“Was he angry?”
“I don’t think so.” His breath grew tighter. “Betan, I lived at Sheon-” (but she knows that, this is a stupid way to start) “-I don’t know the city, I’ve never been outside, except once, when I flew in- You do, a lot, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I go to the coast every spring.”
(Conjuring ribald jokes and student humor and mystic somethings every male in the world knew but him, more marked than Duun, scent-blind and naked as something newborn.) Betan sat close, knee touching his knee. Her eyes were wide and dark. “I never learned,” he said, and lost track of what he was saying, (not hatani, no: she was not; he did not need to be, for once he did not have to be complex, only simple, with Betan, who used to frighten him and now set her hand on his knee and slid it up.) He put his on hers, and felt the silkenness of her fur and felt the muscles slide, alive and taut as she leaned and stretched and came up against him with her hand on his body. “I never learned-”
He felt things happening to him all at once, felt things vastly out of his control and brought it back again. It was all very clear suddenly what he wanted and what his body was doing on its own, and he held her against him and maintained that good feeling as long as he dared, until he felt everything slipping again, and he took her belt and unfastened it quickly. She unfastened his. Her head burrowed underneath his chin and she leaned on him, all warm, and her smell had changed.
It was fear. He flinched, jerked her back by both arms and she twisted in his grip-“Betan!”
The door opened beyond her. A man walked out into the foyer. Betan jerked out of Thorn’s hands and scrambled off the riser.
Duun.
Betan stopped, of a sudden crouched and backing away. Thorn got to his feet. “Dammit- Duun!”
Duun stepped marginally out of the doorway and waved Betan to it. She hesitated.
“Get out!” Thorn cried. (Gods, he’ll kill her-) “Betan! Get out!”
She skittered out the foyer doorway and through the outer door like escaping prey. Duun glanced after her and looked back at Thorn.
Thorn shook. He stood with one foot on the sand and one knee on the desk and shook with reaction as he put his clothes together. Duun stood there as if he would wait forever.
“Leave me alone,” Thorn said. “Duun, for the gods’ sake leave me alone!”
“We’ll talk later. Let’s go home, Haras.”
“I haven’t got a home! A hatani doesn’t have anywhere! He hasn’t got anything-”
“We’ll talk later, Thorn.”
Thorn shivered convulsively. There was no choice. (There’s never been a choice. Come home, Haras. Give up, minnow. Pretend nothing’s wrong.)
(But she was scared. She panicked. Scared of me-)
“Come on,” Duun said.
“I wish you’d been a little later!”
Duun said nothing. Held out his hand toward the door. Thorn left the desk and the room blurred. (Your eyes are running, Thorn.) He walked out and in a vast blurred haze Duun walked beside him down the hall to the elevator. The silence lasted all the way to their door and past the guard there. That watcher was noncommittal, as if he read them both.
Duun closed the door behind them. Thorn headed for his room.
“There was no choice,” Duun said. “You know what you’d have done to her?”
“I wouldn’t have hurt her!” He spun about and faced Duun squarely, at the distance of the hall. “Dammit, I wouldn’t have-”
“I have to be more plain to you about anatomy.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt her/ I’d have-I’d-” (I can’t; couldn’t; but touching her, but her touching me-)
“I can imagine you’d have tried.” Coldly, cooly, from age and superiority. “Common sense was nowhere in it, Thorn. You know it.”
“Tell me. Lecture me. Gods, I don’t mind what you do to me, but you came in like that on her-What do you think you did to her, Duun-hatani? Is that your subtlety?”
“I promised you an answer. Years ago you asked a question and I promised you an answer when you could beat me. Well, you came close yesterday. Perhaps that’s good enough.”