The Tiger's Lady (57 page)

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.

“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.