“Don’t do that again,” he said coldly. “This is difficult to come by and I punish those who waste it out of spite.”

“I didn’t want it in the first place!” Amber spat, wiping her mouth, but she didn’t get in his face and shout it, and when he started to cap the neck, she reached out her hand again. She knew what was coming and as foul as the drink was, she sure wasn’t going to face the rest of this night sober if she didn’t have to.

Zhuqa studied her for a second or two before relinquishing his grip on the flask. She took three deep swallows, paused for a shudder and a grimace, and took one more. A smarter girl would start ingratiating herself now, thank him, maybe even flirt with him; Amber couldn’t, not yet, but she wasn’t going to fight him either.

Zhuqa hung the flask back up, then unfastened the ties of his breeches. Amber watched him undress without flinching, letting her head swim comfortably out of this moment, this room. Meoraq was coming for her.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said when he turned, naked, to face her. “I’m not afraid of this.”

“Fierce little thing,” he murmured, taking her chin in his hand. He stepped forward, pushing her before him until her back struck the wall. “There is not so much as a spark of fear in these eyes. I think you may have done this before. Ah, so you have.” He released her to brush her hair back from her shoulder, revealing Meoraq’s bite-scars. He traced them, then stroked his way over her smooth skin down to her wrist. He brought her hand between them to the slight swell of his loins. “Gently now,” he murmured.

She closed her eyes and let her hand lie limp in his grip as he made her stroke at his scales. Once. Twice. The drink, whatever it had been, made it easy for her mind to drift out beyond these ruins. He could do what he wanted with her; Amber didn’t have to be with him.

“You are determined not to make this easy on yourself,” Zhuqa said, somewhere in the world. “So be it.”

His hand became a fist around her wrist. Tendons creaked. Bones ground together. Amber let out a startled wail, her legs buckling instinctively. This time, he let her drop. Cold stone sent shockwaves of fresh agony up both knees, but all she could do was scratch at his restraining hand while he gazed coolly down at her.

She didn’t know how long it lasted. Probably not long. A minute, maybe. Maybe only half that. When it finally stopped, the relief was enough that she sagged gasping against his thigh, actually clutching at it like a lifeline, her hate like shards of glass in her chest and pain like throbbing hell everywhere else.

He gave her a moment to recover. Then, the lightest of tugs. “Up, Eshiqi.”

She got up, climbing his hip and then his chest, hating him.

He moved her hand back between his legs. “Gently now,” he said again.

“I’m going to kill you,” she whispered, cupping and kneading at the hard lump she felt beneath the cover of his scales.

His head cocked warningly even as his spines flexed in mild good humor. “Was that a threat, little one? I think it was. You’re fortunate I’m feeling so forgiving, but if you want to keep me there, you’ll have to make an effort. Find my slit. I’m ready for you, but I think you need the practice. There you are. I want to feel your hand through my belly-skin. Good. Now, carefully, get a good grip. Squeeze. Gently. Release. Now squeeze again. Steady. Like the beating of a sleeping heart.”

“I’m going to put a knife through yours.”

“Just so,” he told her, color rising in the thin scales along his throat. “Keep your hand at work, but move your thumb up along my slit and when you feel moisture, push inside. It was easy, wasn’t it? I could have been freed well before now, but then how would you know the way to do this? Someday, I will come home to you in Gann’s own humor and you will be glad that you know how to do this, glad that all it takes is a skilled hand to coax me from a killing mood. Ah!” He closed his eyes, spines rigid and neck striped with brilliant gold, and in a strangled voice said, “What you feel beneath your thumb is my sa’ad. Stroke. Use small circles. Gently.”

And before she’d made a single revolution over the prominent nub he meant, his cock shoved itself out in slick insistence.

“Enough lessons,” he grunted, pulling one of her thighs up and around his hip. “You are easily the most deviant—” He broke off with a tight rattle as he penetrated and shuddering with pleasure when their hips finally met. “—thing I have ever done,” he finished, and drew back his head to grimace at her. “How does that feel, Eshiqi?”

How did it feel? How else could it feel with his oils hot inside her and the blunt hook of his ridged cock rubbing insistently at the soft place just beyond her pubic bone? She bared her teeth at him like a dog, hating that she could feel him this way, hating that it didn’t at least hurt. He grimaced back at her in good humor as he began to move, working in curt punching movements that drove her up along the rough side of the wall until her scrabbling toes lost contact with the floor entirely and it was either hang suspended on his stabbing cock or put her arms around him.

“Ah, that’s good,” he murmured, nuzzling at her while she twisted her face away. After that, there was no more speech, no more instruction, only his body like a spear inside her and hate, helpless hate, bleeding out into the wound it left.

* * *

As a child, Bo Peep Bierce’s little girl discovered the elastic quality of Time. Until that golden summer of state-care, Time had always been a constant—precisely measured, easily predicted, immutable. Only after the lady in the flowery dress sent her and baby Nicci back to their mother did she understand that Time was more like a faucet, that it could run hot or cold, pour out fast or drip out slow, and that, if you knew the trick of it, you could put your hand on the knob and shut it off entirely.

Little Amber sat in non-Time in the closet at Holland Mills while her mother fucked men in the bed where she would have to sleep that night. Teenage Amber made it through two years of high school one non-Time class after another before giving up and getting a job. Grown Amber worked non-Time shifts at the factory, unaware of her aching back and feet and head until she had to walk to the bus station afterwards. And in Zhuqa’s lair, Amber drifted in non-Time until he was done with her and tied her up again.

He left her on the floor and after he was gone, Time came creeping in again. The anger came with it and then the tears, which accomplished nothing except to make her head feel thick and heavy. Eventually she slept. It was not a restorative sleep. She woke when the door opened, feeling more exhausted than before, as well as sore and hung over and dried out. She raised her head and saw him in the doorway, holding a covered bowl in the crook of one arm, and suddenly she was hungry too.

Amber tried to sit up, wiggling worm-like in her bonds in an effort to get her back against the wall and lever herself up it. Zhuqa bumped the door shut, set the bowl down and came to help her. His hands were rough, but he was gentle. She hated him all over again, for what he’d done, for what he was going to do, and most of all for not being entirely hateful when he did it.

When she was sitting up, Zhuqa went back for the bowl, then came and knelt beside her. He lifted the cover, releasing a small billow of steam, but no smell. What at first glance appeared to be stew or cereal proved in the next to be a rag floating in water. He took it, squeezed it in his fist and began to wash her face.

Not soup. Just hot water. Tears stung at her eyes. She refused to let them fall.

“How long will you be angry with me, little one?” he asked tolerantly. His hands were gentle as they daubed her cheek, her brow. There was blood on the rag when he rinsed it, and soot and sweat and all kinds of scum she’d picked up in her travels. “A day? A year? You can be angry all you like, of course, as long as you’re obedient, but you will find that hate is heavy. Too heavy, I think, for your little body to carry.”