The Tiger's Lady (13 page)

Pagan stepped back inside, scowling.

He’d accomplished all he’d come for. So why couldn’t he relax? Why did he still feel the prickle of danger, the same way he felt when a big cat was on the prowl?

Beside his foot a log exploded with a hiss, showering orange embers across the grate. And in that explosive burst of color Pagan saw the mocking gleam of a blood-red jewel.

The Eye of Shiva
.

He could almost feel it vibrating nearby. At that very moment, according to Singh, Sir Humphrey was ensconced in one of the brothel’s most opulent suites, enjoying the company of three of Helene’s most experienced girls.

And he had brought the bloody jewel with him.

Had the man no sense at all? Half the London underworld would be searching for the ruby tonight. Pagan could think of at least six men downstairs in the salon who would gladly kill to own the Eye of Shiva.

Probably an equal number of women, he thought cynically.

Still, it was Sir Humphrey’s problem. The ruby was nothing to him now.

So why couldn’t he relax?

He strode to a nearby gilt side table and poured himself a glass of Helene’s excellent claret. His eyes narrowed.

Strange how things changed. Once she had been sweet little Helen Lawrence, the butcher’s daughter.

Today she was one of the most powerful women in London.

Pagan smiled slightly. “Here’s to you, Helen Lawrence,” he murmured, holding his glass up to the flickering firelight. “You always were the most beautiful girl in Broadmoor village.”

Behind him the door opened silently, and the subject of these not quite sober ruminations slipped inside.

Lord, but his shoulders were fine, the red-haired woman thought, her eyes running appreciatively across the fluid muscles rippling over his back. Her gaze slipped lower, following the bronzed skin that tapered to a slim waist and lean legs.

Helene missed no detail of that very fine male body. It was something that she saw but rarely: the body of a man who did hard physical labor for a living. Not the flabby, ungainly shape of the men of wealth who usually came here.

Unaware of her presence, Pagan raised his glass once more. “And here’s to you for putting that sleepy little village by the sea behind you. Your beauty—and your quite singular talents—would have been wasted there. Unlike myself, you’ve managed to find everything you wanted from life.”

“Not quite.” Helene’s voice was a seductive whisper at his back. “I didn’t get
you,
Dev. Perhaps that was all I ever wanted.”

Slowly the man at the fire turned, his eyes dark and unreadable. “You
thought
you wanted me, Helen. But you had the good sense to see that what we felt was nothing more than a childish infatuation.”

Pagan’s eyes narrowed as he took in the diaphanous gown of silk crepe that hugged her lush form. “But you are still the loveliest girl ever to set foot in Broadmoor village.” With a self-mocking smile, he raised his glass in silent homage.

Fire leaped through Helene’s veins at the sight of that taut bronze stomach, at the dense mat of black hair that narrowed at his thighs, where his fire-bronzed shaft rose in rampant splendor.

Hard. Strong. Unbelievably large. Still the biggest man she had ever seen.

“And
you
were Broadmoor’s wildest son.” Her fingers rose, freeing the single ribbon at her neck so that her lace-trimmed robe slipped from her shoulders. “Do you remember the first time, in that barn by the river, with the rain beating overhead?” Her voice dropped, husky with passion. “I remember. Every single detail.”

Deveril’s sensual lips curved in a reflective smile. The movement softened his mouth, which of late seemed too often twisted in mockery. Softened, too, were the steely eyes that seemed to have no bottom and no soul.

“I remember,” he murmured, his eyes lingering on her crimson mouth, on the creamy cleavage displayed so perfectly by her low-cut gown. “Better than you, perhaps.” Suddenly he turned, slapping his glass onto the mantel and staring down into the flames.

But he was wrong. Helene remembered perfectly what had happened then—as well as later, when his father had discovered them, hay-strewn and giddy in the aftermath of pleasure.

The old brute had ordered his son whipped for his indiscretion, then packed him off to India, telling him to try and make a man of himself before he returned. Helen had been sent off to live with a maiden aunt in the wilds of Yorkshire.

She had been nineteen then, and Dev not yet sixteen. She had not seen him again for six years. By then she was
Helene
, a successful woman of business.

