The Tiger's Lady

by Skye, Christina

  Strangely enough, it was Barrett who first noticed the line of crimson drops trailing down his fingers and pooling up over the map.

  Her breath caught sharply and her eyes flashed open. She jerked upright, her eyes huge and luminous. “You—you’ve cut yourself!”

  As if in a dream their eyes met, onyx probing haunted teal. Barrett felt her breath squeezed from her lungs as his gaze pored over her, dark and hungry.

  A shudder seemed to work through him.

  He frowned, looking down at the red drops welling up over his desk. Slowly he released the dagger and opened his hand, staring silently at the gash crossing the base of his thumb. For a moment his lips twisted at some dark, private thought. Then the curtain fell over his features once more.

  His expression unchanged, he drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around the wound. Then he looked up at Barrett.

  The look that passed between them then was electric, tangible, dark with churning emotions. Desire was there, along with wariness, urgency, and regret.

  But greatest of all was need, a need so palpable that it throbbed and pulsed with a life of its own.

  Wide-eyed, Barrett met that piercing gaze. Vulnerable in the wake of her recent discovery, she felt her body tingle and stir with a strange restlessness. It was only because of the danger they had shared, she told herself.

  Liar, a soft voice whispered. It is far more than that.

  Dry-mouthed, light-headed, she faced Pagan, unable to move, barely able to breathe. In the hot still air of the tent the seconds squeezed past like hours while Barrett’s heart thundered in her ears.

  Impossible, she tried to tell herself. This cannot be happening!

  But the languor that stole through her limbs argued otherwise, as did the dizziness that bubbled through her blood.

  She was frozen with the force of his need, and her knowledge that she would be unable to fight it. The thought kindled chill sparks of fear, but even that was not enough to shake her free of the mesmerizing force of his eyes.

  In raw, tense silence Pagan pushed slowly to his feet. As he moved toward her his massive body blocked the lamp, casting the tent into darkness.

  She shivered, feeling a premonition of danger.

  When his fingers traced her brow, light as a bird’s wing, heavy as the weight of the ocean, Barrett was still shivering.

  “Better, Angrezi?”

  She could not have spoken if she had to, not with his warm, hair-dusted chest only inches away, not with his taut thigh close enough to touch. His force was palpable, all the hard, sculpted planes of his face thrown into dark, chiseled beauty.

  His fingers slid over her cheek and Barrett closed her eyes, feeling ecstasy pour through her, shard-sharp.

  What was happening to her?

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were so weak?”

  She swallowed, forcing her swirling world to rights. “I—I would have managed.”

  “Managed? You were nearly dead on your feet, woman. When did you mean to ask for help?”

  Her eyes flashed open. “Never.” Even in that faint voice there was stubbornness and implacability.

  “Little fool.” Pagan’s voice was low and harsh. His fingers brushed a stray strand from her cheek, then slid deep into the warm curve of her neck.

  Her response was immediate and totally instinctive. She shuddered, feeling her heart slam against her ribs, the fire of his touch lurching all the way to her toes.

  She barely managed to catch back a moan as his other hand cupped her shoulder.

  “What is it?” Pagan bent close, his fingers sinking deep into her hair.

  She blinked, her eyes dim and unfocused. Somehow Pagan couldn’t tear his gaze from those haunted eyes. Uncertainty and something else marred their liquid depths, and he was stunned to realize that other thing was passion.

  She was still sitting, rigid, when he eased down beside her and drew her against his chest. He searched her face, and then somehow his eyes dropped to her mouth. Mesmerized, her own eyes fell, tracing the hard, sensual flare of his lower lip.

  Heat coursed through Pagan’s body, pooling thickly in his groin.

  He caught her to him, forcing her face up to his. His thumb traced the curve of her lip. “That was a bloody stupid thing to do on the trail. When will you begin to stop fighting me and accept my advice?”

  “Ad-advice? Or your royal command?” But the protest was watery and faint.

  “Perhaps I was a touch high-handed,” Pagan conceded, offering her the ghost of a smile.

