The Tiger's Lady (42 page)

He was a brute, all arrogant, insufferable suzerain.

And a moment later he stunned her with his consideration and sure insights.

Though she hated to admit it, she knew he could have had her, could have bent her to his will only seconds before, either by force or by the dark, potent skill of his mastering fingers.

And yet he had done neither of those things.

For in his own way, she realized, Deveril Pagan was a man of honor. The thought stunned her. All unbidden, a strange lightness attacked her chest and her breath came fast and shallow. An odd warmth began to curl through her limbs.

“Pagan?”

“Go to sleep,” the man on the far side of the tent said tautly.

“It—it was cold. S-so cold. In the dream I saw a skull—
your
skull. And inside it shone a stone so bright and red that it blinded me. But somehow it seemed cold, unbearably cold, its beauty a thing of perfect evil.” She caught a jerky breath. “Am—am I going mad?”

Pagan frowned. So she did know something of the ruby. How much other information did she possess, locked away amid the shredded remains of her memory? Something that he could use against Ruxley perhaps?

He pushed away the thought. “Forget it. It was just a dream,” he muttered, still chilled by a premonition of danger at her words. Scowling, he shifted on the narrow cot, trying to ignore the straining line of muscle that throbbed at his thigh.

Trying to forget how soft she had felt beneath him.

Trying to forget how much he wanted her still.

And as he struggled to find some elusive position of comfort, Pagan realized it was going to be a damnably long time until morning.

“It—it was the ruby, wasn’t it? The gem you call the Eye of Shiva.”

In the darkness Pagan’s face turned hard. “Don’t be so bloody fanciful. It was just a dream, I told you.” Pagan only wished he could believe it himself.

For a long time all was quiet, the jungle sounds rising wild and restless around them in the steamy night.

And then there came a faint rustling at Barrett’s side of the tent. “P-Pagan?”

“Go to sleep, damn it!”

Her small chin rose in defiant determination. “I—I do remember. Calling your name, I mean.”

The Englishman sighed and found himself wishing that for once she weren’t so bloody honest. All this remembering was only making him grow harder. With a low, noncommittal grunt he turned on his cot, hoping it would lessen the torment at his groin.

It didn’t. He had known it wouldn’t.

Yes, it was going to be a
very
long time till morning.

“There’s—there’s just one more thing.”

Pagan smothered a very crude curse. “What
now,
woman?”

“I just want you to know that—that I did need you. You were right about that too.” In the darkness Barrett silently brushed away a tear. She had to tell him this, for something told her she was nothing if not honest. Scrupulously so. Somewhere deep in her being she remembered that honesty had been one of the mainstays of her life. “Even in my dream I knew you would come, you see.”

Pagan caught his breath at her low, breathless declaration. He frowned, stunned at her admission. For a moment he wished it were a trick. Yes, it would have been infinitely easier to bear had the confession been no more than a trick.

But every male instinct told him that this was no trick and that she was perfectly sincere.

“I’m … glad to hear it, Cinnamon,” he said finally, his voice unaccountably gruff. “Now will you please go to bloody sleep?”

He stood by the pool, eyes narrowed, ears attuned to the restless flow of the jungle around him.

He picked out the low snuffling of a night-hunting sloth bear and the quick, dry panting of a jackal. Somewhere to the right came the sharp yelp of a spotted deer. Then the man by the pool stiffened as he caught the low murmurs of two sentinels, posted just beyond the bamboo thicket to his left.

So that was where Pagan had them posted. A good location, except that the pair were too busy talking to pay any attention to the sounds around them.

Best of all, they were nervous. He could hear it in the bravado of their boasting.

Their nervousness made him smile thinly.

Only three more days till they reached the first of Windhaven’s far-flung hills. For a moment his face was very hard in the darkness.

Almost as hard as the lines of the ruby that haunted his dreams.

But many things could happen in three days, his keen eyes promised, expertly searching the night. And very soon this worthless pair of Tamil guards would be far more nervous than they were right now.

A moment later, skirting the panting jackal, sidestepping the useless pair of guards by mere inches, he melted back into the jungle.

When night closed around him, not one of the creatures nearby had even guessed at his phantom presence.

The air pressed down, thick and heavy though it was not yet dawn. Grimly Pagan dragged his razor across his chin, scraping away a thick black line of stubble and then rinsing the blade in a basin at his elbow. Even when he wore a beard for a disguise, beneath he preferred to be clean shaven.

Tugging off his eye patch, he scowled into the mirror propped on a nearby boulder, assessing the dark rings beneath his eyes, the gauntness in his cheeks, the slight pallor left from his last bout with malaria.

The last few sleepless nights certainly hadn’t helped.

Something continued to bother him, and it wasn’t the gutted carcass of the sambhur buck Nihal had discovered.

It wasn’t the two sentinels he’d discovered asleep at their post. It wasn’t even the fragment of a boot heel he’d found in the scattered leaves at the side of the trail, though that worried him more than a little.

No, it was something else, something he couldn’t quite seem to put his finger on.

Smothering a curse, he gave up trying and attacked the soapy line of unshaved skin at his jaw instead.

Behind him a twig snapped. Instantly he dropped the blade and lunged for his rifle. When he swung about, the muzzle was already leveled.

