"Sharon Green - Diana Santee 2 - Gateway To Xanadu" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Sharon)

of thing more than once?"

"There's a lot more where that came from," I snorted. He seemed to be relieved that I wasn't afraid of
him after all, but he hadn't liked being roughed up in the proving of it. My previous good intentions were
down the drain, but I'd had to settle the question of fear the most direct way possible. Some men turn
protective around women who are afraid of things, and Val and I were slated to work together. If he did
his job slap-dash because he was worrying about me, it could get us both killed.

"What happens if I do manage to get the upper hand?" he pursued, perversely trying to dent the lack of
fear he had been so relieved to see. "Once I have you in a position where you can't do me any harm,
what's to stop me from doing anything I like to you?"

"Nothing," I admitted calmly, exhaling smoke at him.

"You're bigger than I am, stronger than I am, and you just might manage to take me before I could finish
you off. But if you did, you'd have something of a problem. You would not be able to let me go
afterward, because if I ever got free I'd have your heart-and a couple or three other things to keep it
company. To avoid that you'd have to finish me, and then you'd find yourself all dressed up with no
place to go. At the other end of the course tape is my Federation, a volume of space you don't know your
way around in. Assuming you have the proper coordinates you can always turn around and head back to

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Absari space, but once you got there your people would start asking about that conference they're
expecting to have with my people. No matter which way you turned you'd have problems, and all
because of your resentment against my harmless little demonstration. If that's the way you want it, go
ahead and take your best shot."

"Harmless little demonstration," he snorted. "If that was a harmless little demonstration, I'm a-" He
broke it off and stared at me for a long minute, then snorted again with something more like amusement.
"You think you have it all figured out. What would happen if I did take you-and afterward you
discovered you liked it? Instead of coming after me, you'd end up begging not to be turned loose."

"If you were curious to know how likely that would be, you should have checked with the Tildorani
slavers before we left," I said, giving him a grin with a lot of wolf in it. "After I lost my patience with
them, they couldn't hand me over to Clero fast enough. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not very good
slave material. "

"That you definitely are not," he agreed with sudden pleasance, picking himself up off the deck to
stretch. "And now that we have that settled, you have a choice to make, too." He stepped over my legs to
sit down next to me on the couch, then looked down at me. "You can either get back into your clothes,
or start showing me how much you know about raping a man. I can tell you right now that if you don't
do one or the other, I won't be responsible for what happens. I've- discovered that looking at you does
something strange to my normal restraint, which was the reason I started this in the first place. In a
situation like this, with only the two of us here and a lot of empty time ahead of us, it's best if we both
know where we stand."

"I don't think I understand you at all," I said with a good deal of confusion and total honesty. "How
could you not know where we stand after all the time we spent together? We weren't playing cards or