The Tiger's Lady

by Skye, Christina

  “Your skin whispers of hot dreams, Cinnamon. When you tremble I think of fields of spring green and a pleasure that will take us all the way to heaven.” And then instead of his fingers it was Pagan’s mouth that teased the damp cambric, tonguing the dark pink bud that thrust up hungrily for his touch.

  He lapped and tugged and gnawed, their contact separated always by the fragile barrier of cloth. With each movement Barrett’s exquisite torment grew.

  Suddenly she was wild to be free, with nothing but hot skin between them. With nothing but his lips and this velvet hunger. She arched against him, low, breathless cries wrenched from her lips.

  As if in answer the fabric opened, its buttons sheared free. Pink and straining, her breasts tumbled forward, begging for the touch of his teeth and tongue.

  But Pagan did none of those things. He simply took his time looking at her, watching her face flare high with color.

  Until she wanted him mindlessly and accepted her wanting.

  “Pagan—” It was a soft, helpless moan.

  “Ah, falcon, so perfect you are,” he said hoarsely. And then his head slanted down.

  With a hiss the camisole slid from Barrett’s shoulders. She moaned softly as he teased a trail of jasmine petals from her skin, then captured a straining pink nipple between his teeth.

  Shuddering, Barrett drove her heels against the stone, past all logic or modesty now, all barriers gone. His mouth was sleek, searing, and it taught her a wild, drumming pleasure.

  He took her gently at first and then harshly, driven by his own laboring need, by the hunger that had gripped him for months, ever since their meeting in London. “Do you want this from me, Angrezi? Do you want me to take you now?”

  Barrett twisted, her nerves aflame. Her answer was low, breathless, infinitely sultry. “M-more.”

  She flushed crimson when she heard her own raw plea, but somehow even that emotion spun away as Pagan laughed and complied, lips and fingers moving in a rich texture of torment, in a hot, blinding friction.

  Heat lightning. Fire on a long ago London night…

  Memories.

  Instantly the fear struck her. “P-Pagan! No—I can’t—”

  “Yes, Cinnamon. Much more. Now, while you burn for me. While I watch the pleasure rip through you.” His fingers drove deep, deft and seeking, his teeth a searing torment at one taut nipple.

  When she strained upward, Pagan met her with low, guttural encouragement whispered against her flushed skin. When she moaned, he caught the sound in his open mouth.

  “Does this please you, sweet one?”

  Her answer came in the restless, wild shifting, in the soft, breathless cries torn from her lips.

  And when Pagan’s hand swept away her breeches, she arched against him, restless, madly aflame, desperate for something she could not name, could not remember, perhaps had never known.

  His eyes raked her naked skin, missing no inch of love-slick flesh, narrowing upon the golden chain that circled her slender waist.

  His mark.

  For his woman.

  But the dim phantoms persisted, holding her back.

  Suddenly Barrett saw the chill glint of gaslight. Jeweled eyes reflected from a silver dragon, which leered from the buckle of a heavy leather belt.

  The belt rose high and fell hard. Then again, its pain smashing white-hot through her shoulders.

  No. Not again! Why couldn’t they let her alone?

  She stiffened and would have twisted away except for the weight of Pagan’s hand buried deep in her hair, his hard body anchoring her to the mossy slab.

  “Don’t fight me, falcon. Don’t fight this fire between us. Savor it. Glory in it, for it drives the earth, fires the sun, lights the moon and all the stars in their sacred courses. In this primal fire there are no deaths and no shadows, neither forgetting nor remembering.”

  And then Pagan began the deep, exquisite rhythms that would rip the last shred of reason from her mind. Again and again he moved, each time deeper, each time claiming a little bit more of her soul while Barrett shuddered, lost to everything but his touch, her skin hazed with a fine sheen of perspiration mingled with the mist from the waterfall.

  Slowly Pagan taught her a wilder ache, a breathless drumming through blood and muscle. Aflame, she twisted, seeking the reckless beauty he held out before her. And beneath his expert touch Barrett felt beautiful for the first time in her life, felt her body quiver and begin to sing.

