“I don’t see what the one has to do with the other,” Basil admitted.
“That’s because you’re old,” Bricker put in, understanding clear on his face.
Basil scowled at the younger man. “What has that to do with anything?”
“It means you haven’t had the least interest in sex or dating in forever until now,” Bricker said dryly.
“What has that to do with—”
“When you’re without a mate and still young enough to be interested in sex and dating . . .” Bricker paused as if to consider his words, and then shrugged and said, “Well, frankly, the world is a smorgasbord. Pretty women are everywhere, and with our ability to read their minds and know exactly what they’re thinking and what they want to hear, etcetera . . .” He shrugged again. “Every single one is yours for the taking if you want her.” He paused and then added solemnly, “Unless they are married.”
“Ah.” Basil nodded slowly. Life mates were a serious business with immortals, and while mortals were not blessed or cursed with them, as the case might be, marriage was the closest thing they had. Marriage was a binding contract to spend their lives with each other. It was as close as a mortal could get to a life mate. It was considered more than shameful for an immortal male to use their unfair advantage to get a married female mortal to sleep with them. They had even made a lesser law to prevent it from occurring. Lesser laws were not punishable by death, but by various lesser penalties. For instance, fines, sanctions, shunning or incarceration for a stated term. Basil couldn’t recall what the penalty was for dallying with a married mortal, but he was quite sure it was unpleasant. There had been a time when a wife could be murdered for getting caught in an adulteress relationship. In some countries that was still allowed. The penalty had to be a strict one to prevent it from happening.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Basha admitted quietly, and Basil recalled that she was newly returned to the fold and probably didn’t yet know all their laws.
“It is against one of our lesser laws to interfere in a mortal marriage,” he explained now, and Bricker snorted.
“Lesser, my ass,” Bricker muttered. “Most men would prefer to be staked and baked than having their ding-dong shredded once for every year of their life when they made the indiscretion.”
Basha blinked. “So if you were a century old when you did it . . .”
“They’d shred it one hundred times, letting it heal between each,” Bricker said dryly.
“How do they shred it?” she asked curiously.
“I don’t know,” he admitted grimly. “Never wanted to know either, so I stay well clear of married women.”
“Well then, it seems to be effective,” Lucian said dryly.
Bricker snorted. “It’s barbaric.”
“What about women?” Basha asked. “What if an immortal woman interfered in a mortal marriage?”
Obviously not knowing the answer to that, Bricker blinked and glanced to Lucian questioningly, but it was Basil who said, “Actually, at the time the law was made, mortal men were the power brokers in the world. They were free to have mistresses without fear of it interfering in their marriages, so there was no sanction for a female immortal who dallied with a male mortal.”
“Ah, man!” Bricker cried. “That is so unfair.”
Basha just grinned and brought them back to the subject at hand. “So, it would have been against the law for an immortal to have dallied in Sherry’s parents’ marriage?” she said. “But we think he fathered Sherry, who was born a year after her parents got married.”
“Which means the immortal had a relationship with a married woman and is subject to the punishment,” Basil said, pointing out the obvious.
“What if he didn’t use his immortal abilities to have the affair?” Marcus asked. “What if he didn’t use influence, or mind reading, or mind control? Is the punishment the same?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Basha said before anyone could answer to that. “If she was born a year after her parents married, then she was conceived during the third or fourth month of their marriage. They would have been in the honeymoon stage still, and probably still madly in love. He had to have used influence and mind control.”
“Unless Sherry’s mother was a ho,” Bricker pointed out.
“I didn’t get that impression from Sherry’s memories of her mother,” Basha said dryly.
Bricker shrugged. “Well, she’d hardly be a ho when she was older. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t when she was younger.”
“It’s doubtful she was willing,” Lucian said quietly. “I suspect he used undue influence.”
“You think he raped her?” Stephanie asked with shock, drawing their attention to the fact that she’d reentered the room and stood several feet away, listening, with Harper and Drina behind her.
“He wouldn’t have had to rape her,” Bricker said quietly. “We are oddly attractive to mortals. Bastien once told me it was thanks to special pheromones the nanos produce in us. He thinks they were originally meant to assist us when we needed to feed off the hoof.”
“That wouldn’t have been enough,” Basha said with certainty. “Especially when they were so newly married. He must have used some mind control to overcome her conscience and any reluctance she felt.”