  “Arrogant. In-insulting.” Her voice wavered. “Completely impossible.” Abruptly her eyes darkened, strangely uncertain. “I—I would have died if you hadn’t come, wouldn’t I?”

  Silence. Then a muscle flashed at Pagan’s jaw.

  It was all the answer she needed.

  “It—it seems I owe you my life. The third time, I make it now. Strange, you hardly seem cut out for the role of guardian angel.”

  Pagan’s eyes narrowed. “There are many things you don’t know about me, Angrezi.” His voice flowed over her like a dark, midnight tide. “But now at least I’ll have time to teach you. And I don’t mean to let you out of my clutches. Not for a long, long time.”

  Sometime in the long seconds his touch changed, slower, richer.

  Hot, endlessly hot.

  “I suppose … I suppose you mean to frighten me,” she said huskily.

  “Doesn’t it?” His fingers traced slow, heated circles against her hair.

  Barrett felt her bones turning to mush. “No. No, I don’t believe it does.”

  “Ah, but it should, Cinnamon.” His voice was velvet over small, rough stones. “It should terrify you.”

  Barrett shivered as his fingers found the knot of tense muscles beneath her ear and kneaded them gently, expertly.

  With the skills he had learned from a thousand women in a thousand, heated bouts of love, she thought dimly. No, he was not jesting when he warned her of her danger. “And what exactly should I fear, Tiger-sahib! That you will beat me cruelly?” Driven by some inexplicable recklessness, she let her eyes fall to his mouth. “That you will offer me unimaginable torment? That you will break me to your will?”

  “Far worse, Angrezi. I will fire your blood until you moan my name and forget everything but how good it feels between us. For I mean to learn every hot, sweet inch of you, and when I’m done I’ll learn you again, with tongue and teeth.” His eyes bored deep inside her, hard with savage hunger. “I mean to have you, Cinnamon. In every way a man can have a woman. Until you wear my scent on your skin, my teeth marks on your velvet thighs. Until dreams of my body haunt your every hour of sleep and torment your days.”

  Barrett’s breath caught. The air around them seemed to shimmer, charged with tension. You already have me, she wanted to answer. You already have stolen my peace of mind, invaded my days and nights.

  Only her pride kept her silent.

  His rough thumb traced her lower lip. “You know, don’t you? You can feel already how it will be between us.”

  Barrett swallowed. The steel of his rampant sex grazed her hip. Her breath caught, and madness coursed through her.

  For it was madness. Total madness.

  The jungle coiled and pressed around them, deadly as krait and cobra. How could she think of anything but survival at such a time?

  But maybe this was part of surviving. Maybe she would only feel alive when she was caught tightly in Pagan’s arms.

  Had she been a different woman—a woman less proud or more experienced—Barrett would have said as much. But she could not.

  Seized with panic, she caught a jerky breath, feeling heat flood her cheeks.

  She closed her eyes, bewildered, unable to face his probing stare. She was only Ruxley’s latest scheme, after all. How could Pagan think her anything else?

  With her eyes shut, she did not see the wild hope that flared in Pagan’s face.

  His fingers slipped from her hair
and she shivered at the pain of his withdrawal. Better this way, fool, she tried to tell herself. Far better. The man, like Caro’s Byron, is “mad, bad, and dangerous.”

  Let it go.

  “Cinnamon.”

  When the first gentle brush of air met her neck, she barely noticed, too caught up in her own efforts at control. Only when the current swept her bared chest did she stiffen.

  Pagan’s lips traced the curve of her ear. Her eyes flashed open. She saw Pagan’s long fingers at the collar of her shirt. Her breath caught as she watched those fingers slip down, slowly, reverently, peeling back white cloth to bare the blushing swell of breast and rosy nipple beneath.

  She heard Pagan groan deep in his throat. His strong fingers rose, spanning her fullness, claiming the peaked bud at her center.

  Barrett shuddered as he found the proud thrust of her nipple and eased his fingers around her. Heat flared as she watched his dark hands play over her white skin.

