Chapter Eighteen

  If no one understood you, Conar thought, no one could manipulate you.

  If no one could manipulate you, no one could weaken you. Only weak men allowed themselves to be manipulated. Only weak men let others take control of their destinies. Weak men stood by passively and allowed those around them to plan their lives for them.

  He was not a weak man, he reminded himself with a grimace. He had to make sure these people knew that.

  Adversity and defeat had shown him a strength he never knew he had. That strength had brought along with it a determination to never, ever let anyone run his life for him ever again. He’d overcome obstacles most men who had faced them would have knuckled under to, but not him. He’d risen above those obstacles, had made them just one more reason to be in control of his own life.

  He just damned sure wasn’t use to have to ask anyone’s permission to do anything, either, he told himself. Not even in the Labyrinth when his every waking moment had been planned for him.

  Not even in the Wind Temple as a child had he ever needed to seek permission from another. He just did as he saw fit, suffered the consequences, and did as he wanted the next time, damn the punishment.

  But when he asked the Tzar in a somewhat formal request to provide him with a ship with which to return home, he had been refused.

  Refused, damn it! He’d been refused!

  And he knew why!

  The reason was at that moment making itself known.

  As he stood, looking down from the battlements at the procession of horses, wagons, and strange, hump-backed animals so ugly he wondered from what nightmare they had been bred, he was in an absolute blind fury, mindless to the strange looks he was getting from the soldiers roaming the walls about him. His snarls of rage drew many an alarmed look from these men, but it was his alien eyes, hot with pure fury, that caused them to keep well out of his way.

  “I will not be manipulated!” he told Yuri Andreanova who stood a few feet away. He swung that hot gaze to the Outer Kingdom warrior. “All my damned life I have been manipulated by people who didn’t think I had sense enough to make my own decisions!” He jerked his head back to the procession winding its way to the palace gates. “I don’t like it.” He spun around and fixed a steely glare at Yuri. “I don’t like it! Do you hear me, Andreanova?”

  “Yes,” Yuri said quietly. “Most of this province heard you.”

  A growl of spitting-mad bitterness erupted from Conar’s clenched teeth and he tore his gaze away from the calm, placid face of a man who had come, if not to be a close friend, at least a boon companion, and glared down at the pair of high-stepping white horses which were almost now to the gate.

  “I don’t like my life fucked with!”

  “So you’ve said,” Yuri agreed. “We only want what will make you happy.”

  Conar gripped the battlement half-wall, threw back his head and snarled to the heavens above him.

  “All my life I’ve been paying for the happiness people have wanted to give me!” he seethed. “You people want to force me into something I don’t want!”

  “No one is trying to force you into anything,” Yuri reminded him. “His Highness just thought you would like a little entertainment.

  “Damn it!” His bellow of frustration echoed off the battlements, startled the men doing guard duty on the towers and brought in the instant reining of the two purebred Kensetti mounts below.

  “What was that?” Sybelle gasped as she struggled to bring her horse under control.

  Sajin Ben-Alkazar, struggling, as well, with his stallion as the beast sidestepped and nickered in protest, looked up at the battlements, twisting his head to do so as the horse continued to turn in circles, and saw a man glaring down at him from the wall. He stared back, his masculine instinct sensing trouble. Even from where he sat, he could see the irrational fury pressing the man’s face in a mask of deadly promise. A slow grin began to fashion itself on Sajin’s mobile mouth.

  “I think that was a warning,” Sajin chuckled.

  “A warning of what?” Sybelle needed to know. If her brother was in danger here, she would be aware of it and from whence it might come.

  Sajin’s gaze had found the man’s on the battlement. Deep brown clashed with deep blue and a challenge passed between the two men, a challenge both recognized, and intended to act upon.

  “A warning from the lion to the panther,” Sajin answered, “that the panther has strayed into the lion’s den.” He nodded his head at the man above him. “A warning this panther intends to ignore.”

