began to manipulate him. Blade kissed and sucked her breasts and' let his hands roam over her body, the small waist, hard firm nates, the long legs, and back.
But when at last he took her to the ground, gently, and tried to take command she would have none of it. She squirmed agilely, with surprising strength, and rolled atop him.
'You do not know,' she whispered. 'In Sarma it is done so - I am a woman. You are only a man. You must obey me in these things, Blade.'
For the moment he humored her. He was aroused and having trouble with his breathing and wanted only to get on with it. Yet she delayed.
Blade lay supine, waiting, his enormous lingam a tower up-thrust. Zeena regarded it, her violet eyes narrowed. She touched it and bent swiftly to kiss, then retreated and made the sign of the T. She stared at the dark sky, then down at earth and scratched a symbol in the dirt. She began to mutter, a prayer or litany of sorts, most of which Blade could decipher although she slurred words and spoke softly.
'I offer myself, Bek-Tor! Two bodied God, God of two, God of good and evil, of sky and earth. I immolate. I marry. I shed my virgin blood and so stain this man with it that never can it be washed clean.'
Blade blinked. Virgin? He had not counted on this.
Zeena came to stand wide legged over Blade. She stared down at him with eyes slightly glazed now. Slowly she began to lower herself. Lower - lower -
Blade ached, wanted, desired, demanded. His fingers arched and clawed at the earth. At the moment he was more stallion than man, more beast than human, and knew it and did not care. A sound came out of him that he had never heard before.
Lower. Zeena reached down and found him and guided him to that sinking pink orifice. Flesh touched. Blade fought back the urge to lurch upward and penetrate her. Do it her way. For now.
She raised both hands to the sky. Blade put his hands on her breasts.
Zeena cried out, shrill and sharp, 'I marry, Bek-Tor. I marry!'
She let her weight fall on Blade. She pushed down with all her might. Her face twisted in agony and ecstasy and she screamed once. Blade felt the warm stain of blood as it trickled down his thighs.
As his senses fled, as he began to thrust into her, as the slick maddening friction began slowly to build, Blade had a last clear thought.
He was sure as hell married. Married in Sarma, to a Princess of the Royal Blood. What might come of it?
Chapter Eight
In the next week Richard Blade learned much. Enough to stay alive and to see his schemes prosper. He threaded a maze of danger and walked adroitly amid gin and pitfall; he coaxed and cajoled and demanded and threatened. He survived.
It was not without irony, and this he admitted to himself, that his survival was largely due to his phallic prowess. Blade, so magnificently conditioned in body and brain, so painstakingly educated and nurtured through his formative years - and now the end product of Lord Leighton's computer and millions of pounds - now depended almost solely on his ability as a cocksman. There must surely be a moral in the predicament somewhere. He made a firm decision to think it out when he got back to Home Dimension. If ever.
It had been very simple. After the first love making, after Zeena broke her hymen on him, Blade had taken over. To be more exact he had turned her over. When at first she resisted he used force and told her, 'I am the man. In my land it is done this way. And this, Zeena, is the way it is going to be!'
And so it was. Zeena soon lost her look of bewilderment, forgot for the moment that women ruled in Sarma, and began to slide under him at every opportunity. Even Blade, as robust as he was, would have welcomed a respite. He was careful not to let Zeena see this.
He developed his plan, revealed it to both Zeena and Pelops and took their acquiescence as a matter of course. If he had learned anything from his excursions into Dimension X it was that he must always be in command. He must stay on top of the situation, think and plan ahead, and hold his mistakes to a minimum.
So, according to plan, they had come to Barracid, where the battlemen trained for the great gladiatorial shows in the capital city.
'Where better to hide,' said Blade, 'than among slaves? As slaves. Who sees the trees when he is in a forest?'
Pelops objected at first. He cried, literally and vocally, and said he would not be a slave again. It was Zeena, not Blade, who talked the little man around. For by this time Zeena was Blade's slave. Her eyes seldom left him and she leaped at every opportunity to make love. She laved him in love. She doted. She lavished herself on him. Blade had shown her a paradise hitherto unsuspected by any woman in Sarma, and she was not about to lose it.
All this, as Blade well knew, could turn out to be a problem. But for the nonce it fitted into his plans.
He told them a great lie about being shipwrecked. His twin brother, in appearance exactly like himself, had vanished in the storm and wreck. Blade now sought him. In this Zeena promised to help.
After a long council of war it had been decided that Blade, as a stranger, was not, could not be, rigidly bound by Sarmaian law. He did not, in fact, exist in Sarmaian law. He was a stateless person. In Dimension H he would have been a person without a passport. If this was a handicap it was also an advantage. Blade, cunningly thinking ahead - and on the basis of information from Pelops - declared that he would become a battleman. A gladiator. He saw at once that it was the path to fame, fortune, and status.
'I will not have it,' cried Zeena. 'You will be killed. You are husband to me now and I would have you live.' She moved close and began to caress him.
Blade stroked her and nodded at Pelops. 'Ask him.'
Pelops, who was to go as Blade's servant - not slave - rubbed his fuzzy skull and said that if Blade was familiar with arms, which he said he was, then he should have no trouble. There was not a man in Sarma to match Blade in strength.
