These are not his lips. These are not his hands.
It was becoming impossible to ignore the concrete evidence of Martinez’s arousal.
And this is not Lamey’s either, she thought.
“I should warn you.” There was evidence of strain in his voice. “You should know that there will be a point