  Sybelle looked up at the tawny-haired warrior atop the battlements. She saw a glimpse of bright golden hair before the angry face, attached to it, jerked backward and away from sight. A nameless fear entered her chest and she reached out to put her hand on her brother’s arm.

  “Be careful, Sajin,” she begged. “I sense true danger here.”

  Sajin sighed. “Don’t start with that shit, Sybelle,” he warned. He looked at her. “I mean it.”

  “Scoff at my gift if you will,” she answered him. “Just be careful of that man. He means you harm.”

  Sajin drew on his mount’s reins and kicked his heels into the glossy white coat. “Keep your witch’s prophesies to yourself, Sybelle,” he ordered. “I don’t want to hear it!” The stallion leapt forward through the opened gates, taking its rider into the darkened archway above the wide portals.

  “He’s trouble,” Sybelle said beneath her breath, glancing up once more to the battlements. “Very bad trouble.”

  Stomping heavily down the stone steps to the guard rooms at the front of the palace, Conar was in such a rage, he did not see Catherine coming out of the duty officer’s quarters until he plowed into her. Reaching out with an instinctive grab to keep the woman from being bowled over, he pulled her up too quickly, too roughly, too hard into the solid wall of his chest. A small ‘oomph’ of air shot out of her surprised mouth before she brought her slippered foot down on his instep with all the force she could bring to bear.

  “Unhand me, you brute!” she snarled.

  “Goddamn it, you bitch!” Conar yelped, letting go of her and hopping away from her. He crashed into the damp stone wall behind him and cursed in such a vulgar, mean-spirited way, it made the woman before him take a step back.

  “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” she snapped at him.

  “Why don’t you stop following me around?” he shot back, rubbing his instep as he tried to maintain a dignified stance on one leg.

  “Following you a ….” A furious burst of contempt spat from Catherine’s mouth. “Why, you grotesque, motherless ….”

  “You’d better watch what you call me, woman,” he warned in a voice Catherine dared not heed. “I’m in no mood for you damned ….”

  “If you don’t like my opinion of you …,” she began, but found herself plastered tightly against the wall behind her, his hand at her throat, his body pressed so closely and intimately to her own that she could neither breathe nor move even if she had been so inclined.

  “If I want you to have an opinion, woman, I’ll give you one!” he growled at her a second before his mouth swooped down over hers to cut off her response.

  Catherine’s eyes opened wide, so wide it hurt. The man’s mouth was slanted across her own, his tongue thrust into the very core of her most lethal weapon, disarming her. His body, hot, sweaty, as hard as marble, was plastered against hers with enough force she could feel the imprint of his belt buckle into the flesh of her belly. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Her belly was turning flips inside her. Her body had broken out in a sweat. The region between her legs seemed to be on fire, the inferno not helped by the insinuation of his thigh suddenly thrusting between her own. She had a fleeting thought of clamping her teeth down on that slick, moist tongue invading her mouth, but somehow she knew if she did, the man attacking her so expertly would do far more harm than a stolen, never asked for, kiss.

  Even as the thought crossed her mind, his free hand came up and clasped her breast, and the heat from his palm through the thin fabric of her gingham gown made her whimper with both surprise and something she could not explain.

  He flinched at the sound, his hand jerking away as though he had touched hot metal and when his mouth released hers and he moved away, his face as stunned as she knew her own to be for she could see her reflection in the gleaming sapphire pools of his eyes, she was left with the feeling that had his body pressed so close to her own not been there, her knees would have buckled.

  Conar stared down at her, shock sending shivers of warning down his tall frame. What the hell had he done, he thought with a hard swallow which left his mouth dry? He was shivering from head to toe, burning up, his head throbbing along with the hard bulge between his legs. His heart was slamming in his chest, his palms sweating, his chest heaving.

  “Are …. are you finished?” he heard her ask and he could only nod, unsure of what he had started.. “Would you please move?”

