The Tiger's Lady (39 page)

Barrett trembled with the power of his wanting, gloried in the strength of her giving, wanting to do all he asked and more. She arched beneath his knowing fingers, all fire and quicksilver in his hands, all flashing scales and hot fins, all mermaid in a sea of flowing black velvet.

All woman, touched by this singular man.

Her legs found his waist. Her arms slid out to cup his neck and comb through his wave-wet hair.

Another shudder shook him, and she felt as if she trembled on a volcano about to explode.

Her eyes closed.

Red silk and golden bells. Honeyed laughter in the long, burning night.

In a rush, her dreams came back to her, along with the sudden knowledge that
this
was the man she had dreamed of.

In that instant Barrett realized how much she wanted to touch him, to feed his pleasure until they were both honeyed, hot, and wild. Even now his touch was a torment beyond imagining.

As she trembled a mere hair’s breadth from yielding, his lips slid down her neck. Slowly they eased back the silk at her chest. Wet and exquisitely thorough, he explored every rich inch of her. Slow and silken, he tongued every lush curve.

And then in a dark rush he feathered lower and captured one perfect, upthrust nipple in his teeth.

“Tremble for me,
Angrezi.
Moan for me. Show me your sweet heat.”

Again and again he shaped her, mouth to her silken skin, sometimes gentle, more often fierce.

Waves of fire coursed through her. The earth seemed to sway and tilt. She felt her body tense and arch, like a perfect bow bent to a master’s arrow.

Groaning, Pagan arched her back against him. All teeth and tongue and liquid heat, he drew her tighter with every heartbeat.

Her loosened sarong pooled at her hips. His hands played over her nakedness, maddening her, inflaming her.

Parting her.

He laughed softly, whispering dark words of praise and triumph. Words she could not understand. Like so much else about this hard brooding man, they spilled from hidden places.

With every touch he drove her harder. With every stroke he tore the breath from her throat, the blood from her veins.

And then, finally, the very heart from her chest.

Plunged in fire, she arched blindly, her nails digging into his skin. “P-Pagan, stop! I—”

But it was too late for pleas or accusations. The night rose up and wrapped her close in all its hot, sweet magic until all that was left was desire, drowning her, clawing through her.

And then the pleasure caught her broadside and cast her up, blind and gasping, into the trembling, silver music of the sea.

She was still drifting, part of the fabric of night and wind and water when a low cry made Pagan stiffen.

Barrett swayed dizzily as he issued a sharp question, then waited rigid for the sentinel’s reply.

Slowly reason began to return, with all its incriminating memories. What had she done? How had he managed to make her so reckless, so wanton?

With a low cry she stumbled away from him, just managing to keep the water below her waist.

From the edge of the jungle came another urgent shout.

Pagan muttered something beneath his breath. Barrett heard him tug the stick free and cast it into the water, then turn and slap up toward the beach.

Grimly she followed, raging at herself with each unsteady heartbeat. When her feet met solid ground, she felt tears trickling free.

At that same moment Pagan turned, his gaze fixed on her darkened face. One hand traced her cheek, slick with tears.

“Don’t say anything. Not a word. And I—I’m not crying,” she said defiantly. “I
never
cry.”

His fingers climbed to her eye, achingly gentle. “I never said you did,
Angrezi
.” He hesitated, as if to say more, his hands tense upon her cheek.

But he only bent down and shouldered his rifle. “Get dressed. Nihal’s just sighted a party of hunters coming over the ridge.”

Hours later Barrett lay restless in her cot, unable to sleep. The hunting party had turned out to be simply a band of disgruntled Vedda aborigines, looking for any sort of game in a jungle arid and bare before the onset of the monsoon.

Pagan had traded them some salt and a freshly slaughtered boar in exchange for medicinal herbs and a very potent arrack punch.

After drinking together amiably with Pagan for half the night, they had shouldered their packs and longbows, then melted back into the jungle.

Barrett had suffered through every note of off-key singing, every burst of raucous laughter as she tossed back and forth in the arid tent. Hour after hour she had chased sleep up sere jungle slopes and down again.

Always it evaded her.

Partly it was the tension of waiting, knowing that any minute Pagan would flip up the fine mesh flap and stalk inside the tent. She understood his order that they share a tent, even though she did not like it. But if she rose in her sleep and found her way, dream-blind, into the jungle, she knew it was likely she would never return.