  How had he learned such forbidden things? What sort of dark power did he possess to make her so wild, so shameless?

  But it was too late for questions. Already she felt the rising silver rush of pleasure. “Dear heaven, Pagan, I—” She tensed, moaning as the first velvet tremors coursed through her. “No, n-not like this!”

  “Yes, falcon. Now. While I watch you. While I bring you your own piece of paradise.”

  His face slanted down and he played her reckless body with hand and tongue and expert fingers. White-hot and mindless, the pleasure grew, rising to a fierce crescendo. Over and over Pagan muttered her name, a raw plea, a fierce demand.

  Images, dim and dark, swept over Barrett. It was there again, very close. But something held her back still, something made of memory and shadows, digging deep inside her with cold, invisible fingers.

  Why couldn’t she find it?

  Why did it always recede, like a mirage dancing in the hot, white air?

  “Feel it, Angrezi. Want it. Accept your wanting. And when you do, think of a winter’s night. Think of snow swept beneath gaslight while horses clip past at the trot. Think of a man … a man who’d been alone too long and was running from his past.”

  So close now.

  Every word sent new images vibrating through her mind.

  “Think of a man who found his own piece of heaven, only to lose it the same night.”

  Barrett’s breath caught as she heard Pagan’s raw need and the regret he no longer concealed. For a night she desperately wished she could remember.

  Suddenly pleasure broke through her in a blinding wash of silver, and her resistance shattered.

  She told herself it was because he had saved her life. She told herself it was because she needed his strength in this world of unknown and immeasurable dangers. She told herself it was because he was careful and gentle and caring with her.

  Barrett told herself everything except the truth.

  And the truth was that she shivered because she loved this man and wanted his claiming more than anything else in the world.

  Her body convulsed wildly against him. Over and over the pleasure broke, tossing her into mist and fury, shredding her into a thousand pieces and pitching her like fallen petals into the pounding rush of the waterfall.

  In her ecstasy she cried out, and the sound was Pagan’s name, offered in the raw, wanton splendor of a heart given wildly and without restraint.

  Given in love, though Barrett did not think of that word yet, nor even think at all.

  Pagan curved over her protectively and caught her cries with his mouth, his eyes burning.

  And while he watched in awe, Pagan had the odd sense that the air around them filled with the scent of hyacinths, spilling their sweetness into the last, hot seconds of the day.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Slowly he cupped her cheeks and raised her head, sliding the tangled hair from her face. The movement was slow, intimate, and infinitely protective.

  Barrett’s eyes blinked open. Color stained her face. Her eyes were dark with a passion only temporarily abated. Passion he had kindled so exquisitely and well. “H—help me, Pagan. I—I don’t want to wake up trembling in the night anymore, wrenched from darkness and lost memories.”

  Somehow her hands found his shoulders and she held on for dear life. “Dear heaven, I’m tired—so tired of feeling them inches away, always faceless, always escaping me.” Her eyes rose, haunted. “No matter how hard I try, I can never quite reach them. And if I don’t, I—”

/>   Her voice broke.

  Pagan’s hands eased her closer. Sensing her turmoil, he waited for her to finish.

  Slowly her head slid forward until her forehead rested against his chest. Her next words were muffled. “Sometimes I think I’ve gone quite, quite mad. That it’s all a dream and I’ll wake up any minute. Only I never wake up. And the pain just doesn’t go away.”

  In the end, it was her confession that decided him.

  He hadn’t meant to touch her, not in the way she expected. Not with the deep, piercing dominion that he, too, yearned for.

  No, he had meant only to force her to face her past and accept the answers she found while she strained, exquisite and vulnerable in her passion.

  For an oath stood between them. An oath taken long ago, while the blood-lust of Cawnpore raged around him.

  And Pagan had repeated that oath just seconds before the tiger’s roar echoed over the hills. Because she was different. Because she was not one of his casual flirts, not just another cynical bed partner. Because she had a right to expect more from him than he could give.

