by Reese, Jenn
Hunan Project? As in Hunan Province?
Victor looked at Shan, the corner of his mouth twisting up into a cruel smile. But when he spoke, it was back to Rachel. "Excellent, Miss Sexton. I'd like to speak with the interested parties."
"I told them you--"
"What's the Hunan Project?" Shan interrupted.
Rachel's pretty brow furrowed. "Miss Westin, please--"
"You don't know?" Victor asked Shan, interrupting Rachel again. "I thought you knew everything about jade..."
Shan ground her teeth together. "Keep talking. Tell me about the project." Her body temperature rose. She could feel the heat in her face, her hands coursing with her blood. She was seconds away from ripping off her wig and giving Ashton a good look at her inner tiger.
Ashton smiled. "The Hunan Project started about sixteen years--"
"No!"
It was Ian this time. Shan glared at him, her anger jumping from Ashton to him in an instant.
"No?" she hissed.
"No," Ian said quickly. "I was just at the presentation. I'll tell you all about it myself." His gaze darted to Ashton, to Rachel, and back to Shan. "They're busy. We shouldn't keep them."
Ashton laughed.
"No, of course not," Ashton said. He released Shan's arm. "Go with your fiancé, Miss Westin. Let him tell you all about our Hunan Project. Who knows? Maybe you'll want to invest, too." He laughed again. Shan wanted nothing more than to plunge her hand through his ribcage and rip out his heart. If she could find it.
Confused, Rachel tried to restore order to the scene. "This way, Mr. Ashton. The gentlemen are waiting."
Ashton left with Rachel, but Shan's anger was still on the rise. She turned on Ian.
"Why? Why did you do that?"
"Come with me," Ian said. "Come with me back to the room. I'll explain there."
"Explain here," Shan said. "Explain now."
"No."
Shan looked at him. His eyes still hid in the shadows of his face; his lips were a thin line beneath his nose. She needed to hit something, to bite and to shred it. If they went back to the room, that something might be Ian.
But if she stayed here, as angry as she was, it would definitely be him.
"The room," she growled. "Now."
They walked fast without speaking. Wisely, Ian kept his distance. And when they got to the room and entered, he immediately put the heavy wooden desk between them.
Shan locked the door.
"We're here," she said. "Tell me what the Hunan Project is."
Ian looked like a trapped animal behind the desk, but he actually took a step forward when he spoke.
"It's the Jade Circle, Shan. They're excavating the sanctuary."
And, just like that, the rage emptied from her body as if Ian had just pulled the stopper out of the tub. Shan looked away from him, saw herself in a mirror by the door. Some blonde woman, awkward and out of place, stared back at her.
The Jade Circle. From the second Rachel had mentioned Hunan, Shan had known it was the Jade Circle. But could she believe it? Were people really running around the sanctuary, measuring and recording, taking pictures and making little notes in their notebooks? Were they digging up her mother's bones and labeling them for some museum display?
Or worse, to sell to the highest bidder?
Shan wanted to throw up. She wanted to purge herself of this place, of every memory of Ashton touching her. And she wanted to find him--wherever he was, whoever he was with, whatever he was doing--and make him pay for the injustice. Her mother would never have let it come to this. She would have gotten the dragon from Fortier, rescued Chen Sun, found the leopard...
"I hate this place." Shan's voice cracked. "I hate it."
And then Ian's arms were around her, and Ian's face was pressed into her hair.
But it wasn't her hair, it was that blonde woman's. Short and curly and powerless.
Ian seemed to read her mind. His fingers found the pins and pulled them off one at time. He lifted the wig from her head and tossed it away. Then his fingers went to work again, pulling pins from her own dark hair until it, too, fell free.
Shan sighed and leaned against his chest as he stroked her hair. Her own arms wound under his and met near the small of his back. Against her ear, his heart beat its steady rhythm so loudly that it was all she could hear.
She felt close to tears. If he spoke, they would come. But it wasn't time. She needed to contain her anger and her pain, to feed them to the tiger. Let it grow strong on rage, fierce with desperation.
