Dragon's Eden (17 page)

With a heavy sigh, she shifted her gaze,
dragging her hand back through her hair.

“We’re fighting again,” she said, her voice
tinged with a hint of weariness.

“I know.” He reached out and tilted her face
up, needing to touch her and reconfirm the life and warmth of her.
Getting angry wasn’t getting him anywhere.

He smoothed the pad of his thumb over her
skin, following the curve from her brow to her ear. She was lovely,
fresh and exotic, utterly female, and she was supposed to be his.
He would, and probably was, betting his life on that fact, but she
needed convincing.

“There’s an old Chinese saying,” he said,
“about riding the dragon through gates of jade to cool its burning
fire.”

She gave him a quizzical glance. “And what
in the world does that mean?”

“If we make love, we’ll stop fighting.” He
let a slow, easy grin curve his mouth.

She lowered her lashes and fiddled with the
hem of her shirt, looking uncharacteristically flustered. “You make
it sound like a prescription cure.”

“For what’s been bothering you and me, it
is. We could use some practice in getting along and working as a
team, and good sex takes a lot of getting along and teamwork.” He
bent his head and tried to glimpse her face. “It’s a helluva lot
more fun than hockey, Sugar. Or basketball. Think of it as an
adventure. You explore me, I explore you, and we share the
treasure.” Sounded good to him.

Instead of returning his smile as he’d
hoped, she looked away, off into the darkness of the tunnel behind
them. She’d twisted her shirt into a knot at the bottom.

“That night on Mustique, one of the friends,
a boy, wasn’t so casual.”

His teasing mood instantly vanished. He
didn’t want to hear this.

“He was a couple of years older than me and
I’d known him just long enough to convince myself I was in love,”
she went on, really making him wish she would stop. “He’d hardly
been on St. Vincent a week before we were talking marriage. I know
that sounds dumb.”

His heart sank. He didn’t think it sounded
dumb. Hell, he hadn’t been with her even a week and he was thinking
in long terms himself.

“What happened?” he asked, hoping to bypass
the more intimate details. She was his, should have been his from
the very beginning.

“We went to the party with all his friends.
They chartered a plane and everything, champagne and caviar,
probably drugs. I don’t know. I was pretty naive.” A breeze snaked
through the tunnel, stirring the tendrils of steam. “Come on,” she
said. “We better keep moving.”

She stepped around a corner, and he
followed. “What happened at the party?”

“Corey, that was the boy, got drunk. I think
he was drunk even before we got off the plane. Sinkhole.” She
flashed the light on the floor to warn him. “There must have been a
hundred people at the estate. It was like a lot of different little
parties going on all over the house and grounds. Corey wandered
into one he shouldn’t have.”

“And you followed him.” It was a simple
statement and not the question he wanted to ask, which was about
the kind of friends she’d had who would invite Fang Baolian to a
damn New Year’s Eve party.

“The people were older, more formal. I’m not
even sure it was a party. There were a lot of servants. At least
that’s what I thought at the time. Later I realized they were
guards or soldiers. Anyway, the room was crawling with them and
they were all kowtowing to this beautiful Asian lady dressed in
black.”

Baolian, Jackson thought. She was the
quintessential woman in black. No one did the look better, or with
such deadly grace.

“I could tell right off that we didn’t
belong there, but Corey was too drunk and too arrogant to think
there might be anyplace he didn’t belong. I think his dad was a
politician or something, maybe a senator.”

All around them, the sound of running water
was getting louder, and he wondered if they were nearing the
waterfall. Then he realized the water wasn’t ahead of them, it was
above them. He instinctively ducked and swore under his breath, as
if either one of those defense mechanisms would save them if the
roof caved in.

“He couldn’t take his eyes off the Asian
lady,” Sugar continued, “and when she finally noticed him, the
attraction was obviously mutual.”

“Baolian does have a thing for younger men,”
he said, knowing the truth only too well. The woman had a good
twenty years on him.

He looked up at the roof again, eyeing it
warily. Cooper would never top this one.

“Well, her taste has improved since then,”
Sugar said. She took the end of her shirt and wiped some of the
dampness off her face. “We’re in for a little geothermal action up
ahead. The water gets really hot. Be careful.”

