"Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 03 - The Cage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Shirley)

Until I reached the shores of the Lannic and met you, she
thought, looking up from her musings to Megan. Since then it's
all seemedтАж fresher, somehow. Or is it only that you had a
purpose, and a goal?

"Fehinna wasтАж" She paused. "Fun."

Megan snorted. "If you define fun as nearly being eaten alive
in the sewers by the crawlers, tortured, chased by the SniffersтАж"

Shkai'ra lay back on the bed and linked her hands behind her
head. "Fun rescuing you, kheeredo," she amplified. "And just
think, Baiwun hammer me flat and Jaiwun strike me barren, if I
hadn't decided to rescue you one more time on the docks, I
wouldn't have been chased on board ship and you wouldn't have
had someone to look after you all these weary yearsтАФ"

"Rescue?" Megan whirled and pounced, landing with knees
astride Shkai'ra's chest, grabbed a red-blonde braid in each
hand. "If I had to list all the times a certain loud, clumsy, often
drunken, large, over-sexedтАФ" She interrupted herself to pull
Shkai'ra's head up to kiss her. "тАФbarbarian had to be rescued!
How about the beams of a certain sweet factory? Or a plank
floating on the open ocean? Or a ledge inтАФ" Shkai'ra reached up
and shut her up by kissing her, grabbed her in a hug around her
back and rolled on top of her. Megan went with it, relaxed,
wrapped her legs around and squeezed.

The Kommanza smiled, gasped and wheezed, "hhEnough!
You'll squeeze the breath out of me!" With one hand she reached
up and began tickling Megan under the short ribs and they
rolled over on the bed, wrestling. Then the Kommanza had her
pinned, used her weightтАФ

"Shkai'ra. Let. Go." Megan's voice was flat. She lay still under
Shkai'ra, her good-natured struggles gone in the snap of a finger.
Shkai'ra heard the panic in her voice and stopped, let go. This
had happened before. Somehow the old fear would well up in the
Zak woman, a fear that Sarngeld, who had owned her when she
was a child, had carefully cultivated. The one asshole's making
her vulnerable to the second, Shkai'ra thought. Megan lay still,
clenched her fists so she wouldn't claw her lover, and shivered.

"I'm sorry, akribhan. I try. I try so hard sometimes but when
you just hold me down, I look up and it doesn't matter that I love
you, that I know you, that you'd never hurt meтАж"

"Shush, I know. It's all right, kh'eeredo." Shkai'ra grinned, a
bit forcedly, and tickled Megan's chin with one of her braids. "I