And Dev was a boy no more, the scars on his back long healed.

But not, she suspected, those that were cut deep into his heart.

The duke had lost his only son that day, in mind if not in body, and it served the bloody old fool right, Helene thought bitterly. Deveril was too good for the treatment he’d received at his father’s hands. Too good for the years of distance and deliberate coldness. Too good for the impossible standards the duke had set since his own return from India years before, encumbered with a sickly, melancholy wife and a quiet son who acted much older than his years.

And if Helene, too, had changed since that day in the barn, she refused to think about it. The past did not matter. All that mattered was that Deveril was back, and this night was theirs.

The auburn-haired beauty loosened her gown of peach silk and crossed the carpeted floor, her eyes glittering. With a secret smile, she brushed her silk-clad body against Pagan’s naked flanks. “Forget all that. Forget everything but this,
cheri.”

Though Helen Lawrence had never been farther east than Gravesend, it suited her particular line of business to assume a certain foreignness.

The man at the fire did not turn, his muscles tense beneath her touch. “I find I cannot.”

“Let me help you, then.” Pagan’s companion slid back and forth against his rigid back. Her tongue darted out, flickering hotly over his shoulders. “Like this.” Her long nails scored his thighs.

Gently. Then not so gently.

Pagan’s breath caught in a smothered oath.

The fire in Helene’s eyes grew.

After a moment the viscount reached one broad hand back to cup the soft, curving hips behind him. His callused fingers splayed apart, pulling her closer.

Helene leaned into his rough embrace, into his unyielding heat. Yes, damn him, Deveril Pagan would always be welcome here, whether he had guineas in his pockets or no.

Purring, she nipped the warm skin across Pagan’s back. Her long nails teased the dense sable hair at the crown of his thighs. “You haven’t forgotten, Pagan—I know you haven’t.” With a silky laugh, she drove her pelvis against him. At the same moment her deft fingers cupped his muscled shaft. “You’re beautifully hard already.” Her fingers circled teasingly, then tightened. “Ummm—wonderful. And something tells me you’ve become very good at this man-woman thing. That’s what you called it then, didn’t you?”

Pagan went absolutely still. “I was a bloody fool at fifteen, Helene—Helen. Damn it, that’s your real name! Why do you try to hide it?”

With an oath, St. Cyr pulled away from her experienced fingers, his eyes stormy.

“Many things about me are different, Dev. Why don’t you find out for yourself what they are?”

Helene’s pink tongue played over her crimsoned lips. Her hands dropped, digging into his lean buttocks.

“You’ve learned all the tricks, haven’t you?” Pagan’s voice was raw with something that might almost have been regret. His eyes narrowed, sweeping over the creamy curves and shadowed triangle so fetchingly revealed through her gossamer gown. “I wonder if there is anything left that would shock you, anything at all you would refuse to do for a man?”

His fingers slid along her belly until they teased the downy curls at the apex of her thighs. She was hot and wet; Pagan could feel her desire through the wispy silk.

And yet he did not remove the gown. He saw from the darkening of her amber eyes that she liked the waiting and the wanting.

Damn the memories
, he thought.
Damn the beautiful pale face that he knew he’d never forget.

She was gone by her own choice.

Tonight was for pleasure, before he went back to the jungle.

“I would do whatever
you
asked of me.” Her nails drove into his taut buttocks. “Oh, Pagan, p-please.”

His thumbs circled slowly. His fingers moved deep, sheathed in wet silk, then retreated with tantalizing slowness.

“Pagan!”

In one rough stroke he stripped off the silk garment, baring the voluptuous body beneath.

Helene moaned, reaching for him, but Pagan stood apart, studying her through heavy-lidded eyes. Yes, Helene was exquisite, with that no one could disagree. Her body was such as to excite even a marble statue to heated arousal. And he could feel that heat pool through his limbs, swelling his manhood.

And then his breath caught, for only then did Pagan see what Helene was wearing.

Around her waist hung a chain of hammered gold, its smooth links gleaming in the firelight. And secured through one link was a massive ornament, which dangled just below her navel.

Blood-red and perfectly faceted.

