The Tiger's Lady

by Skye, Christina

  Of her own wanton state of near-nakedness.

  But freed from horror, her body turned traitor and pulsed with life. Suddenly warmth poured through her limbs to flush her face and chest. Against the half-closed shirt she felt her nipples bud and then spring forward with arousal.

  With trembling fingers she tried to shove the buttons home but somehow her hands would not respond, and her body was totally out of control. As if in a dream, she looked down and saw that her shirt was caked with blood, rent by the razor-sharp claws of the great cat. A shudder worked through her.

  “The tiger must have dropped his kill when he bent to examine your shirt. That would explain—” Pagan stopped and cleared his throat. “It must have been a sambhur buck, judging by the size of the drag mark. You were damned lucky that the cat had just eaten.”

  Pagan’s words brought no comfort to Barrett. Suddenly all she could see was blood, blood splashed everywhere over rock and water. Blood that made her feel sticky and cold and defiled. She bit down a moan and turned away, scraping at hot tears.

  Without a word Pagan began unbuttoning his shirt. “Give it to me.”

  Barrett turned, studying him blankly.

  “Your shirt—take it off. You can’t wear that one. It’s covered with blood. And with those claws marks, you’re more naked than clothed anyway. I’ll give you mine.”

  Barrett blinked at his flat, rapid-fire orders. She shook her head, trying to order the chaos in her mind. “I don’t want your shirt. I d-don’t want anything from you!” She couldn’t say exactly why she countered him, for she knew he was only doing the logical thing. But in the wake of her brush with death, logic seemed the farthest thing from her mind.

  “Now, Angrezi.”

  “G-go to hell!”

  “Bloody, stubborn woman!” Without another word Pagan gripped her shoulders. “I’m done with arguing, Cinnamon. Take it off or I’ll tear it off.”

  Ashen still, Barrett faced him in mute, churning fury. She hated him, hated this place of lethal beauty, and most of all she hated herself for not being able to remember even one fact that would help her to escape and find her way home.

  Home? Maybe she would never find her way back there, where linden and lime trees marched in tidy rows beside green hedgerows.

  She blinked, stunned at the image that swirled through her mind.

  But it was too late. Almost immediately the vision shattered and disappeared.

  Barrett’s fingers began to shake. When was she going to be normal again—a whole and complete person? How much more could she take?

  The tremors grew. Blindly she drew her fingers into fists to conceal their shaking.

  “Very well. If that’s the way you want it…” The next moment Pagan wrapped one rock-hard hand in the neck of Barrett’s shirt and ripped the bloody, half-shredded garment from her body, then tossed it to the ground.

  Teal eyes flashing, Barrett clutched her hands to her chest, trying vainly to hide the satin curves all but revealed by the thin, damp camisole. “Damn you, Pagan!”

  Pagan’s dark brow crooked. “A little late for modesty, isn’t it, Cinnamon?”

  Barrett’s face flushed red with fury. “Barbarian! You may play petty tyrant to your minions at Windhaven but I shan’t be one of them, do you hear?”

  Pagan’s breath came low and hoarse. Against his will, his gaze dropped to her silken skin, hung with silver beads of water. One drop slid to the budding nipple outlined beneath the wet camisole and hung there suspended.

  For raw seconds Pagan tasted desire, felt it roar through his veins.

  His eyes turned to smoke as something raw and savage swept across his face. “Barbarian? Perhaps I am at that, Angrezi.” His voice was harsh with self-mockery. Slowly his gaze rose, sweeping from her flushed cheeks to her flashing eyes. “How impossibly beautiful you are.”

  He said the words unwillingly, as if they were a grave offense. His next sentence was a hoarse growl, barely audible. “In the name of heaven, when are you going to leave me alone?”

  Barrett felt her cheeks flush anew. Queer tendrils of heat attacked her solar plexus. “Any—anytime you like, Pagan. Or should I say Viscount St. Cyr?” She laughed, a raw, wild sound. “Let me leave and I promise to trouble you no more.”

