Captive Heart (15 page)

Not when his bold palm covered my thatch of hair and arch of bone and bold fingers stroked over me.

The hand at my breast stole away as Persant’s son rose to his knees, unbinding the laces that prisoned his staff and setting it free. Long and slender like his hands, it waved between us.

“My father’s gift to you,” the father’s son murmured at my breast. “Use it as you please.”

The long strokes between my thighs became a thrum, a slow and rhythmic beat over the sensitive nub that guarded the entrance to my deepest pleasure. The muscles in my stomach clenched as heady desire swept over me, sudden craving for marriage with the gift that was hard with promise now.

“No. Marrok. Gareth. I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” the voice at my breast crooned.

“Can’t betray them.” My head shook even as my hand gripped the long, hard vow between us. My other arm braced around his shoulders and I lifted my hips over him. I guided the probing tip to my entrance and eased myself over the length of him till he would go no further.

“Don’t move,” I whispered, and began sliding up and down while Persant’s son held breath. Only the stretching of his mouth and the widening of his eyes betrayed his building pleasure.

Then, with a grin of disobedience, he tipped me back into the sheets. Instantly I wrapped my legs around his hips and crossed my calves behind him. I clung to his shoulders while he drove into me, faster and faster. Visions of Gareth and Marrok at their peaks, in my arms, in each other’s arms, came unbidden to me. The stranger’s face above me twisted with the same pain of ecstasy as he poured himself into me.

With legs and hands I gripped him, desperate now for my own release, to be done with Persant’s son, eager for the regret that awaited me on the other side. Regret that I deserved.

I threw my head back and howled that regret with a voice more suited to Marrok’s throat when the waves of passion hit. And when they were done, I pushed the stranger in me out and rolled away.

“Go,” I told him.

Already he was lacing himself up, not meeting my eyes as the magic faded. Scrambling for his tunic, he fled when he found it, not once looking back.

It wasn’t the looking back I dreaded, though. It was the facing forward and how I could possibly survive the coming censure in my champions’ eyes.

My handmaid came not very long after dawn in the gray time between night and day. I was already dressed and my pack waited by the door.

“Sir Persant waits to farewell you in the dining hall,” she said.

I licked my lips and nodded. Facing anyone this morning was likely to take far more courage than I currently felt I had in me. Leaving the girl to see to my pack and privy pot, I made my way to the lord’s hall to face my shame.

Marrok and Gareth met me outside the hall. I wondered if I looked as haggard as they as we mumbled our greetings while avoiding each other’s eyes. A fierce pang of envy washed over me as I imagined in every naked detail why they might look so tired and drawn.

We entered, my heart lurching when I saw who sat at table with Persant—his son and two quite fair ladies with the same face between them.

The Blue Knight waved his hand and the servants disappeared. Only then I noticed no one else of the House was there. It was a deliberately arranged private meeting for what had to be one purpose only. Heat blushed my face as I stood in uncomfortable silence between two equally uncomfortable men.

“Sit.” It wasn’t an invitation but a host’s command. “I would tell you my children and I are very close,” he began.

Children
. Then the ladies were his daughters, his son’s sisters. How many more were to know my shame? I stole a glance at the women, but there was no righteous indignation or even accusatory stares. In fact, they were pointedly studying their hands demurely folded on the table.

“We share all,” Persant continued. “The good in our lives, the many joys that touch us daily, as well as our hurts and fears, however ugly or unnatural they might be.

“Can you imagine a father’s pain to hear a child speak of shameful deeds, of possession in the night, of acts that—” he squeezed his eyes shut against the sights. “And can you imagine that pain multiplied by three?”

“Three?” I mouthed the word in surprise but it was Marrok who gave voice to it.

If three, “Does that mean—?” I looked to my champions and they to me. Really looked. And in their faces I saw my shame and sorrow reflected.

Then anger rose up to war with the shame. I thought I had betrayed Marrok and Gareth’s trust, had betrayed our bodies’ pledge. It was pain enough to envision them pleasuring one another when I could not be there with them, but to think of them pleasuring not just another lady but two…

Marrok half-rose from the bench. “You and this—this—” he stabbed a finger toward Persant’s son.

Gareth covered his hand and bade him sit. “How is that any different from what
we
did?”

“The difference is we were
compelled
.”

“Are you sure?
They
were certainly, but were we? Or did you just embrace the opportunity?”

“Isn’t that what you did? Or were you just too courteous to tell a lady no?”

“Enough!” There was more sadness than anger in Persant’s command. “There is blame and betrayal enough for all, but turn your anger and jealousy to the one responsible. Nimue. She means to undermine your strength. To divide you. That she can hurt me and those I love by turning you one against the other is simply gravy on the goose.

“You could forgive?” Doubt lay thick on Marrok’s tongue.

“Forgive what? You coming here and forcing Nimue to use my family to attack your hearts and souls? Never. Forgive my blood for any transgressions committed or endured while under the thrall of that fae-witch? With a father’s unconditional love, a thousand times yes. Forgive
you
for despoiling Igraine before she’s husbanded? What father could ever forgive that?”

