Dragon's Eden (5 page)

To his credit, he didn’t give her one of his
wry smiles. He didn’t tease her. She almost wished he had, anything
to break the embarrassment engulfing her.

“This is going to sting,” she said, forcing
the few words out and using the most clinical voice she could
manage with a full-blown blush coursing across her cheeks. She’d
been fondling the man.

He said nothing, only glanced away after a
reflective perusal of her eyes. When she went on to clean his
wound, he didn’t flinch. Not so much as a flicker of discomfort
showed on his face, though she knew from experience that the
antiseptic stung like the dickens. She finished tending him,
fighting twinges of guilt as she added another bandage to match the
one on his shoulder. He wasn’t supposed to have gotten hurt while
under her care. Something had to be done with him, before anything
else happened.

“I don’t want you to touch me again,” she
said. That sounded good, real good, and would certainly help with
her overawareness of him. She smoothed a strip of first-aid tape
into place. “If you’ll keep your hands to yourself, I’m sure Jen
will do the same with his swords. You’re safe while you’re here, so
there’s no need to go around attacking people.”

“I wasn’t attacking you,” he said, sounding
at least as irritated with himself as she was with herself. “I was
protecting you.”

She gave him an incredulous look. “From
Henry?”

“From a stranger. You said there was no one
else here. Only you, and me, and Jen.” He turned his head to meet
her gaze. “Don’t lie to me, Sugar,” he warned. “I’ve got damn few
facts to work with to keep myself alive.”

She’d never been called a liar. It was an
utterly novel and not very pleasant experience.

“When we were in the bungalow,” she said,
“there were only three people here. I’m not sure why Henry came
back tonight, but I asked him not to return until morning.”

“Why?”

“In case you still hadn’t come around.” She
crossed the first piece of tape with another.

“What would you have done with me, if I
hadn’t?”

“I would have gotten you better medical
care.”

He shot her a hard look. “In other words, if
I die, I can leave.”

She just stared at him, appalled at the
conclusion he’d drawn. “You were brought here so you would be safe.
I am supposed to take care of you. I can take of you,” she told
him, feeling far more than her pride was at stake. “You aren’t in
danger. I swear.”

A short bark of laughter escaped him, the
sound as good as calling her a liar again.

“I am not lying to you,” she said. “Shulan’s
only concern is for your welfare.”

In answer, he lifted one winged eyebrow in a
clear show of derision. “If you believe that, then I obviously know
your friends a hell of a lot better than you know mine.”

Sugar felt just enough contrition for her
earlier words to offer him an apology. The man had been wounded and
captured. Antagonizing him would get her nowhere. Insulting him was
unnecessary and mean. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you have lots of
friends, somewhere.”

His answer to her apology was more laughter
and sarcasm. “My, my, you are sweet, aren’t you?”

“Not really,” she said, feeling foolish. The
man didn’t need her sympathy, and she’d do well to remember it.

“No?”

“No.” She was emphatic.

“Ah, then you’re just in it for the
money.”

She gave him a wary look. “What money?”

“The ransom Shulan wants for dragging me off
that beach before her mother’s lackey dog could get another shot at
me.

“She better be asking for a bundle,” he went
on. “I would guess Baolian’s maternal instincts will be running on
empty if she ever finds out what her little girl has gone and done.
The Dragon Queen wanted me dead. She’s not going to be happy to
find out I survived her ambush, and she isn’t going to be happy
with the person who helped me, blood relative or not.”

“You’ve got it all wrong,” Sugar said,
turning toward the table to repack her medical kit. “Shulan is
saving you for the same reason her mother wants you killed, because
you are Sun Yi’s son. There is no ransom.”

“Right,” he drawled, clearly calling her a
liar yet again. “And you don’t have the kind of legs men dream
about in their sleep.” He rose from the chair and walked over to
the window overlooking land’s end, leaving her speechless behind
him. “He’s still out there, wandering around.”

“Jen or—or Henry?” she asked, wanting to
prove to him he hadn’t stunned her senseless with his
matter-of-fact summation.