  Pagan’s fingers bit into her shoulders. “Do you really believe that? Do you think it’s a simple question of proximity? Of availability?” A muscle flashed at his jaw. “I only wish it were. But ever since I saw you on the beach I knew it would come to this. That you would be the one who—” With a curse, he bit off what he’d been about to say, his face a harsh mask.

  Barrett frowned. “The one who what?”

  Pagan’s eyes smoldered over her crossed arms, then down to the slim hips clearly molded beneath her wet breeches. His gaze was hot as a kachchan wind, but Barrett shivered beneath it, hugging her arms more tightly to her chest.

  Dimly she realized his fingers were rigid but no longer shackling upon her shoulders. She could have broken away then, but somehow she did not, too hungry for his answer to move.

  When Pagan finally spoke it was in a hoarse rasp. “The one Ruxley has been waiting for, searching for, all these years. The one who—would get past all my defenses, disarm my logic.” He stopped, his features drawn taut, his eyes ablaze with silver glints like stars against a chill, midnight sky. “And you’re the one who has finally managed what Ruxley and all the others never could. You should count yourself proud. You’ve finally broken me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The husky rasp in Pagan’s voice shook Barrett to life and finally made her run. Dark and rough, it spoke of vast desire on the raw edge of overflowing. It spoke of torment and bliss, of a world of sensation beyond her wildest imagining.

  And the sound was lethally seductive, making her dream of things she had never dreamed of before.

  She turned and ran blindly, splashing through the pool toward the rocky trail that lead to the cliffs above.

  She was afraid of Pagan, afraid of the tiger. But most of all, she was afraid of herself, of the weakness that gripped her at his slightest touch.

  And the look in Pagan’s eyes promised her that she had escaped one predator only to face another, who was far fiercer still.

  Her heart pounding, she stumbled forward, feeling lotus leaves and reeds catch at her legs. She gave no thought to where she would go or what she would do if the tiger returned. Her only concern now was to put as much distance as possible between the onyx-eyed Englishman and herself.

  Near the middle of the pool where the water surged just above her waist, Barrett lost her footing and went under. A reed wrapped around her ankle, trapping her for a moment. Finally she managed to kick free and burst wildly to the surface, then lurched on toward the far shore.

  A heartbeat later she cried out as hard hands gripped her ankle.

  “Don’t run from me. Haven’t you learned by now that you cannot escape?”

  “I can escape—here or anywhere else.” Wildly she kicked, trying to break his grip, but Pagan’s fingers locked against her like steel. In the struggle she lost her balance again and plunged headlong into the water. When he pulled her out, she was sputtering and furious. “Damn you, Pagan. L-let me go!”

  “Promise me you’ll stop running and I will.”

  “Never,” she spat, twisting vainly.

  “You shouldn’t have run before. It was a damned stupid thing to do.” He tugged her infinitesimally closer. “And I was a bloody fool to let you,” he added harshly.

  “You lied to me! You let me believe—” Without warning she kicked out with all her might, striking his elbow.

  But Pagan’s angry fingers didn’t budge. “It wasn’t a lie, Angrezi. I merely let you believe what you wished to believe.”

  “It was a lie, no matter how you try to wrap it in clean linen. And you bloody well know it!”

  Pagan’s eyes were hard as glass as his fingers inched up her knee, dragging her inexorably closer
. “I meant to tell you. Somehow … somehow the time was never right.”

  Barrett twisted furiously, clawing at the water, churning up water plants in an angry green tangle. Somewhere up the hillside a peacock barked shrilly and the alarm was picked up by a noisy band of langurs hiding in the treetops.

  She muttered a furious oath. “Right? No, I’m quite certain the time was not. Not when you were finding so much amusement in deceiving me.”

  With a ragged sob, she clawed wildly at Pagan’s hands, wrenching from side to side.

  With no appreciable effect. He was closer now, much closer, his hands locked savagely at knee and thigh. The look in his eyes made Barrett tremble.

  Fear, she told herself breathlessly.

  But she knew it for the lie it was.

  “I have felt many things since I came upon you on that beach, Cinnamon, but amusement at deceiving you has never been one of them.” Even as he spoke, Pagan hauled her closer, his hands rising higher.