  Why was her voice so soft, he wondered. So low? So calm? So polite? He took a step back, feeling himself peel off of her, their clothing actually sticking together. He took another step back, opened his mouth to apologize for what he never intended to do, when her hand lashed out and his cheek was on fire from the stinging slap she delivered to his left cheek. He literally staggered from the force of her blow.

  “Don’t you ever put your hands on me again! Do you hear me, Conar McGregor?” she bellowed at him.

  He put his hand up to his face, could feel the heat of her hit beneath his fingers. He stared at her, at the look on her face. Her entire body was shaking with rage as she glared at him. Her mouth was vicious-looking, lips pulled back over bared teeth, her expression filled with contempt.

  He could stand it no longer.

  “If you ever lay a hand to me again, I’ll make you regret it, woman,” he promised her.

  Catherine’s fighting instinct leapt to the surface and she found her chest heaving, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps of outrage. Her eyes narrowed dangerously.

  “Don’t threaten me, McGregor,” she warned him. “You don’t threaten me!”

  He shook his head angrily, tossing his mane a golden hair. “Not a threat, a promise.” He pushed away from the wall where he had been leaning. “On my honor as the regent of Serenia, I swear to you you won’t like what I do to you if you so much as dare raise your hand to me ever again.”

  “What would a man like you know about honor?” she sneered. “Men disinherited by their own fathers could have no honor, else they would not have been cast aside!”

  She knew she’d pushed him too far that time for the look that came over his flushed face was so livid, so violent, she couldn’t help but scuttle out of his way.

  “My God,” she thought, staring at the fury lashing his face, “the man is going to explode with rage!”

  His eyes were merciless, fierce, boring into hers like twin coals from the fires of Hell. The rigidity of his body, literally quivering with his fury, caused Catherine to heartily wish she had never lifted a hand to strike him. Those powerful hands—had she once thought them soft and ineffectual?—were clenched into fists so tightly that the knuckles bled white. His lips were twisted into a grimace of such towering contempt, it was a wonder he could speak to her.

  But speak he did and the words he said cut Catherine to the quick.

  “I don’t think you understand me,” he ground out. “I wasn’t asking you not to touch me again, I was telling you you’d better not ever do so.” His hand snaked out and gently took hold of her neck, drawing her toward him. A slow, viciously cold grin settled on his lips as she stumbled toward him, her own body rigid with fear. He cocked his head to one side and looked at her for a long time, his strong fingers bracing her head so she could not move. His face was hard, frigid, infinitely deadly. His nostrils flared as though her smell nauseated him. When he spoke again, his voice was a mere whisper of sound fanning her ashen face.

  “Give me a reason to hurt you, little bitch.” One tawny brow lifted. “Just one reason. And I will enjoy every minute I turn you inside out.”

  His thumb rubbed a soft caress along her cheekbone as his fingers left her neck and slid forward until his fingers were curled under her chin. With a suddenness that brought a moan to her lips, he grasped her chin in a punishing grip.

  “God, how I hate you!” he snarled into her face. His eyes shone with repressed fury. “I loath you, you fat cow!”

  Catherine felt herself shoved away from him, backwards, coming up hard against the wall behind her. His handsome face was twisted into a snarl. He was staring at her with a hatred so violent and virulent, it sent shivers down her taut spine. His dark gaze was now blazing with uncontrollable anger, his body barely leashed as his fists opened and closed at his sides. She was afraid he would strike her, pommel her into submission, and she whimpered. She saw one golden brow slash into the fallen flax of his tumbled hair.

  “What’s the matter, Catherine?” he cooed at her. His steel-edged voice was husky. A muscle bunched in his scarred cheek. “Have you found you’ve taken on the wrong man this time?”

  “Please,” she begged, hating the sound of her voice, the need to say that word to this man, lowering her head to keep from seeing the gleam of revenge in his face. “Just leave me alone. I’m sorry ….”

  “Not nearly as sorry as you’re going to be,” he promised.

  Her head came up. If she lived to be a hundred, she knew she’d never see vengeance stamped so plainly on a man’s face as she did at that moment. Her heart lurched in her chest.