“Henry.” He laughed softly. “Jen doesn’t
wander, physically or mentally. That’s what makes him such a good
watchdog. He’s got the tenacity and focus of a heat-seeking
missile. Which is great, unless you’re the damn target.”

He swore, a rude word, and turned to face
her, dragging his hands back through his hair. He stood staring at
her, his gaze raking her from head to foot, his expression a
mixture of resentment and fascination.

“I don’t know where she found you, but
Shulan chose you well. So damn well, it makes me wonder if the
drugs she used gave her access to my fantasies . . . because you
are it, lady. But that’s not enough to keep me on this rock.”

If he expected an answer from her, he was
going to be sorely disappointed. She didn’t have anything to say to
such an outrageous statement—or so she thought. The longer he stood
there staring at her, looking like he wanted to either beat her or
eat her, the more inclined she became to speak.

“You’re w-wrong again,” she stammered.
“Shulan isn’t asking for a ransom, and she knows better than to ask
anything like what you’re suggesting of me.”

“Sex is the oldest lure on the face of the
earth.” He took a step forward.

“Not on my corner of it,” she said,
inadvertently stepping back.

His half smile and the satisfaction
darkening his eyes alerted her to what she’d done. She cursed
silently. She couldn’t afford to let him have the upper hand, and
when he took his next step forward, she held her ground.

“There are a couple of things you need to
know before I leave you to eat your dinner,” she said, stiffening
her backbone in the face of his slow, predatory approach.

“Such as?” He cocked one brow in
question.

“You’re nine miles from the nearest
inhabited landfall. Off the leeward point of the island is a deep
ocean trough that’s called Shark Alley for a reason, and you’re
bleeding. I wouldn’t be going for any midnight swims if I were
you.”

Her piece said, she turned and walked out
the door, barely clearing the porch before a stream of virulent
curses burst from the kitchen.

Jackson stood on a jetty of rocks in the
fading moonlight, watching the sea ply its trade. Sounds of the
island came from behind him, filling the lull between waves with
the chirping of crickets and the peeping of tree frogs. The
faintest brightening on the rim of the arch told him dawn was
nearly at hand.

He’d eaten the meal she’d laid out for him
of rice, beans, and fruit, and he’d cleaned up as best he could
without knowing where everything went. Most of all he’d enjoyed the
freedom of being alone, of eating without being watched, of being
able to move around without anyone following him. Even the old
Chinaman had let him be.

If anything that night, he was the watcher.
Henry, the drunk, had curled up under a blanket in the cabana off
the kitchen, too far gone to make questioning him anything other
than a lesson in futility. All Jackson had learned was of Henry’s
penchant for a lovely but heartlessly cruel woman named Carolina.
Jen was asleep on a pallet in the icehouse, having commandeered
that dilapidated building for himself, and Sugar Caine was in the
bedroom next to the one she’d given him in the green-shuttered
bungalow, tossing and turning. Her light had come on numerous times
in the night, bare strips of illumination leaking through the
jalousies, telling him of her restlessness.

He knew he was the cause. The way she’d
touched him while tending his wound had told him more about her
life and her needs than anything she’d said. There had been
tenderness in her caress, in the softness of her fingers on his
shoulder, in the gentle exploration she’d made of the back of his
neck; tenderness and a reverence that had made him wonder how long
she’d been alone. She’d let herself linger over the moving aside of
his hair, playing with the length of it and sighing so quietly, he
would have missed the revealing sign except for the rise and fall
of her small breasts. The slight movement had fascinated him,
tantalizing in all its possibilities. When he’d lifted his gaze to
meet hers, he’d seen a reflection of his own desire in the soft
gray depths of her eyes.

Strange, beautiful woman-child. What could
she have done to Baolian?

He raised his head and turned toward the
bungalow where she slept. Fireflies flitted through the undergrowth
encroaching on the courtyard and through the numerous pots of flora
on the porch. A stand of bamboo canopied the rickety stairs leading
from the bungalow to the beach, where coconut palms sighed with the
wind, their fronds swaying in the cool currents of air.

