She shook her head and though I couldn’t see her face because of the table, I heard a sob in her voice as she answered.
“No!”
“Do you want the, er, treatment to be over now, my lady?” I asked her softly.
“Y-y-yes.” She was definitely crying by then. In fact, sobs were rocking her body, making me wish I could gather her into my arms and comfort her. Poor little female! My heart twisted in my chest again.
“Do you want help to get off the table, my lady?” I asked her.
She shook her head, unable to answer. But when she attempted to get off the table and nearly fell, I caught her by the arm. This time she didn’t pull away. She looked up at me instead, her face a mask of misery and her big, dark eyes full of tears.
“Thank you,” she whispered and then she ran off—ran into the fresher and shut the door behind her leaving me standing here, wondering what in the Seven Hells I had done wrong.
Sark stopped recording and shook his head as he looked into the fire. Poor little female—what had upset her so much? He’d been as careful as he could to honor the terms of his contract without going overboard. He hadn’t touched her in a sexual way at all. Or at least, not what he considered sexual. But you never could tell about another person’s culture.
For instance, the Zibwians of Zibway Prime thought nothing of rubbing their genitals together every time they met someone they knew and the Chimers of Chimeline Three entwined their long, snake-like tongues. On the other hand, the Gethwigs of Gettyweegan Twain considered even looks to be sexual. The whole lot of them went around wearing vision blockers all the time to make certain they didn’t make “carnal eye-contact” with members of the opposite sex who were not their mates.
Isla had said that females in her part of the world didn’t submit to massages. Perhaps even having his hands on her back and shoulders had been too much for her, Sark thought. It could be he’d fucked everything up royally and she was never going to trust him now.
Why her trust was so important to him, he didn’t know. After all, he was only here on a short mission—after the trip to Fenushia Alpha, his contract would be up and he would be leaving both the Lord Baslik Le’rank and his wife, Isla behind.
But none of that mattered at the moment. Sark only cared that it seemed he had hurt the little female and he wished fiercely he could make it up to her and gain her trust.
NINE
From the diary of Lady Isla, wife to Lord Baslik Le’rank of Telmar Two of the Orinthian System:
At first I was too distraught to write and great tears kept dropping to the pages of my diary, threatening to blur my ink. But I am somewhat better now and shall try to put down what happened with my new guard.
I seized my courage in both hands and went to demand that he should give me the treatment or “massage” as Baslik calls it, at once. For I could not bear waiting and wished desperately to get it over with.
Well, he told me to come into the sitting room where he said he had everything “set up.” I had no idea what he meant until I went and saw a long, padded table set up beside the fireplace. There was a hole in one end and I was petrified of it, fearing that he might make me put my lady parts there for some perverted reason. It is certainly what Baslik would have done in a similar situation.
But the giant only told me to lie upon the table and when I did so, lying face up, he told me to turn over and put my face in the hole—the better to breathe while he touched me.
Of course, I felt horribly vulnerable. I kept waiting for him to reach around and grab my breasts or start jabbing his big fingers between my legs as Baslik always does. But he didn’t. He just started rubbing my back with some sweet scented oil that reminded me of the peepla flowers we have back home on the Southern Continent.
It seemed to take forever. All the time he kept rubbing and rubbing and I kept waiting for him to get tired of fooling with my back and jam his hand between my thighs. But he never did—he just kept on making those long, soothing strokes up and down my back and arms and shoulders. And his hands were so warm. Not at all like Baslik’s clammy palms and cruel, pinching fingers.
Finally, I worked up the courage to ask if he wasn’t going to touch me anywhere else. But he said no—that anything else would be a “violation.” Then he asked if I wanted him to touch me and of course I said “no.” I could feel myself starting to cry at that point, though I couldn’t have said why.