Barrett stood frozen in the middle of the dirt path, white-faced, her fingers clenched at her sides.

“Damn it, woman, when are you going to learn there are some things you just don’t do in the jungle?”

Though her breath was coming fast and jerky, she scowled back at him. “When you tell me what they are, I imagine. I have no way of knowing your precious rules without—” Abruptly she stopped.

Her teal eyes darted downward, then jerked back to his face.

Her features blazed crimson. “But you—you’re—”

A smile crept over Pagan’s lips. Whatever she saw served the bloody female right.

“You’re—you’re not dressed!” she sputtered.

One sable brow crooked. “Any reason why I should be,
Angrezi
? A man goes into the jungle looking for a little peace and quiet, not expecting a female to come creeping out after him.”

“I—I was not creeping.” The crimson streaks on Barrett’s cheeks grew brighter. “I do
not
creep.”

Pagan eyes narrowed. He found himself wondering what it would feel like to kiss those hot streaks of color, to feel the heat of her desire bloom beneath his lips.

Instantly he felt the muscles at his groin tighten and swell. Too late he remembered his state of undress, which would render his state of arousal blatantly obvious.

His lips compressed, he spun about and grabbed for the printed length of native cotton slung on a nearby bush.

But he wasn’t quite fast enough to conceal the effect of that one idle speculation.

And despite all her determination, Barrett’s eyes had dropped, wide and mesmerized, to the naked expanse of Pagan’s bronzed chest and from there to the rampant blade of muscle that swelled beneath her gaze and surged hotly at his thigh.

But … the man was—was huge! All rippling bronze muscle and springy black hair. Hair that nestled perfectly around the part of him that—

She caught back a breathless moan. No lady would think about such things, of course.

But then probably no lady had ever found herself in such an intolerable predicament with a man like Pagan, she told herself wildly.

His eyes dark with fury, Pagan jerked the printed cloth around his lean hips and knotted it tightly.

Damn the woman anyway! How did she manage to make him feel so bloody out of control, like a youth caught in some furtive depravity? “I’m beginning to think stealth is second nature to you. Don’t you realize I could have shot you?”

So they were back to that, were they? Barrett squared her shoulders angrily, refusing to be baited. “Actually, the thought never crossed my mind, Mr. Pagan. But then I had no reason to think of it. I’ve never spent time with anyone who would fire a few cartridges first and ask questions later.”

Pagan’s eyes bored into her face. “You better be damned glad I
am
that sort, my dear
.
If I weren’t, you wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it out of this jungle alive.”

The cold certainty in his eyes left Barrett no doubt that he was telling the truth, but pride made her raise her chin. Only with a great effort did she manage to keep her eyes from the bronze expanse of muscle bunching and rippling across his chest. “Since when has privacy become so important to you? As I recall, you have invaded my own often enough.”

Scowling, Pagan slanted the rifle against a boulder and then leaned back, studying her through hooded eyes. “You
have
no privacy, Cinnamon. Not here on my land. Not with Ruxley’s men at our heels. No, here you have only what I choose to accord you and nothing else.”

He watched her eyes flare azure at his words. Shock and something else swirled through their dark depths.

What else,
Angrezi?
Is it cunning? Calculation? Or is it something far more primal? Something like what I’m feeling right now?

Damn it, he wasn’t about to ask her.

Instead, fighting down his churning hunger, Pagan grabbed his towel and swept his jaw clean of the last lingering traces of soap, then slung the towel over his shoulder. His last task was to slip his black eyepatch back in place. “Now what was so important that you had to charge off into the jungle without an escort? In express defiance of my orders, of course. Not that a little thing like
that
would bother you.”

Her eyes wide, Barrett stared at the towel slung so casually over his left shoulder. Mesmerized, she studied the line of pale cloth so different from the dark, heated bronze of Pagan’s skin.

Skin that would flex smoothly, warm and alive beneath her fingers.

Pagan lounged back lazily, his eyes never leaving hers, simply waiting.

Barrett’s breath caught as she realized where she was and exactly what she was doing. The man truly was a pagan, she thought wildly. Worse yet, when she was with him he made
her
feel like a pagan, too!

“I simply wanted to know how far it is to our destination,” she muttered with clenched teeth. “To this place you call Windhaven. Nihal will tell me nothing, and Mita very little more.”

“Does it matter,
Angrezi
? Surely you haven’t tired of my company already?”

“I should have known better than to expect even common civility from you. Vile, intolerable man! You can take yourself straight off to the devil!”

“Ah, but there I’ve already been, Cinnamon. It’s far more interesting to be here with you, dreaming up an infinity of sins.”

His eyes followed the breeches that hugged every curve of her bottom, every inch of her slim belly. The pain at his groin grew worse every second, but Pagan couldn’t look away, for to look away would have hurt most of all.

With a defiant little sniff Barrett straightened her shoulders, resisting an urge to twitch her collar closed, to deny him any trace of bare skin.

Somehow she knew it wouldn’t matter. She would still feel his gaze like a palpable thing, hot and heavy wherever it touched her.

But she didn’t back down, not by so much as a muscle, even though her cheeks were the color of ripe strawberries. Not even when his gaze raked her heaving chest and the dusky crowns that pebbled in arousal.