Paradise or hell? He still didn’t know,
except Sugar Caine looked more like an angel than a demon, and she
fought the same devil he did.

Her light came on again, and his pulse
quickened, surprising him. What had Shulan done by bringing him
here?

* * *

Sugar slipped into her sandals and doused
the lantern. Her days started early no matter how short the night
had been. Today would be no exception. Henry wouldn’t stay drunk
forever, and she wanted him off the island before he got too sober,
before Jackson Daniels cornered him and started asking questions.
What made Henry the perfect courier and liaison was his
guilelessness and general state of confusion, not his discretion.
She’d shared a few bottles of rum with the old man, and they both
had a tendency to get maudlin as hell in their cups. Even only
half-coherent, Henry might tell the dragon man more about her than
she wanted him to know.

She closed the bungalow door behind her and
stood for a moment, buttoning her jacket. The northeast trade wind
had blown through the night, keeping Cocorico cool and carrying the
mists out over the ocean. The sun would come early this
morning.

Finishing the last button, she started down
the stairs to the beach. It was more ritual than necessity to walk
the headlands, but she wanted to check the surrounding seas and
assure herself there wouldn’t be any unexpected arrivals. Sometimes
unwary sailors laid anchor off the island, though a stop in any
nearby port would have warned them away. Shark Alley was real and
marked on the maps, making Cocorico a poor choice for diving.

Beach morning glories climbed over the
rocks, spreading across the sand at the bottom of the stairs and
all along the base of the cliffs. She checked the windward side of
the island first, knowing it was the least likely place for a
stranger to anchor, in the buffeting winds that came off the
Atlantic. For a friend, though, it was the only choice, in the
hidden cove carved out of the limestone on the other side of the
arch.

When she saw no mast or rigging silhouetted
against the pale sky, she made her way down the rocks to the beach.
Cocorico was a crescent-shaped curve of land, about three hundred
yards long. As on the windward side, the leeward boundary of the
bay was demarcated by a jetty of rocks carved from the cliffs
above.

She picked her way across the tide pools and
over the ragged-edged boulders, making for the farthest point of
land, and was almost upon him before she realized it. She stopped
suddenly, the soft splash of her last step fading into the rhythmic
pounding of the surf.

He’d seen her. She knew it, or she would
have turned and tried to slip away.

He stood above her, at the top of the jetty
with his arms at his sides, his legs spread and braced. The dawn
wind molded his clothes to him, the thin cotton revealing the
strength of firm flanks and a broad chest. Wind lifted his hair and
sent it rippling like a dark veil down the side of his body. He was
the vision of a warrior, an image of power as constant as the sea.
In the last shadows of the night, he took her breath away.

“I’ve been watching the sharks,” he said,
his voice carrying above the sound of the waves.

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
She didn’t want him here, invading her sanctuary and wrecking her
hard-won peace, bringing violence and longing back into her life.
She had run from violence once and escaped it. The longing she’d
subdued and ignored, sublimated it in order to survive alone.

But he’d lain in her bed, filling it with
his body, so much larger than her own, claiming it with his scent
and presence. She’d felt longing again, a need to be held, a desire
to feel a man’s mouth on hers, to know the caress of his hands.

Was it so wrong to want what she couldn’t
have? Or was it merely the pain of the wanting that made it
foolish, a masochist’s idyll?

And if she was going to be tempted, why
couldn’t the temptation be easier to resist? She remembered there
being hundreds, if not thousands, millions, of average-looking men
in the world, and she’d be the first to admit they had their
appeal. A man like Jackson Daniels was overkill in the temptation
department. His body was a masterwork of form and curve and
sentient masculinity that any woman would want to touch and
explore. He would have tempted a saint, and she was no saint,

“Come,” he said. “There’s a ship.”

Nothing else he could have said would have
impelled her to accept the hand he offered. Not when she’d spent
the whole night devising ways to keep her distance, to build
barriers between them so there would be less danger of him making
an impression on a heart that she knew was desperately
impressionable.