Chapter 12
“WHO IS MEG?”
Jenna felt Kane go very still.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“You spoke it, in your sleep.”
After a moment, she heard him let out a long breath at the same time his body relaxed against her. She waited, but he said no more.
She rarely dared to speak herself—he was still Kane, after all—in those quiet moments, the moments after the explosive encounters, the moments when they awoke in the morning and she found herself tucked into the strong curve of his body, their legs entwined, Kane’s arms tight around her. This had surprised her; she had not thought he would want her to stay with him, had thought he would gain his release and then send her away until the need was upon him again.
But then, she had not expected to feel such astonishing things herself, any more than she had expected the pleasure she took in these quiet moments in his arms. It was his strength, she supposed. Here in his arms, feeling the size and heat and power of him so intimately, she could easily believe the legends they told of him. She could easily believe he had been the right hand of the most powerful of warlords. She could easily believe he was as much myth as man, although it was the man who shouted his exultation as he convulsed in her body.
And it was the man who, asleep, had moaned a woman’s name in tones of such anguish she had steeled her nerve to speak of it.
“Meg was my sister.”
Jenna went very still in turn. She who had been through so much loss of her own knew all too well which word was crucial in that short, blunt admission that seemed to have been torn from him against his will.
“Was?” she said softly.
“She is dead,” he said, confirming what she had already guessed. “She died at my father’s hand, after trying to protect me from a beating she feared would kill me.” He took in a shuddering breath as Jenna held hers. “She was but twelve. And she had spent nearly half her short life trying to protect me from him, because I was three years younger than she.”
“Your own father . . . killed her?”
“She stood in the way of the punishment he wished to give me.”
Jenna tried to keep her horror from showing; she’d learned any show of sympathy made Kane shut down, as if he were not equipped to deal with such soft emotions.
“What . . . had you done?”
“I refused to kill her dog.”
Jenna drew back sharply. “What?”
“She treasured it, that small, furry, spotted thing. Still a puppy. I could not do it.”
“But why did he . . . want it killed?”
“Because she loved it.” He shrugged, a motion she felt more than saw in the dim light of the cave in this hour before dawn. “But more important to him, he wished me to kill it.”
Jenna suppressed a shiver; she could not comprehend this kind of treatment, she who had known only love from her own parents.
“Why?” she asked after the moment had passed. “You were but a child!”
“To make me follow his orders, no matter what it was he asked.”
What . . . happened?”
“He told me there was a price to disobeying him. He told me again to kill the dog. I refused again. So he did it himself, crushing it beneath his boots.”
Jenna winced at the image, and her stomach churned.
“He turned on me then, and I thought he would kill me for disobeying him. But he did not. He killed Meg instead.”
Jenna gasped.
“I never again disobeyed him. Until the day I came here.”
Through her shock at the cold recital of the grim, harsh story, Jenna felt the sting of moisture in her eyes. She fought it, but it was too much. They traced a path down her cheeks.
“I ache for that little boy, Kane. No child should have to endure such cruelty.”
“Ache for my sister, if you wish. She deserves it, not I.”
His tone was cold, harsh, and she knew he was rejecting her unwanted compassion. She could never explain to him, she supposed, what he had just revealed to her, what he had made her understand about Kane the Warrior, both the man he had been and the man he had become. Nor could she convince him to accept the feelings welling up inside her.
“I wish . . .” She swallowed and tried again. “I wish my tears were worth something to you.”
He went as still as he had when she’d mentioned his sister’s name. For a long, silent moment he didn’t move, didn’t speak. Then slowly his hand moved, and she felt a soft, stroking touch on her hair.
“They are, Jenna. They are worth far more than I deserve.”
He turned to her in the way she’d come to know, pulling her close, stroking her, caressing her. The passion that she’d never thought she possessed, that with Kane never seemed far from the surface, rose to his touch as surely as the sun rose over Hawk Glade.
With a shudder so violent it shocked her, Kane went still.
“I don’t deserve this, either,” he whispered against her hair. “Not what you give me, here like this. I never expected . . .”
“Neither did I,” Jenna said quietly as his words trailed away. “I never thought I could feel such things as I feel when you touch me.”
She felt his arms tighten around her at her words; she didn’t know if her words had pleased or disturbed him. Then he gently nuzzled her ear, and his tongue crept out to lightly trace the curve of it, so lightly that a shiver ran through her, a shiver that she felt to her toes as her blood began to hum in anticipation.
The heat began to build as she thought of the pleasure to come. “It makes me feel so wicked,” she whispered, suppressing another shiver.
Kane lifted his head. “Wicked?”
“My people are dying; I should be thinking of nothing else, but I lie here, wishing—”
She bit back the words, fearing the power they would give him over her; he already had power enough.
