WINDREAPER (24 page)

Alarmed that he might strangle her, seeing an alien emotion in the face she now feared beyond description, she gasped. When his hand slid along her right shoulder, made its downward curve to the tender flesh of her heaving breast, she sucked in her breath, expecting pain.

"You belonged to me once," he said, his voice hushed. His hand gently caressed her. "Once, so long ago, you were mine."

Liza went as still as stone, staring at the expression that said he was in pain, experiencing an unknown agony. She wanted to say something, to ease the suffering she could almost feel flowing from him.

"And you loved me, then," he whispered.

As if in a state bordering on dreaminess, Conar dipped his fingers beneath the lace at her bodice, pushing aside the fabric. He spanned his fingers over her bare breast.

She quivered at his touch. "Look at me," she whispered, wanting him to see that what he was doing was wrong, but also loving the feel of his callused hand on her flesh.

He looked up. His fingers tightened around her flesh, his hand gently kneading the tender mound, his thumb moving over the taut nipple. When she gasped, he plucked the hard nub between his thumb and forefinger.

"Tell me you don't want me," he told her.

Liza had never wanted him more than at that moment. She wanted him with every nerve ending in her body, with every squirming, clutching vibration driving deep in her womanhood. She felt the tumescence of his shaft prodding her thigh, leaping against her with need. Again, she quivered, wanting that intimate part of him deep inside her, wanting to feel the pain of his length pressed against her womb. She had always thrilled to the weight of his body atop hers, his hungry mouth plying hers, and she was shocked to realize she wanted those things again. She had become a woman at the hands of this man, and her body had once belonged entirely to him—as had her heart. She had gained his love, and thought to always possess it. Now, the expectation in his eyes told her that love was still hers. That it would always be hers.

"Tell me you don't want me, Liza."

"Conar…" Her voice was tiny, wounded. "I…we…"

"Tell me you no longer want me," he whispered raggedly, his heart and soul showing.

She was vitally aware that he was holding his breath, that his love for her was shining wetly in his eyes. She watched in agony as a silent tear crept down his cheek. She could feel the heat of his fingers, the hardness of him straining toward her. "This…this is wrong."

"Is my loving you wrong?" he asked, his hand stilling on her flesh, his voice breaking. "Don't I have the right to love you?" His breath came on a hitching sob. "Didn't I belong to
you
once, a long while ago?"

She gathered him to her, pulling him down so that his head nestled between her breasts. He settled against her, obviously needing what she could not give. Her pain over having deliberately hurt him drove deep. She bit her lip until she tasted blood.

"Love me, Liza," he begged, lifting his head to look at her. When he focused on her lips, a look of intense pain flashed over his face.

"No," she whispered, knowing he had misconstrued the cause of her bleeding. "I…"

He pushed himself up and lowered his head. With a gentle touch of his tongue, he licked away the blood, soothed the bite.

"Conar…"

"Shush." He released her, got up, and held out his hand to her.

Liza saw the effort it was taking for him to deny himself what he wanted, what he knew she wanted, despite her ties to his brother. Hesitantly, she settled her hand in his and allowed him to draw her to her feet. As soon as she was standing, he walked to the window.

"Go, now," he warned. "Go before I wind up hurting you. And me."

The dejected slump of his shoulders against a glaring burst of lightning caught at her heart. She wanted to reach out to him, for the pain she had seen in his eyes had hurt her deeply, more deeply than anything his hands could ever do. She had come to fear him, even hate him a little, but now all she wanted was to hold him and make his pain go away. That she was playing with fire, she had no doubt. That she might push him beyond his control, she never questioned. But her instinct for protectiveness swelled up inside her, and she threw caution to the wind and walked to his side.

He held up a hand to restrain her. "I told you to go."

She moved in front of him. Through another lightning flare, she viewed the misery etched on his face. She caressed his cheek, her fingertips touching the scars.

