The Tiger's Lady

by Skye, Christina

  At that possibility a tiny sliver of jealousy worked through Barrett’s heart, but she fought it down angrily. It was no business of hers where Pagan spent his nights. She should be glad that it wasn’t with her.

  But that thought, as she slipped into dreams, brought her no comfort at all.

  Night gripped the jungle.

  Wisps of memory trailed through Barrett’s sleeping mind, fragments of remembered scent and sound. Like a distant song moving closer, like a steam train catching speed, the fragments resolved, gaining clarity and strength.

  Her breath caught. She raised her hands, trying to hold the fragments away.

  On they came, closer, ever closer, until the hot breath of memory trembled, only a heartbeat away.

  And with the remembering would come the greatest horror of all, she realized.

  Fingers splayed, pulse ragged, she jerked upright, fighting back the night. But most of all she fought the terror hidden deep within her own mind.

  “No! No more—please!”

  The raw plea burst from the darkened tent at the edge of the jungle. In the quiet night it traveled all the way to the far trail near the water hole.

  Even against the shrill cicada song Pagan heard it, and the sound was a knife in his heart.

  He was running through the darkness before he knew it, before her second cry had even begun.

  Bamboo slapped his face. Thorns ripped his hands, but still he did not stop.

  His jaw fierce, he stripped away the canvas flap and plunged into the steamy darkness of the tent, rifle leveled before him.

  “Cinnamon?”

  No answer. No movement of any sort.

  Blind in the heavy shadows, Pagan strained to see. “Barrett, what is it?”

  He heard a soft cry, the faint whisper of canvas on twill. The faint, spicy scent of some jungle herb lingered in the air.

  And then the sharp, sweet smell of woman.

  He flinched as his manhood hardened, his body flooded by desire. Damn, he didn’t even have to see her to feel it!

  “Tell me, damn it! What is it?” As his eyes gradually grew accustomed to the solid darkness of the tent, Pagan made out a dim outline, pale hands raised against shadows.

  Suddenly the figure jerked upright, fingers fisted, hands flailing. “Never—you won’t have them, do you hear? They are my secrets!”

  He covered the tent’s five feet in two strides, sliding his rifle to the ground and catching her slim wrists within his own hard hands. “Stop fighting, Barrett, it’s just a dream. There’s no one here but us.”

  As he held her, Pagan gave a sigh of relief. It was simply the dreams again. Just the dreams.

  Except the woman in his arms did not know that. She was far beyond him, too far to be comforted. “N-no. Too close that time. Must reach the King’s Arms. Don’t let him find me!” Her eyes wide with terror, she fought against Pagan’s grip.

  He stiffened, realizing she was reliving some old memory. “Hush, Cinnamon.” He ducked as one hand burst free and nearly plowed into his cheek, which already bore the mark of her nails. “Enough!” he roared.

  Her breath came fast and jerky, her breasts thrusting wildly against his bare chest, and each movement inflamed Pagan beyond bearing.

  His eyes burned. His jaw hardened to an implacable line.

  So be it. If nothing else got through to her, then perhaps this would.

  He caught her beneath him as if she were no more than a doll. In his strong grip he held her tight, one hard thigh pinning her restless body. And as she felt the heat of him, the weight of him, her eyes went wider still.

  Hoarse, alien words broke over her in dim, incomprehensible waves, dark words, strange words, a guttural tide of sound.

  But the force was real and clear, and the urgency sent her own pulse hammering.

  “I want you, Angrezi,” Pagan whispered, his lips mere inches from hers. “And I swear I’ll have you. I, not some phantom, not some dim memory!”

  “N-never,” she breathed, twisting, shivering. Seeing only a skull that glittered, grinning at her evilly.

  “First I’ll have your heat. Then I’ll have your heart. And last, by heaven, last I’ll have your soul.”

  He was the devil. He was death.

  And somehow Barrett knew he would do all those things.

  Her face bled white as the skull drew closer. Her lips trembled. She shoved wildly at the shimmering image. “P-Pagan!” she screamed. “Help me!”