Glittering with all the fires of Mughal India.

A ruby that shone with the jealous pride of a thousand rajahs. With all the spent life force of the scores of victims who had died since its discovery years before.

Unearthed somewhere on Windhaven’s eight hundred acres, the exact source lost in the madness and greed that followed.

“How did you get it?”

Helene’s amber eyes glittered. “Sir John was too far gone to notice anything, I assure you.” Her eyes dropped in seductive invitation. “Don’t worry, I’ll put it back before he wakes. He’ll never even know.”

A muscle flashed at Pagan’s jaw. “But
I’ll
know.”

“Please, Dev. Just once. I’ve dreamed of this for so long.” Her body moved against him, sinuous as a cat’s. “What dreams they were. And in all of them you were naked against me like this, hard with wanting. So ready.”

Pagan’s fingers clenched and unclenched at his sides. “Even
you,
Helen? Has the cursed stone taken you, too?”

Was that revulsion in his tone? But that was impossible, the woman thought. No one could wish to be free of such a treasure. Helene looked down, relishing the sight of the gem nestled in the hollow of her creamy stomach.

She would have given all she owned to possess such a gem, but Helen Lawrence, daughter of the butcher of Broadmoor village and lover of the duke’s son, was a realist. If she could not have it, then she was determined to steal at least a few moments of pleasure with the gem.

In Deveril Pagan’s potent embrace.

For she was hungry to discover if the rumors about Dev were true, that he knew secrets even she had never encountered in her work, techniques as old as the East itself. It was whispered that he was a man whose control was unlimited, and his inventiveness without bounds.

“Take the cursed thing off! It’s Sir Humphrey’s now.”

But his companion merely smiled. She felt an odd stirring in her blood and a rising heat in her limbs.

Something she had not felt for years.

Against her ivory skin the ruby seemed to shimmer and glow. And Helene could not resist its wanton promise.

Her head slipped back. Pouting, she reached to tease the engorged length of Pagan’s manhood. When he did not move, she pressed closer, rubbing her stomach against the velvet tip. “Is it true what they say?” She took his heated manhood into her fingers. “Does the ruby really—”

The viscount cut her off. Already Pagan could feel the heat pooling at his groin, where the ruby teased his skin. “Shall I show you, Helene? Does the thought of the ruby’s heat excite you?”

Grim-faced, he lowered his head and drew one stiff, crimsoned nipple between his lips, worrying it with his tongue, then his teeth.

Helene’s head fell back. “Pagan—
please
—” The words fled in a rush of hot breath as his fingers drifted low, working their dark magic until her limbs buckled.

Still he held her, ruthless now, in the grip of fierce emotion, which drove him to taste this sensual pleasure to the fullest, to experience every dark texture of sensation.

To know and be known. To desire and be desired. As the other woman had not wanted…

His dreams lost, Pagan pushed the woman in his arms down, fire flickering over them in blood-red patterns. When she whimpered and arched against him, he parted her thighs and drove deep inside her.

He felt the ruby, hot and hard between their frenzied bodies.

When Helene screamed, sinking her nails into his back and arching up against him, Pagan barely noticed. Even her jerky cries of pleasure seemed distant, insubstantial.

For now it was a different dream he was pursuing, a blinding dream savage enough to sweep away his past and make him clean again.

No, not
clean.
Nothing could ever make him clean again.

Just
free
—free of the tormenting memories, free of the thousand regrets and terrible loneliness that had plagued him for the last seven years since…

His blood screaming for release, he plunged down, burying himself deep, as deep as a man could go.

But it was not deep enough.

Even as the heated waves of pleasure coursed through him, Pagan knew that what he really wanted was high green hills rich with the smells of jasmine and patchouli.

What he needed was air, chill, clear air flowing unimpeded from the Bay of Bengal and before that all the way from the snow-clad Himalayas.

When Helene moaned again, then shuddered beneath him, Pagan tensed and pounded into his own release, smiling grimly when his bed partner gasped and arched beneath him one more time.

Then his smile faded.

He did not have to look down to know that the ruby was winking at him again.

Mocking him for thinking he could ever escape.