The Tiger's Lady

by Skye, Christina

  “Is this what you want, Cinnamon? For me to bury myself inside you, so bloody deep that I can never again pull free? So deep you’ll never want me to?” Pagan’s voice was raw, harsh with unspoken nightmares and a desire too long restrained. “If so, then tell me, damn it!”

  Barrett shuddered, grasping at his rigid shoulders. Her head fell back and her hair spilled around them, gem-bright in the slanting sun. “Deep. Oh, deep, Pagan. P-please!”

  With a harsh groan he slid her down his body until her thighs molded his burning need. By instinct alone Barrett arched back and wrapped her long legs about his waist, her nails digging into his shoulders.

  He muttered then, the words dark and guttural, as he tested her velvet response against the hard line of his throbbing sex.

  And then, while she was infinitely ready, while her skin was licked by flame and her eyes were blind with the beauty of his naked wanting, Pagan caught her close and drove deep within her soft, trembling heat.

  “Sweet heaven, Barrett, you’re—so small. So damned tight. Burn for me, Angrezi. Burn me into ash!”

  She shuddered at his fierce words, feeling a queer burning and then nothing else but his hard liquid slide. His face taut, he buried himself deep, parting muscle and love-slick skin, driving all the way to the bone.

  No, deeper. All the way to her heart.

  Inside her, against her, around her, he was, huge and pulsing, hot and straining, part of her now, delving right to her very soul.

  Even then it was not enough. Her breathy moans told him so.

  His hands tensed. He laid her back into silver waters and fitted her to each wild, slanting downthrust, groaning when he left her by slow, calculated inches, gasping when he joined her anew.

  Each velvet journey was an end and a beginning, all the world’s sensations rolled up in one raw, quivering explosion of emotion.

  “Give me everything. I want every shudder, every sigh. I want your heart trembling on my fingers. I want every hot, sweet inch of you around me when you come.”

  Barrett moaned, straining against him, tossing in a storm of sensual need. He was steel heat and velvet control; he was relentless invader, dark protector.

  He was the man who had made her whole again.

  And then, with her legs still wrapped around him, she felt the velvet splendor begin anew, wanton and unspeakable because this time Pagan filled her, drove deep, bone deep, impaling her with the fury of his naked need.

  Her nails dug into his shoulders. She arched back, ecstasy exploding through her in white-hot waves. “Oh, please!”

  “Are you—am I—” Pagan tensed, his voice harsh with worry.

  “Yes, Pagan. Yes!”

  And in the wake of her stunned cry, she felt him drive deeper still, dimly realizing that he had given her only part of his throbbing length until that moment.

  She felt herself stretch and glove his heat, felt her fire reach out and wrap him tight.

  She twisted, wanting all of him, needing him as wild as she was, riding the last blood-red rays of the dying sun.

  She moaned, squeezing the hard length of muscle buried deep inside her. She arched, sheathing him close like a sleek, hot glove.

  The movement was utterly unthought, the blindest of female instincts.

  And it was Pagan’s final undoing.

  “Take me, my heart.” He threw back his head and buried himself to the hilt, groaning harshly when he felt her tremble and convulse against him once more.

  She wanted every part of him, every hot inch of him, and she had him then. She shuddered in the glory of his need, yielding to his steely possession and his raw hunger. Each naked thrust was a paradise in itself, a mini-lifetime of sensation, birth exploding through glorious, ripe awakening, and then the sweet, drifting glide back to lazy, satiated peace.

  In those raw seconds Pagan taught Barrett more about life than she’d thought could exist—and more about herself than she’d ever hoped to know.

  “Barrett. Angrezi. I cannot—ahhhhhh—”

  She smiled darkly as she felt him shudder, his control broken at last. Then Barrett took him home inside her, all the way home, away from the shadows of Cawnpore, away from the leering fires of the hated ruby. She gave him all she’d yearned to give since that long-ago night beneath the gaslight when he’d saved her twice from terrible death.

  She gave him herself.