  The man above her went completely rigid. He watched her face, a study of terror, her pulse fairly leaping beneath her skin. Fury ripped through him as he tried to imagine what it was she saw there, what terror it was that stalked her restless dreams.

  Was the thing so terrible that she denied the memory, even to herself?

  “P-Pagan! Where are y-you, d-damn it?” Her throat tightened in a jerky sob.

  The sound was like a fist driving into Pagan’s belly. Dear heaven, she wanted him—she needed him! Most of all, she trusted him.

  The knowledge was like a blast of clear ocean air after long days of musty jungle heat.

  “Here. Right beside you. Sleep now. I’ll keep away the nightmares.”

  Her slim body quivered. He heard her breath catch sharply.

  “Pagan? What—” Abruptly she went completely still in his arms. “W-what are you doing here?” she demanded stiffly.

  “You cried out. For me, Angrezi. And I came.”

  Still half buried in the fog of dreams, Barrett started to protest.

  But she knew it was true. “I—I must have been dreaming again. Did—did I—” She couldn’t finish.

  “Did you what, Cinnamon?” Pagan’s eyes hardened. He wasn’t going to make it any easier for her, not when he was in greater torment than she, nerve and muscle aflame.

  “Did I say anything—do anything—damn it, you know what I mean!”

  Pagan smiled thinly in the darkness. “I’m afraid I don’t know, Angrezi. Why don’t you tell me?”

  At his silky challenge, she shoved her palms against his chest and tried to break free.

  But he held her easily, effortlessly. And that superior strength only fueled her fury. “L-let me go, damn you!”

  “Now what sort of gentleman would that make me if I did? Don’t forget it was you who called me to your bed, Cinnamon, and half the camp heard you cry out my name. Had I been with you at the time, they would have sworn it was the raw moan of a woman cresting in passion. Shall I call in Nihal to prove it? Mita, perhaps?”

  “No, damn you! It—it was only because I was having a nightmare. Purely by reflex.”

  Pagan’s eyes glittered in the darkness. “Was it, Cinnamon?” he asked, in a velvet voice that spelled surest danger.

  “Of course,” Barrett snapped. “Yours was the first name I could think of. Probably it was the only name I could think of,” she added bitterly.

  With a growl, Pagan twisted, driving her down beneath him onto the cot until every granite ridge of bone and muscle dug into her struggling body. “I don’t believe that for a second, Cinnamon. What’s more, neither do you,” he added fiercely.

  His breath came hard and heavy with the need to press her back, to feel her softness spread and filled by his man’s heat.

  His jaw clenched as he tasted the raw hunger, knowing she was his now, that she would not fight him in this nether state between sleep and waking.

  In seconds she would be twisting and hungry, her sleek velvet bared to his fingers, her urgent cries rising wanton around them.

  Suddenly the jungle sounds, the din of birdsong and insect melted away until the only sound he heard was the thunder of his own heart.

  And of hers in wild, staccato answer.

  How I want you, Angrezi. With nothing but hot skin between us, while you drown in need. With your hands buried in my hair, wild and endlessly hungry. With my name trembling on your lips when I push you over the edge to paradise.

  With a start, Pagan caught himself, realizi
ng how very close he had come to uttering those dangerous words, words which would give her endless power over him.

  With a low curse he jerked to his feet and pounded across the tent to his cot. Damn the temptress anyway! Bedding her would prove nothing, except perhaps that he had become no better than the jackals that howled in the night, the monkeys that rutted and shrieked in the temple ruins.

  And Deveril Pagan had come too far to throw everything away for a few hours of furtive pleasure with a silk-skinned siren trained by a blackguard named James Ruxley.

  Whether she remembered those lessons or not.

  “You’ve had your fun, Angrezi. Now go to sleep.” After positioning the rifle within close reach, Pagan flung his broad body down on the cot and eased his arms beneath his head.

  The twill strained and protested beneath his weight. Wood creaked; metal hinges clicked and rasped.

