The Tiger's Lady (58 page)

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.