  “Bastard!” She chose the word that would anger him most, the word that had driven him to rage once before, knowing if she goaded him far enough, he might lose that steely control and give her a chance to escape.

  Again she hurled the savage epithet. “Bastard—bloody, lying bastard, that’s what you are. You’ve done nothing but lie to me from the first moment we met. Do you think I would ever believe anything you tell me now?”

  Pagan’s face hardened to a mask, his eyes gleaming slits. “Don’t push me too far, Angrezi. If I am a barbarian, you might find the results not at all to your liking.”

  “Nothing about you is to my liking! Nothing about this godforsaken country is to my liking! Now let me go, you—you swine! You jackal!”

  Dimly Barrett felt his hand circle her hips, while the other gripped her thigh. In a few moments his control over her would be complete.

  She wrenched at him wildly, and a button burst from her straining breeches. A second felt ready to follow any second. Knowing she had no time to spare, she jackknifed down into the water and lashed out with her foot. The blow caught Pagan directly in the shoulder, driving the breath from his lungs.

  She was free!

  Wildly she dove forward and churned for the far shore.

  Behind her Pagan swayed, bent double with pain. In her turmoil, she had forgotten about his wound. She realized now that she must have caught him full against his shoulder, for his fingers were splayed out over a line of crimson.

  Barrett’s face paled and she felt a raw pang of self-disgust. What sort of wild creature had she become here?

  But it was too late for regrets, too late for turning back. Blindly she clawed at the shimmering turquoise, sand and fallen petals churning up in her face.

  And then she felt the pool go shallow at her feet. Almost there!

  Her fingers met cold stone. Behind her she heard Pagan’s angry oaths.

  “You’ve kicked me once too often, Angrezi. By heaven, I’ll—” Harsh coughing shook him. “I’ll—see you pay for that!”

  Tossing her hair from her face, Barrett lurched from the water and scrambled toward the natural stone steps leading up over the waterfall. Her heartbeat was so loud that she missed the telltale splash at her back and the ping of falling gravel.

  This time Pagan took no chances. His hard hands gripped her waist and wedged her beneath his good arm. Without a break in stride he stalked toward a nearby corner of the pool, half-hidden beneath trailing fronds of bougainvillea.

  “Let-let me go, you savage!” Barrett twisted and kicked furiously, but met nothing except air. “You—you’ll be sorry for this, Deveril Pagan. Oh, how I’m going to make you sorry!”

  “I already am, Cinnamon,” Pagan growled. “But what’s done is done. And now I mean to do what I should have done that day back on the beach.”

  Barrett’s face bled white. “You can’t! You—you wouldn’t!”

  She had dreamed of him, had dreamed of the sight of his body, had even dreamed of greater intimacies. But in the dreams her desire had been full and lush and wordless, while now, faced with the steely vision of Pagan’s fury, with the awful reality of how he meant to possess her, brutally and in anger, Barrett knew only fear.

  She caught back a sob, shoving vainly at his shackling hands. “You—you wouldn’t dare!”

  “Oh, I can and I will,” Pagan said darkly. “I should have done it long ago. Then maybe—” Cursing, he cut off what he’d been about to say.

  They were several feet from the waterfall now, their bodies misted with silver. Wordlessly Pagan carried her beneath a trailing spray of crimson blossoms, which dusted free and scattered through Barrett’s hair.

  Fear and something else squeezed at her heart, something hot-cold and alien. Something churning and reckless that drew energy from his own ferocity.

  “Don’t—don’t do this, Pagan.” She tried to bite down the note of fear, but failed.

  He merely strode on, muttering in Hindi. Beneath the trailing blossoms the waters lapped against a sheer wall of stone where a long fallen slab formed a natural seat, green draped with moss and ferns.

  “No, Pagan,” Barrett rasped, as she saw his intent.

  But her captor made no answer, carrying her forward in raw silence, his face dark and shuttered as he reached the shaded bower. He deposited her seated and squirming onto the slab of granite and pinned her wrists to the cliff at her back.