Again, Ian seemed to understand her mood. He stepped back, took her hand, and pulled her toward the grotto in the back of their suite. Shan could feel her muscles, tight and strained, in her neck and back, and all the way down her spine. Even her feet in their high-heeled torture devices throbbed when she thought about them.
She let Ian lead her.
They stepped into the back room and into a different world. Water trickled down the back wall and swirled under the soft mist of the hot spring. Shan felt her own heat rising as Ian freed first one foot, then the other, from her black sandals. His hand grazed her calf. She swallowed thickly.
She felt his fingertips at the base of her neck as he stepped behind her, and then heard the faint purr of metal on metal as he opened the zipper on her blouse. Shan lifted her arms, and Ian peeled the skin-tight material off her body. A gentle pressure behind her back, and then her bra tumbled to the floor in a shallow heap of straps and satin.
She closed her eyes.
Her skin tingled, each nerve awakening as if from a deep sleep. The smooth, cool fabric of Ian's jacket brushed her shoulder blades. She could feel each button of his shirt pressed against her spine. He reached around her waist and unhooked her slacks. With slow, graceful fingers, he slid down the zipper. Shan's breathing deepened, her whole chest expanding and contracting with each breath. Ian's hands found her hips and slipped under the rim of her pants, the thin line of her underwear. He pulled her clothes down along her thighs, grazing the back of her knees with his thumbs. His hands spread heat in a fiery trail along her legs. Down he went, until her shackles lay in a pile at her feet. His touch lingered only a heartbeat on her ankle until its searing caress vanished, too, leaving her naked.
Free.
Her body vibrated, shivered, hummed. Warm mist from the grotto swirled around her, teasing every inch of her bare skin. The wig was gone--the pins, the tightness pulling at her temples, the strange face in the mirror. Gone, gone, gone, along with the rest of those false trappings.
"The water," Ian whispered, his voice thick. "Go."
Shan's eyes opened under heavy lids. She stepped into the pool, and they almost fluttered shut again. The heat of the water matched her own, welcomed her like a sister. The smell of plants and wet rocks and life overwhelmed her senses. She became an ancient goddess as she stepped into the pool, naked, deeper and deeper.
Frustration, anger, pain... The feelings didn't disappear, but they ceded their strength to another deeper, ancient power growing stronger with each moment...
The power of desire.
Shan stood waist deep amidst hot, swirling water. Ian hadn't moved. He crouched by the edge of the pool near the mound of her discarded clothing, and she knew he could feel it, too. It was in his eyes and the way his breathing matched her own. His flesh burned red along his cheeks and ears. Yet he waited.
"Join me," she said. Her voice felt as if it had clawed its way up from her gut--deep and too powerful to be denied.
He stood, his gaze meeting hers, and gave her what she'd been waiting for. The drop of his jacket. The pale line of his smooth, toned chest revealed by long fingers that never hesitated or fumbled. Nothing hurried, nothing slow. His belt. The final trappings that kept his body separate from hers. It all slid away to join hers on the floor.
Graceful, he stood on the banks of her private world. Steady, he stood, and strong. Her Ian, in all the ways that counted.
Shan arched b
ack and dipped her hair into the water. It clung to her, long and sleek and dripping.
Ian inhaled sharply. He stepped into the water, his lean body submerging with each pace. Shan watched the water as it climbed up his flesh, from foot to calf, knee to thigh. She growled softly. From thigh to waist. She circled him, put his back to the natural stone wall alive with its steaming tendrils of water. Shan wanted the rest of the world--everything outside of this secret place--to disappear.
She wanted only Ian.
She wanted all of Ian.
When finally she touched him, flesh on flesh, her need erupted into action.
Her fingers explored, drawing trails of water across his chest that her mouth followed and reclaimed. His hands followed her curves, traveling down her neck to linger on her breasts. Shan groaned and bit his lower lip. He gasped and pulled her into a deep, primal kiss that stole the breath from both of them.