  But here in this quiet glade, with his life-blood churning in the wake of her escape, Pagan forgot about oaths, forgot about everything but the bleak pain in Barrett’s dazed eyes, where he saw reflected her need and confusion, along with all his own.

  His breath hissed free. He would hate himself tomorrow. Perhaps even sooner than that. But somehow he would wrest this moment of pleasure from the bitter hands of fate and carry it with him forever.

  “Then let us start with the heat, falcon. Heat and softness.”

  Dimly Barrett felt him sweep her arm aside. The next instant her bared breast spilled warm and hungry into his callused palm.

  This time the groan was Pagan’s.

  Good. No, wonderful…

  She must have spoken the thought aloud, for Pagan laughed darkly and slanted his head down to tease the silken arch of her ear.

  The rational part of Barrett’s brain told her to push away, to escape while it was still possible. But she had been cold too long, alone too long, and she had come close, so close to dying…

  “P-please…” It was a woman’s plea, smoky with need, and it made Pagan’s eyes smoke in turn.

  “Oh, I shall please you, my heart. Before the sun is gone I’ll teach you pleasures you can’t even imagine, never dreamed of.”

  Barrett shivered, knowing it was wrong to speak of such things, much less to carry them out. But how could she push him away when his touch was so raw and elemental, everything that she needed to drive away the fear that harried her still?

  Suddenly she had to know what it felt like to be a woman.

  Pagan’s woman.

  And she would start, Barrett decided, by finding out what it took to make him groan that way again.

  Breathless, she turned in his arms, pressing close to his locked thighs. Her head slid back and she stared up at him intently. With her pulse like stormy surf in her ears, she rose and brushed her lips against the warm hollow of his neck.

  Pagan’s breath caught sharply. Barrett felt his man’s heat straining at her thigh. It made her smile, a dark, primitive female smile.

  He wanted her.

  Dear Lord, it felt good to be wanted, deliriously good to know such power. Like a drug, it drove her to taste more.

  She captured a dark strand of his hair between her teeth and tugged. He stiffened, and then his breath exploded against her ears.

  “Touch me, temptress. For another kiss you can have my very soul.”

  His head dipped, teeth playing roughly over her ear and tugging the lobe deep within his mouth.

  Barrett’s moan was dismay and wild triumph, jubilation and darkest denial.

  And then some woman’s instinct made her arch, catlike, and drive her body even closer into his hot, capturing fingers.

  She felt him shudder, felt his heart slam against his ribs, felt the heat of him race through her like fire.

  And the full-blown sweep of his manhood made her wild to possess all of him.

  Her eyes flashing teal and sapphire, Barrett circled his tensed shoulders and stared up at him. Suddenly she was the huntress, she the aggressor, sharp on the scent of her prey.

  Her breasts drove against his half-opened shirt, desperate for his heat, for the seal of his body upon hers.

  For the proof that she was alive, gloriously alive.

  Pagan clutched her slim hips, his face molded into a bronze mask of need as Barrett jerked at his shirt buttons, shearing them off when they resisted. Wildly she tugged the cloth free of his breeches and dragged it from his shoulders.

  Then her fingers froze. She saw the white gauze at his shoulder, belatedly recalling his recent wound. “But, Pagan, you can’t—that is, there’s your shoulder to think of. You shouldn’t—”

  He cut her off with a growl as her fingers grazed his nipples. “Forget my shoulder, Angrezi! I’ve a wound that pains me far greater, a wound only you can solace!” His breath caught in ragged awe as his eyes raged over her. “What are you, sweet temptress? The nymph who rules this glade?” His eyes glittered, dark and demanding. “But no matter. Either way I mean to have you, Cinnamon. And this time, I’ll feel you hot and tight against me when the pleasure comes.”

  Little jerky breaths spilled from Barrett’s lips as she pressed her face to his chest, sliding her tongue deep into the crisp black mat of his hair.

  Pagan muttered harshly, his hands dropping to her buttocks. His fingers splayed apart and drove her tight into the saddle of his granite thighs. In answer, her tongue burned upward and searched out his flat male nipple.