Kane rolled atop her, raised up on his elbows, and stared down at her. She could feel the rigid column of aroused flesh pressing against her belly, and could not help the sudden, cramping need that seized her. How had he brought her to this, so quickly? Her mother had not warned her of this, had not told her that when that greatest of sparks came, the blaze it began would consume her.
“Wishing what, Jenna?”
His voice was caress and coercion in one, and she was helpless to deny him the answer.
“Wishing you would be in a hurry, this time.”
Something flared in his eyes, darkening them to storm-cloud gray. “You . . . want me?” He shifted his hips, nudging her belly with the proof of his own wants.
“I do,” she admitted. “I should not, but I do.”
In seconds he was inside her, driving hard, and so fast that she could barely catch her breath, and yet she gloried in it, in the power and heat of him, in the soaring response of her body, and most of all the way, for the first time, he cried out her name as he poured himself into her.
HE WAS LOSING his mind. There was no other explanation. He’d not even told Tal that woeful tale, yet he had told Jenna. He had told her, and she had wept, not for his sister, who at least deserved her tears, but for him, who deserved none of her soft, tender emotions.
She had cried for him, the man who had from that day followed his father’s brutal orders to the letter, until he’d become a thing of legend, a cruel, merciless warrior who took no prisoners and whose name was spoken with more fear than even the warlord he served.
Yet Kane, the fighter renowned for his coldness, his isolation, had turned to a chattering fool in the arms of a woman, telling sorry tales and whispering sweet things he did not mean in her ear.
“Again,” he shouted, as Jenna lowered the crossbow he’d handed her at least two hours ago.
She gave him a considering look, then set the bow down and went to retrieve the bolts she’d fired in the last session of shooting he’d set her to.
He was pushing her hard, harder today than ever before. He’d run her up and down the worst of the mountain paths under full pack, had made her fire a full quiver of arrows with her bow, retrieve all but the two she’d sent past the target far into the trees, had stood like a solid oak while she had tried to apply what he’d told her about balance and leverage and using her smaller size to advantage to take him down, then he’d handed her the crossbow.
He knew what he was teaching her had little to do with saving her clan—in hand-to-hand combat they would have no chance—and everything to do with a vain hope that she would somehow be able to save herself in the end that would inevitably come. And that her survival had become important to him was a fact he did not care to admit to.
“You have little time left to learn, do you wish to waste it?” he’d said coldly at her sideways look when he’d handed her the crossbow.
She said nothing, merely obeyed, with a meekness that somehow made him angry. He suspected it had something to do with that nagging reminder that she had little choice, both in what he set her to doing here, or in the nights they spent together.
And his anger wasn’t eased any by the sneaking notion that he was punishing her for his own weakness, that he was pushing her today because he’d betrayed so much to her in the soft warmth of her embrace in the dark.
He watched her as she strained to hold the heavy bow steady. She was a woman of rare determination; more, even, than he had at first thought. And now that he had intimate knowledge of the body that seemed so small to him, he was even more amazed at her perseverance. So small, yet she took him with ease, with every appearance of pleasure. . . .
It swept over him again, that heated rush of sensation that had struck him when she had said, so simply, so honestly, I never thought I could feel such things as I feel when you touch me.
It made no sense; he’d never cared before if a woman felt anything, although he tried to avoid giving pain. A woman was nothing more to him than a way to ease a passing need. He required nothing of her other than that she be willing, and that willingness was usually easily secured by coin.
Or in Jenna’s case, by lessons in arts she should never have had to learn. It was the same, only the payment was different. He stubbornly ignored the voice in his head that persisted in telling him that the price Jenna was paying was far higher than merely that of her body and her innocence, that for a woman like her to give herself over to a man like himself was costing her part of her soul. No, it was merely a variation on the old theme, no different than if he were paying her for the use of her body, he told himself.
And that his stomach knotted at the knowledge of what that meant he had to call her made no sense. None of this made sense to him. He was Kane, and he did not feel. His heart, if ever he’d had one, was long dead.
Your heart isn’t dead, my friend, merely in a long sleep, as the bears of the mountains in the winter, and someday it will awaken and be ravenous. Someday, the right lady will lay a fair hand at your door, and you will let her in.
Tal’s words came back to him, suddenly seeming as ominous as the warning that if he left these mountains he would cease to be. He had scoffed then, arrogant in his certainty that it would never happen, that his heart was as dead and cold as his soul, and that there wasn’t a woman alive who could change that. He’d declare it again, were Tal here to listen.
He saw it in his mind as clearly as if his friend were truly standing here, saw the slight smile, saw him glance at Jenna, heard him say in that annoying tone of amusement, “Of course, my friend.”
It was Tal’s damn fault, Kane thought in exasperation. He’d been doing just fine alone, isolated as he had always been, even amid a throng, when Tal had arrived in his life and simply refused to go away. For the very first time, Kane had learned what it meant to have a friend. He’d gotten used to it, to having someone to talk to who never judged, just listened. It had turned him soft, and now—
“Again?”
