“You can come sit down with me if you like,” Quartilla offered. She sat upright with a seemingly effortless sway that brought her knees around and lifted magnificent breasts while her dark hair swirled behind her. She patted the couch.
In a — business — like this one, serving the needs of men whose lust would turn to fury if frustrated by delay, there couldn’t be leisure. There should have been a pimp outside the entrance of the crib, itself doorless to hasten the operation. Here of course there was no need to collect the money, a sesterce or two, in advance, but one of the toadfaced bodyguards should have hulked at the entrance to prevent jostling and to jerk out of the crib any soldier who made excessive demands on the whore or her time.
There was no jostling because there was no significant delay. And there was clearly no concern about time. . . .
“How can they do this?” Vibulenus asked as he seated himself gingerly beside the woman. His intellectual curiosity was competing with his body’s requirements. His full erection proved that he need have no concern about that aspect of the repairs made to his body, and the dim, colored light hid the stain on his flesh.
“Are there so many of you?” he continued, reaching around the woman’s shoulders. He was sure that if he touched her breast as he first intended he would lose at least his ability to hear her answer. She was wearing a garment after all, a hard fabric that fit like a second skin but which had enough irregularity to whisper when the tribune stroked her hair against it.
“Time passes more quickly in these rooms,” Quartilla said, running a chubby hand over the skin of Vibulenus’ throat and the neck of his tunic. “Aging too, of course, but that doesn’t matter to you. Don’t worry, we won’t be disturbed.”
She kissed the tribune’s mouth while her gentle hand drew him to her. He cupped her breast — full, of course, but not as heavy as expected — and wondered whether he could get out of his tunic.
The breast was covered by minute hard nodules.
“W — ,” Vibulenus said. He fumbled for her other hand, the one that was reaching under the hem of his tunic. “Wait.”
He took a deep breath — it had no effect on his sudden dizziness — and asked, “Quartilla. What are you wearing?” With difficulty he raised his eyes to meet hers.
“Nothing at all, sir,” the woman said, smiling as she moved her body again with amazing fluidity. Her knees spread wide and she rocked back on the base of her spine to lift her vulva. “What would you like me to wear? Anything can be provided.”
The light was faint, but it was so close to being a point source that it threw a reticulated pattern across the female’s skin when she moved. That net of shadows was caused by the tiny roughness the tribune had felt. Now that his eyes were adapting, he could see that Quartilla was covered by —
Vibulenus leaped to his feet, instinctively ready to strike the female if she tried to hold him. “Light!” he shouted. “Give me light, curse you!”
The walls glowed white, relegating the red bead to merely a decoration in the corner. The lighting was normal and thus dazzling to the tribune at this moment, but he had no difficulty in seeing that Quartilla was covered with translucent scales.
The underlying color of her flesh was pale green. The scales gave it a metallic luster.
“You’re. . . ,” Vibulenus said. “You aren’t. . . .”He didn’t really have the words to complete either attempt.
“I’m not of your race, no,” said Quartilla, tucking her feet beneath her fleshy buttocks. The movement was utilitarian, not seductive, but it seduced the tribune despite himself because it was made with perfect economy and physical control.
She looked down at herself with dispassionate appraisal. “But I look a lot like I ought to, don’t I? I didn’t used to, you know. . . .”
“I thought you were a woman,” Vibulenus whispered. The light he had demanded was a pressure squeezing him and turning each pulse into a hammer blow in his temples.