Johanna Lindsey - Warrior’s Woman

“When you needs be a Sec 1, you may dress accordingly.”

“Stars, who’s the captain around here, anyway?” she grumbled.

“Martha claims to be.”

“Well, Martha is still answerable to me, though she likes to pretend otherwise. And I know farden well you haven’t had time to unpack anything yet, so how about compromising a little and letting me wear what I want to until you do?”

“When a warrior begins compromising-”

“Challen! Be reasonable for once, dammit!”

“If the Challen is displeasing to you, Tedra De Arr, I will-”

Tedra rounded on the android. “Stay out of this, Corth!”

“No,” Challen said menacingly. “I would hear what the man would do.”

Tedra rounded back on the warrior. “He isn’t a man. Why can’t you grasp that simple concept? He’s a machine, a companion, an entertainment android. He’s here to amuse me, and nothing else. He’s like a pet, Challen. Does that make sense to you?”

“I am also a fully functional sex-sharer,” Corth pointed out, much to Tedra’s horror.

“Now, Challen…” she said when he started toward the android again. “I’ve never used him in that capacity. You, more than anyone, ought to know that.”

“Nor will you be able to when I am finished with him,” the warrior growled.

“Will you stop! You can’t be jealous of a machine.” And then Tedra’s eyes widened at what she’d said. “Can you? Are you jealous, warrior?”

The look he gave her was priceless, full of chagrin, exasperation-and bewilderment. Warriors weren’t supposed to experience jealousy. That was a woman’s emotion. Yet he felt it, and couldn’t deny it, and Tedra was so delighted, all she wanted to do was shower him with kisses.

“Why don’t you go visit Martha in the Control Room, Corth,” Tedra suggested, doing her best to keep an idiotic grin off her lips. “I think she’s just got the results she masterminded and needs someone to crow to. Don’t you, Martha?”

“Sure do,” came the smug voice out of the large audiovisual console against one wall.

The voice and turned-on screen temporarily distracted Challen, and Tedra shooed Corth out while he wasn’t looking, then came up behind the warrior to wrap her arms around him. “You know, I swore a long time ago that one day I’d get you into a solaray bath. But you aren’t dirty, not even a little sweaty. But I know a way to get you sweaty. Wanna hear about it?”

He turned around so he was the one doing the holding. “Best you show me instead.”

That idiotic grin got loose as she unbuckled her blouse to drop it over the console screen. “Just remember, babe,” she said as she wrapped herself around him and was picked up in his arms, “if the bed moves-ignore it.”

“Oh , my Stars, they’ve brought in the big guns and haven’t even bothered to dress them appropriately,” was Rourk Ce Dell’s alarmed comment before it dawned on him that the giant was standing in his living room. “Wait a minute. How did you get in here?”

“He’s with me, babe,” Tedra said, stepping out from behind Challen.

“Tedra!” And she was pounced on for a hug that swung her around the room. “Oh, babe, it’s good to see you! But when did you… why are you… dammit, Tedra, it’s too soon. Nothing’s changed yet.”

Before she could answer, she was separated from Rourk, who was still holding her, the entire span of Challen’s arms. Rourk, understandably, lost his train of thought. All he could do was stare at the warrior, who was giving him a don’t-touch-my-woman-again look.

Tedra shook her head, snapping her fingers in front of her friend’s eyes. “You’d be surprised what has changed, Rourk. He’s not one of them, he’s mine, and there’s more where he came from.”

That got Rourk’s attention back real quick. “What do you mean, yours? Who is he, Tedra?”

“Challen Ly-San-Ter, shodan of Sha-Ka-Ra on the planet Sha-Ka’an.”

“You mean Sha-Ka’ar?”

“No, I mean Sha-Ka’an. You suggested I do a little world discovering while I was gone, remember? Well, guess what I discovered?”

With another glance at Challen, who looked nothing at all like the uniformed warriors still in control of Goverance Building, Rourk hit it on the nose. “Their mother planet? You actually found their mother planet? Where?”

“Not in Centura Star System, that’s for sure. I believe we named their system Niva, but they don’t call it anything, not knowing too much about other worlds, theirs or anyone else’s. I was only the second sky-flyer to pay them a visit, you see.”

“The first being?”

“Those miners who made the mistake of thinking captured Sha-Ka’ani would make good slave labor. By the way, according to Challen’s father, who is a Guardian of the Years, it was a penal village that got taken. All they knew was the entire village disappeared three hundred years ago. Naturally, they weren’t too upset to have their worst element taken off their hands.”

“Criminals?” Rourk laughed. “Sha-Ka’ar founded by criminals? No wonder they kept no records of where they came from.”

“Yes, well, they might have been criminals, that original bunch, but they were still Sha-Ka’ani warriors to start with. And their descendants might be familiar with advanced worlds, but they haven’t advanced all that far themselves. They’re still sword-wielders, and what better way to defeat sword-wielders than-”

“With sword-wielders,” Rourk finished for her, beaming. “Do you really have more like this one?”

“This one has a name,” Challen said stiffly.

“Ah, sure, Challen,” Rourk said uneasily. “You’ve just been so quiet, I-ah-”

“Don’t stick your foot in it.” Tedra chuckled. “If my warrior’s not saying much, it’s because he’s suffering a little cultural shock. He saw visuals of modern cities on the Rover, but it’s not the same as actually being inside one with air cruisers and fleet-wings flying all over the place. We Transferred down right to your front door, but that one brief look really-”

“You have made your point, woman,” Challen complained gruffly, a little too gruffly as far as Rourk was concerned.

The Kystrani forgot Challen’s earlier annoyance over his familiarity with Tedra and pulled her aside to whisper, “Are you nuts, teasing him like that? The man’s a farden gia-hey!”

He got picked up this time, and held up, and Challen was about to shake him, too, when Tedra got mad. “Dammit, warrior, that’s my friend you’re scaring the hell out of! Put him down right now!”

“Tedra, really, it’s all right,” Rourk insisted, more alarmed by her ready-to-fight tone. “Let him do whatever makes him happy.”

“It would make me happy did you keep your hands off my woman.” But Challen set him down as he said it.

“Sure. Whatever you say. I don’t even know her.”

“Cut it out, Rourk,” Tedra said in disgust. “And as for you”-she poked a finger in Challen’s chest- “you’ve got to get this thing under control before someone gets hurt. Now, I love it that you’re capable of feeling jealousy, but it’s groundless. Rourk is to me what Tamiron is to you, no more, no less, so I think you owe him an apology.”

Rourk almost choked on that one. “Tedra, please-”

“For Stars’ sake, Rourk,” she cut in, exasperated, “will you stop thinking the man’s going to flatten me? He’s not, you know. He’d die before he’d even put a bruise on me.”

“He would?”

“Certainly I would,” Challen said indignantly.

Rourk frowned then, at both of them. “What the hell’s going on here? And what is it with all these possessive ‘mys’? Did you adopt him, Tedra?”