He blinked. Jenna was standing before him, the small bow he’d made for her in one hand, the feathered bolts in the other. He stared; had she really fired them all and he’d been so lost he’d not noticed?
“Kane? Are you all right?”
“I . . . yes.”
“Again?” she repeated, gesturing with the bolts.
“No,” he said. She wouldn’t be learning much if her teacher was lost in foolish wonderings, not paying any mind to what she was doing. “You’ve done enough for one day.”
He thought he saw her let out a short breath. Relieved, no doubt, after the day he’d put her through. Still, she made no attempt to relieve herself of the weight of the crossbow, clearly expecting to carry it herself all the way back to the cave.
Before he thought, he reached out and lifted the burdensome weapon from her. She looked startled, then simply thanked him. He grunted something indistinctly as they began to walk, not happy with his own action. But then she gave him a tentative smile that made him forget his disgruntlement.
“You seemed a long way off while I was shooting,” she said. “What were you thinking of?”
He tensed. He could never tell her what he’d been thinking. Yet he couldn’t find it in him to simply ignore her gentle question as he once would have.
“Tal,” he said, seizing upon the only bit of the truth he could give her.
Jenna’s expression changed, and she lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry if . . . I am the reason he has stayed away.”
Kane drew back. “You?”
“I thought . . . I know he has not been around since the day I met him. I thought perhaps he . . . took a dislike to me and that is why he—”
“It has nothing to do with you,” Kane said, wondering why he was in such haste to reassure her, why he cared at all whether she thought it her fault. “Tal does as he pleases. He comes and goes, for reasons only he—and that blessed bird, no doubt—know.”
He looked down at her, wondering what she would say if he told her Tal had ventured down from the mountains, into the chaos below. He could not do it. He could not bear to see the memories come back to haunt her, to darken the vivid blue of her eyes with imaginings of what was happening to her people in her absence. It was enough that she cried out in the night, enough that so frequently the shadows darkened her expression without any prompting from him.
It was too much. For the first time in his life all his strength, all his training, all his knowledge of battle could not help him; he had not the power to fight her fears. And that he wanted to, that he wanted to ease her mind, that he wanted to wipe away that dread that left her eyes dark-circled and her slender body weighted down, made him more uneasy than anything had in his life.
The only time she seemed free of it was when they were locked together in passion, and in the languid calm afterward. Then, at least for a while, she seemed to think of only the pleasure.
While he seemed to think only of how soon she would leave.
“You have known Tal for a very long time?”
He pulled himself out of the conjecture he neither enjoyed nor had a reasonable answer to.
“Yes.” Then he thought about it a moment, and corrected himself. “No.”
Jenna gave him a mildly amused look. “Both?”
His mouth twisted. He did not like talking of such things, yet she seemed to make it impossible not to. If he changed the subject, she eventually returned to it, and if he refused to answer at all, she merely gave him a speculative look that made him wonder if she was spinning her own answers to her questions. And somehow that made him even more uneasy than answering did.
“In time, I have known him only since I came here five years a
go,” he said, not knowing how to put it any clearer.
“But it seems as if you have known him much longer?”
Surprised at her accurate guess, he nodded. “It makes no sense, I know—”
“I understand. ’Tis like the storyteller. I had never seen him before he came to us from out of the forest, but yet I felt as if I had known him forever. My brother . . . said he must remind me of someone dear to me.”
Kane did not miss the hesitation, the catch in her voice as she spoke of her dead brother, and he waited to see if it would engulf her now, that pained sadness and anxiety that so often gripped her, until she was beyond his reach, lost in a misery he could do nothing to ease. But she seemed to fight it off, and spoke again.
“Perhaps it is that way with Tal? He reminds you of someone like that?”
“I have never known a man like Tal,” Kane answered truthfully, avoiding the even more honest answer that there was no one dear to him, that there had been no such person since his sister had paid the most extreme price for his disobedience. For twenty years he had made certain of that, swearing that never again would he give anyone such a tool to use against him. Soft feelings made you as vulnerable as a snared rabbit, helpless, at another’s mercy. He’d learned that lesson early and well. Yet Tal had breached his barriers, and Kane had never been able to figure out exactly how.
“He is . . . rather unique,” Jenna said. “You called him the local wizard . . .”
Kane stopped in his tracks to stare at her. “It was but a joke. I told you, he is not. And I will thank you not to be repeating such things. There are those who would not take it lightly.”
She looked up at him, the slight breeze that rustled the trees stirring her hair. “I know,” she said quietly. “I believe I met two of them.”
Chagrin flooded him. She had indeed met two of them, had rescued Tal from their lethal intent. An odd feeling he could not name welling up inside him, and words he’d not said since he was nine rose to his lips.
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