“Right,” he said, already feeling the heat.
“So what happened after love at first sight?”

Her laugh was bitter. “I should have been
grateful Baolian saved me from getting any more . . . uh, involved
with Corey, heartless jerk that he turned out to be. But at the
time I was too crushed, and all I wanted to do was get out of
there. Some guy thought differently, though. I avoided him for a
while, thinking Corey would come to his senses, walk away from this
woman in black, and we would leave together, but it didn’t work out
that way.”

“You wouldn’t happen to remember the guy’s
name, would you?” He told himself it was a professional
question—anyone who partied with Fang Baolian had to be up to no
good—but he was lying. He wanted the man’s name for personal
reasons.

“No,” she said. “We didn’t get to
introductions. We did end up in a strange room. I thought I’d been
working my way out of the house, but I was actually getting in
deeper. The room was all mirrors and silk, everything in red,
yellow, and black, and there was even a feast laid out on a table.
There was music playing, candles and incense burning. Before I
could get back out of the room, the guy grabbed me. I grabbed a
knife.”

Sugar paused. “I didn’t mean to cut her. I
didn’t even know she and Corey were in the room, until I stumbled
over them. They were lying on these pillows and they were . . .
Anyhow, I stumbled over them, tried to catch myself, and that’s
when the knife cut her.”

“Where did you cut her?” He had seen more of
Baolian than he’d ever wanted to see, and for the life of him, he
couldn’t remember any knife scars.

Sugar looked over her shoulder at him and a
teasing glint came into her eyes. “Right across the biscuits, cheek
to cheek. I think she would have killed me on the spot, but with
all the blood and screaming, I had a couple seconds’ lead. She
still would have had me if someone hadn’t pulled me into a hidden
passageway. From there I was able to get back to the plane. I laid
low in the baggage compartment until it took off.”

They ducked under a smooth arch, and Jackson
could have sworn it was getting lighter in the tunnels.

“So that explains Baolian,” he said. “How
did you get involved with Shulan?”

“She was the one who grabbed me when I was
running. We’d gone to the same private school on Barbados. She was
a few years behind me. We all knew she was rich, living off a trust
fund in the Caymans, but didn’t know her mother was the Dragon
Queen of the South China Sea, or that she spent her vacations on
Mustique. None of us did. After I got back to St. Vincent, I
toughed it out for a few months—”

“Toughed what out?”

She shrugged. “Things started
happening.”

“Things? What kind of things?” It was
definitely getting lighter and warmer.

“Bad things. My cat and dog were killed,
innocent people were hurt, crippled in a car bomb meant for me,
people I loved.”

He swore silently. Those were mean games to
get caught in.

“I thought that was too high a price for one
girl’s dubious honor. I went back to Shulan, begged her to
intercede with her mother, to tell her I would do anything.”

“Baolian doesn’t work that way,” he said,
controlling his anger. No one in Baolian’s position worked that
way. He’d met all types of pirates over the years, and as far as he
could tell, only the ruthless had a chance in hell of surviving to
rob and plunder another day.

“That’s what Shulan told me. The best she
could do, she said, was to help me disappear until her mother
forgot me. I ended up here. Shulan owns the island, but I’ve got a
ninety-nine-year lease. She’s one of my few regular visitors.”

“Who are the others?” he asked.

“Carolina, Henry, sometimes my father. Every
now and then, Shulan lets a scientist come to study for a day or
two.”

“What about your mother?”

A moment of silence preceded her reply. “She
comes when she can. It’s hard for her.” She flipped off the
flashlight. “We’re here.” An opening in the cave’s ceiling flooded
the cavern with sunshine.

“Where?” he asked, looking around at the
slick rock and the column of steam rising out of a pool in the
middle of the floor. Most of the steam went out the ceiling hole,
but a good portion also drifted into the tunnel they’d left.

“I call it Coeur de Cocorico, the heart of
Cocorico,” she said. “By the time I come back for you, you’ll
probably be calling it the sauna from hell. It’s the only thing
like it on the island. If it gets too unbearable, the waterfall is
ten yards that way.” She pointed toward one of the smaller tunnels.
“The sinkhole you fell in the first time is the only one you have
to worry about. There aren’t any others in that direction.”

