Rychor tipped his head again. She thought she could actually see him thinking behind his eyes, which glittered with interest.
At last, he said, “This possibility does not make sense as an explanation for our species’ decline in females.”
“Whatisthe explana—”
Rychor stood up suddenly. “This exchange of information is diverting us from our primary objective,” he said. “I am not obtaining evidence that your sexual arousal is positively affected by it. I must return to my primary objective, having ruled this form of discussion out.”
“But, wait—” Sonya protested, reaching for him. She grasped his arm, her fingers barely making it halfway around his wrist. She felt his skin, soft and human-like, beneath her fingers as it changed, warming instantly to her touch, a flow of blood coursing under her palm.
Rychor glared at her. Between the change in his skin and his dominating stare, she was cowed and retracted her hand to place both of them in her lap.
“So what…” she said, her voice hollow, the ice forming beneath her skin again. “…will youdoto me?”
“I sense fear,” Rychor said, reaching his hand toward her. He turned his palm up and beckoned her with his fingers. She knew that he wanted her to put her hand in his, and as much as she wanted to resist, she did it. A sense of calm worked its way through her skin, into her bloodstream, and thawed the ice in her chest. “We will not seed you without your consent. That would be…” He paused and pressed a finger to the back of his neck with one hand, while he drew a circle on her upturned palm that seemed to go straight to her clitoris.
“…unethical,” he said a moment later.
Her brow arched. Her hand fell away from her mouth. “Unethical?” she whispered. “But spanking me isn’t?” Some subconscious part of her was trying to goad him, she realized. Trying to provoke him into dominating her with force again.
“The correction you received was for your own good. Your protection. You cannot consent while gripped by hysteria,” he said.
Her jaw fell. This guy had some nerve. “I beg your pardon?Hysteria?” she asked. She was aware that she sounded moderately hysterical, which added to her fury.
Rychor drew in a breath, then let it out in a heavy sigh. “Perhaps that is the wrong word,” he said. “It is interesting to note that the other females reacted similarly to it.”
“Yeah,” she snorted. “Perhaps.” She tapped her fingers on the stone table in front of her, then eyed him from under her brow. “And what if I don’t consent? What do you do then?” she asked, back on a mission to upend his apple cart.
He laced his fingers together, his gaze boring into her. “There is no ‘if,’” he said. “You will consent. This is the purpose of your time here with me.”
She snorted again and managed to roll her eyes. “Wow,” she muttered under her breath. “How romantic. Not to mention audacious.”
He pressed a fingertip to the back of his neck again. Looked like he was scanning a dictionary. His eyes shot up to hers a moment later. “There is nothing ‘audacious’ about certainty,” he explained.
She gave her head three slow shakes. The fog of the fruit might have been wearing off. She couldn’t tell for sure. She was more aware of her nakedness now. A hint of embarrassment had returned, and self-consciousness and doubt were creeping back into her thoughts. Her arm drifted up and she covered her exposed breasts with it. “So?” she asked, her voice suddenly fearful. “Whatisnext?” Her eyes darted off to one side as Rychor studied her.
“Would you care for another bite?” he asked, pushing the tray toward her. It was like he sensed the change in her demeanor.
“I’m good, thanks,” she shot back.
He considered her for a moment, and she got impatient with herself for enjoying the attention that he was giving to her, the thought of himthinkingabout her.
She folded her arms over her breasts. “There isno way,” she said, “that I am giving you consent to breed me. Not you, and definitely not some other… Ryvokia. So you might as well… send me on my way.”
Rychor looked thoughtful for another moment. She seemed to have made a connection with him, perhaps even be talking her way out of this crazy place, but once again he seemed to flip a switch. He nodded, once, and rose to his full, impressive height.
“You will consent,” he stated simply, and with an infuriating confidence that burned right through Sonya again. “All the other human females have done so. I have diverged from our well-tested protocols. I apologize for distressing you. We shall revert to the original methods now. I suggest that you consume your fruit and I will allow you to reconsider your choice.”
“No,” she said, feeling like a stubborn toddler. Even as she mounted her best defenses, determined to prove Rychor wrong about his “protocols,” she felt a snake of fear winding through her body.
What if he was right? What if she would be broken by their tests and “protocols?”
And why did she feel, following along in the wake of her fear, excitement? A perverse and twisted desire to find out what the Ryvokia determined were the most “efficient” sexual “stimulations” for her?
Rychor, to his credit, gave her a moment to reconsider, before waving the columns, table, and fruit away with his hand. The column beneath her began to sink first, so she rose to standing. The table disappeared behind it, and she stepped back to move her feet out of the way.
She blinked as the light in the cavern changed hues from ocean to sky blue, then finally to a bright, almost blinding institutional white, the same temperature as the corridors of her ship. There was nowhere to hide from it.
She suddenly felt as exposed as she had when she’d first woken up in the dark cavern. Staring straight ahead, she realized that stone patterns rising out of the floor had formed into a platform about three times as long as it was wide. It looked like something she might have seen in the infirmary on the orbital.