  For she remembered now, not all, mostly still in fragments. But it was enough to know he had been there.

  And when he caught a last shuddering breath and drove fierce and full inside her, she opened to him, opened to his blinding need, felt his force and all his fury and then his hot seed exploding deep inside her. That, too, she wanted.

  In that moment Barrett knew that Pagan had found his haven just as she had, no matter what long years of wandering and betrayal had gone before.

  Blind, yearning, they found heaven together then, skin slicked to fevered skin, breath tumbling into heated breath.

  Her final conscious thought, as she tumbled headlong into a final shuddering bliss, was that this moment was ordained.

  Kismet, as Pagan liked to call it.

  And memory or not, Barrett swore to do everything in her power to ensure that the hard, brooding man in her arms would never escape her again.

  Breathless moments later they skidded slowly back to earth. Even then Pagan held her locked against him.

  His convulsive hold did not loosen.

  Not then. Not later when passion flared anew.

  Her eyes were still dark and glazed with passion as he thrust within her again. He shuddered, seizing a raw breath and gripping a lock of her hair. Tightly he held her, thigh tangled to thigh, shoulder pinned against damp shoulder. And it was her name he groaned when he exploded into bliss, her name he whispered when he felt her answering tremors shake him.

  He was still saying it when they collapsed back in a blind sprawl upon the warm, glinting sand.

  Overhead the clouds darkened to crimson and violet. Still Pagan filled her, loath to leave her soft heat. When at last they drifted into dreams, lazy and sated as jungle cats, his hard fingers were still buried in the silken cloud of her hair.

  Heaven and hell, past and present, they mattered naught.

  All that mattered, the brooding planter decided, was the sweet, soft weight of Barrett’s body on his, and the slim fingers which nested so tightly against his chest.

  He was going to hate himself in an hour or two, he knew. But now … now was for dreaming and for forgetting. Now was for trust.

  He sighed.

  She mumbled, exhausted and replete.

  They slept, cushioned on crystal-studded sand and each other.

  Behind them the valleys stretched away in an unbroken line of emerald and ochre, rock-strewn and shadow-dappled beneath a sky of darkening turquoise. Overhead the clouds swept past in a glory of lilac and fuchsia while the sun exploded in its final fury.

  Blood red and gold, it disappeared behind the far peaks where Windhaven’s broad, shadowed verandas waited even now.

  Pagan twisted restlessly.

  His fingers opened, then dug down, slicing furrows in the warm, wet sand.

  He smiled faintly and came awake.

  His first sight was of her face, pale and peaceful now in sleep. Her hair lay about them both, a thick, golden cloud that smelled faintly of jasmine.

  He felt his manhood stiffen and begin to throb, fire exploding into him again where he was sheathed in her soft, slick petals.

  One thrust, one pumping thrust and she would twist beneath him, breathless and ready for him again.

  His body stirred wildly and his muscles bunched rigid with his effort at control.

  One thrust was all it would take.

  He looked down where their bodies joined, where the thin gold chain still clung to her slim belly. The sight made him know an explosion of desire such as he hadn’t felt in years—or ever.

  And then Pagan went completely still. />
  Her cheeks and breasts were red, faintly abraded from his unwitting violence, his mindless lust.

  The sight sickened him.

  Not that way, Angrezi. I never meant to hurt you, to betray you. Slowly he tugged a long skein of hair from her porcelain cheek and let it slip like satin through his fingers.

  The fire at his groin grew, became an ache, and then a white-hot agony.

  Now. He’d have to do it now, Pagan knew. Otherwise he never would.

  His face was a mask of savagely won control as he slipped from inside her and stumbled to his feet.

  Giving her the greatest gift in his power.

  Better this way, falcon. Better the quick, searing stroke that cuts off all hope, once and for all

  He could do that much for her, at least.

  He was certain that one day she would thank him for it.

  Nihal’s sharp cry woke Barrett a lifetime later.

  She muttered restlessly and tossed out an arm in unseen dreams.

  Damp sand filled her fingers, each grain glinting with water-smoothed crystal.

