WINDREAPER (39 page)

He had been her all.

Now, he was no longer hers.

"Don't," he warned, as if sensing her pain, perhaps feeling it himself.

"You were my beloved. Heart of my heart, soul of my soul. Even though we may never be together in the way we both want, neither will we ever be apart."

* * *

Conar's resolve shattered. He reached out for her, wanting her, needing her, craving her. But she backed away, turning to flee both the room and the temptation lurking there.

"No," she sobbed as she left. "We can't!"

Conar wanted to run after her, to claim her as his own again, and damn the entire world, his brother, and anyone else who dared to come between them. He had seen her great love for him. He had felt her sorrow as he felt his own, and he was torn. One part of him longed for her despite all the obstacles in their way, while the other part of him remembered the man who had held him as he cried in pain. Had sang in his godawful voice songs of their childhood. Who had cleaned his body and soothed his ache.

He owed that man every loyalty there was.

He turned toward the window and smashed his doubled fist into the paneled wall.

He didn't feel the pain in his hand.

The pain was in his heart.

The evening meal in the great hall of Ivor Keep was missing one diner.

Legion, as was his right as owner of the keep, sat at the head of the table with Liza by his side. Jah-Ma-El sat across from her, Brelan to Jah-Ma-El's left. The others—Teal, Roget, Shalu, Sentian, Marsh, Bent, Storm, and Thom—were ranged down the table's sides with Corbin and Regan at the far end, Corbin facing his surrogate father, Legion A'Lex.

Conar had stayed in his room, telling Legion he was not yet ready to sit through the rather elaborate meal the cook and her helpers had prepared. He hadn't fooled Legion with his excuse any more than he had fooled the others. It was obvious to even the slowest among them that Conar would have felt uncomfortable dining with his brother and Liza.

Brelan held up his wineglass. "To the downfall of Kaileel Tohre!"

The others chimed in, their glasses raised.

"Conar asked me to get in touch with the rest of the force," Roget said as he put down his glass. "He wanted them all here."

"Why?" Legion asked, his attention on his wife. He was furious at her for not returning to Boreas when he had demanded it. Now, he was determined she left at first light.

"I believe he needs us all together so we may begin the final plans," Brelan answered. "And he wants Elizabeth to hear what he has planned, to meet the men who will be carrying out his orders."

Legion took a quick gulp of wine, then glowered at Brelan. "I see no need for Liza to get involved."

"We're going to need her, Legion," Jah-Ma-El said. "That was always understood."

"Not by me!" Legion snapped, taking another drink of wine.

* * *

As she listened to the men talking about the coming confrontation, Liza sat quietly, playing with the stem of her wineglass. Her mind was on the man she knew was thinking of her while he ate his meal upstairs. She could feel his thoughts as she knew he could feel hers. It was like a gentle caress across her soul, encouraging, reassuring. When she sighed, Legion's head snapped her way. Guiltily she looked at him. Viewing the anger in his eyes, she realized with a pang that he had guessed where her thoughts resided.

"You look tired, lady," he bit out, his hot stare raking her flushed face. "Perhaps we should go to bed." A hint of challenge threaded his words.

Liza had avoided him all day, not ready to do battle over his brother. She had bided her time, hoping he had cooled off, hoping he had seen a glimmer of reason. But from the look he gave her now, she knew he had not.

"The boys—" she began, but his hard tone overrode her.

"Can be seen to by the servants."

Her gaze swung to Brelan, took in his worried look, then returned to her husband. She was tired, but she knew he would afford her no rest this night. He wanted to talk, to argue; she could see it in his face. "Perhaps I should stay a while longer with you gentlemen. I would—"

Legion gripped the table edge. "Perhaps you should go to our room, Madame!"

Liza realized the others knew what was happening between her and her husband. She could feel their sympathy, but she also knew she would get no help, not even from Brelan.

Rising, she motioned the men to remain seated. "I bid you gentlemen a good eve."

Legion pushed back his chair. "I believe I, too, will say good night."

* * *

Once upstairs, Legion locked the door. Anger beat a hard tattoo in his neck, and his teeth were clenched so tightly, his jaw began to ache.

He had not missed the sidelong glance Liza had given the stairs leading up to the tower where Conar slept. Nor did he now miss the slight tremor in her hands as she clutched them in front of her.

"Is it really bed you are seeking, husband?" she asked.

"You know what I want."

