The Tiger Prince

by Iris Johansen

  She didn’t want to give anything but found her legs instinctively tightening around him. That spiraling tension she had known in the railway car had returned and was growing with every second. How could her body betray her when it meant victory for him?

  He moved, turned, and somehow she was on her back, lying sidewise on the chaise. There was room only for her torso on the tufted cushion and her head arched over the edge, her hair brushing the floor with Ruel’s every thrust. She could feel a scream building in her throat, building in her entire body, waiting to be released.

  “Stop holding back,” Ruel muttered as he rotated, drew out slowly, and then plunged deep. “Give it to me.”

  She could fight him no longer. The primal scream broke free, her body convulsed, climaxed, and she heard his low cry of satisfaction above her. She was barely aware of the short flurry of thrusts that brought him his own release. He had won, she thought wearily. He had manipulated her body and taken what he wanted, and she had not been able to keep even that final victory from him.

  He was carrying her toward the bed, the towel still draped loosely about her.

  Her breath was coming in gasps as she looked up at him.

  “You didn’t expect it, did you?” he asked as he deposited her on the bed. “Our bodies don’t care if we hate or love. It’s going to happen every time. I’ll make it happen whether you want it or not.”

  “No!”

  “Yes, I’ve never had a taste for compliance even in my whores.”

  She flinched at the unexpected thrust. “You took me by surprise,” she said haltingly. “It won’t happen again.”

  “It will and very soon. I find I’m fairly insatiable where you’re concerned, and I assure you that’s just the first surprise. I’ve had three years to plan many, many more.” He reached over to the bedside table, and the next moment he was holding something before her. “Do you remember that night at Zabrie’s?”

  A mask, an extravagant sable and turquoise feather mask.

  A picture flooded back to her of Ruel standing in the center of the room, mocking blue eyes glittering as he gazed at her through the slits in a mask very like this one.

  “I recall very little of that night. It’s not a memory I treasure.”

  “Nor I.” He brushed the feathered mask over her nipple. “But that’s because I was undergoing a great deal of frustration at the time.”

  Her breasts were swelling, her nipples becoming more acutely sensitive with every lazy stroke of the feathers. “Is that necessary? I wish … you would stop it,” she said haltingly.

  “Presently.” He moved the mask down and brushed it lightly back and forth over her lower abdomen.

  She felt a hot tingling begin between her thighs. Not again, she told herself despairingly. Lie still. Don’t give him any more response than he can take from you.

  “Zabrie was very clever. She knew that in a house of pleasure a man doesn’t care who a woman is as long as she gives him what he wants,” he murmured. “There’s nothing more anonymous than a mask, is there, Jane?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He moved over her, parted her thighs, and entered her again, sliding slowly to the hilt. “Ah, you’re ready for me. I thought you would be. You’re proving very accommodating.” He placed the feathered mask on her face and leisurely tied the velvet cords behind her head before arranging her hair to fan around her on the pillow. He sat quite still, gazing at her. “You look quite splendidly erotic.” His tone was mocking, but his voice had thickened, hoarsened.

  Sweet heaven, she was clenching around him.

  “And evidently that’s also how you feel.” He smiled faintly. “I approve. That’s how a woman of pleasure should feel and behave. You’re learning fast, Jane. When we’ve taken the edge off this, I’ll give you another lesson.” He began to move with excruciating, teasing slowness. He whispered, “There are many other purposes and places for feathers than the obvious.”

  “You didn’t do it right,” Jane murmured as she gazed at the window through which the first gray light of dawn was beginning to stream.

  “Really?” Ruel gathered her closer, his fingers idly toying with her red hair spread across his shoulder. “I would never have known it by your response.”

  “Oh, you made me feel …” She trailed off. He already knew how he had made her feel during these last hours. Possessed, completely in his power, bent to his will like a twig in a windstorm. Her body ached with that possession, and yet she knew he could arouse her again if he chose to do so. Yet, gradually, she had begun to realize something that had filled her with infinite relief. “But I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

  “I didn’t know you ever were.’”

  “I think you did. I’m not very clever about hiding my feelings.” She gazed unseeingly at the patterns of pale sunlight on the royal-blue and cream carpet. “But you didn’t know why.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  She whispered, “I was afraid you’d make me love you again.”

  He stiffened. “Love?”

  “I did love you … a long time ago. I was afraid it would come back.”

  “I’m sure that possibility no longer exists.”

  “No, it’s gone now. I feel hollow inside, as if I had been filled with sand and it had all poured out of me.”

  “A great relief, no doubt.”

  “Yes, it would have been terrible. I thought for a while back in Kasanpore that you could be—” “I could be what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Nothing seemed to matter. She felt as if she were floating. Fever? she wondered. She would have to remember to take her quinghao tomorrow morning….

  “On the contrary, I find this confession of devotion fascinating.”

  “You were so different from me, different from anyone I’d ever known. I used to think of you as one of those Chinese mandarins.”

  “What the hell is a mandarin?”

