Sharon Green - The Warrior Challenged

“I dislike your manner of evoking the reactions you seek,” he grumbled, bringing one hand up to rub at his bitten shoulder, his eyes still displeased with me but lacking that you’ve-had-it outrage which usually means I’m in trouble. “How am I to put strength behind those feelings which normally have no strength of their own?”

“All emotions have strength of their own,” I retorted, leaning down again to kiss the place where I’d bitten, at the same time using pain control. There hadn’t been that much pain to begin with, but kissing-it-to-make-it-better takes on new meaning when a Prime empath indulges in it, something that made Tammad chuckle again.

“An emotion doesn’t have to be strong to have strength,” I continued, looking down into his eyes as I toyed with the blond hair on the unbelievably broad chest I rested against. “What you gave me for sadness was this,” and I replayed the faint regret, “when you should have given me this.” I reshaped the emotion and brushed him with it, the feeling of loss that one has been expecting yet nevertheless deeply regrets. “Or this,” I added, making the loss unexpected and moving, the sort to bring tears to your eyes. Then I changed it to an opportunity gone that might have been more than worthwhile if it had been acted on, and the broad body under me squirmed in discomfort, the swirling calm trying ineffectively to block me out. “When you’re sending an emotion, don’t try to imagine it, fee! it. Let it touch you before sending it on its way, even if it’s an emotion a l’lenda doesn’t usually allow himself to feel. If a person doesn’t believe the emotion you’re projecting he won’t feel it the way you want him to, so you -have to make it real. The more real it is to the two of you, the more it will be felt.”

“There are no emotions a l’lenda refuses to feel,” he corrected, reaching up to brush a strand of hair from my shoulder. “Should a man refuse to allow himself to feel, soon he will become no man at all. Merely do I find difficulty with this-sending-you attempt to teach.”

“You’re not finding difficulty with it,” I corrected in turn, producing a sharpened look in the blue eyes watching me. “When someone says they’re having trouble with something, that usually means they’re trying but not making it. You, on the other hand, are not making it because you’re not trying. You think what I’m teaching you is dishonorable.”

“Indeed do I feel it dishonorable,” he grudged, not happy with the admission but not wanting to lie. “I continue to feel that to invade the being of another is completely lacking in honor, yet was I given this-gift-without having been consulted. I must learn the control of it so that I do not intrude without being aware of it.”

Only two days earlier, when I had regained my empathetic abilities after thinking they were gone forever, my brother empath Len Phillips had discovered that Tammad, the man who had banded me, was a strong, natural empath himself. Tammad was trying to hide the bitterness he felt, the deep-down despair that something like that had to happen to him, and I knew exactly how he felt. Asking, Why me? had filled a large portion of my self-dialogue in the months just past, and knowing it had to be someone didn’t do a damned thing to make acceptance easier.

“There are other reasons to learn that you should like better,” I said, putting my hand to his face as I let my compassion touch him so that I might share his pain. “Once you have the control you need, you not only won’t intrude accidently, the choice will be entirely yours whether you intrude at all. And don’t forget that if Len’s guess is right, most of the men on this world are empaths. If you happen to run into one who can control the ability, you won’t be at a disadvantage. Learning control will be just like getting better with a sword. There’s nothing dishonorable about getting better with a sword, is there?”

“No, hama, there is nothing dishonorable in increasing one’s ability with a sword,” he agreed with a soft smile, accepting not so much what I’d said as the reason I’d said it. He knew as well as I that he would have to come to terms with his doubts by himself, but I’d also wanted him to know I was there to help him, to make the time as easy and acceptable as possible. He did know that now, in a way untalented people could never experience, and when I touched him with the love I felt, he fumbled briefly to copy the emotion and send it back to me before drawing me closer for another kiss. There was no desire in that kiss, only the sort of pure love we had touched each other with, and when I raised my head to look at him again, we were both smiling.

“And that’s another benefit in learning control,” I said, spreading my hands out to enjoy the hard-muscled feel of his shoulders and arms. “You can tell someone you love them even in a crowd of people, and no one else has to know about it. Or, at least, I can do that. You still haven’t learned to narrow your projection enough. If anyone else had been in this room a minute ago, they would have felt awfully well loved. Your projection was fat.”

“Fat!” he repeated in mock outrage, his eyes twinkling as he shook his head at me. “I show the woman the size of my love, and she deems it overfleshed! I shall be certain to bring a switch when I return.”

“Don’t you dare!” I laughed, knowing this time he was doing nothing more than teasing me, and then it came to me that that might be just the time I’d been looking for to ask him about the strange urge I’d had lately. I didn’t know what his reaction would be, but I’d known from the first that even the asking would have to be carefully timed.

“I think I had best be on my way now,” he said before I could get my request phrased just right, stretching where he lay. “Sit up now, hama, so that I might rise and retrieve my sword. ”

“Tammad, wait,” I blurted, reluctant to let the opportunity slip away. “There’s something I want to ask you first.”

“My answer is what it was, wenda,” he said with a grin, reaching one big hand out to stroke my bottom. “When I return I will give you the joy you crave.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I protested, upset all over again at the new blush I could feel in my cheeks. I also wanted to push his stroking hand away from my bottom, but that was something I knew he’d never allow. “What I want to know is if you would be willing to teach me something in return for what I’m teaching you. A trade of skills, so to speak, so that both of us will benefit.”

“It pleases me that you wish to learn, Terril,” he said, and I could feel the strong approval in his mind. “There are, however, those who are far more qualified than I to teach cooking and such. Best would be that you await the return to our city, where there are sufficient wendaa to teach you what . . . . ”

“You don’t understand—” I interrupted, forcing myself to get the words out before I lost my nerve. “Oh, I do want to learn how to cook and do other things for you, but first I’d like to learn how to—use a sword.”

I mumbled the last three words, so I wasn’t sure he heard me, especially since there was no immediate reaction. Those blue, blue eyes stared at me for a long minute, the mind behind them practically motionless with surprise, and then he was fighting hard to keep laughter from erupting.

“So you would learn the use of a sword,” he said, his hand back to moving in a circle over my bottom, his voice even and his eyes studying me, just as though he were seriously considering my proposal. “And what would you do with such a skill once you had acquired it?”

“Don’t know,” I admitted, wishing I could make him stop touching me like that so that I could think. “Please don’t laugh at me, hamak, it really means a lot to me. Couldn’t you find a-smaller sword that you could teach me how to use?”