"No!" He gasped, reaching up to pull away her hand, but she would not allow it. She gently pushed his hand aside and returned her fingers to his cheek. She traced the deep indentions, soothing away any hurt or shame the brutal ravages might once have caused him.

"These are," she said, "as much my fault as Kaileel Tohre's."

"Liza…"

Her fingertips moved to his lips. "You and I will always be bound to one another. Our passions will always ignite around one another."

"I should not have baited you."

"I started it. It was my fault. I pushed you too far. I should have expected you to push back." A sad smile touched her lips. "You always have."

His eyes bore into hers. "I could have hurt you. I wanted to."

"No," she said, placing her other hand on his face, as well. "I don't believe that."

He took her hands. Bringing her palms together, he raised them to his lips and kissed her fingertips, then nestled them against his naked chest. "I swear, by all that is holy, that I will not make your life as miserable as it has been. The only way for me to do that is to leave—"

"Leaving here is not the answer."

"Then, what is?" he asked, his hands tightening around hers. "Obviously I can't be around you." His voice broke, and he took a deep breath. "You don't belong to me any more, I realize…"

"I will always belong to you," she said defiantly.

"Not in the way that counts. No, you don't belong to me now—my head tells me that, but my heart says something else. I'm finding it harder every day to accept you as Legion's wife instead of my own." He moved away, putting distance between them. "As long as you are with him, my life is…is worse than the hell I endured in the Labyrinth."

She flinched, knowing she was the cause of his anguish. "Tell me what I can do to help you." She came to him, putting her hand on his rigid arm. "This wall between us must come down once and for all. We have a son. A son who needs to know his father. Corbin thinks he is to blame for this barrier between us."

"He's innocent in all this."

"We know that, but our son thinks otherwise. He believes it was his birth that caused this thing between us."

"Then you have to tell him."

"I have tried, but he has gotten it into his head that if he had never been conceived, I would not have been forced to marry his Uncle Galen." She searched his eyes. "That part of it
is
true, but I knew the exact moment I conceived him that night in the grotto. I would have married Tohre, himself, to keep your son safe! I have told Corbin that, but it doesn't seem to matter to him. He thinks I betrayed you, too, and he sees himself as part of that betrayal and reasons that is why
you
want nothing to do with him." Tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks. "I didn't know you were alive. Don't you know, heart of my heart, that I would have moved heaven and hell to find you if I had known?"

"I believe you would have tried," he said, tears also filling his eyes. "But you would not have succeeded. The gods, Themselves, meant to see us apart."

"Why did They do that?"

"Because we were happy, we were in love, and the world was envious of that love."

"Past tense," she said, reminding him of what he said earlier.

"I know you loved me once," he said woodenly. "I reveled in that love."

"Once? I've loved you all my life. Why would you think I would stop?"

He replied with a careless shrug, one that brought a groan of agony from Liza.

"I never stopped!" She fell to the floor, covering her face with her hands as she began to sob. "I
never
stopped!"

Conar knelt beside her and took her in his arms, his hands stroking her back, her hair. He cradled her against him, letting his body absorb her sobs.

He listened as she explained once more about Galen, about her liaison with Brelan, her forced marriage to Legion, her ultimate love of his eldest brother. He rocked her when she spoke of his father's death, of the loss she had felt at his passing. She cried out her loneliness, her heartbreak at having to live without him during the years she thought him dead. Of how she would not allow them to demolish the whipping post, wanting it to remain as a reminder of what had taken him from her.

"I never betrayed you," she said, lifting her face. "Not in my heart. I love you now as much as ever. I never once stopped. If I could have gone with you, even in death, I would have, but I knew our son had to come before my grief. When I heard them sentencing you in the Tribunal that day, I would have given my life to spare you the punishment Tolkan Coure decreed. I would gladly have gone to the whipping post in your place." She clutched at him. "Had they not drugged me, I would have been on the Tribunal Square that morning. I would have felt every pass of that vicious whip as it tore at your flesh."

"Thanks be to the gods you were not there!" he said, shuddering.