What would my own dear father have done had he known I’d gone so willing to the beds of my champions, neither of
them
my betrothed? Would I have disappointed him beyond forgiving? Or…dare I wonder now? Had
I
been spelled? Had Marrok taken advantage of me too—because I was a convenient opportunity? Did his wolf care if I were spelled or not?

And what of Gareth who had no wolf to blame?

If they could be so free with me, why not another? Beneath their tear-swollen eyes, Persant’s daughters were lovely, well-formed and desirable. Any man would lust for them even without Nimue’s interference.

“Would you ask that same forgiveness of your son?” Gareth asked quietly.

Persant’s eyes on me were hard but fair. “Would I need to?”

Whether he knew I was no maiden before last night or simply suspected, the truth was clear. I slid my gaze to Persant’s son who stared at me intently now, waiting to know just how much harm he’d done. I looked away and shook my head once.

“Why are we here?” Gareth asked. “To relive our sins? To make apologies?”

“All that,” Persant agreed. “And because the vile magic of my brother’s mistress dared enter my house. Because having breached it once what is there to stop them from breaching it again? I would see them undone. I would see them destroyed. I would see you win against them.”

“When did we intend otherwise?” Marrok grumbled.

“Ironside is still my brother, my blood,” Persant snapped. “And he is as powerful as any tale you’ve heard told of him. You have one chance of defeating him. One chance to discover his secret at this table here and now. And you can thank my daughters’ shame, my son’s sin, and Nimue treating them and me like puppets in her private play for giving me the courage to betray him.”

“My sister’s life was not enough?” I asked, grateful for whatever advantage he was about to reveal but resentful he had not seen fit before last night to share.

“Your sister’s blood is not mine,” Persant said. “We do for kin what we’d not do for others.”

I bowed my head.

“Nimue wields great magic, but for all her power, she can do little more than put the thought in a person’s head.”

“Compulsion,” I said.

Persant nodded. “But when she first met my brother, she called upon Avalon to help forge her champion and protector. What wiles she used to borrow that power I don’t know. But with it, she was able to cast a potent glamour over Ironside that doubled his strength. More importantly, from sunrise to noon each day, he has the strength of seven.”

“I had heard his prowess came because he was a berserker,” Gareth said.

I nodded, having heard that story too. True berserkers were rare, though, and their stories stuff of legend.

“No berserker he,” Persant said, “but something far more dangerous. Do not be tricked into fighting him in the morning when his strength is at its best. If you must confront him, do it after you hear the bells for Sext.”

The reason why Persant shared the secret no longer mattered. Only that he
had
. For that I was beyond grateful. Yet my heart constricted as I considered all that it meant. “When you say strength, does that mean—with Nessie—?” My eyes widened with fright at the thought of Marrok or Gareth’s efforts doubled when they pleasured me—and they were welcomed. At seven times… Would I even survive? Could Nessie? “Does Nimue—?”

I had scarcely hoped to find Nessie sane after all this time. Now I scarcely hoped to find her whole. Better perhaps for her if she wasn’t still alive. For me… Whether she was broken and alive or already dead, Ironside had his revenge. My sister for his father. My pain for his.

A pail of tears pressed painfully behind my eyes. Sorrow so deep I could drown. Yet I did not weep. Revenge was an insidious thing. If I couldn’t rescue Nessie, I would avenge her. This cycle of revenge was far from done.

I set my jaw and lifted my head—above the tears, above the shame, above the regrets.

“We ride.”

What Gareth wanted from me I didn’t know. A confession? An apology? A vow to never be compelled by magic again? Given my beast state, that last wasn’t something I’d be able to hold to no matter how sincere my effort.

As for Persant’s daughter—Igraine, I think someone had named her—consequences could indeed be long-reaching. If any future husband required proof of maidenhead before marriage… But I had not taken anything that I was not compelled to take and she compelled to offer. Did I have regret? For the circumstances, yes. For my part in them, no. I would not blame myself any more than a farmer might blame a rainstorm for ruining newly planted crops. Some things could not be controlled and could not be undone.

If Gareth could not see the difference…

Lyn, however…

Anger welled quick and sharp at thought of another man possessing her. Of her
allowing
another man to—Had she taken joy in it? Had she reached for him? Touched him? Invited his caresses? Had she wrapped her legs about him and crushed him to her with sighs and moans and cries that should have been for my ears alone? And Gareth’s, I had to amend, though it was with great reluctance my wolf deigned to share her, even with him.

And now, riding the road to the Red Lands, all I could see in my waking dreams was Gareth’s raptured face as the twinned beauty’s hair fell over his thighs in a bobbing wave while she paid worship to his risen flesh. And Persant’s son in a tangle of white limbs as his naked flanks rose and fell, rose and fell over Lyn.

It was the wolf’s jealousy I knew that kept the images so obsessively in my head, that kept them escalating my emotions till by late afternoon I was nearly blind with the seeing of them and with the wolf’s great anger coursing through me.

That we had recently passed from the Inde Lands that Persant ruled into the Red Lands of the Red Knight could be no coincidence.

Nimue was near. And she knew the ugly triggers of our minds.