  Her eyes opened slowly. Drowsily she took in a world of lavender shadows and swaying fuchsia petals. The air hung rich with perfume and the chill clarity of the coming night.

  Far to the west, above the dark wall of the jungle, the sun had bled away, leaving only a molten crimson nimbus to mark its descent.

  Languid and sleepy still, Barrett stretched, feeling a strange but pleasant ache in muscles she had never before known existed.

  And then she sat up with a gasp, her eyes flashing open as memory returned in a raw rush.

  Memories of hot skin and hungry fingers.

  Memories of naked longing and rekindled dreams.

  “Pagan!” She stumbled to her feet, searching the twilight shadows vainly.

  Just as the wind sent a fragrant white rain of jasmine blossoms down upon her head, a darker figure appeared, parting the underbrush at the far side of the glade.

  With his back to the last dwindling light, Barrett could make out nothing but the outline of his face and the grim set to his shoulders.

  Her pulse skittered alarmingly. “Pagan, I—I—”

  “You’re awake, I see. Good. I didn’t relish waking you.” His back was rigid, his tone clipped.

  But why was he fully dressed, his rifle slung over his shoulder? Why this cold, impersonal tone, which tore the breath from her lungs, the joy from her heart, the heat from her trembling limbs?

  A wadded mass of cotton came flying through the air toward her face. “Get dressed. Nihal will be here any second.”

  By instinct alone she caught the mass. Blindly she studied the garment, unable to speak.

  The Englishman turned with a curse and paced the sandy bank like a hungry animal. “Go on, damn it! You needn’t fear I will look. Not that it would make the slightest difference now,” he added in a bitter undertone.

  Barrett’s slim fingers dug into the wadded fabric. Dimly she noted that he had retrieved her breeches and had provided her with a clean shirt, one of his, no doubt.

  Her heart hammered painfully. “What—what are you doing?”

  “I should have thought I’d made that perfectly clear. I’m taking you back to camp.”

  “But—”

  “But what?” His jaw clenched. “What just happened was a mistake, a colossal mistake. It will never happen again, that I assure you. As soon as we reach Windhaven, sometime tomorrow morning I estimate, I mean to see you on your way back to England. I am not entirely without connections there. I will find a safe place for you, someplace where even Ruxley’s long arm cannot reach.”

  “But … I don’t understand.” Barrett could only stare, dazed, while the blood bled from her face. “You said … I thought that we…”

  A muscle flashed at Pagan’s jaw.

  Abruptly he tossed Barrett the battered felt hat that he had been worrying between his fingers. “Don’t make this more difficult than it already is, Angrezi. Store what just happened away with your other memories. In a silk box lined with lavender and pressed roses, or in the dainty lines of your private journal, if the fancy so moves you. But don’t think it will last and don’t think it will ever happen again, because it bloody won’t!”

  “But—but I don’t want to remember you! I want to be with you, to be part of your life. Here, not somewhere else, safe though it may be.”

  Pagan’s hands locked. “All because of an hour or two of pleasant lovemaking? No, Angrezi, it will take a great deal more than that for a woman to worm her way into my life.” His eyes glittered. “Even a woman as beautiful as you.”

  “You—you don’t really mean that. You can’t!”

  “Don’t I?” The man in the shadows gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, the sex was good enough, though I don’t much relish taking virgins. Though in your case, Cinnamon, I use the term loosely, for the barrier I felt was little more than a technicality.”

  Barrett swayed beneath his cool verbal onslaught, telling herself it was just another performance, that he could not really believe these things he was saying.

  She clutched the garments to her chest, fighting a wrenching wave of sadness, feeling the last hint of warmth drain from her body.

  And then her slim shoulders stiffened. She would never beg. By all that was hold, never again.

  Not even while her heart was being torn from her chest and ripped into tiny, jagged pieces.

  “Very well,” she managed to answer, amazed that her voice could sound so cool. “You have relieved me of my virginal state, and I thank you for it. It will make the rest of my experiences with men so much more … pleasant.”

