WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (46 page)

"True," Nate had to agree, "but if he is there, it's not because he wants to be."

"Are you going to mention this to the others?" Rupine inquired.

"Not yet," Nate answered. "Not until I know more about this woman, Sybelle, and what she could want with my brother!"

"Don't pout, McGregor," she said on a sarcastic sigh. "Such childishness does not become Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 205

you."

His mouth tightened, but that was the only sign that he had heard her. He calmly licked his finger and turned the page. If anyone had asked, he couldn't have enlightened them as to what it was that held his attention so raptly for, in truth, he could not remember a single word he had read.

As furious as he was, as hurt, it was all he could do to keep his hands on the book and not wrap them around Sybelle's slender throat.

"I liked your brother, Nicholas," she said, coming into the cell, unaware of the murderous glint that had began to form in his pale eyes. She sat down on the foot of the cot and looked at him.

"But I found Newkern to be intolerable."

Conar snorted, but didn't look over at her. "That's not surprising," he informed her.

Sybelle's left brow crooked. "Why not?"

He lowered the book just a tad then looked up from it, his gaze steady on the far wall.

"Nate is a very astute man. He probably saw right through you." With his attention still on the wall, he shrugged. "He knows a whore when he sees one."

The Kensetti woman's back stiffened and before she knew what she was about, she shot out a hand and knocked the book from him, came to her feet in a lethal bound and stood glaring down at him with rage.

"Be very careful what you say to me, McGregor," she warned him. Her gaze narrowed dangerously. "Unless you want more flesh stripped from your back!"

Very slowly he turned his head and looked up at her, his expression blank, his mouth cocked in a taunting half-grin, but he didn't answer her threat.

Sybelle had expected there to be defiance and it was there in the unpleasant smile on his full lips. It was a mean smile that left no doubt in her mind how he felt about her. But there was also great hurt and longing and she knew that if she played her cards right, she could turn that hurt and longing to her advantage.

"Let's don't fight," she said, her voice becoming softer. "There is no need." She resumed her seat beside him and reached out to lay a soft hand on his hard thigh. "You know why I couldn't let you see your kinsmen." She smiled sweetly at him. Encouragingly. "At least not right now.

Perhaps later."

He understood her ploy, recognized it for it was, and the knowledge made him hate her all the more. She had no intention of allowing him to speak with his brothers. There would be no opportunity to plot with them for his escape. Sybelle would see to that. Until she tired of him, he was virtually her prisoner despite the fact that his wrists and ankles and neck were free. His soul was not.

"If I behave," he murmured.

"I didn't deny you seeing them to punish you, McGregor," she said and was astonished that the words were true. She had only wanted to keep him out of his kinsmen's sight lest they try to take him away from her.

He shook his head ruefully. "What does it matter? They are gone." He got up from the cot and walked to the bars of the cell, thrust his hands through the slats and gripped them. "As you once told me, I have nothing more than what you allow me." He looked back at her. "But that shit can be a two-way street, Sybelle."

The Kensetti princess frowned. "What does that mean?"

Conar looked way from her. There was a tight little smile on his mobile mouth. "I've learned a lot of things over the years, Sybelle. From a lot of women." He leaned back, pulling on the bars. "How to arouse a woman so thoroughly she will forget she has a husband and five brats Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 206

waiting back home for her." He withdrew his hands, turned and leaned his back against the bars, folded his arms over his chest. "I've learned how to prolong a woman's pleasure so that she can derive even more intense sensations from our lovemaking than she has from any other man she's ever slept with." His eyes glowed. "I can bring her to the point of climax, time and time and time again, leaving her hovering there until I am ready to grant her release." The right side of his mouth lifted sardonically. "Or just leave her there, wet and panting and begging, then walk away, never looking back."

Slowly she stood up, her glare frosty. "You wouldn't dare."

The Serenian's thick golden brow arched. "Wouldn't I?"