  “Li Sung says they’re men of power in China. In ancient days some of them gained their influence with the emperors through magic”

  “I’m hardly a magician.”

  “No one else had ever made me feel like you did. But you also made me feel … helpless.” She whispered, “I was afraid you’d turn me into her.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yes, I guess I’ve always been afraid that I really belonged in one of those places and fate was only waiting to find a way to pull me back.” She smiled sadly. “What better tool could fate use than a mandarin? But now I know you can’t do that. It’s only my body, not my mind. You can’t really change what I am. When I leave here I’ll be the same person I was when I came. I’ve cheated you, Ruel.”

  “Don’t be too sure. I’ve only just begun.”

  “But it’s too late now. You might have succeeded if you’d done it right, if you’d made me remember the old days.” Her gaze shifted to the crumpled mask on the bedside table. “Silk curtains and scented rooms … exotic feather masks. That’s not what I remember, that’s not what I’ve been afraid of all these years.”

  “It seems I’ve been remiss in my preparations. Would you care to tell me a few of those fond memories?”

  “Sheets that smell of dirt and sweat and urine, the red glass bowl of the opium pipe my mother smoked, watching Frenchie counting the money …” She closed her eyes. “I’m very tired. May I go to sleep now?”

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to duplicate those charming surroundings now that you’ve confided in me?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. You’re not—” She was so tired, she could barely think, much less talk. “You’re not Frenchie.”

  “Thank God.” He didn’t speak for a moment and then said lightly, “As it happens, I’m much too fond of my own comforts these days to want to undergo that ordeal. I’ll have to find another way of accomplishing my ends.”

  “It’s too late. I’m not afraid anymore. You can’t hurt me if
I don’t feel anything for you. I’m free of you, Ruel.”

  He ran his hands through her hair. “Are you?” “Yes, I know what I am now….”

  She was asleep.

  Ruel’s hands ran slowly through her hair again.

  you didn’t do it right.

  He had to ignore the picture she had drawn for him with those few sentences. He would not let pity turn him from his purpose. The punishment he had chosen for her was trifling in comparison to what she had let happen to Ian.

  He had hurt her as he had told her he would; he had made her feel used, without dignity or pride, a mindless object of lust and pleasure.

  No, she had not been without dignity even at the end. She had just kept her word and given whatever he asked of her. He hadn’t expected anything else. She had never broken faith since the day he had met her.

  Except when she had built the bridge over Lanpur Gorge. She had traded in iron instead of steel and Ian had been the one to suffer for it. If she had to falter, why the hell couldn’t it have been at some other time, some other place. He could have forgiven anything but what had happened to—

  Forgiven? It was too late for forgiveness between them. He had taken his revenge and would take it again until it was time for her to leave. What he had done was just. It was not right for Ian to suffer and no one else.

  I know myself now, she had said.

  But did he know himself? Did he know how much of what had happened tonight was revenge and how much the fever of lust? The more he had of her, the more starved he became.

  Starved and enchained. At times he had felt more enslaved than Jane during these past hours.

  He would get over it. The first wild burst of passion was always the strongest. By the time she left the summerhouse, he would surely slake himself of both lust and revenge.

  I don’t love you anymore.

  I’m free of you.

  He pulled her closer with a movement unconsciously possessive. She murmured something inaudible into his shoulder and was asleep again.

  He did not sleep for another two hours. He was too filled with anger and frustration and— It was not pity.

  you didn’t do it right….

  Li Sung frowned. “None of your guards sighted the elephant anywhere?”

  Dilam shook her head. “A peaceful night.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “You appear disappointed.”

  “Foolishness,” Li Sung said curtly. “After his rampage I merely thought it odd he had left us in peace for two nights in a row. Why would I want the elephant to come and destroy what we have built?”

  “Why indeed?”

  He knew what Dilam was thinking. makhol More foolishness. “There’s work to do.” Li Sung turned away with a jerky movement and walked toward the track, carefully keeping his gaze from wandering toward the west. Dilam was wrong. It was not some mystical bond that was attracting him to the elephant. It was anger … and fear.

  Margaret threw open the door of the studio and announced belligerently, “I have no intention of continuing to come here. I’m here today only because I couldn’t think of a way to—”

  “Keep me from getting what I want,” Kartauk finished impatiently. “I know, I know. Now, come over and put on your apron. We have work to do.”

  She felt a surge of relief as she realized there was no hint of intimacy in his tone. So much for the worrying and soul-searching she had undergone all night. He had closed the door and it was as if yesterday had never happened. She moved across the studio toward the worktable. “And I shall not pose for you.”

  “Not now,” he said absently as he measured moist sand into a small box. “I have to cast Ruel’s seal. I’ll think about the statue another day.”

  “It will do you no good to ponder the matter. I will not pose.” She reached under the table for her apron and put it on, her gaze upon the mold they had started two days ago. “What do we do first?”

