The Tiger's Lady (53 page)

And Pagan prayed to heaven that the prey was not Barrett.

He pounded up to the top of the incline and crashed through a thick tracery of bamboo, his eyes scouring the valley before him.

The pool was exactly as he remembered it. Flashing water glinted behind a distant fringe of greenery.

Rifle leveled, eyes narrowed, he sprinted into the clearing, braced for an attack.

But the glade was empty. Bone-jarringly empty.

He spun about, scanning a row of nearby eucalyptus trees for any signs of motion.

Nothing.

Maybe she had run. Maybe she had already reached the far end of the valley and was right now climbing into the distant hills.

For tense seconds Pagan did not move, studying the terrain. Seeing no sign of the great cat crouched anywhere about, he moved toward the pool.

Then he saw the line of pugmarks running from the far trees down to the water’s edge. With fear twisting through his gut, he ran closer and bent down to study the damp, sandy soil.

So there really was a tiger! It was no figment of his malarial dreams after all. The beast must have escaped from a passing vessel outbound from Madras or Kerala, for tigers were not native to Ceylon.

And these fresh prints in the damp earth were unequivocal. Judging by their size and spacing, the creature was a powerful, fully grown male.

Pagan had hunted the great cats before—once and once only. It was in the sere brown elephant grass of north India, where little rocky pools drew the tigers down to bathe and escape the stifling heat.

He had tracked a powerful, six-hundred-pound maneater for three days, cornered it at a cliff, and put a ball neatly between its eyes.

And afterward Pagan had sworn never to hunt such a magnificent creature again, except in defense.

Now, facing these large tracks, Pagan felt a paralyzing wave of fear—not for himself, but for the inexperienced woman he had allowed to run away unattended. But there was no time for emotion, not with the tiger still to corner.

Cursing softly, he plunged toward the water. He hadn’t gone ten feet when he saw the white shirt that lay puddled on the dark earth.

Only now the shirt was no longer white, nor even mud-flecked. Now it was dark and mottled with blood all over the neck and chest.

The sight hit Pagan like a cannon blast. He staggered, unable to take his eyes from the shredded, bloody garment.

Barrett’s garment.

Instantly he pictured her as he had last seen her, shoulders rigid with pride and fury as she ran from the pain of his deception. And then Pagan seemed to see a pair of great claws slashing down toward her chest while blood churned up in hot, crimson waves.

“Barrett!”
It was a hoarse, strangled cry, raw with an infinity of pain and regret. But something whispered to Pagan that it was too late for words of any sort.

Blindly he stared at the trail of dirt leading away from the pool, drag marks where the cat had carried off his prey to a safer place to feed.

Pagan’s hands began to shake on the muzzle of his rifle. Cursing, he clamped them tighter. He caught up Barrett’s shirt and crushed it blindly to his chest.

The cloth was chill and damp, all the heat of her body gone.

“Noooo!”
It was the raw cry of one outraged predator to another, offering the primal jungle challenge of male to male. The sound exploded like gunfire through the glade, quiet in the tiger’s wake. The deer and monkeys had long since fled to safer havens, where they waited in trembling fear.

Only the water splashed and sputtered on, its gaiety cruel.

Pagan’s heart hammered violently against his ribs. “Dear heaven … it cannot be.” His boots dug into the soft sandbank as he fought to stay upright, crushed beneath a wave of horror and pain. Her bloody shirt still clutched to his chest, he looked up to the cloudless sky, seeking some answer in the face of nature.

But nature was silent, as was her wont, all her secrets hidden.

And that is when the rage began, exploding from some deep part of Pagan and spewing forth like a monsoon flood. A wild torrent, it raged higher and higher, until it nearly choked him—for the worst of it was aimed at himself.

His eyes dark with madness, Pagan turned, searching for the great cat’s tracks. Only a few yards from the pool he picked out the dragmark again, where the cat had leaped to a boulder, then plunged on uphill, leaving a broad furrow of blood-stained earth in his wake.

With a sickening wrench, Pagan realized he was indeed too late.

Nausea ripped through him. Only after a violent struggle did he keep from slipping to his knees and emptying his stomach.

He stumbled backward until he felt a boulder dig into his back. Reaching out blindly, he dug numb fingers into the stone until blood pooled across the granite.

Beside him the water shifted and shimmered, but Pagan paid no attention, locked in a world of shadows and wrenching pain.

The wind raised waves over the silver face of the pool. A ripple lapped softly against his boot.

“P-Pagan.” It was no more than a faint croak.

Wildly Pagan swung about, his rifle sweeping the clearing. It must be a dream…

“I’m—I’m here.” The voice was louder this time. Golden hair rose from a lily pad.

“Good sweet heaven.” Something that was too savage to be called relief swept across Pagan’s harsh features.

