He gripped her by the arms, his fingers digging cruelly into the soft flesh there. Through the touch her untrained laran gift-which she could never control but which, in deep emotion, thrust itself on her involuntarily -made her aware of his frustration and anger, and desire. He wanted her, crudely, sexually, and in a kind of intense, man-to-woman hostility that she had never known since-incredulously, she identified it as what she had sometimes sensed, without understanding, between her father and his women. It turned her physically sick; she thrust him away without trying to conceal her disgust. Her voice was shaking.
“Kyril, I do not want to hurt you under your mother’s roof, where I am a guest. But you have known since we were fifteen years old that no Free Amazon trained in self-defense can be-can be raped. Don’t put your hands on me again, Kyril, or-or I will have to prove it to you again, as I did then.”
She realized, in shame and self-disgust, that she was crying.
When -we -were both fifteen years old, Kyril probably meant no real harm; it was a game he was playing, a game of adolescent pride: a little kissing and fondling, just to prove himself a man and my master. But I would not play that game with him then, and I wounded his pride more than he could endure. And I made him an enemy, and he is still my enemy.
“You bastard bitch,” he flung at her, and his face was very ugly; the more terrifying because it seemed such a cruel caricature of the face of her lover. “By what right do you play the whore with this stranger, and then turn away from my touch like any chaste lady? By what right do you refuse me what you so freely give him?”
“You dare talk of rights?” Her tears gave way to flaming anger. “Rights? I choose my lovers, Kyril-and by what right, then, do you complain that I have not chosen you? I would not have you when you were an arrogant boy of fifteen bullying his mother’s fosterling, and I will not have you now when you have grown into”-she caught back the crude obscenity on her tongue-“into her unworthy son!” She turned her back on him, hurrying toward the breakfast room, knowing that he would never dare make this kind of scene before dom Gabriel. She was not overly fond of Rohana’s husband, but she knew him for an upright man who would tolerate no offenses toward a woman and a guest at his own table.
But Kyril followed close on her heels, gripping her from behind, his fingers digging into the bruises he had made so painfully that Jaelle cried out. “How dare you talk of my mother and your respect for her? It has not kept you from behaving like a harlot under her roof! Does my father know how you have shamed our kin by flaunting yourself in this stranger’s bed? If he does not, my girl, then I promise you he shall know at once, and then your precious lover shall account to the Lord Ardais himself for how he has dealt with his kinswoman!”
“I am not his ward; I am a Free Amazon, and by law I am mistress of my own actions,” she said, and again, with that frightening laran awareness, sensed that he took pleasure-an active, sexual pleasure-in the pain of his hands bruising her arms, in her uncontrollable sobs. She fought hard to get herself under control again. She would not; she would not feed that sick thing in him that found pleasure in her suffering. She said, breathing hard, but her voice calm and steady, “What has Piedro done to you, Kyril, that you want to hurt him this way? Why are you doing this? I had thought you his friend!”
“This has nothing to do with Piedro,” said Kyril, and he was breathing hard, too. “He is a man; but you damnable Amazon bitches, thinking yourself free of all the rules for women, thinking that you can pretend yourself chaste ladies and demand that we treat you like chaste ladies, and then playing the whore when it suits you, flaunting your lovers- Zandru whip me with scorpions, but I will teach you that you cannot treat men that way!”