  White-faced, Barrett heard each movement, each separate sound. And all she could think of was how good it had felt to pillow that great body, to feel each corded, straining muscle anchor her to her cot.

  Dear heaven, what was happening to her? Could she possibly be regretting that he had gone to his own bed?

  She frowned into the darkness, her thoughts in turmoil. There were so many things about this man that were not as they appeared, she realized now. He hounded her mercilessly one minute, then saved her from the results of her own rashness the next.

  He was a brute, all arrogant, insufferable suzerain.

  And a moment later he stunned her with his consideration and sure insights.

  Though she hated to admit it, she knew he could have had her, could have bent her to his will only seconds before, either by force or by the dark, potent skill of his mastering fingers.

  And yet he had done neither of those things.

  For in his own way, she realized, Deveril Pagan was a man of honor. The thought stunned her. All unbidden, a strange lightness attacked her chest and her breath came fast and shallow. An odd warmth began to curl through her limbs.

  “Pagan?”

  “Go to sleep,” the man on the far side of the tent said tautly.

  “It—it was cold. S-so cold. In the dream I saw a skull—your skull. And inside it shone a stone so bright and red that it blinded me. But somehow it seemed cold, unbearably cold, its beauty a thing of perfect evil.” She caught a jerky breath. “Am—am I going mad?”

  Pagan frowned. So she did know something of the ruby. How much other information did she possess, locked away amid the shredded remains of her memory? Something that he could use against Ruxley perhaps?

  He pushed away the thought. “Forget it. It was just a dream,” he muttered, still chilled by a premonition of danger at her words. Scowling, he shifted on the narrow cot, trying to ignore the straining line of muscle that throbbed at his thigh.

  Trying to forget how soft she had felt beneath him.

  Trying to forget how much he wanted her still.

  And as he struggled to find some elusive position of comfort, Pagan realized it was going to be a damnably long time until morning.

  “It—it was the ruby, wasn’t it? The gem you call the Eye of Shiva.”

  In the darkness Pagan’s face turned hard. “Don’t be so bloody fanciful. It was just a dream, I told you.” Pagan only wished he could believe it himself.

  For a long time all was quiet, the jungle sounds rising wild and restless around them in the steamy night.

  And then there came a faint rustling at Barrett’s side of the tent. “P-Pagan?”

  “Go to sleep, damn it!”

  Her small chin rose in defiant determination. “I—I do remember. Calling your name, I mean.”

  The Englishman sighed and found himself wishing that for once she weren’t so bloody honest. All this remembering was only making him grow harder. With a low, noncommittal grunt he turned on his cot, hoping it would lessen the torment at his groin.

  It didn’t. He had known it wouldn’t.

  Yes, it was going to be a very long time till morning.

  “There’s—there’s just one more thing.”

  Pagan smothered a very crude curse. “What now, woman?”

  “I just want you to know that—that I did need you. You were right about that too.” In the darkness Barrett silently brushed away a tear. She had to tell him this, for something told her she was nothing if not honest. Scrupulously so. Somewhere deep in her being she remembered that honesty had been one of the mainstays of her life. “Even in my dream I knew you would come, you see.”

  Pagan caught his breath at her low, breathless declaration. He frowned, stunned at her admission. For a moment he wished it were a trick. Yes, it would have been infinitely easier to bear had the confession been no more than a trick.

  But every male instinct told him that this was no trick and that she was perfectly sincere.

  “I’m … glad to hear it, Cinnamon,” he said finally, his voice unaccountably gruff. “Now will you please go to bloody sleep?”

  He stood by the pool, eyes narrowed, ears attuned to the restless flow of the jungle around him.

  He picked out the low snuffling of a night-hunting sloth bear and the quick, dry panting of a jackal. Somewhere to the right came the sharp yelp of a spotted deer. Then the man by the pool stiffened as he caught the low murmurs of two sentinels, posted just beyond the bamboo thicket to his left.

