Pathways - Jeri Taylor [216]
M’Fau peered at him, waiting for a response. Tuvok folded his hands together, forcing concentration, and felt his arms shake with the effort. “How do I find a wife?”
She seemed pleased that he could focus on the matter. “Go to thy parents. They will have chosen.”
This struck him as monumentally odd. His parents— would have chosen a mate for him? When? And why had they never mentioned it? Why had they never told him of this incapacitating experience, prepared him for the disruption to his life?
But he asked none of these questions. All his rapturous energy, so diffuse and unbridled, had coalesced in an instant to a single goal, which burned within him like the white-hot tip of a tiny needle: he had to find a woman.
When he arrived at his parents’ home, he was perspiring heavily. His mother took one look at him and seemed to understand what was happening, a fact which angered him but which didn’t detract from his need. “We have chosen a mate for you, Tuvok,” T’Meni announced confidently. “We have given this matter much thought, and have selected carefully. We think you will be satisfied.”
“Why did you never tell me of this?” he queried, still finding it preposterous that such a monumental event would be concealed from him.
“We do not discuss it” was his mother’s only reply. “Bathe yourself and put on suitable clothes. We will meet your bride.”
And so it was that Tuvok found himself standing in the home of people he had never met, staring into the serene and knowing eyes of a young woman named T’Pel. Her skin was as soft and shining as brown velvet, and her hair hung down her back in carefully restrained curls. Her voice was low and keening, and as soon as she spoke, he could imagine her singing to him with a siren lure.
She evinced no surprise at the introduction to her mate—did everyone know about this except him?—and Tuvok imagined that he saw in her tranquil expression a satisfaction, perhaps even a pleasure, in seeing him.
A yearning more powerful than anything he could ever have imagined swept over him. He had to touch her, to caress her, run his hands over all her body, taste her skin, press against her, flesh against flesh, must become her, make one of their two.
The thought came to him: Was this what Lily, and Sophie, and the others had felt? Did humans live in this constant state of arousal? Now he understood the tears.
Abruptly, he turned away from her, aware that he must be making a spectacle of himself. He could not embarrass his family like this. He removed himself from the group, into a corner, and stood silently there, observing with as much decorum as he could while his parents, and T’Pel’s, made arrangements for their mating ceremony.
The next day they were standing in the ritual site, Tuvok ruminating that while Vulcans inexplicably kept this powerful experience a carefully cloaked secret, once it began at least they acted with alacrity. He was grateful for this, for he wasn’t sure how he could have endured one more night alone.
Now T’Pel stood before him, gracious and composed, listening as M’Fau intoned the mating ceremony. Tuvok paid little attention to what was being said; it was all he could do to hold still. The afternoon burned hot from the desert winds, and, prophetically, T’Khut loomed monstrously overhead, volcanoes belching lava. It was, Tuvok thought, an apt representation of the fire within himself, an inferno boiling within that needed eruption.
At M’Fau’s instruction, he placed his fingers on T’Pel’s luminous face, initiating the mating bond.
Rapturous images swirled between them. The desert in its shimmering heat became the silvery cold of the mountains became the roiling lava flow became the ecstasy of icy streams became the blistering summer storms became the chill winds of the short season. Ice upon fire, fire upon ice, as T’Pel warmed and Tuvok cooled and their minds entwined with one another, touching, blending, dancing, singing, soaring.
One. Forever.
Later, they were alone, standing apart from each other in a room that had been prepared for them with candles