  “We powder the plaster model with fine charcoal dust.” He did so and then pressed the model into one of the two caster boxes on the worktable before him. Wonderful hands; skilled, graceful, sure. Yet they had not been this sure when he had touched her yesterday, but trembling with need. “Then we dry the portion of the model where the figures come. Are you listening?”

  “Of course.” She guiltily looked away from his hands. “What next?”

  “pasta di pane crudo.”

  “What?”

  “Dough.” He scooped up doughy paste from one of his bowls, shaped it like a cake the same size and thickness the seal was to be, and carefully placed it over the design formed by the plaster. “The dough is to make the shape of the body of the seal. Take the other caster sand box and fill it full of sand.”

  She scooped the moist sand into the box. “And then?”

  “We let that sand dry and then set that box over the first box. Two halves of a whole.”

  That’s what he had said about what they could have together. Two halves of a whole.

  “Pack the moist sand very tightly. You’ve spilled some….”

  It was no wonder. Her hands were trembling as much as his had been the day before. He had closed the door. Why couldn’t she do the same?

  “After a time we’ll separate the boxes, take out the dough cake, and cut a mouth and two vent holes in the mold. When both are dry, we’ll smoke the mold over with a little candle smoke and let it cool. It’s always best to pour hot gold into cold interstices.”

  “Is that all I’m supposed to remember?”

  His thick brows lifted. “Is that not enough? Should I have given you a greater challenge, apprentice?”

  “This is quite enough.”

  “I hope you paid careful attention. You’ll do Ian’s seal by yourself.”

  Her eyes widened. “What? The entire seal?”

  “I’ll prepare the materials, you’ll do the work.”

  “But I’m not ready to do something like this. What if I make a mistake?”

  He smiled. “Hope that you do. You learn most from your mistakes.”

  She grimaced. “And you would stand by and let me waste hours of work on nothing?”

  “I told you to listen. If you ruin your seal, I will explain once more and only once before you do it again.”

  She tried frantically to remember the order of the steps he had taken in the process. “What comes next?”

  “We melt the gold, but I think you have enough to remember. We won’t go into that now.”

  “Thank you,” she said sarcastically. “I suppose I’m required to memorize that process as well. Have you no other words of wisdom to impart?”

  He did not look at her as he stood up and took off his leather apron. “Yes, concentrate only on the work at hand.”

  “I could scarcely do anything else.” “And remember to keep the flame turned low.” “I thought we were not going to go into melting the—”

  I kept the flame turned low for three long years.

  Kartauk had been aware of what she had been feeling but had ignored it, putting her at ease, giving her something to cling to in this unknown sea of emotions. She experienced a glowing warmth deep within her that had an element of despair. How could she guard against him when he showed such kindness and empathy?

  “I understand,” she said in a low voice.

  “Of course you do. You’re a very intelligent woman, apprentice.” He moved toward the veranda door. “Tidy up this mess while I go to the furnace room and select a sheet of gold for the melting.”

  he clouds hovered gray and heavy over the mountain. Just the sight of them made Jane feel as if they were pressing down, smothering her in a sluggish languor. No, it wasn’t the weather. The day had only just turned threatening and yet she had been experiencing this heaviness since she had opened her eyes that morning.

  “I’d like to ride over and see James Medford later this afternoon,” she said over her shoulder to Ruel. “I need to talk to him about the schedule for joining the
rails.”

  “Restless already?” Ruel’s lips tightened. “It’s been only two days. I’ll have to apply myself to keep you more interested.”

  He was angry. Jane had been aware of Ruel’s growing edginess for the entire day. He had been prowling around the summerhouse like a caged lion for the past few hours. “You’re restless yourself. Neither of us is accustomed to being cooped up with no work to do.”

  “This is your work for the time being.”

  She whirled away from the window, holding tight to the sheet she had draped around herself. “Good heavens, we cannot fornicate every hour of the day. It’s only making you bad-tempered.”

  “I’m not bad-tempered.”

  “You most certainly are.”

  He scowled. “Then it’s your job to distract and soothe me.”

  “You shouldn’t need soothing. I told you that you’d be disappointed.”

  “I’m NOT disappointed. I’ve done exactly what I said I’d do.” His smile was a mere baring of teeth. “And enjoyed every minute of it.”

  “No, you haven’t.” She frowned, trying to put together the pieces of his behavior. “For some reason … oh, I think you’ve enjoyed my body but not the other.”

  “What other?”

  “You didn’t like hurting me.”

  He stiffened. “I’ve not noticed any bruises.”

  She did have a few bruises on her body but not by his intent. It would have been impossible not to have gone through the orgy of sexual indulgences of the past forty-eight hours without showing any signs. “You know the kind of wounds you inflicted. It gave you no satisfaction.”

  “I regret you’re reading me wrong. I’m very satisfied with every aspect of our time together and, if you’d admit to it, I believe you received an equal satisfaction.”

  “Because you gave me pleasure?” She shook her head. “Every time you gave me that pleasure it hurt me. It stripped my pride and made me feel less than myself, just as you intended it to do.”