Cynara found herself caught on those memories as if they were traps deliberately set. The images were focused yet languorous, no longer nightmare but ecstatic dream. Ronan’s dream.
It was his first time. For years he had seen shaauri adolescents leave for Walkabout, one by one, free to mate as they chose until the time of Selection. Only he had been forbidden such release. At the age of sixteen, as humans reckoned it, his thoughts had been filled with need and confused yearning.
Then they had sent for the Kinswoman. She had shown him such wonders… Cynara tried to remain apart from the memory, but Ronan’s emotions were too powerful. Gratitude, elation, release, the fragile sensation of having come home at last.
When it was over, he reached for his lover, his mate, believing with all his heart that she would stay. After what they had shared, how could she do otherwise?
But the face turned toward him was cold, and in it he read the indifference of a tedious duty completed. With that look she wounded him, not in flesh that would heal but in his very soul.
That had been the first of the annual visits. Each time a new Kinswoman arrived to relieve a young man’s hungers. No companionship. No love, except when memory touched the old shaaurin, and sometimes other faces that did not turn from him in scorn and loathing.
Cynara tried to conceal her pity, the sorrow for Ronan that he might sense if she projected too strongly. As if aroused by her efforts, Ronan claimed her again—not with old memories, but as he was now, fully aware of her as she was of him.
Emotions washed over her, barely contained. She felt Ronan’s desire—attraction, yearning, physical hunger, everything that he had experienced with those other women, but a thousand times more potent.
In his mind he had stripped her naked, and they lay in that forest he remembered from childhood, bodies entangled. Her legs were wrapped around his hips, and he was moving inside her with deep, rhythmic thrusts. She was no longer a captain or a D’Accorso or even a woman of Dharma, but some unrecognizable creature heedless and half mad with lust…
Cynara snapped the link far too swiftly, breaking the protocols meant to protect both telepath and subject. It was like lopping off one of her arms. She slumped over the table, breathing hard, Ronan’s scarred hands filling her vision.
She pushed up on her elbows. Ronan’s gaze passed through her, unseeing.
“Are you all right?”
He blinked and focused. “Is it finished?”
Poseidon. Had it been illusion, her sense that he had been conscious of her presence within his mind? Her entire body felt like a live current, thrumming with Ronan’s desire and the memory of his phantom lovemaking.
“Yes.” Her throat was too dry for speech. She got up and filled a glass of water from the dispenser, leaning heavily on the counter. After a moment she poured another glass and set it before Ronan.
He touched the glass with his fingertip. “Was it difficult?”
Difficult. She hadn’t attempted anything like this since Tyr’s death had tripled the acuity of her insignificant talents. She’d always feared that such concentrated use of them would summon Tyr from his restless sleep, compel him to reclaim the life she’d unwillingly stolen.
For she knew he still lived within her. She drew upon his confidence and absolute belief in his own competence and strength. She had no right to prevent him from reclaiming what should be his, yet she avoided any risk that might upset the precarious balance.
Tyr the hero. Tyr the beloved of all Dharma. Tyr the bold, brilliant captain, her childhood idol.
I gave everything to you, Tyr whispered. Do not deny me, Cynara. Let me live…
“Cynara?”
She winced at the concern in Ronan’s voice. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t difficult.”
“Did you discover what you needed?”
Cynara gathered all the images she had collected and realized how little she had seen of his life. Yet it was enough. No man could suffer so and be anything but a fugitive, desperate to rejoin his own kind and find acceptance.