"But I was aware of it, my love," she said, her lips trembling, her mind stricken with the memory of that evil day. "I knew what they were doing, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. To lessen the pain you were being forced to endure." Her entire body quivered with emotion. "And when I heard you did not survive, I wanted to close my eyes and cease to exist! The worst day of my life was the day they took your coffin to the ship. The whole courtyard was full of people. They had come to bid their beloved Conar farewell. No one had seen you since the whipping. None of your family had been allowed to prepare your body."

"Liza, don't," he begged.

"I had them put down the coffin so I could see you one last time. I could not let them take you away without saying goodbye. Without kissing you one last time."

"Brelan should not have allowed that to happen."

"Why?" she countered, not understanding.

"Because of this," he said, pointing to the scars.

"I didn't see the scars. I wasn't looking for them. All I wanted to see was your face and have you know I was there. That your family was with you. I have kept that last vision of you sacred in my heart. I have never allowed it to fade. I have replayed that scene over and over in my dreams. I see you lying so still. I see your eyes closed forever and the pain of it is almost more than I can bear." She clutched him to her. "I want you to know this—if I had not been seeded with your child, I would have taken my life!"

"Liza, listen," he said, despair ravaging his eyes. "The only thing that kept me sane in that prison hellhole was my love for you. That love kept me alive, made it possible to withstand all they did to me. I clung to that love, Liza, because it was the only thing worth living for. I held on to it, buried it so deep inside me, so deep they couldn't touch it, couldn't take it away from me like they had everything else. If they had told me you were dead, I would have ceased to be. I'd have lain down and stopped breathing."

She clung to him, the imagined sight of him incarcerated in the Labyrinth filling her with terrible agony.

"Let the dream go, Liza. Lay it to rest with the man I once was."

"No! It is all I have left of you!"

"Not all. You have Corbin."

"Conar, please," she sobbed. "We…"

"It's because of what I endured there that I've changed, beloved. They stripped me of everything I ever was, took away all my humanity and replaced it with the instincts of an animal. An animal bent on survival through whatever means he could find." He lifted her chin in his hand. "It's that animal that returned to Boreas, not the man you once loved." He eased away from her and stood, drawing her up with him. He put his palm on her cheek. "Go back to Legion, now. He's the one you should be with, not me."

"He loves you, Conar. Make peace with him. He has been a good husband and a loving father to your child. Please do this for me out of whatever love you still have."

"Whatever love?" he asked, his face filled with pain. "My love for you is the same as it has ever been. Don't you know that?"

She ached for him, spiritually and physically, and that ache must have shown, for he shook his head.

"I would do anything for you, Elizabeth. I would give my life, my soul, for you. But if you stay one moment longer…go while I will still let you."

At the door, she looked back, but saw only his silhouette framed in the window. "You asked if I wanted you," she whispered. "As all the gods in the heavens are my witnesses, I always shall."

* * *

Conar waited until she was gone before he opened the doors leading to the garden. Bracing his hands to either side of the double doors, he let the rain wash over his fevered flesh.

He knew he'd eventually gather up as many bottles of liquor he could carry. He knew he would eventually step into the garden, leave the keep through the sea gate, and make his way to the grotto where, in a special niche, Sern would have hidden fresh drugs. He knew he would eventually end up in a stupor that would have him dead to the world for most of the next day.

But at that moment, he stood in the rain, his bare chest speckled with the chilling water, and shivered.

The thought of Liza seeing him in his coffin filled him with such despair, it was hard to breathe. He would have spared her the sight, the ugliness of what they had done to him. It was more than the scars on his face and the brutal condition of his back. What hurt him the most was knowing she believed him dead.

And lost to her forever.

Tears gathered in his eyes.

What if she had taken her life that day? The mere thought of it drove stark terror through his soul. He could picture her lying lifeless on their bed, a dagger in her hand, scarlet plumes of blood flowing from wrists to soak the coverlet. A vision of her rigid form doubled upon itself, her lips blue from poison she had consumed.