So when Pagan had ordered her cot moved in here across from his, she had bit down her protests, contenting herself with one sharp, defiant look.

Now as she lay in the steamy darkness she found all she could think of was Pagan’s hard fingers and soft mouth, his infuriating ability to intuit what she wanted seconds before she even wanted it.

Or maybe it was a darker magic he commanded, a magic that made her want what he
chose
her to want, against her very will and spirit.

And what of her own breathless, stunning response? With a sharp oath she wrenched to her side and snuffed the palm-oil lantern, tears glittering in her eyes. She absolutely refused to waste any more thought on the infuriating Englishman.

At the far side of camp, Pagan watched the lantern in his tent flicker and go out. He caught back a sigh of relief that he had managed to keep from going to her this long.

But with the darkness, new temptations gripped him.

Thoughts of how she would feel if he came to her in the shadows, how little it would take to re-create the wild, sweet abandon he had felt at the lagoon.

With a low, dark curse Pagan shoved to his feet and plunged off into the darkness, the potent arrack liquor he’d consumed with the Veddas burning hot trails through his exhausted body.

He had walked nearly twenty miles that day, crisscrossing back and forth before the others, checking and rechecking to be certain that they were not walking into an ambush.

Only when he satisfied himself they were not, did he trot back to the rear and hold a position there, keeping well out of sight until they made camp for the night.

Even with that care, the Veddas had come nearly unnoticed.

A bad sign, he realized, even though the island’s aboriginal tribesmen were renowned for their ability to melt into the jungle. The only good thing was that they had not been a band of Ruxley’s men.

One more example of the way he was slipping, Pagan thought in disgust.

As he strode through the jungle, palm leaves and trailing vines slapped his face but he scarcely noticed. He still cursed to think how close he’d come to madness, to taking her right there in the gleaming silver currents of the lagoon. And Pagan was experienced enough to know that the desire would have been mutual. And then had come her wild, liquid tremors. Her breathless cry. Sweet Lord, had a woman ever been so beautiful in her passion?

Then the planter’s face hardened. A man was only as good as the worth of his word, and tonight he knew he had come very close to breaking his. Her innocent fire had done that.

It was not a vow to family or friend, but a vow made to himself, which was the most important kind of all.

A vow made long ago, while the heat and smoke of Cawnpore churned up around him.

And the day he broke that vow was the day Pagan died.

On he stalked through the jungle, finding the water by smell alone. Blindly he dove forward, clawing his way toward the far horizon, seeking the oblivion that would bring forgetting, if only for an hour or two.

His last thought before succumbing to a blessed exhaustion was how ironic it was that the Englishwoman with no past was seeking the
one
thing he would have given a fortune to shed.

In the hot, still darkness of the tent Pagan tugged off his shirt, then eased his tired body back onto the cot.

Strong arms locked behind his head, he concentrated on the sounds of the night, cataloguing a hundred forms of wildlife.

The whoosh and faint click of a large, night-flying insect that rushed into a lantern and was incinerated instantly.

The wild cry of a shama falcon, sighting its prey. The swish of a flying squirrel soaring from one perch to another. The distant crash of underbrush as some large, lumbering creature—a sloth bear, perhaps—pushed through a dry, brittle thicket.

Each sound Pagan catalogued carefully, hoping it would help him ignore the slim form only inches away.

But it did not.

And then another sound came from the steamy darkness, a low moan followed by the rustle of fine cloth.

In taut silence Pagan watched Barrett jerk upright. He did not move, waiting to see what she would do next, wondering if he might discover untruth in these nighttime meanderings of hers.

Her arms rose slowly. She seemed to brush something from her face. Without a sound, she rose to her feet.

Her eyes wide and fixed, she studied the darkness, her head cocked to one side.

Pagan waited, his pulse churning noisily in his ears. She moved forward in the darkness, straight toward him.

Danger prickled along his spine, urging him to seize the knife hidden in his boot. But he did not, for somehow answers were more important to him than self-defense at that moment.

Even when she stood beside his cot, he still did not stir by so much as a muscle.

Her hands glided out, and Pagan expected any moment to see the dull gleam of moonlight reflected off a honed blade.

But there was no brightness in the still, hot air that curled between them. There were only shadows, and the steamy scent of need.