Dragon's Eden (4 page)

“Sugar.” He spoke her name softly, liking
the sound of it even as he smiled at the absurdity of it. She was
wild, all right, both tough and shy, like an animal unused to
sharing its territory.

He’d held her close enough and long enough
to still feel the imprint of her body against his, to still feel
the warmth of her. An image came to him of her lying close to him
and of him whispering her sweet name in her ear.

A ripple of sensual awareness started in the
nether regions of his body and pooled in his groin—and it was real,
no imagining. The wave of desire he felt was physical, seductive,
and told him he was alive and well the way nothing else could
have.

He poured a glass of water and took a long
swallow to cool himself down. His limbs were still weak, and he
wondered what the woman would have done if she’d known he was
holding on to her as much to keep himself from falling back onto
the bed as to keep her from running away.

He didn’t wonder long. She would have run.
He’d seen it in her eyes. Then she would have come back. He’d seen
that, too, right at the end when her gaze had lowered and her
expression had softened.

He finished his water and set the glass
down. He had work to do. He had to locate Jen. The Chinaman was
old, seventy if he was a day, but he was wily, and cunning, and
skilled with his swords.

Moonlight slanted through windows and marked
his path as he walked silently through the bungalow’s rush-matted
hallway, tucking his shirttail into the pants she’d left for him.
The verandah that lay beyond an arched door led him past
green-shuttered windows and scattered pots filled with cacti and
flowers. At one end of the covered porch lay the heart of the
island enclave, the courtyard.

He stood barefoot on the timeworn wooden
decking, looking across the cleared area at a small cottage with a
connecting cabana. A light was on inside the cottage, revealing a
stove, table, and a rack of cooking utensils—Sugar’s kitchen. He’d
wondered where it was. The bungalow had only bedrooms in it. At the
other end of the verandah was the outhouse, distinguished by its
size and the cluster of falling stars cut out of the top of the
door. Following his body’s demands, he turned toward the
outhouse.

The first thing he found inside was the
flashlight hanging from the ceiling that bumped him on the head.
The plumbing was archaic, as she’d said, but not rustic. When he
was finished, he performed his ablutions with the water he found
running out of a bamboo pipe attached to the small building. There
was also a shelf holding a dish of soap, and a clean towel hanging
from a hook by the door.

The wind had picked up, coming in off the
water and cooling him through the thin cotton clothes. The
drawstring construction of the pants left a lot to be desired, like
a fly, but he was past complaining about his wardrobe. The clothes
were clean and soft and they smelled good. They were also his
favorite color for nighttime—black.

He walked back along the length of the
verandah and stood quietly under the thatched roof. Moonlight
glittered on the tops of the waves, illuminating the eternal ocean.
Behind him, inland, was like a bottomless, formless abyss. He
peered into the darkness, trying to discern the landscape. There
were trees and another smaller building made of stone, but he
couldn’t find the horizon.

Fighting an uneasy sensation, he stepped off
the verandah. His gaze automatically moved upward, higher and
higher, searching for the sky. He found it so far above him, it
made his blood run cold.

He was trapped. A towering cliff wall sealed
off any hope of escape from the island. A natural stone arch loomed
across the top of the cliffs, framing southern stars. Maybe she was
right.

Maybe they were at the edge of the
world.

Nothing but the sea sounded at his back, the
waves breaking against the rocks tumbled from the cliffs above;
nothing but the moon and the stars shone across the black velvet
dome of the sky. There was nothing else to be seen or heard,
nothing beyond the sea and the sky and the small hold of her home—a
fine prison indeed. His only chance might be the water, swimming in
a strange ocean at night, and that didn’t seem like much of a
chance at anything except getting himself killed.

He started to move forward, when the sound
of singing and laughter arrested his steps. Silently, he dropped
into a crouch. It had not been a woman’s laughter, and Jen never
laughed.

Sugar halted her actions in the kitchen’s
cabana, not quite believing her eyes. A half-wrung-out T-shirt
dripped water from her hand and onto her bare feet, but she hardly
noticed. Her prisoner had disappeared. One instant he’d been
standing in the courtyard surveying her home, and in the next he’d
melted into the night like a jungle cat on the prowl.