"Aye. You want to argue and I do not. You have had your say and I have had mine. Nothing has changed. What is to be, will be." She sat on a cushioned bench and took off her slippers.

"I meant what I said. You are to stay away from him! There is no two ways about it!" Her tired sigh infuriated him, and he glowered at her. "I have no intention of allowing you to betray me with my brother!" He viciously tugged his shirt from his breeches. "You're going back to Boreas first thing in the morning!"

Liza stood and began taking the pins from her hair, laying them on the dressing table. Her hands noticeably trembled. "I have told you why I must stay." She pulled up her skirts and unhooked her silk stockings from the garters. Putting her foot on the dressing table bench, she unrolled the silk stockings and laid them on the table. "Why are you being so unreasonable?"

With a savage snap, he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor, ignoring her cluck of annoyance. He put up a hand and rubbed the heavy furring on his chest, glaring at her. She let her skirts drop and turned her back to him so he could undo the buttons of her gown.

"It isn't my unreasonableness that's at question!" He put his hands on the tiny pearl buttons, undoing them with little care. "I am your husband and you will obey me!"

* * *

Liza sighed again, hating her husband's arrogant, proprietary tone, biting her bottom lip to keep her anger from erupting. She let the gown fall in a graceful heap at her bare feet. She stepped out of it and stooped to pick it up. As she did, Legion grabbed her upper arms and dragged her to him, crushing the gown between them.

"Did you hear me?" he shouted. "You will do as I say, woman!"

His hard fingers dug into the soft flesh of her arms, bruising her. "You are hurting me."

"I'll do more than hold you roughly if you don't do as I say! I will not have you going near him!"

His mouth came down over hers with a brutal, searing assault that took her breath away. He molded her slim body to his and ground his hips into her. She felt the hard erection that was blinding him to everything else around him. He lifted her from the floor by her upper arms and took the few steps that led to the bed in which Conar McGregor had been conceived. He pushed her down on the soft fur coverlet and lay on top of her, pinning her beneath him, writhing against her as his hands went to the silk and lace of her chemise.

"Legion, don't!" she protested as he rent the fragile material and dragged it away from her.

"You are
mine
! Not
his
!"

Liza pushed ineffectually at his broad shoulders, trying to dislodge him. His hands fumbled with the closure of his breeches. She gasped as he freed himself and the hard rigidity of his manhood pressed against her quivering thighs.

"You belong to me! To
me,
damn you! He'll
never
touch you again as long as I draw breath!" He guided himself to her, stabbing at her shrinking flesh with the steel of his penis. He found the opening of her vagina and began to push himself into the tight, dry opening.

"Legion, please, don't!" She gripped his hair, her fingers tangling in the thick mane of salt and pepper, pulling with all her might to get his attention, but he was obviously beyond sight or sound or denial.

Legion drove deeply into her with an insanity likely born of jealous rage and a life-long belief that he was not as good a man as his brother, that he would never be equal to the man no matter how hard he tried nor how much he accomplished. He rode Liza like a madman, pummeling her with his flesh, slapping against her with quick, pulsing jabs.

"Legion," she begged, "you are hurting me!"

When he climaxed, he jammed his hands beneath her buttocks and raised her up so his penetration could go deeper, painfully so. He laughed at her cry of pain as he pressed himself to the hilt. "Feel me! Feel
me,
Liza!"

She felt the almost immediate shrinking of his member as he pulled free of her flesh. The wet essence of him dripped down her thigh when he turned to lie on his back, one arm thrown over his face.

"Did you lie so passively beneath him?" came his bitter intrusion into the silence.

She had no answer. They were so much alike, these two brothers. What they did, they did passionately; whom they loved, they loved with a single-minded pursuit; what they hated, they hated with the same intensity.

"Aye, Legion," she finally said. "When he raped me, I laid just as still."

His head turned. He stared at her for a long moment, then a single, muffled cry came from him. He turned his face into her shoulder, putting his arm around her waist to hold her. "Oh, God, see what you've done to me?" he sobbed. "What loving you has made of me?"

Bringing up her arms, she enclosed him within their protective embrace and cushioned his racking sobs with her body. Crooning softly, she tried to hush his crying, telling him it was of little matter.

"I am no better than he was!"

"And no worse." She felt her husband's tears falling down her side. "Have you no faith in me, Legion?"

When he looked up at her, his face was pinched in pain. "It isn't you I mistrust."

"You think he would betray you after all you have done for him? Do you think I would let him?"