She took a step toward him. "And risk being flayed alive for the insult? I think not!"

He unfolded his hands and took a step forward, nearly laughing aloud as she quickly moved back, putting the cot between them. He cocked his head to one side.

"What's the matter, Sybelle?" he taunted her. "You aren't afraid of me, are you?"

Her snort was vulgar. "Don't jest with me, McGregor," she said, stepping around the cot, keeping out of the range of his long arms. "You would not like to experience my anger."

Conar advanced on her, his lean hips thrust out suggestively, his lips twitching with merriment. "You want me, don't you, Sybelle?" he asked hoarsely as he took another step toward her.

"Stay back, McGregor!" she snapped, edging toward the cell opening. "I'm warning you."

He stopped, looking at her with the same powerful stare that Elizabeth Wynth had once jokingly called his 'predatory leer'.

"Conar is irresistible around anything female when he looks like that," Liza had said. "You just can't resist him."

And Sybelle was no more immune to that intoxicating stare than had been any other woman Conar had turned it on. It was, as another woman had once described it, like the way a snake mesmerizes its prey with an unblinking, unwavering look. She stood there, watching him stalk her, unable to move, unable to look away from that riveting stare, and became aware of the low keen of anticipation that came from deep within her being.

He heard that soft, unbidden, submissive sound and knew he had her. Even as he closed the distance between them and reached out to snag her arm, to jerk her toward him, he knew she had no thought of denying him.

"You want me, bitch?" he asked, his hard hands yanking her so close to him the pressure of their bodies in contact would leave the imprint of his belt buckle on her tender belly.

"Yes," she whispered, frightened of him, but wanting him so urgently she could feel the blood pooling in the nether regions of her body.

Conar nodded, scanning her face, glancing down at her heaving bosom. "All right."

He let go of her left arm and moved his hand to her rump, drawing her against the steel-like bulge forming between his legs. He lifted her, rubbed himself against her, then slid his left thigh between her legs.

Sybelle gasped as he lifted her free of the floor, bracing his booted foot between the cell bars, positioning her so that she was sitting almost on his knee. Her thigh muscles clenched around his and the heated core of her pulsed wetly as he slid her down his leg until her pelvis rested against his.

"You want me to fuck you, Sybelle?" he asked, tensing his thigh beneath the juncture of hers.

Her eyes glazed with lust. "Yes," she answered, breathlessly. "Yes!"

Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 207

His hand moved from her rump to her breast and squeezed, viciously, painfully, and he grinned at her harsh gasp of agony. Yet he wasn't surprised when she leaned into him, putting more pressure on her captured breast as she did so, seemingly unmindful of the cruel twist that brought tears to her eyes.

"He beat you, didn't he?" Conar asked, his palm pressing so hard against her breast he could feel her heart pounding. "Jaborn beat you, didn't he?"

She nodded, her hands moving down his powerful arms, up over his wide shoulders until she had circled his neck. Her head dipped to the soft flesh at the intersection of his throat and shoulder and she licked him.

"Did you like it?" he asked.

She nodded again, trailing fevered kisses down his sweaty neck. She arched against him, grinding her hips against his.

Conar was disgusted by her actions, but understood her. He'd once known a woman, Wyn's mother to be exact, who enjoyed rough sex. It was the only way Myra could gain pleasure. In the mood he was in, he doubted he could have become erect any other way, either, and the thought brought a passing sense of shame to his heart before he resolutely shoved it aside and let his foot fall from the bars.

Sybelle moaned as she slid down his leg and he spun around with her, shoving her roughly to the cot. Her back hit the hard metal mattress guard and she crumpled to the floor, flinching as he rushed to her, reaching down to jerk her up before flinging her to her back on the cot. She barely had time to cry out before his powerful grip gathered up the bodice of her gown and ripped it from her, the sound of the material being rent down the middle almost sexual as the cold dunjon air flushed over her naked breasts.