  She found it.

  Pagan instantly froze.

  With slow, exquisite torment her tongue danced across him, without thought, provoked by some deep, wordless instinct. Somehow every movement seemed familiar, part of the dark, primal dance of life. Suddenly she was every woman who had ever lived, with an infinite breadth of experience.

  With a growl he captured her buttocks and drove her upward, his arousal rock-hard between her thighs.

  Barrett shifted, wild to learn more, wild to feel all of him. She fitted herself into his hardness, moving side to side and then locking her long legs around his waist.

  At the same instant her teeth captured the sensitive male nub and Pagan groaned hoarsely, head thrown back as pleasure roared through him.

  “You’ll be the very death of me!” Suddenly the chill barrier of fabric between them seemed an unspeakable sin. “Undress me. I want to feel you everywhere, love-slick and hungry against me. I want to make you hot and reckless, beyond logic or modesty, as wild as a woman can be. But first—”

  In one powerful motion he lifted her higher and slipped one flushed pink nipple into his hungry mouth. He took her fiercely, plucking and nipping with teeth and lips.

  Ablaze in need and wonder, Barrett let her head fall back, tawny hair spilling over her shoulders. She shuddered with the fire of his possession, splendor spilling molten through her.

  All she had dreamed of. All she had ever hoped for…

  Her body shivered and begin to sing.

  Pagan muttered a growl of triumph as she tensed against him, her nails digging into his shoulders.

  “N-no—not again, not this way—” But resistance scattered as he played her flushed, aching skin with his teeth.

  Exquisite. Unforgettable.

  And Barrett discovered neither protest nor resistance meant anything here in this dark, pagan paradise he forged. When he touched her, she forgot everything but this hot yearning of hungry skin and gnawing need.

  When he kissed her, she knew only that he made her feel exquisite and wanted.

  And whole again.

  It was heavy and rich, this thing between them, a war of blood and brain and shivering muscle.

  But her mind and memory, Barrett discovered, had absolutely nothing to do with it.

  “Pagan, I’m—”

  Her breath broke on a moan.
/>   Once more the distant roar, once more the blinding silver wave, rising in awesome silent splendor.

  And then the wingless flight, the soaring joy. In starlight and in crimson fire Pagan’s strong arms wrapped her tight and carried her all the way beyond her fears.

  Pagan’s eyes had the dark, feral look of a jungle cat as he caught her cries on his lips and anchored her to his chest, watching the wild pleasure rip through her again.

  Surprise and triumph glittered in those onyx depths, along with a savage need held barely in check.

  A need he must soon satisfy.

  For he was a man driven now, flushed with triumph, cast beyond the breaking point. He spoke no longer, only touched, only moved, blind in a world of sensation. His face a mask, Pagan let his hands speak, burying his fingers in her hair and slanting her head back to face his fevered gaze.

  “Now, Cinnamon. Sweet Lord, I can wait no longer.”

  “Y-yes. Oh, now…”

  Around them the sand glittered in the slanting rays of the sun, lit by thousands of tiny crystals. Ruby, sapphire, and topaz fragments lay scattered in the gem-rich effluvium carried down from the mountains above.

  But none were so rich as Barrett’s eyes. None so sharp and piercing as the need that gripped the two people in the quiet glade.

  In one savage movement Pagan wrenched off his boots and tossed them aside. Swiftly he freed his breeches. His hard-muscled flanks glowed like molded bronze in the dying sunlight.

  He turned to Barrett then, and the sight of his pulsing manhood made her breath catch. Good sweet heaven, the man was massive! How could she possibly—

  But there was no time for fear or uncertainty, no time for anything but a wild shiver of anticipation before Pagan’s hands wrapped around her hips and skin met heated skin.

  Nerves aflame, bones turned to mush, Barrett felt his massive thighs flex, felt the first velvet thrust of his exquisite, sliding invasion.

  His hands kneaded her buttocks fiercely as he held her to him. She moaned softly, twisting, driven by a reckless hunger she did not understand, had never imagined.