Shan pulled him down into the water's dark embrace. Her need grew until she was barely more woman than tiger. But still woman enough. She raked Ian's back with fingers instead of claws, nibbled his neck and shoulders with teeth instead of fangs. And she rubbed against his hardened body instead of just taking it, here and now, into her own.
Ian answered with an animal of his own, strong and confident and lost to the now. His fingers found her, and she writhed in his arms. Her eyes, she knew, would flash between green and tiger yellow, her pupils large and round and limitless.
The eyes of a hunter.
His lips met hers with a ferocity barely contained. Shan shoved his arm away with a growl and wrapped her legs around his waist. Ian maneuvered them to the edge of the pool for a condom from his discarded pants. She gave him the room he needed to put it on, then reclaimed her place as he drew them back into the deep.
Shan pressed her body against his, strands of her wet hair clinging to her cheeks and throat. She touched the tip of her nose to his nose, her forehead to his, and gazed at him with her tiger eyes.
His pupils widened in the shadow of her.
Shan took the swirling pulse of chi trapped inside of her and projected it through her eyes, through the touch of her hand as she buried it into the hair on the back of his head.
I want this, she told him, but only with you. Only because it's you.
He answered with a look that mirrored her own. He whispered, "Shan..."
She took him.
He gasped. Her lungs screamed for oxygen as she crushed her body to his, trembling from the power of their combined chi. Energy sparked along her meridians--a chain reaction of fireworks igniting every nerve. She couldn't stop saying his name, kissing him, kissing his face, his smile, his brow. And in the depths of his eyes, she read only joy and passion.
Joy. Passion. And what felt like love.
She awoke in the bed, in his arms. Or maybe he was in hers. It was hard to tell by the tangle of their limbs under the sheets. Ian's eyes were already open, watching and protecting her as she slept.
"Mmm." Shan stretched, languid, like a cat in the sun. He kissed her midway through, pulling her body even closer to his until her breasts were almost flattened against his chest.
"Thank you," she said. "For earlier."
Ian laughed. "Yes, I did you a big favor."
"Several, actually," she said, playing with the hair at his temple.
He kissed her forehead, her eyebrow, her nose. "Like...?"
"Like stopping me from killing Ashton in the hallway."
"Oh, that," said Ian. He kissed her lips, her chin, and her chin again. "That was nothing. I wasn't terrified at all. Nope. Not one bit."
Shan laughed, "I didn't think so." She exposed her neck and let his trail of kisses continue.
He looked good after sex. Way too good. And now she had even more appreciation for his toned muscles after feeling them bunch and move under his skin. His hair had always looked like it was mussed from sex, but now that she knew it was...she couldn't keep her fingers out of it.
"I like you," she said, grinning.
"Mmm." He was busy drawing a line down her neck with his tongue. Already her body wanted him again. Her mind and her heart had never stopped.
But hours had passed, and she still needed to find the jade animals. Preferably before they were sold off to the highest bidder at Saturday's auction. The tiger wasn't ready to let her rest.
Ian pulled himself away from her collarbone, but not without giving it one last, deliciously wet kiss.
"Did I mention that I have a present for you?" he said.
Shan raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Another one, you mean?"
Ian groaned happily. "Stop that. All that sexy looking and touching and just, I don't know, being. I'm trying to have a conversation."
"Sorry."
"Good."
"But not really."
He groaned again, then kissed her. On the lips. Shan melted into the bed, her whole body relaxing. Hours. Days. Years. She wanted to do this forever.
Ian ripped the covers off, shattering that daydream, and hopped out of bed. "Stay there," he commanded.
He slipped something out of his pants, still piled on the floor, and climbed back under the sheets. Unfortunately, he'd grabbed a piece of paper and not a condom.
"What's this?" Shan asked. The scrap of white paper had seven numbers scrawled on it: 2082606. "If this is Rachel Sexton's phone number, I'm not amused."
"Oh, I already have her phone number," Ian said easily. "But this is even better."
"Hard to imagine."
"Even if it's the security code to the museum wing?"