  “You want a fight, bitch?” he asked her. “Then you’ve got one!”

  Catherine watched him stalk away, his shoulders straight, his walk arrogant, coming close to being a strut. Long after he was gone, out of sight, not ever out of mind, she could hear his voice, feel the press of his body against hers, smell the cinnamon scent of him all over her.

  “It’s not what I want,” she heard herself whisper, a treacherous tear falling down her cheek. “Not at all.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Catherine took a deep breath and put a false smile on her face as she walked to where her father was sitting. Overhead fleecy white clouds were knitting together the unraveled skeins of a rainstorm’s aftermath. A raven, its shiny black wings glistening in the peek-a-boo sun that finally decided to show itself, plied its ebon body through the sky with a raucous call to the Tzar who looked up at the scavenger and frowned.

  “Go away!” Thomas Steffensberg called up to the crowing visitor. “You’re a bad omen!”

  “You don’t believe in that silliness, do you, Father?” Catherine asked him as her father’s attention turned down to her from his place atop the garden wall.

  The Tzar shrugged. “I need no further bad signs to leap out at me, daughter.”

  She leaned against the fieldstone wall and put her hand on her sire’s swinging leg. “What’s wrong, Father?”

  “What isn’t?” came the brusque reply. He swung his thumb up and jabbed it over his shoulder. “Do you see him down there?”

  Catherine turned around and peered over the waist-high wall. At first she didn’t see anything, but then she caught movement and recognized Conar McGregor sitting on the gently sloping grass knoll about a hundred feet away. Her face hardened then she turned her back on the man.

  “He shuns company, doesn’t he?’ she asked through clenched teeth.

  “He is such a lonely man,” her father sighed. “He doesn’t make friends easily.”

  A snort of derision burst from Catherine’s tight lips. “The man’s an arrogant loner, Father. There’s a difference. He doesn’t like anyone’s company but his own.”

  Her father turned his head and looked at her for a long moment before he spoke. “Catherine, you don’t understand men.”

  “Men like him I don’t wish to understand!” was the heated reply.

  “And yet you would condemn him without even trying.”

  She turned an expression of surprise to her father. “Conar McGregor is no different from any other strutting peacock, fanning his feathers for attention. What is there to understand? The man is …..”

  “If that is all you think you see in him, Mary Catherine, I fear you will remain unmarried.” Her father slid down from the wall and started to walk away, but his daughter’s shriek of outrage brought him up short.

  “What does he have to do with my getting married?”

  The Tzar thrust his hands into the pocket of his lightweight jacket and looked at his daughter. “Your mother has told you there is a Prince from one of the Inner Kingdom Emirates here to seek your hand?”

  “A pog,” Catherine pouted. “How could you, Father?”

  “He is a friend of your brother’s,” Thomas said with a stern tone to his normally vacant voice. “You will not speak of Prince Sajin in such a way. It is an insult.”

  “What does Conar McGregor have to do with it?” she repeated, knowing full well her father’s prejudices against the desert tribes.

  “I have asked him to help your mother and I decide if Prince Sajin is husband material for you.”

  “You what?”

  Conar heard the explosion of fury, recognized the voice that blared out to break the peace of the late afternoon, and turned to see who the bitch was tongue-lashing now. Seeing her father, he shrugged. The man could handle her. He turned his back on the two.

  “Lower your voice, Mary Catherine!” her father warned. “You are not a fishmonger’s daughter!”

  “But you would have me a pog’s wife!” she spat back.

  Conar turned back around at the vicious shout and stared at the father and daughter.

  At her father’s lowered expression, Catherine dropped her voice to a low hiss of fury. “I will not allow you to put my future in the hands of that man!” she said, pointing toward where Conar sat.

  “Now, what?” Conar thought, seeing the fat cow pointing at him. “Telling your father what I did to you, you frigid hippopotamus?” He scowled as she glared down at him across the distance. “Go ahead. Tell him!” he murmured to himself. “He won’t care!”

 

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