Read The Spacetime Pool Online

Authors: Catherine Asaro

Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Literature & Fiction, #Galactic Empire, #Science & Math, #Mathematics

The Spacetime Pool (6 page)

BOOK: The Spacetime Pool
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The door swung
inward, moving slowly. Dominick stood in the archway, filling it with his
height and his presence. The dim light turned his shirt a darker blue and
glinted on the hilt of his sheathed dagger. The way he loomed, his face harsh
and starkly intense, evoked the specter of conquerors who swept across
continents, laying waste to their enemies.

 

“Hello.” Janelle
barely managed the word. Such a quiet greeting for so dramatic a man.

 

“May I come in?” he
asked.

 

She appreciated that
he asked, given that he could have done whatever he wanted. “Yes,” she said.

 

He entered, and the
room seemed to shrink. He closed the door, then came over and knelt on the
other side of the bed. His shirt was open at the neck, revealing a tuft of
chest hair, black and curly.

 

“Have you slept?” he
asked.

 

“A little.” She
wondered how the rest of his chest looked.

 

He watched her
watching him, and his lips curved upward. The shadows eased the hard edges of
his face. Sitting on the bed, he tugged off one of his boots.

 

Janelle froze. Now he
was taking off the other boot. He set it next to the first and started to undo
his shirt.

 

“Wait.” Her cheeks
flamed. If she hadn’t been so groggy, she would have realized sooner what she
might be agreeing to when she invited him into her room.

 

Dominick paused. “No?”

 

“I can’t. I mean—that
is—”

 

He waited. Then he
asked, “Do you want me to leave?”

 

“I don’t want to be
alone. But I don’t—” She stuttered to a halt, feeling like an idiot.

 

“It’s all right.” He
slid across the rugs and stretched out on his side facing her, with his head
propped up on one hand. He took up the entire length of the bed. She could see
why he might like sleeping on the floor; his legs were too long for a mattress.

 

“My monks checked
your hair,” he said. “You are Janelle Aulair.”

 

She flushed,
unsettled to have him so near. “Well, I knew that.”

 

He trailed his finger
along her hip, sliding up the robe, which suddenly seemed too short. “This is
pretty.”

 

She put his hand back
on the bedspread. Maybe she should ask him to leave. But she dreaded being
alone. He continued to watch her, his head tilted to the side as if she were a
puzzle.

 

“You must have more
names than Dominick,” she said, flustered.

 

“Indeed I do.
Dominick-Michael Alexander Constantine.”

 

Now
that
was a
moniker. “Those names are famous in my universe.” She was talking too fast
again. “Like Alexander the Great.”

 

“The Great.” His gaze
turned sleepy, as if he were a satisfied cat. “Tell me more.”

 

“He conquered Persia—”
She stopped as he tugged the sash of her robe. His knuckles brushed her inner
thigh.

 

“Don’t,” Janelle
said.

 

He traced his finger
along her cheek. “Do I offend you so much?”

 

“Sweet heaven, no.”

 

“Good.” His voice was
like whiskey, dark and potent. “Otherwise, this would be a rather uneventful
wedding night.”

 

Whoa. “You have the
wedding night before the wedding?”

 

“If the bride and
groom agree, yes.”

 

“What if they don’t
agree?”

 

“I thought you did.”

 

There was that. “If
you stay tonight, are we, uh, married?”

 

He watched her face. “If
agreement is reached, and the bride receives rings from the groom, then yes.
But public ceremonies are traditional and expected, especially for the royal
family.”

 

“Oh.” She hesitated. “Does
that happen tomorrow?”

 

“In the morning. Is
that all right?”

 

After a moment, she
said, “Yes. It’s just so strange.”

 

“For me, also.” He
stroked his knuckles along her thigh. “But not unwelcome.”

 

“Dominick...”

 

He rubbed the hem of
her robe between his thumb and finger. “This cloth is beautiful on you.”
Putting his finger under her chin, he tilted up her face. He kissed her deeply,
and she tensed, wanting him both to stop and to keep going. Her only experience
with seduction was on the level of sending out for pizza and Cokes; she was so
far out of her depth here, she was drowning.

 

When she didn’t
protest, he pulled her closer and eased the robe off her shoulders. When he
slid his palm over her breast, his calluses scraped her nipple, and she tingled
in places he wasn’t touching her. Then he drew back, his face unexpectedly
tender.

 

“Women are so small,”
he said. “Look at this.” He put the heel of his hand at the bottom of her rib
cage. His palm stretched up her torso and his fingers closed around her breast.
“I can hold so much of you, but you couldn’t even cover my ribs.”

 

His ribs. Clever,
sexy man. Of course she looked at his chest where he had unfastened his shirt.
A mat of hair curled over his muscles. She laid her palm against his abdomen,
feeling the springy hair, the hard muscles. Very nice. But very intimidating,
too.

 

“You smell like
flowers,” he said. Laying her on her back, he stretched out on top of her,
easing his hips between her thighs. Then he reached for the waistband of his
trousers.

 

“Wait!” Janelle said.
He didn’t seem to have any speed between
pause
and
fast forward.

 

He lifted his head,
his eyes glossy with arousal. “Wait?”

