by Sue Wilder
Moving into the bathroom, he stripped the dirty clothes from her body. She had roused enough to stand on her own, but he held one hand on her shoulder as he turned the taps in the modernized shower. She felt too fragile, and he stripped off his own bloody clothes, then lifted her and stepped beneath the spray. At the first sign of her resistance, he just held her, stroking along her arm. Her breathing calmed. The water was warm as it soothed across her skin, and for a long time he simply held her upright until she shuddered once.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said as she opened her eyes.
Lexi didn’t seem to know what to say, so Christan reached for the lemon scented soap. Gently, so as not to alarm her, he smoothed his hands over her collarbones, then down her back. He needed to do this. Each reincarnation was seared into his soul. No matter what color her hair, what body type she possessed, he could touch her like this and know her.
He would never tell her, but he felt so proud of her courage. His warrior girl. She hadn’t flinched in the face of violence, hadn’t run this time. She’d grown into a new skin and it thrilled him, sizzled across his nerve endings. Made him a little irrational. He felt it, in the way his fingers tightened before he let her go.
Need pressed against him, but Christan forced it back. With quick movements, he washed the blood from his skin, his hands easy and comfortable with his own needs. She’d watched him fight and refused to leave until he was safe. Then he’d asked her to drive where the imprints from Gemma would be the most intense. He knew the memories had returned, just by looking at the new amber line that burned beneath her skin. She would hate him for it, and perhaps he deserved it more now than ever.
He reached for the shampoo and worked the lather into her hair, pressing against her scalp. Bits of dirt washed away with the lather, and he ran his fingers through the pale strands, spreading them across her wet shoulders, smoothing down the center of her back. He loved her hair. Loved it best when she bent over him, the silken veil cocooning them while he moved deep within her. Abruptly, he turned off the water, lifted her, wrapped a large towel and carried her back into the bedroom, ignoring his own nudity. Kindling had been laid in the fireplace. Flames burst into life. He settled himself in a chair, close enough to feel the warmth, and held her.
She was so warm, snuggled deep into the curve of a masculine shoulder. Hard arms surrounded her. His fingers were stroking her leg as if soothing a restless child.
Lexi knew that touch. She recognized the strength in those corded arms, breathed in the intimate fragrance of male flesh tinged slightly with lemon soap. Her eyes opened. Slowly she pushed out of his arms, realizing she was wrapped in a towel and he was wrapped in her.
It would be better if she could move away, but then he would be exposed. And he knew it. A slow, wicked smile curved his lips, and Lexi looked around. The room was familiar, too. The walls were a soft earthy rose, but once they’d been white. The floor was cool tile beneath her feet. A carved Italian four poster bed rested against the far wall and was deep in shadow, still draped in white linen. Tall windows overlooked what she knew would be a garden where she’d once played as a child, loved as a young woman. Where she’d cried and begged and lost everything. Emotions rose and nearly overwhelmed her. Lexi lunged to her feet, but before she could run, he was behind her. His big hands circled her arms, holding her steady.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered in her hair. “I shouldn’t have brought you here without warning.”
It took her a moment before she could speak.
“I remember, Christan,” she said as she turned to look at him. “I remember Gemma.”
They were sitting on the thick rug in front of the fire. Lexi was curled in a white robe. Christan had donned a pair of jeans and was stretched out like a great cat. The caretaker, an elderly Brit named William Strome, brought up food, and Christan insisted she eat.
Firelight spilled warm light across the floor, over the curve of Christan’s shoulder. He was shirtless. Hard muscles across his chest bore the scars of his life. It was the first time Lexi had seen the entire tattoo that snaked across his back and shoulder, down his left arm to just below the elbow. It was pagan, the copper and black lines forming an intricate tracing beneath the skin, a primitive language that spoke of violence and war. She remembered touching, biting some of those lines. She refused to look away.
Christan was watching her, his expression guarded.
She reached out and touched him.
“What are these lines?”
“My life.”
“How do you get them?”
“We used to record our history, until one day the history recorded itself. The tattoos are sensate memories beneath the skin. When I press here, I can relive that moment. Press here, I relive another.”
“They give you a way of recalling everything?”
“I have lived a very long life.”
“How long?” she asked, curious.
“Too long,” was his only answer.
She leaned forward, her fingers lightly touching his skin before she traced the line that moved across his shoulder. “This one?”
His eyes narrowed as if a storm were brewing. Her gaze remained steady while her fingertip pressed against his skin.
“Do you feel this?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What does it feel like?”
“Death. I smell fire and smoke, feel the heat as my hand closes around a blade. I revel in the confusion, the massive crush of bodies as men go to war. I rip into flesh, shout over screams of dying men, taste the iron warmth in my throat. I have the power to create whatever destruction I desire. It’s what I was then,” he said. “What I still am now.”
“And this?” she asked, ignoring the way his lips tightened. He took a deep breath, and she pressed harder.
“This,” she repeated, as he sank his fingers around her hand and held it in place.
“It was never my nature to be a good man.”
“I don’t believe you, Christan,” she insisted. “This line.”
“You.”
“And this one?”
“Also you.”
