The Tiger's Lady (19 page)

If they paid at all.

In grim silence Pagan kicked open the door to his bungalow and strode down a long corridor to his sparsely furnished room. In one corner stood a rattan chair and a wooden campaign desk, the latter placed in tins of water to discourage the foray of voracious white ants. On the bed lay scattered correspondence, chits requiring his signature, and scribbled notes detailing the progress of his tea experiments.

Pagan swept the papers onto the floor, then dumped his sodden captive over his shoulder onto his bed.

Why hadn’t she awakened yet? There had been no blood nor any sign of a head wound.

Then his onyx eyes hardened. Maybe she wasn’t asleep at all, merely feigning.

If so, he knew the perfect way to find out.

His fingers dropped to her bodice. He pried a tiny, cloth-covered button free, trying to ignore the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Any moment he expected her to sit up, squawking in protest.

But she did neither. Not by the flicker of an eyelid did she acknowledge his presence.

Pagan attacked the second button, his hands strangely awkward. His fingers slipped on the tiny circle, once and then again.

Get control of yourself. How Ruxley would laugh to see you now,
he thought furiously.

But his fingers only grew more unsteady. Smothering a curse, he sank down on the bed and pulled the woman across his lap. In one savage stroke, he caught the top of her gown and sheared the row of buttons away, sending the cloth-covered circles pinging across the wooden floor.

Even then she did not move.

Pagan’s jaw settled into a hard line as he tugged the woman’s dress from her shoulders. All the time he reminded himself that he was calm, that he was in control, that this was merely another skirmish in his ongoing war with Ruxley.

But it was a lie.

The lie that became harder and harder to ignore as his manhood strained, hot with desire where she lay angled against him, her weight a sweet, burning torment.

For he was
not
in control, and he was anything but calm.

With jerky motions he freed the ribbons at the top of her chemise, pulled the float of cambric over her head, and tossed the garment onto the floor.

What he saw next drove the breath from his lungs.

She was tightly laced into a low-cut corset of a sort Pagan had never seen before. Its rigid gussets cinched a waist so slim that he could span it with his hands.

But it was the corset’s lacy edge that caught his gaze and sent flames exploding to his groin.

There, smooth as China silk, her lush breasts thrust up, cool and perfect. And there, just as in his dreams, her coral-tinged nipples peeped out from the lace trim.

Sweat broke out on Pagan’s brow. Even as he watched, one perfect crest trembled, then spilled free.

With a curse he released the breath he hadn’t even known he was holding. Struggling for calm, he bent to the damp mass of her skirts. Anything to forget the agony of his arousal, agony fired by the thought of the perfect curves only inches from his hungry fingers.

He frowned at her horsehair bustle. Why did Englishwomen insist on wearing so many clothes in the middle of the tropics? What were they trying to hide?

The anger steadied Pagan somehow, helping him forget her softness.

He pushed her onto her side, freeing the bustle and hurling it across the room. Farewell and good riddance! That was one article of dress she’d not wear again. And her bloody corset would soon make a second.

But first he had her wet petticoats to contend with.

Grim-faced, he bent to the task, his fingers rough and urgent against the fine, damp organdy. A person could smother buried beneath so much cloth, he knew. Many an Englishwoman had keeled over in a dead faint, laced and muffled head to toe in such clothes.

But not this woman, Pagan vowed. Soon she’d be naked as the day she was born. And he meant to see she
stayed
that way until he had answers from her.

One tape gave way. Pagan shifted her to tug the garment free.

Her head turned, pressing into his thigh.

He froze. Erotic images spilled through his mind.

Just like the ones in his fevered dreams.

He felt a shudder snake through her. Dark eyes smoldering, he raised her head and studied her face. But his trespasser’s features were pale and perfect, absolutely expressionless. She gave no sign that she noticed him or anything else around her.

But something else had moved. With Pagan’s efforts, her corset had shifted.

Now in frozen silence Pagan watched her other nipple tremble, then spill over the corset’s lacy edge.

Fire ripped through him. Desire beat a savage staccato straight down to his tumid manhood.

Take her,
an angry voice urged.
Take her here and now. That’s all the harlot deserves. After all, that’s what Ruxley sent her for.

But somehow he could not. Dreamlike, he watched his callused fingers fall until they grazed the small, peaked buds surrounded by pure lace and purer skin.

Pure?
he thought bitterly. Pure was the last thing this harlot of Ruxley’s could be. As if to prove just that, he cupped one ivory mound and stroked its velvet bud with his thumb.

The woman did not move.

Pagan scowled. It proved nothing. She was well trained, after all, by a man who was a master at deception.

But a pinprick of guilt stirred.

The Englishman found himself remembering another woman—a woman who had met him with sweet fire. Lips that had clung to his with soft abandon while snow danced around them in the London night.

A woman he had tried for weeks to forget.

“Meri jaan.”
The words were on his lips before he knew it, part plea and part raw accusation.

A shiver swept through the woman in his arms, so faint that Pagan wondered if he’d imagined it.

Stunned, he stared down at the pale sweep of her cheek, at the arch of her lips. The hair color was different and her features had been veiled, but…

Dear heaven, could it possibly be
her?