She knew what had spooked him, Henry’s
drunken rendition of “Island Girl.” Truly, it was enough to spook
anybody, those wavering high notes hanging on the wind,
interspersed with an old man’s cackling. Carolina must have put him
up to it. Henry never would have expended the effort necessary to
get to Cocorico in the dark without some kind of threat inspiring
him.

Swearing softly, she dropped the T-shirt
back into the washtub and reached behind her to jerk the cord on
the generator. When the engine caught, she ran into the kitchen
through the side door from the cabana. Old sot that Henry was, he
was her friend, and she didn’t want to see him come to harm at the
hands of the dragon man. She crossed the room, scooting through the
narrow space between the table and the north wall, hurrying to
reach the switch concealed by a hanging basket full of fruit. Her
hand connected with metal, and with a small grunt of effort, she
threw the switch.

Painfully bright light flooded the
courtyard, freezing everyone in place. Through the west window,
Sugar saw Henry swaying on his feet near the clothesline, blinking
against the light, but thankfully exposed for what he was, a
harmless old man.

Jen was a triangular silhouette of gray next
to the icehouse—and he was staring right at her on a line of sight
from the cliffs to the interior of the cottage.

A jolt of adrenaline washed into her veins.
Whatever she’d expected, it hadn’t been to find the Chinaman
guarding the entrance to Cocorico and watching her from out of the
darkness.

Her prisoner, the dragon man, was harder to
spot. She quickly moved around the kitchen table and stationed
herself at the front door, ignoring Jen as best she could. Her gaze
scanned the courtyard, the beach, and the wilder places spreading
away from the cliffs, searching for Jackson. He couldn’t have
gotten far, but she’d be damned if she could see him.

The reason became clear an instant later
when she was captured from behind and hauled back inside the
kitchen.

Her gasp of fear was quickly replaced by one
of disbelief when she realized who had her. The dark hair falling
over her shoulder and the rock-solid chest at her back didn’t leave
a doubt in her mind, except she couldn’t believe anybody could have
moved as fast and as quietly as he had. He must have been almost
upon her before she’d even cleared the threshold from the
cabana.

“Let go of me, you . . . you—”

“Who’s the drunk?” he growled in her
ear.

“Henry. He’s a friend.” She struggled within
the viselike circle of his arms, flailing at him. He’d gone too
damn far this time.

“Not of mine.”

“You don’t have any friends,” she snapped,
anger getting the best of her. She tried to elbow him in the ribs,
but he was too quick, shifting his hold but still restraining her.
In the next second, though, she fell to the floor, suddenly
free.

She looked up at him, ready to lambaste him
for his carelessness and threaten him with anything she could dream
up—from chains to starvation—if he ever grabbed her again, but her
threats would have been redundant. The gleaming blade of Jen’s
sword lay against his neck, marking him with a thin line of
blood.

Her dragon man glared down at her,
subjugated by the edge of steel curving toward his throat. His eyes
were dark with fury. His fists were clenched at his sides.

“You’ve made your point, Jen,” he muttered
between closed teeth. “Now back off before I accidentally kill
you.” When Jen didn’t move, he spoke a stream of Chinese, all of it
commanding and angry.

The old man’s reply was the silent removal
of the weapon, followed by the hushed metallic slither of the sword
being sheathed.

Sugar slowly pushed herself to her feet, all
of her senses on overdrive. Shulan had brought two warriors and a
war to her doorstep, not an invalid in need of care.

“I thought you were here to protect him,”
she said to Jen, her voice a mixture of admonition and wariness.
His rescue had been swift and full of deadly intent; she’d seen the
danger in his eyes and felt it in Jackson’s reaction.

Shulan had told her many of the details of
Jackson’s story, but the pirate princess had forgotten to warn her
of the old Chinaman’s skill. The ancient and fragile Jen was at
least as alarming as the dragon man.