"I'm going to hurt you," he said, his hands going to the buckle of his breeches. "I swear before all that's holy, I am going to make you wish you'd never laid eyes on me, bitch!"

He fell on her, like a rutting beast, his flesh so rigid, so hard, it tore into her as though it were a dagger aimed at her vitals. His thrusts were painful, so painful she cried out with the agony of it, but there was pleasure there, as well, a pleasure that thrilled her despite its brutality and savagery. Her flesh bruised beneath his cruel touch and her womanhood would be lacerated before he was through with his attack, but she reveled in the violence of it, the possessiveness of it. Her arms gripped his shoulders, her legs wrapped high around his body as he drove mindlessly into her.

She could feel the itch beginning at the very center of her and arched up to him, wanting him to drive harder into her defenseless body to ….

Conar laughed, withdrawing from her in one quick, angry jerk of his lean hips, throwing off her arms.

"No!" she shouted even as the back of his hand lashed out and connected with the fragile beauty of her face. The slap was loud in the still room and echoed down the dank corridor.

"Shut up!" he seethed, his open palm rocking her head back the other way. He saw a fleck of blood well at her lips and the sight pleased him more than he would have thought possible.

Sybelle's cheeks were stinging. She knew he hadn't hit her hard enough to do damage.

Only hard enough to cause pain and to exact the revenge he thought he deserved. She surprised him by flinging her hands to either side of her and thrusting her face up as though asking for more of the same.

"Sick slut," he whispered. His slap was harder than the first one and executed with more self-disgust than revenge.

"Take me," she crooned to him, her eyes wide, her lip bloody. She stared up at him, Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 208

wanting him more than she ever had before. "Take me. Hurt me. Beat me!"

Conar's fist doubled and for once brief moment in time he wanted to smash it into her face, to obliterate the taunting, sexual look leering back at him. His entire being throbbed with the need to punish his jailer. To wreck her beautiful face and kill any part of her that still remained that would entice other men to their doom.

"You're not worth it," he said, seeing a hanging rope dangling before his heated vision. If he killed her, he'd pay with his own life for it.

She nearly moaned as he levered himself from the bed, moving as far away from her as the small cell would allow. She pushed herself up on her elbows, unaware of the gaping ruin of her gown. She looked at him as he stood there, wedged between the cell bars and the wall, glaring back at her with so much hatred, so much loathing, it was palpable.

"I'll have them tie
you
!" she warned him, swinging her legs over the bed. She walked to him, pushing a furious, unsatisfied finger into his chest. "I'll ride
you
, McGregor, if you don't finish it!"

The part of him that had wanted to rape her, to ravage her as though she were a bitch in heat, had cooled. He was ashamed of his reaction, sickened by the unknown need that had reared up to goad him on. He couldn't do to her what he really wanted to do and still hold onto what humanity he still thought himself to possess. He shook his head.

"It doesn't matter. I won't do what you wanted me to."

That he had realized her intent annoyed and angered her, but Sybelle didn't care at that moment. She was aching with desire, her body primed for fulfillment and all she thought of was the cessation of the torment inside her overly-excited body.

"Chaim!" she screamed, smiling hatefully when she heard the running footsteps tearing toward them from beyond the dunjon cells.

Conar barely glanced at the burly servants as they ran into the cell, asking what was amiss.

"Take him!" Sybelle ordered, pointing her finger at him. "Chain him to that bed." Her chin lifted with spite. "Then strip him!"

He didn't resist. What good would it have done? There were four to his one and a powerful sorceress whose idea of pleasure was pain.

Not only her own, but his, as well.

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He had to get away.

Before she killed him. Or he killed her.

He could not go on, night after night, being mauled. Having his body abused, his soul plundered. Sybelle Bath-Alkazar was dangerous. The things she did were dangerous. To him. To her. If he didn't get away, he was going to wind up swinging from a noose or having his head lopped from his body. Either way, his neck was in danger of paying the price for the woman's insatiable hunger.