“Which one is Gemma?” she asked, watching his hard face. He took her hand and moved it closer to his heart.
“This one.”
There was steel in his grip, perhaps a truth he didn’t want her to discover. Her hand trembled but she pressed against him anyway, traced the dark tattoo. Touch was such an intimate act. If tattoos were remnants of sensation, she felt the shattering reality: how he saw her, loved her, ultimately hated her. It was the hardest thing she’d ever had to face and she did so now, shoving her way through grief and regret just to come up for air.
She owed him the truth.
“I need to tell you,” she said, and even that small admission was incredibly difficult to make. Honesty was a feeling one had to get used to, knowing even as you spoke the words you were destroying what you’d once believed. She needed a moment, just one moment to feel him still beside her before she walked that path alone.
He cleared his throat and said, “You don’t have to do this.”
“I do.” She was trying to remember what it felt like, to love him then. So bone-crushingly painful she couldn’t process the depths to which she’d plunged. But really, could she have done anything worse than continue that hatred into this lifetime? What had she said weeks ago? That she hated him? And he said it was so easy to do.
They were too close. Her heart felt bruised, and she stood from the floor and stepped back, his attention focused on her.
“What I remember,” she said, “was that Gemma hated the fighting, but she couldn’t make herself stop. She was so bitter toward the end. Nico was the one way she could punish you. She would do anything, say anything if it drew blood.”
It hurt just to look at him, watching as if he refused to hear the words. Beyond her, the fire flared up in a rush of sparks, orange, bright yellow at the edges, blending into white. She tried
to understand what drove Gemma to such extremes, but she couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t think of anything he could have done that would make her feel that way now.
He was waiting, and Lexi forced herself to speak.
“She was with Nico the night after you returned. I remember a darkened room, where she found you staring into the fire. There was a fight and she ran outside. Nico was there, and she confided in him. Her sister lived too far away to be a confidant, but Nico—he was kind when he came to visit. He teased her, played chess with her when she was lonely.”
“He made her happy?”
“She thought he was her friend.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Did she know who he was?”
“No, not if you mean did she know he was Kace—Wallace, Nico, they were all the same. Just names.” A pause, a bitter laugh. “Whatever else you might think of me in that lifetime, Christan, Nico was never her lover. And when Gemma was on the road that night, she wasn’t meeting him. She was running away from him.”
“Why?” Christan’s voice had thickened, and it was hard to admit, in the intimacy of the fire-lit room, but she deserved every hateful word he’d ever thrown. She closed her eyes. Confessing her sin to this man seemed like a death from a thousand knives. She did it anyway.
“Gemma was many things. I think she was a woman with strong passions that she didn’t always control. Especially with you. She loved you in the beginning, but mostly, she hated you, because you were always just beyond her reach. That was all she wanted, Christan. She wanted you, and when she couldn’t have you she turned to Nico.”
Lexi bent her head, allowed the curtain of blond hair to obscure her expression. “I think she knew what she was doing, in fact, I know she knew. She felt guilty enough to light a candle in the chapel and try to bargain with God.”
Lexi paused for a moment, straightened and pushed the hair back from her face, unwilling to appear afraid.
“That night, she felt humiliated. There was talk in the village, between the staff, about the reasons you stayed away. She’d had enough of it. Nico found her in the garden and he discussed the vendetta, said Gemma had no male relatives to defend her. He offered, described a random attack, mercenaries on the roadway. He said that he would attack you, try to kill you and all she had to do was ask.”
“And did she ask?” It was the question that had never been answered. Dark, lethal interrogation had entered Christan’s voice, demanding details, and Lexi knew the wound she ripped open would bleed for more than this lifetime.
“Yes. I won’t excuse what she did—what I did. Gemma asked, and then she tried to take it back. She felt guilty, realized it was the worst kind of betrayal, that you didn’t deserve it. But Nico said she was a coward, that she wanted your death, just didn’t want to hold the knife. And he was right. She was a coward. She could have stopped it with an anonymous warning, sent to any of the men loyal to you, but instead she committed an even greater sin than asking Nico to kill you. She wrote a confession and left it for the priest in a place he wouldn’t find it. She put her few possessions in a bag made of tapestry and she ran away from what she’d done.”
Lexi’s face was wet with tears, but she faced his condemnation with what courage she possessed. “I was so sure, Christan, that you had destroyed me lifetime after lifetime. But I was wrong. Scraped down to the raw essence, I’m the monster in the night. I tried to destroy you. I’m everything I ever accused you of being, and you have every right to hate me.”
He said nothing, and she dragged a hand across her cheek, wiping away the moisture. Panic chewed at the edges of courage and she wanted nothing more than to run from her own misery as she had done long ago. The smells and sounds in the room left her hopeless. Memory, of kindling, popping in the warm silence. The faint tang of the smoke, smudging with an exotic freshness. The rustling of cloth, a male hand touching her with tenderness. Of all the endings she could ever have imagined, this ending, in this room they shared all those centuries ago, was not one of them.