“I don’t want anybody killed here,
accidentally or otherwise,” she continued, her gaze taking in both
men so there wouldn’t be any mistake about whom she was talking to,
though she doubted if Jen understood a word she was saying.

She looked at him, as the older and
supposedly wiser of the two, but whatever assurances she’d hoped to
get weren’t going to come from that quarter. He gave her nothing
beyond his inscrutable gaze and a short, formal bow before leaving
the kitchen. Left without another choice, Sugar let her gaze rise
to the man still dominating the room. Somehow she knew to expect
even less from him.

He was angry, dangerous in the way of all
wounded predators, and he was more than she could handle. She
wasn’t prepared to cope with a warrior who only answered to an old
man’s sword. She had nothing with which to control him.

Her hand shook as she pulled out one of the
chrome-and-vinyl chairs flanking her wooden table, the small
weakness irritating her further. He shouldn’t be able to unnerve
her so easily. Maybe all her longing for a mate was better left in
fantasy, if Jackson Daniels was the reality.

He wouldn’t be staying, of course, but what
other kind of man could she realistically expect to end up on
Cocorico, except one with a violent past and a need to hide?

Her eyes flicked up once, quickly, then just
as quickly looked away. What she’d seen had not been encouraging.
Dressed, he looked larger than he had naked, taller and more
intimidating—a lot more intimidating.

She should have chosen different clothes for
him, something to counteract the sheer intensity of his presence.
The unremitting black of his pants and shirt heightened the aura of
danger around him, and it had certainty helped him disappear in the
courtyard.

“You’re bleeding,” she said. “Sit down . . .
please.” The added politeness was merely that, she told herself. It
was not a plea.

Much to her relief, he did as she asked,
lowering himself into the chair without a complaint. She had no
idea what she would have done had he resisted her.

“I’ll . . . uh, go get the first-aid
supplies,” she said, stepping around him and cutting off the
floodlights before making her way to the pantry. She wouldn’t
forget about him wearing black in the night, and she wouldn’t let
it happen again.

Within moments she was back at his side with
her medical kit. She set the large metal box on the table and took
from it the antiseptic and a sterile gauze pad. He wasn’t hurt too
badly, but she didn’t want to take a chance on infection setting
in.

“That’s quite a stash,” he said, nodding at
the array of pharmaceuticals in the box. “Are you a drug runner or
a doctor?”

“I’ve got an out-of-date Red Cross card,”
she said, “and that’s almost as good as a medical license out
here.”

“Out where?”

“Here,” she said, not missing his crude
attempt to get information from her. He was still angry. She could
tell by the tension in his body and the barely perceptible
twitching of the muscles in his jaw. But he was controlling his
emotions—thank God—trying to come down off the inevitable
adrenaline rush of finding a sword ready to cut his throat.

She lifted the antiseptic-soaked pad to
clean his wound, but her hand paused near his shoulder, heeding an
intuitive warning: Touching the dragon man was a risky thing to
do.

The only times they’d had contact, he’d
grabbed her, taken her by surprise. There had been no premeditation
on her part, and to the best of her ability, she had not touched
him back. The choice was lost to her now.

Chiding herself for foolishness, she used
her free hand to smooth his hair behind his car—and immediately
knew her fears had not been foolish.

The warmth of his skin unsettled her, making
her aware of the pure animal aliveness of him. Equally startling
was the texture of his hair. She would not have guessed it to be so
sinfully soft and sensuous, so at odds with the hard strength of
his body. The straight dark strands slid through her fingers and
drifted across her palm as she moved them aside to expose his
throat. With absentminded care, she trailed the pads of her fingers
along the back of his neck, feeling the heat and vulnerability of
his nape, and the subtle shift he made to increase their
contact.

He wasn’t dangerous to touch. He was heaven,
strong and warm, sensual and responsive, his body so wonderfully
different from hers.

The rising of his lashes captured her
attention and drew her thoughts away from his silken hair. She
lowered her eyes to meet his—and was trapped by the green fire of
his knowing gaze. Mortified, she pulled her hand away, letting his
hair return to his back and slide to his waist.