 

“No more.” She felt
like a fool, but she had just discovered she couldn’t go this far with someone
she barely knew, even if he would be her husband tomorrow.

 

He brushed his lips
across hers. “I won’t hurt you.”

 

“Dominick, I—no. No
more.”

 

Frustration crept
into his voice. “You tease me.”

 

“I don’t mean to. I
just—I can’t.”

 

He lifted his head to
look at her. “First your behavior says yes. Then no. Then yes. Then no. Which
is it?”

 

“I’m not ready.”

 

He lay there, propped
up on his hands, and she knew they both realized the truth. He could do
whatever he wanted and she couldn’t stop him. She lay still, meeting his gaze.

 

Dominick groaned and
rolled off her, onto his back. Then he threw his arm over his eyes and inhaled
deeply. He stayed there, silent and still, except for the rise and fall of his
chest.

 

Gradually his
breathing slowed. Finally he lowered his arm and turned his head to her. “You
are an unusual woman.”

 

That was tactful.
Better than
Make up your damn mind.
She wanted to hold him, to feel
safe, but she wasn’t safe with him. Although she didn’t think he meant to force
her, he would get angry if he thought she was deliberately leading him on, and
she could end up with more than she bargained for. She could also, she
realized, end up pregnant.

 

Dominick studied her
with that close focus of his. “I don’t mean to pressure you.” He smiled
ruefully. “But you’re so lovely, Janelle. Difficult to resist.”

 

Her face heated. “You
do sweet-talk a girl.” The southern drawl she had lost after her family moved
to Washington often slipped back into her voice when she was nervous.

 

“It may be ‘sweet-talk.’
But I mean what I say.” He took off only his shirt, nothing more. Then he slid
down the velvet cover and drew it over them both. Settling on his back, he
pulled her into his arms. She closed her eyes, relieved, letting her head rest
in the hollow where his arm met his shoulder.

 

“Dream well,” he
murmured.

 

“You too.”

 

Dominick soon fell
asleep, his eyes twitching under his lids. As she drifted into slumber, she
wondered if he dreamed of the towns and countryside that would someday fall to
his army. He could be gentle with her, but she had no doubt he was capable of
conquering a continent.

 

Would he wrack his
world with the ambition that led men to create empires—at immense human cost?

 

* * * *

 

IV

 

The Shattered Hall

 

Birdsong awoke
Janelle. She lay in a pleasant haze, listening to the dawn.

 

Then she remembered.

 

Her eyes snapped
open. It was real. She was still in the palace. Early morning light filtered
through high window slits she hadn’t seen last night. The room otherwise looked
as she remembered, beautiful and spare. And empty. Dominick had gone.

 

She rubbed her eyes.
Yesterday she had been a new graduate with good prospects; today she had
nothing but the unknown. She thought of Rupert Quarterstaff, the lawyer who
dealt with her inheritance. Two years ago, when she had been paralyzed by
grief, Rupert had stepped her through the estate settlement with a solicitude
that went beyond his professional duties. He expected to see her in a few days.
What would he do when she didn’t show? It would be a mess.

 

Janelle sat up,
rubbing her eyes. She couldn’t stay here as the plaything of a warlord who
wanted to conquer half of North America. She needed a library.
Someone
had invented Dominick’s gate. Pushing off the covers, she shivered in the cold
air. She went into the other room and bathed, then dried off with a towel
someone had left while she slept. Her clothes from yesterday were gone.

 

As Janelle searched
for something to wear, she kept noticing the walls. Something strange...?
Stepping closer, she peered at the mosaics. Wavelike curves intertwined in the
tulip designs. She hadn’t seen them clearly last night because they were the
same color as the swirling stems. The curves weren’t just wavelike, they
were
sinusoids: diffraction patterns, harmonics, or quantum wave functions,
beautiful and elegant. They were too accurate for coincidence; someone had
understood them well enough to reproduce the curves. It was another piece of
the puzzle, along with the Fourier Hall and Riemann gate.

 

Deep in thought, she
returned to the bedroom. Someone had come in while she bathed; her robe were
gone, and the bed had been remade, with fresh rugs and a jade-green bedspread.
As she toweled her hair, she surveyed the empty room. She couldn’t dress
without clothes.

 

When the doorknob
turned, she jumped. She barely had time to wrap herself in the towel before the
door opened. The three women from last night stood there, each holding a large
box decorated with abalone and opals.

 

“Uh ... good morning,”
Janelle said, clutching the towel around her body.

 

Her greeting seemed
to be the signal they expected. They bowed and entered the room. The older
woman took an ornate key off a hook under the lamp and handed it to a soldier
outside. He closed the door, and a loud click came from the lock.

 

Janelle watched them
uneasily. “Why did he lock us in?”

 

“For privacy.” The
older woman spoke in the same slow voice she had used last night. “I am
Farimah.” She introduced the younger women as Silvia and Danae.

 

Janelle was becoming
accustomed to the dialect and understood better this morning. It reminded her
of times she had spent with the families of dignitaries who visited her father,
how she had striven to learn their language. To her, such new words were gems
strung together to create sparkling necklaces of meaning.

BOOK: The Spacetime Pool
2.51Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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