  She had to stop him, stop this. It was wrong to feel so wild, so reckless. To be so lost to everything but his touch.

  She opened her mouth to tell him so, to make him stop, but all that emerged was a long, heated sigh as his other hand rose, easing off her shirt and then claiming her other breast.

  A strange humming rose in her ears. She shifted restlessly, an alien tension coiling through her limbs.

  “You are fire itself, Angrezi,” he whispered. “Can you feel how perfectly you fill my hands?” He palmed her rich curves, idling over her in rhythmic circles until she shivered and arched back against him. “And now you feel what it is to burn—just as you make my own blood burn.”

  “Pagan.” It was the only word left to her, the only thing that made any sense in the trackless storm of sensation where she pitched and swayed. “What—what madness is this?”

  “Hush and I’ll tell you, beauty. With many words and in many tongues. But none will be half so beautiful as you are.” He shifted and slanted a hot trail of kisses down her neck.

  Her head fell back. Without thought she opened herself to him, her tawny hair spilling over his chest.

  In raw, dark words he spoke her beauty, in strange phrases that Barrett understood nothing of. But she felt every beat of magic, every hot nuance of feeling. And when at last his mouth slid over her swollen, aching crest, she moaned, wild with need.

  “Yes, little falcon, feel my heat. Feel my fire in your blood.”

  Time wrenched to a frozen, breathless halt.

  In dark compulsion Barrett’s eyes opened. She watched, spellbound, as Pagan’s tongue circled one dusky, swollen bud. Dark and feral, his eyes found hers. He watched her as he took her into his mouth, suckling fiercely.

  “N-no, Pagan. You must not—I cannot—” Her breath caught in a moan. “S-stop!”

  He studied her furled beauty in brooding wonder. “Stop,” he repeated, mouth to her aching skin. “Of course. Must stop … will stop … but how responsive you are!”

  And then his tongue began to move anew, tracing slow, tormenting circles on her urgent skin. Seconds later his hard lips followed.

  She was lost.

  She heard him groan, but dim, so dim it was. Untried muscles flared to life, demanding things she still did not understand. Blindly she caught his shoulders, seeking his strength as the world fell away around her, his name a choked cry upon her lips.

  For a moment there was fear as his hands found her woman’s heat. Gently, skillfully he bared her, cherished her.

  Claimed her.

  “Gentle, little flower.” His voice was hoarse. “How soft, how sweet. Here—do you feel it? Here. Does this please you?”

  Her only answer was a raw moan. She dug her nails into Pagan’s back as he coaxed an entry deeper, ever deeper.

  Until she felt her body shimmer, felt magic spill over her in hot, liquid tremors.

  But it was not enough.

  His mouth moved against her and the next instant he parted her to his hot quest.

  “P-Pagan!”

  He shifted, his breath a gossamer torment. “Yes, that way, little flower. Tremble for me. Bud for me. Need me. Let me show you all the faces of your desire.”

  And then his lips sealed around her wet, and gentle and blindingly sweet.

  Barrett stiffened. In a raw storm desire swept through her, ripping past every barrier of sense and fear. With a choked cry she fell, shivering as pleasure caught her in wild, drugging waves.

  On and on it went. On and on he swept her, stunned and blind with wonder, afloat in silver seas.

  And when Barrett’s hope and longing swirled together, finding form in sound, the sound was his name.

  She whispered it wildly—and was still whispering it when her body finally shattered into a thousand, glittering pieces.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  She felt her body re-form. In slow, shuddering silence light slipped away and matter returned.

  Finally her breath grew still. Barrett felt reason reclaim her, and with it came shamed awareness.

  What had he done to her? How could this man stir her to such blind sensation?

  Her eyes squeezed shut. She turned her head away, horrified at the thought of what she had become.

  And then she felt Pagan’s lips nuzzle her neck. She stiffened, her eyes flashing open.

  His gaze was locked upon her—hard, predatory, piercing.

  Singularly possessive.

  Heat washed over her neck and face, heat that grew with every second of his potent stare. What had she done?