“Falcon?” he whispered, tracing her bottom lip with his thumb, struck with the wild certainty that he had touched her this way before.

His thumb probed the shadowed center of her mouth. In his arms the woman trembled, her lips parting slightly.

A muscle flashed at Pagan’s jaw. It was impossible! She couldn’t be the woman he’d met in London. Her hair wasn’t even the right color.

But how else was he to explain this haunting sense that he had touched her this way before?

The answer was not a pleasant one.

It must be because he desperately wanted to believe it. Because he was half mad with malaria and had succumbed to Ruxley’s cleverest tactic yet.

Pagan jerked his hands away, struggling to fight the attraction he still felt. No, she couldn’t be the one. It would have been too great a coincidence.

And where James Ruxley was concerned, there was no such thing as coincidence.

Abruptly the woman twisted, murmuring restlessly. St. Cyr hated the way his pulse leaped at the sound.

Again it came, the raw, choked whisper. And then Pagan heard what he hadn’t allowed himself to hear before—that the sound was prompted by pain and not desire. Her fingers, he saw now, were clenched white, her lips compressed in a flat line.

Something was wrong!

He caught her wrist and felt her pulse. The beat was faint and sharply erratic.

Damn Ruxley and all his devious plans!

Grimly Pagan pushed the tangled mane from the woman’s face, cursing himself for not checking for wounds sooner.

But he knew why he hadn’t. There had been no shipwreck, no storm, and no real signs of any emergency which would have driven her onto his beach.

And because she was beautiful.

Because she was softer than any woman had a right to be.

Because he was halfway under her spell already.

The realization left Pagan stunned and furious. His jaw clenched as he continued to explore her neck and forehead, searching for anything that might explain her continuing lassitude.

Then his fingers froze. A raw laceration crossed her left temple just inside the hairline. Deep and jagged, it oozed bright new blood even now.

God forgive me for my stupidity,
Pagan thought. Then he was on his feet and running for the door.

Praying he was not too late.

She woke to pain and numbing cold.

Barrett moaned, fighting her way up through layers of darkness and an eternity of dreams.

Only now she did not think of herself as Barrett or as Brett. Now she thought only in blurred wisps of sensation that knew neither sound nor words.

Hard fingers probed her skull, tugged at her clothing.

She shifted restlessly, struggling against the hot, choking air. “S-stop! No more, you f-foul leech! I—I won’t do it, do you hear? Not now. N-not
ever
!”

But the words were only in her mind.

A dream?

No, not a dream. Still in the water—had to get ashore. Had to reach the shore. Had to find…

Pain seized her between its gleaming metal jaws. Live a vise, it ripped through every layer of reason and defense.

Something wet splashed across her brow. She flinched, fighting it with mindless ferocity.

She mustn’t give in!

The voice came as if from a great distance.

Never give in. No matter what they say or do to you. You knew it might come to this, if you were caught.

She tried to think, to plan an escape, but the pain blocked every thought. When she tried to remember, she met only suffocating darkness.

And more pain.

Which left nothing to do but fight. And fight she did, with teeth bared and nails poised, like the desperate, hunted animal that they had finally made her become.

Vainly Pagan tried to quiet his captive’s wild struggles. But his touch seemed only to drive her to greater fury, until he could scarce dodge her flying fists.

He looked away, reaching for a clean cloth, and she twisted suddenly, her nails raking his face and drawing blood. Pagan cursed, knowing that he had to stop her before her wound opened wider. Grimly he wrapped an arm about her waist, forcing her against his chest.

With every movement, more blood spilled down her cheek.

Again, she broke free, slamming her fist into his cheek.

Pagan could taste his own blood as he rolled to his side and trapped her beneath him. In one swift movement he captured her wrists and pinned them at her sides. “Stay still, little fool!”

If the woman heard, she gave no sign of it. White-faced, she struggled harder, her chest heaving, her lips compressed in pain.

And in fear, Pagan saw, though she hid it well.

She was either a very brave woman or a very clever one, he decided. Before the hour was out, he would know which.

“It w-won’t work. N-not—again!” She twisted furiously. Panic sharpened her voice. “I won’t do it, do you hear? I don’t care what they t-told you!”

“Stop fighting me, woman.” The Englishman tried to ignore the exquisite sensation of her breasts against his naked chest. The way her softness yielded to his aching male hardness.

There would be time for that, he vowed, but now he must calm her and tend to her wound. The nearest decent surgeon was three hundred miles away in Madras, and Pagan had neither men nor time to fetch him, not with the monsoon only a matter of days away.

Grimly, he ripped a length of muslin from her discarded petticoat and knotted it around her forehead. That should stop the bleeding until he could clean the wound.

Just then his captive twisted, sinking her teeth into his wrist.

Pagan jerked away, studying the small red marks left by her teeth. Any wound was dangerous here in the jungle, where infection could rage out of control in a matter of hours, but a human bite to the hand was the most dangerous of all.

“Nihal!” he bellowed. Immediately bare feet pattered down on the hall.

The door was thrown open by a small sober Sinhalese servant with a blinding white smile and fine, regular features. Right now those features were creased with curiosity. “Yes, Tiger?”