  And then some angry demon made her toss back her hair until her naked body was revealed to him in all its ivory beauty. She slanted him a sultry, measuring look. “I only hope you aren’t expecting to be paid for your services.”

  She saw him flinch, saw his teeth clench in a hard, angry line. The sight should have made her happy, but somehow it only tightened the cold lump wedged in her throat.

  Pagan’s hands clenched on the barrel of his rifle. “No, I’ll expect no money for initiating you into the mysteries of sex, for all that I’m accounted a bloody master at it. But in your case, my dear, the feel of your hot little body and your tight, wet sheath was payment enough. Yes, I rather think you have an aptitude for copulation. If you find your memory doesn’t return, you might even consider making a living on your back. One day you might actually be rather good at it.”

  He spoke clearly, coldly, wanting to be certain that she understood every damning word.

  Why are you doing this, Pagan? she wanted to scream.

  But she did not, pride holding her to a stony silence while her nails dug cruel channels into her palms.

  “Perhaps,” she said coldly. “But then there are so many ways to manipulate a man, are there not? Using my body is merely one of them, you know. Unfortunately, I cannot say that I found your skills to be so very remarkable, my dearest.”

  Fury leaped across his face. “Your raw cries of pleasure would argue otherwise. To say nothing of the nail cuts and the marks of your teeth which you left all over my back and shoulders.”

  She managed a cool, mocking smile. “But then such things are so easily feigned, after all. Surely a man of your experience must know that, Tiger-sahib.”

  He went rigid, fury emanating from him in palpable black waves. When he spoke again, his voice was low, raw. “Oh, but you did enjoy it, Cinnamon. Those sweet, silken contractions could hardly be feigned. In fact I’d say I gave you more pleasure in an hour than most English wives receive in a whole lifetime. Your gossipy friends back in London will no doubt be vastly amused with the story, and all agog for details. But just in case they are not properly impressed, my dear, why not claim a double triumph? Yes, just tell them you have had the signal honor of being plowed by a half-caste Anglo-Indian bastard, a man who was sired by a bloodless English peer upon an accommodating prostitute. And don’t forget
to provide them with all the details. I’m sure they’ll want to know how our anatomy compares with that of our lofty English cousins.”

  Barrett’s hand rose blindly, as if to ward off this flow of shocking revelations. “Pagan, don’t—”

  “Not enough? Greedy little hellcat, aren’t you? Well then, if that gossip pales in its novelty, you can tell them one more thing: your partner was nothing less than a murderer. His first victim was his own mother, whom he watched die without uttering a single word. Yes, that should give you hours of amusement, I’m sure.”

  While Barrett stared, shocked and speechless, Pagan turned and strode toward the west, where Nihal was already clambering up the slope.

  This time she did not even think of trying to stop him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Blindly, Barrett turned, sweeping away tears as she tugged on first breeches, then the shirt Pagan had left her.

  Beyond the glade she heard Nihal call excitedly to Pagan, who answered in a harsh foreign staccato. Her hands moved numbly, securing the row of buttons down her chest, tucking in the long tails of the shirt, smoothing her hair back and plaiting it into a thick golden coil.

  All the time she was unaware of doing any of those things, her wild thoughts focused on Pagan’s last harsh words.

  Bastard … half-caste … murderer.

  The words struck hard and fast like a hail of sharp pebbles. The pain of his betrayal and the ache of her own loss both lost importance before that revelation.

  Was it true, any part of it? Could it be so?

  She flung back salty tears and sank down to pull on her boots, trying to forget the piercing sweetness when he had finally thrust deep inside her, raining hoarse, dark love words upon her naked skin.

  Which was he, champion or betrayer, dark hero or coldblooded beast?

  Could he somehow be all those things at once?

  Her thoughts in chaos, Barrett moved blindly toward the line of bamboo at the mouth of the glade, where Pagan and Nihal stood waiting impassively.

  She did not even look at Pagan as she moved past, then continued, automaton-like, downhill toward camp.