  With a little sob, she struggled back, shoving vainly at his chest, trying to fight to her feet.

  His fingers closed over her bare shoulders. “Don’t turn spinsterish on me now, little flower.”

  Barrett couldn’t speak, her eyes locked shut.

  “Look at me, Angrezi. I never believed you to be one for cowardice.”

  At that her eyes jerked open, just as Pagan had known they would. Still stunned at the lush honesty of her response, at the richness of her passionate abandon, he fought down his own savage need, knowing how important the next moments would be.

  Already he could see denial darkening her eyes, closing her off from him. And that Pagan would never allow, not when he had finally discovered how wildly passionate she was.

  And Deveril Pagan, half-heathen, confirmed cynic, and total sensualist, refused to see such fire and beauty locked away and wasted.

  His thumb brushed her cheek. “Better, Cinnamon. You need not hide anything from me, you know. I may not be a patient man but I am an experienced one. I have seen things you cannot begin to imagine—nor would I wish you to. But believe this: nothing you could say or do would ever shock or offend me. Nor should it shock or offend you.” His fingers rose to anchor her cheeks. “Do you understand me, falcon? You are in the East now. It is time to accept the ways of the East.”

  Barrett shivered, falling prey to his dark power just as she had before, almost able to believe that something so raw and shocking could be totally natural and acceptable. She wished it were so, for already she craved his touch again.

  But reason bound her, reason and hard principles learned young.

  So she caught a breath and tried to pull free, only to feel his fingers grip her fiercely.

  “No, Angrezi—not until we talk as we could not talk the last time.”

  She stiffened, knowing she could not escape, not until he chose to allow it. “Very well,” she said, her voice low, husky still.

  Pagan pulled back fractionally, drawing her against his chest while he shifted on the cot, trying to ease the hot pressure at his groin.

  But he knew that his fire would find only one release, and that was when he was sheathed deep in her satin heat, listening to her soft, passionate cries as ecstasy broke over them.

  He smothered a curse, pushing away the image. “You are very passionate, falcon. It is truly rare. You have had no other taste of such pleasures?”

  Her cheeks flamed. “I—I don’t—that is
, surely I would remember if—” More fire spilled over her cheeks. How could she sit cradled against him, calmly discussing such forbidden things?

  At her artless confession, raw triumph coursed through Pagan. He realized how very much he wanted that, wanted to be her first lover, her most potent lover.

  And with the help of heaven, her last and only lover.

  But that was impossible, as well he knew. That knowledge made Pagan’s eyes harden, searching her face. At least he could give her this much. “Savor your passion, Angrezi. Guard it carefully.” His fingers tightened on her flushed cheeks. “Your body is exquisite, made for giving pleasure—to you and to any man who has the vast good fortune to be your lover. Rejoice in that gift, little one. It is not found often,” he added bitterly.

  But you are the only lover I want. Yours are the only hands and lips I seek. The words burned through Barrett’s mind with horrifying clarity.

  She lowered her head, her hair falling in a bright curtain around her face. She could not let him see her pain, her vulnerability while he remained so controlled and cynical.

  At her movement, Pagan’s eyes narrowed. Behind them the lantern flickered, casting a bar of shadow over her hair and face.

  His breath caught. Lips clenched, he stared at the dim line of chiseled nose and chin, the rich curtain of her hair.

  Suddenly something sweet and warm invaded his blood, something that felt dangerously close to trust and hope. Without warning he began to dream, dreams that he never should have dreamed.

  “Meri jaan.”

  “Why—why do you call me that?”

  “Just—just a phrase.”

  In spite of his light tone, Pagan was churning inside, taut with desire and emotions more dangerous still.

  Suddenly he wondered if he should tell her about London. After all, it was her right to know, her past in question. He scowled, searching for the best way to begin. “Have you any memories of London, Angrezi? Gaslit streets, horses passing. Snow, perhaps?

  Barrett caught her lip, frowning. She tried to remember, tried to probe the blank walls around her mind. But like all the other times, this effort too was useless.