Shan looked up from the paper and into Ian's grinning face. "How?"
He shrugged, but was clearly pleased with himself. "Rachel and I go way back. I figured out she was dyslexic on our first dig together, by the way she always wrote down every measurement and read each digit back to me to verify. When we walked by the museum wing door and I saw the security panel, I figured she'd have the number written down somewhere."
"You went through her stuff looking for the number?" Shan asked, astonished.
"So it would appear."
Shan gave him her most dazzling smile. "Ian Dashell, that's the best present anyone's ever given me." She let her gaze wander down his sheet-covered body and remembered the hot tub. "Well, the second best, at any rate."
Ian grabbed the piece of paper from her hand and tossed it over his shoulder. There was a new spark in his eye that brought heat to every part of her. He said, "Let's go for third best, shall we?"
Shan pulled her dark hair into a loose bun at the back of her neck and dressed in conservative black. The big martial arts tournament was starting soon, so Ashton and his lackeys would be busy for hours. There'd never be a better opportunity to go for the jade animals.
"You ready?" Ian asked. He wore another one of his impeccable tuxes. It wasn't fair, Shan thought. The man looked better with every hour that passed. Even the tiger in her seemed torn between heading to the museum wing or ripping off his clothes and staying in.
"Let's do it," Shan said. More sex--even sex as soul shaking as they'd shared--could wait. Soon, all five animals would be reunited in one perfect circle of jade.
Soon, her mother's spirit would be able to rest.
Shan led the way, pretending to be one of Ashton's employees with a guest in tow. She saw few people along the way, and all of them were hurrying toward the big fight. Shan had only an academic interest in tournaments. The way you handled yourself in a controlled fight bore almost no resemblance to how you reacted when your life was at stake.
Shan kept her eyes straight ahead and her expression stoic as they neared the security door, despite the fact that her chi was almost singing in her veins. Ian watched the hallway while Shan tapped the correct sequence on the number pad.
Click.
She was in.
Shan grinned at Ian as they slipped into a dimly-lit antechamber. Wall hangings, statues perched on pedestals, signs in Mandarin and English--Shan ig
nored them all and headed for the imposing gold doors on the other side.
"Wait," Ian whispered. He caught up to Shan as she was reaching for the huge wooden latch.
"Why?" she hissed.
"Because we don't know what's in there. It could be Ashton, or security guards, or, I don't know, maybe even guard dogs."
"Yes, I know," Shan said, and pushed the door.
It swung open into a huge room with an arched ceiling. Recessed lights cast a yellowish glow on the dozens of black-clad tables arranged like a maze through the room. The artifacts, each with its own tiny spotlight, sat in perfect rows on the dark velvet.
But Shan didn't care about artifacts. All she wanted were the jade animals.
"I'll take the right," Shan whispered. Ian nodded and headed left. Shan watched him a moment longer. His gaze swept the room, not once, not twice, but continually. Something was bothering him, and it was more than just the thought of theft or security guards.
Shan frowned. She didn't like it. But the sooner she found the animals, the sooner she could take Ian and leave this room, this fortress, and this whole damn island.
"Don't touch anything," Ian called softly from the other side of the room. "Pressure sensors."
Shan nodded and turned her gaze to the first table. A dagger. A belt buckle. A small bottle. She moved on to the next table, and the next. Each held an array of seemingly mismatched items--books, jewelry, pottery, weapons, sculpture. Ian would probably understand the groupings.
Especially since he was progressing much slower through the room than she was.
Shan grinned and headed toward the next table.
Something breathed.
Shan stilled her body. Across the room, she saw Ian pause as well, his eyes scanning the darkness.
She heard it again, the heavy pant of an animal, not more than a few feet away from her.
Shan took a deep breath and stepped around the next table toward the noise.
"Ian," she said softly, "I think you were right."
His voice floated back, "About the guard dogs?"
Shan stared into a pair of huge, golden-green eyes. Eyes filled with expanding black pupils and surrounded by orange and black fur.