“I must go.” Frantic, she looked around. She’d confessed her greatest sin and he said nothing. She saw her discarded clothes across the room, a tumbled pile beside the door. She walked toward them, memories tormenting her mind. His silence, continuing. Muddy jeans, clenched in her hand as she struggled to turn them right-side out. No time, she thought, just grab the clothes, just run.
Staggered, Christan listened to her confession. How many centuries had he wondered, imagined what had driven Gemma that night? Now, he wished she’d never said the words, never remembered what had happened all those centuries ago.
Christan recognized his own responsibility in that desperate act. He’d known who Nico was, realized what the Enforcer was doing. Christan should have protected Gemma. Instead, he drove her toward the man, preferring to hurt her because it was easier than telling her the truth. Rage had driven him in that lifetime, from the guilt he carried, the truth he could never reveal. Even Gaia would not have loved him if she’d learned what he’d become.
But this woman—who she was now in this life—had nothing to do with what happened in the past. She shouldn’t have been punished for it. The pain in her eyes left him undone, shamed by his behavior. This slender, courageous woman who pulled him from an alley not two hours ago, who’d driven through the night toward memories she never should have relived, now believed she deserved his utter condemnation. When she’d told him her truth, he’d searched her face, trying to find Gemma there. But it was like trying to find the face of the man in the moon. Too indistinct to be accurate. All these weeks, he’d refused to see the differences.
He could hear her breathing, ragged in her throat, her body stiff with pain. He knew she was on the edge of running, as she had run from him those long centuries ago. He needed to stop her.
“I thought you lived with courage,” he said roughly. “That to refuse to face your life was an act of cowardice.”
“I have faced it.”
“You are running,” he accused her, angry.
She nodded, her back still turned. “Sometimes that is the only option.”
“I would ask you to stay.” He reached out on a wave of warm power and wished it was his hand. “It was not Gemma’s sin that night, it was mine. She had every right to run. You,” he emphasized, “had every right to run from me. I terrified you in that lifetime.”
“Why?” Her voice was barely above a whisper and he strained to hear. “I remember how we loved each other once. Why do we destroy each other now?”
Christan needed to be as honest as she had been. “I don’t blame Gemma for turning to my enemy. I drove her there. She knew I lied, felt it every time I touched her. I let her believe her own fears because I refused to trust her with my fears. When she grew to hate me for it, I hated her in return. When she begged, I walked away. When she cried, I became angry because of my own guilt. I wanted her to love me, and I knew she never would if she knew who I really was.”
Embers in the fireplace popped, flew angrily into the air in a swirl of emotions and Christan knew his telekinetic power was on the verge of raging uncontrolled.
“She knew nothing of what I am because I refused to tell her. I convinced myself I was protecting her through ignorance. I knew the truth. I was protecting myself, not her, because I was afraid to tell her all the things that I had done. That was why I married her,” he continued harshly, “to bind her to me, to make it easier for me to stay away.”
He saw the small tremor that moved through Lexi, the trembling of a bird’s wing.
“When you said those words to her, Christan. In the chapel, your voice was so deep in your throat. She thought you meant every word. She was so happy. Then she woke and you were gone. It broke her heart.”
“I meant those words—I am damned for it because she knew. You knew, cara, that I was not protecting you, even though you could never put it into words. I knew who Kace was and I did nothing to stop him. In my arrogance I trusted the Agreement would keep y
ou safe, that Kace would never harm you. I could have found ways to protect Gemma, but I didn’t. I could have told her what I was, what I had been obligated to do in the service of the Calata. And I didn’t.”
His voice became deep and rough. “I should have done a better job of loving you. But love is for the angels, and I was never allowed in heaven. I am not a good man. I have always been flawed in ways that can never be repaired.”
The silence drew out with only the continued popping of embers in the fireplace, revealing the depth of pain. Pressure ached in his throat while he waited for her to respond. When she turned, he wanted to hear her as he’d never heard her before.
“You’re not flawed, Christan,” she said. “If you couldn’t tell her your truth, it was because she wouldn’t understand. I remember her tears—I cried them. But I also remember her vengeance. What I did to you in that lifetime—I condemned you beyond all decency, and then I refused to admit what I had done. I would ask, if not your forgiveness, then at least your understanding.”
He stepped close enough to cup her face but didn’t. “You did not condemn me. I condemned myself.”
“And now here we stand.” Lexi was trembling as she stepped away.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t leave.”
And she remembered, then, how he’d filled her heart with simple joy, the one true light in every lifetime. He was the memory she held tight at night. The tears she turned toward the ocean breeze. The whispers when she counted the first five stars. He must have read it in her eyes because he stepped close again. The muddy clothes fell from her hands and she pressed her palms against his chest.
“I carry the scars of what I did to you,” he said, the emptiness in his voice unraveling her. He shifted his weight and restless, aggressive power filled the shadowed room. He cupped her face, wiped the moisture from her cheeks with his thumbs. She trembled and didn’t pull away as he slid the robe from her shoulders, tossed it to the floor. His fingers traced the dip of her throat, to her shoulder in a journey of rediscovery, his eyelids dropping as his hand cupped the soft swell of her breast. A calloused thumb stroked lightly against the sensitive flesh as he waited for the permission he needed in this lifetime.