He looked up at the circle in the ceiling.
Like the one above the secret pool, it was nearly enclosed with
greenery. Even here, large tree roots grew down inside the cavern,
both holding it together and breaking it apart.

“Isn’t it unusual to have a single, isolated
spot of geothermal activity?”

She shrugged. “When you live on Cocorico,
you learn to accept the mysteries of life.”

“Like four-tiered waterfalls and giant
snakes, shark alleys and albino scarlet macaws, and rivers that run
overhead?”

The laugh he got out of her almost made the
whole convoluted mess worthwhile. A kiss would have clinched the
deal.

“You forgot the mist,” she said. “When you
see it, you’ll definitely think it’s mysterious.”

“And you?” he added. She’d held something
back in her story. He didn’t know what, but he knew the secret held
part of the key as to why she’d accepted exile over taking a
chance.

“No.” She shook her head. “There’s no
mystery to me. I’ll try to come back shortly after nightfall with
food. If they leave earlier, I’ll come then. Will you be okay?”

No, he didn’t think he would be okay, not
without her kiss, but he didn’t tell her. He showed her, pulling
her into his arms and lowering his mouth to hers. For the first
time there was no resistance in her. She came to him with parted
lips and melted against him, accepting everything he gave, meeting
every stroke of his tongue with one of hers, teasing and delighting
him with her shy explorations.

The kiss took him back in time, toward the
beginning when first breath was given. They were both warm and wet,
entwined within the womb of the cave, a fiery caldron at their feet
and a clear blue sky above them.

Earth, wind, water, and fire—the alchemist’s
potions worked their magic and drew him ever deeper into her
spell.

Sugar knew she was in trouble the minute she
saw Jen lying in the courtyard, bound hand and foot, surrounded by
soldiers. She was still within the protective cover of the forest
and turned to flee, but she didn’t get more than three feet before
the metallic slap of a lowered gun and a barked command stopped her
in mid-flight.

The language was Chinese, but the man’s tone
gave the words clear meaning: Stop or I’ll shoot.

* * *

Jackson had never been any good at taking
orders or sitting still. He paced the confines of the cave,
restless. Their plan made perfect sense, for him to stay and for
her to go, but it wasn’t setting right. If he’d gone with her, he
would have been taken only God knew where in Shulan’s misguided
attempt to keep her half brother safe. At least that’s what the
pirate princess kept insisting. It was certainly what Sugar
believed. He wasn’t so sure.

There was no doubt his father had been
Asian. Jackson only had to look down at his skin or his hair to
confirm the genetics. A glance in a mirror would reinforce the
fact. Except for the color of his eyes and a vaguely prominent
bridge in his nose, he was as Asian as chopsticks. But those truths
did not mean he was the son of the most notorious pirate to sail
the South China Sea, a title surrendered to Fang Baolian only upon
Sun Yi’s deathbed.

On the other hand, if a person was to cross
the pure green of Cooper’s eyes with the warm golden amber of
Shulan’s, they’d end up with Jackson Daniels. It wasn’t exactly
scientific evidence, but it was something to think about.

He’d rather think about Sugar, the gray-eyed
one. He stopped his pacing and ran his hand along one of the thick,
exposed tree roots growing down from the opening in the ceiling. A
narrowly slanted shaft of sunlight slipped up the cave walls,
reminding him of the lateness of the hour. It would be dark soon.
Tilting his head back, he looked up into the fading blue sky
fringed with a verdant forest, and it beckoned to him.

With a bend of his knees, he jumped up and
reached as high as he could, grabbing onto a gnarly curve of root
and pulling himself up. He found a foothold against the wall and
pushed, straining higher. In a few minutes he’d reached the opening
and levered himself over the top and into a bed of sweet-smelling
grass. Breathing deeply, he rolled onto his back, spreading his
arms out at his sides.

A breeze blew across his face, bringing the
scents of flowers and fruit and the ever-present sea. She’d told
him what he’d wanted to know, and maybe something more. A grin
teased his mouth. He could imagine Baolian’s rage at having her
curvy little behind scarred for life. She was a woman who prided
herself on her beauty as much as her brains and her
ruthlessness.