  His eyes were hard and wary, the eyes of a predator inching toward its kill.

  Barrett twisted and fought, but he wedged his thigh between her legs and caught her immobile against the rock.

  The water lapped cool and velvet at their legs.

  She wouldn’t beg, damn it. Win or lose, she would never beg!

  Not again.

  Suddenly a memory, shard-sharp. A voice telling her to beg, threatening her with pain and more pain if she did not.

  Barrett’s breath came fast and raw. She heard a muffled curse and then the crack of leather on bared flesh.

  Her flesh, which quivered and split beneath the angry force of the blow. Down the whip sailed, again and again, until she heard her own voice shatter in a shrill scream.

  Pain exploded before her eyes.

  And then, as fast as it had come, the image fled.

  Pagan saw her swallow. Saw her fight down her fear. He frowned, feeling a sickness that went all the way to the bone.

  But it had gone too far between them to stop now. He had tossed through too many sleepless nights with the fire in his blood and awakened too many mornings in the same searing condition.

  It had to end. Now. He sensed there was more, much more that she had not told him. Things that even she did not know, could not remember. And if he was right…

  He drove closer between her legs, male hardness fitted to female softness. The fit was perfect. Dear heaven, it was more than perfect. He swallowed, fighting back a wave of desire that bade him push her down and bury himself inside her without preamble.

  And Deveril Pagan, adept of four schools of yoga and every erotic art that India had to offer, found himself perilously near to forgetting all those disciplines and plunging into her without care, taking his pleasure like a rutting beast.

  One more sign of how well she had done Ruxley’s work for him, he thought grimly.

  His jaw locked as he struggled through dark currents of desire. He thought of the woman who had run helpless and afraid through London streets, a killer on her heels. He remembered her fire and her stubborn refusal to accept his help.

  She had been brave, that one. She had also been passionate, meeting him with a sweet, untutored fire that drove him wild.

  That night he had felt her answering response, her rising hunger. Where had all that passion and honesty gone? he asked himself.

  The voyage from England would have taken about three months on a trim clipper.

  Three months captive at the hands of Ruxley’s men? It might just as well have been a lifetime.

  What have they done
to you, Cinnamon? What secrets are locked beneath that chiseled brow? Are they things it would be better for you not to remember?

  Pagan went completely still. His body tensed. It would be hard. Almost too hard, even for one of his training…

  His features taut, Pagan willed his thoughts away from his aching need. He searched Barrett’s face, seeing the pulse that beat wildly at her neck, the hectic stain of color at her cheeks, the churning emotions reflected in her teal eyes.

  “Did they hurt you, Angrezi?” His voice was low, almost a dark caress. “Is that what you’re afraid of, being hurt?”

  Barrett blinked, confused by this new tone of voice. She frowned, gnawing a dry lip between her teeth. What did he mean? Why was he so—so caring suddenly?

  Another trick?

  “Hurt me? I-I don’t know what you mean.”

  Pagan couldn’t tell if it was a lie. Maybe she herself didn’t know. “I think you do. And I think you are afraid—afraid of wanting anything. Or anyone.”

  Barrett felt a wave of fear sweep through her. Memories, raw and unfocused, squeezed through her mind.

  Hard, clutching fingers. Hot, stale breath. The constant sense of being watched during long, burning days at sea…

  She caught back a sob. No, she mustn’t think of those dim images. Leave them for the night. Leave them for the dreams that made her walk. Thinking always brought on the pain, the throbbing headaches. “S-stop. I-I cannot remember!”

  His eyes were fierce, only inches from her own. “I think you can, falcon. I think all you have to do is want to remember.” Pagan’s hard body pressed closer, every taut muscle, every sleek sinew imprinted on her own.

  Barrett wanted to scream, torn by a storm of conflicting emotions. She wanted to push him away, wanted to draw him closer, wanted to slap his face, wanted to taste the water that hung in beads on his lips.

  Was she going mad?

  Pagan pressed closer; she felt the cliff grind against her back. His thigh began to edge between her squirming legs. In slow circles his thumbs stroked the pulse that leaped at the inside of her wrists.