  So that was where Pagan had them posted. A good location, except that the pair were too busy talking to pay any attention to the sounds around them.

  Best of all, they were nervous. He could hear it in the bravado of their boasting.

  Their nervousness made him smile thinly.

  Only three more days till they reached the first of Windhaven’s far-flung hills. For a moment his face was very hard in the darkness.

  Almost as hard as the lines of the ruby that haunted his dreams.

  But many things could happen in three days, his keen eyes promised, expertly searching the night. And very soon this worthless pair of Tamil guards would be far more nervous than they were right now.

  A moment later, skirting the panting jackal, sidestepping the useless pair of guards by mere inches, he melted back into the jungle.

  When night closed around him, not one of the creatures nearby had even guessed at his phantom presence.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The air pressed down, thick and heavy though it was not yet dawn. Grimly Pagan dragged his razor across his chin, scraping away a thick black line of stubble and then rinsing the blade in a basin at his elbow. Even when he wore a beard for a disguise, beneath he preferred to be clean shaven.

  Tugging off his eye patch, he scowled into the mirror propped on a nearby boulder, assessing the dark rings beneath his eyes, the gauntness in his cheeks, the slight pallor left from his last bout with malaria.

  The last few sleepless nights certainly hadn’t helped.

  Something continued to bother him, and it wasn’t the gutted carcass of the sambhur buck Nihal had discovered.

  It wasn’t the two sentinels he’d discovered asleep at their post. It wasn’t even the fragment of a boot heel he’d found in the scattered leaves at the side of the trail, though that worried him more than a little.

  No, it was something else, something he couldn’t quite seem to put his finger on.

  Smothering a curse, he gave up trying and attacked the soapy line of unshaved skin at his jaw instead.

  Behind him a twig snapped. Instantly he dropped the blade and lunged for his rifle. When he swung about, the muzzle was already leveled.

  Barrett stood frozen in the middle of the dirt path, white-faced, her fingers clenched at her sides.

  “Damn it, woman, when are you going to learn there are some things you just don’t do in the jungle?”

  Though her breath was coming fast and jerky, she scowled back at him. “When you tell me what they are, I imagine. I have no way of knowing your precious rules without—” Abruptly she stopped.r />
  Her teal eyes darted downward, then jerked back to his face.

  Her features blazed crimson. “But you—you’re—”

  A smile crept over Pagan’s lips. Whatever she saw served the bloody female right.

  “You’re—you’re not dressed!” she sputtered.

  One sable brow crooked. “Any reason why I should be, Angrezi? A man goes into the jungle looking for a little peace and quiet, not expecting a female to come creeping out after him.”

  “I—I was not creeping.” The crimson streaks on Barrett’s cheeks grew brighter. “I do not creep.”

  Pagan eyes narrowed. He found himself wondering what it would feel like to kiss those hot streaks of color, to feel the heat of her desire bloom beneath his lips.

  Instantly he felt the muscles at his groin tighten and swell. Too late he remembered his state of undress, which would render his state of arousal blatantly obvious.

  His lips compressed, he spun about and grabbed for the printed length of native cotton slung on a nearby bush.

  But he wasn’t quite fast enough to conceal the effect of that one idle speculation.

  And despite all her determination, Barrett’s eyes had dropped, wide and mesmerized, to the naked expanse of Pagan’s bronzed chest and from there to the rampant blade of muscle that swelled beneath her gaze and surged hotly at his thigh.

  But … the man was—was huge! All rippling bronze muscle and springy black hair. Hair that nestled perfectly around the part of him that—

  She caught back a breathless moan. No lady would think about such things, of course.

  But then probably no lady had ever found herself in such an intolerable predicament with a man like Pagan, she told herself wildly.

  His eyes dark with fury, Pagan jerked the printed cloth around his lean hips and knotted it tightly.

  Damn the woman anyway! How did she manage to make him feel so bloody out of control, like a youth caught in some furtive depravity? “I’m beginning to think stealth is second nature to you. Don’t you realize I could have shot you?”