He searched her face. "Can you tell me that you do not love him still?" When she remained silent, her eyes drifting away from the sharp intensity of his own, he nodded. "I thought as much. You are still in love with him."

Liza let him move out of her embrace and watched as he stood, readjusting his manhood into his breeches. She said nothing until he pulled his discarded shirt over his head. "Where are you going?"

"Does it matter?" he asked, one dark brow raised.

"Aye, Legion, it does."

"No," he said, shaking his head in denial. "
He
matters to you, Liza. He always has and he always will." There was a hopeless, helpless look on his bearded face. "I was merely a substitute for him."

"Legion!" she gasped, coming to her knees on the bed. "That's not true!"

"You may not think so, but I know better. I mattered until Conar McGregor came home. Now that he is back, you want to be with him."

"Not in the way you mean!" she said angrily. "It is
you
who is pushing me into his arms, Legion A'Lex!"

"Liza, if you truly believe you can be with him and not let him touch you, nor you touch him, you are deluding yourself, love. I can't compete with him. I've never been able to. What he has wanted, he has always gotten, and he wants you as much as you want him."

"And I tell you he will never be the one to betray you!"

"No, I would imagine not." He smiled at her. "It will be
you
who does the betraying."

* * *

Regan looked out the door of the room he and Corbin shared. He didn't see his half-brother anywhere, and was pleased. Interference of any kind was exactly what he didn't need.

He eased the door shut and bolted it. Making his way to the bag of clothing on his bed, he rummaged through the contents until his fist closed around the thing he was looking for. He pulled out the black crystal dagger. He held it to the light, marveling at the shine of its black blade, feeling the power coursing through the deadly edge. Unconsciously, he licked his lips.

Here was the tool to his father's final and ultimate destruction as Kaileel had sworn so long ago—a weapon that could sever the life thread connecting Conar McGregor to this world, sending him plummeting into the Abyss.

He looked at the blade from every angle before he was satisfied. Pulling up his tunic, he stuck the dagger into the waistband of his breeches.

"Soon…very, very soon."

* * *

Conar looked up as the door opened. He had expected Legion, who now stood in the dim light from the corridor. A deafening silence filled the room as they faced one another, the air heavy and expectant. Time dragged on like a widow's weeds.

Legion finally spoke. "I wish to the gods you had never returned."

"I know."

"Why did you?"

Conar carefully watched his brother. "It wasn't necessary for me to have come back to Boreas Keep. I could have carried on my business with Kaileel from here or Eurus or a dozen other places. It was you who sent for me."

"And you know why, too!"

"I also know you might never have sent for the Darkwind had you known who it was." He got up from the mattress and leaned against the wall, folding his arms across his bare chest. A light sheen of sweat glistened on the fine hair between his breastbone, despite the chill. "You didn't ever want to see me again."

"That isn't true! I would have gladly welcomed Conar McGregor home. If you had to come back to us when you were released from the Labyrinth, you would have been—"

"I would have been welcomed with loving, brotherly arms if I had come back the broken man I was then," Conar interrupted in a bitter voice.

"We would have cared for you! You could have come to us and we would have seen to you because—"

"Because I would have been so pitiful and so docile that I could have been led around like a cripple?" He nodded. "And then you could have cosseted me like a pet dog, patted my obedient head, draped your supportive arms around me to help me walk, feed me, clothe me, cleaned up my shit." Conar pushed away from the wall. "Aye, you would have done that while you shook your head at how submissive I had become. Aye, you would have welcomed me had I come home like that because I would have posed no threat. No woman would have wanted me like that."

"You came back for her! My sending for you played right into your hands, didn't it?"

Conar vigorously shook his head. "No. I didn't want to come back here."

"Then why did you?"

"Corbin."

"You thought he was Galen's son. Don't tell me you felt some pull toward Corbin. I won't believe it!'

"I felt no pull, but I wasn't about to let another McGregor male suffer the torture and abuse
this
McGregor male did at Kaileel Tohre's hands!"

"But even after you rescued the boy, you stayed at Boreas! Why?" Legion's face was livid.

"I think you know."

"You won't have her!" A'Lex's furious bellow rattled the windows. "I won't let you take her away from me!"

"Have I tried?"

"Aye, you have!"

Conar locked his own angry gaze with Legion's. The demon inside him thrust words from his lips he had never intended to say. "If I had, do you believe she would still be with you?"