Slowly Barrett rose from the bed of reeds and water lilies mid-pool, her face as white as the petals that clung to her hair and chest.

“Meri jaan,”
Pagan whispered, ravaged by churning emotions.

“Is it—has he—” Barrett struggled to speak, her eyes glazed with fear.

“Gone. And I-I believed he’d taken you with him.”

Barrett’s eyes flashed to the bloodstained shirt still crushed between Pagan’s fingers. She saw the stunned look on his face, the tension at his jaw, the bleakness in his eyes.

She caught a jerky breath and swayed the rest of the way to her feet, jelly-kneed still, her eyes locked on Pagan’s face.

“Cinn—” The raw syllable wedged in Pagan’s throat, and he tried again. “
Cinnamon
.” It was a harsh growl, as savage as anything from the tiger’s throat.

Barrett stumbled from the pool, oblivious to how the water molded her thin camisole to her high, proud breasts. Suddenly all she could think of was Pagan’s face, Pagan’s hands, Pagan’s hot, hard body. As if in a dream, she watched his long fingers clench against the wadded shirt and wondered how it would feel if they drove through her hair like that, if they gripped her naked skin the same way.

She could not go through life without feeling those things at least once, Barrett decided.

At the water’s edge she slowed, her eyes raw. “I—I snapped off a reed and used it to breathe. The lilies were close and I hid within them when the tiger returned to the falls to clean himself.”

Suddenly Barrett’s slim shoulders began to quiver and her carefully controlled veneer shattered. “Pagan—” A sob tore from her white lips. “I almost—he nearly—”

She began to shake, cold, so cold. She brought trembling fingers to hug her chest, fighting for warmth as the paralyzing chill enveloped her.

She swayed, and a second later Pagan’s hard fingers gripped her waist. His face was harsh, shadowed, as he dragged her against his chest. “Are you so eager to escape me? Or do you just have a wish to die young?”

“I
—
I
don’t
want to die.” With stiff, jerky movements she jerked away, pulled the wadded shirt from his grasp, and shrugged it around her shoulders.

Abruptly she became conscious of the silence that hugged the glade, of their primal isolation in this wild place of splendor.

Of her own wanton state of near-nakedness.

But freed from horror, her body turned traitor and pulsed with life. Suddenly warmth poured through her limbs to flush her face and chest. Against the half-closed shirt she felt her nipples bud and then spring forward with arousal.

With trembling fingers she tried to shove the buttons home but somehow her hands would not respond, and her body was totally out of control. As if in a dream, she looked down and saw that her shirt was caked with blood, rent by the razor-sharp claws of the great cat. A shudder worked through her.

“The tiger must have dropped his kill when he bent to examine your shirt. That would explain—” Pagan stopped and cleared his throat. “It must have been a sambhur buck, judging by the size of the drag mark. You were damned lucky that the cat had just eaten.”

Pagan’s words brought no comfort to Barrett. Suddenly all she could see was blood, blood splashed everywhere over rock and water. Blood that made her feel sticky and cold and defiled. She bit down a moan and turned away, scraping at hot tears.

Without a word Pagan began unbuttoning his shirt. “Give it to me.”

Barrett turned, studying him blankly.

“Your shirt—take it off. You can’t wear that one. It’s covered with blood. And with those claws marks, you’re more naked than clothed anyway. I’ll give you mine.”

Barrett blinked at his flat, rapid-fire orders. She shook her head, trying to order the chaos in her mind. “I don’t want your shirt. I d-don’t want
anything
from you!” She couldn’t say exactly why she countered him, for she knew he was only doing the logical thing. But in the wake of her brush with death, logic seemed the farthest thing from her mind.

“Now, Angrezi.”

“G-go to hell!”

“Bloody, stubborn woman!” Without another word Pagan gripped her shoulders. “I’m done with arguing, Cinnamon. Take it off or I’ll
tear
it off.”

Ashen still, Barrett faced him in mute, churning fury. She hated him, hated this place of lethal beauty, and most of all she hated herself for not being able to remember even one fact that would help her to escape and find her way home.

Home? Maybe she would never find her way back there, where linden and lime trees marched in tidy rows beside green hedgerows.

She blinked, stunned at the image that swirled through her mind.

But it was too late. Almost immediately the vision shattered and disappeared.

Barrett’s fingers began to shake. When was she going to be normal again—a whole and complete person? How much more could she take?

The tremors grew. Blindly she drew her fingers into fists to conceal their shaking.

“Very well. If that’s the way you want it…” The next moment Pagan wrapped one rock-hard hand in the neck of Barrett’s shirt and ripped the bloody, half-shredded garment from her body, then tossed it to the ground.

Teal eyes flashing, Barrett clutched her hands to her chest, trying vainly to hide the satin curves all but revealed by the thin, damp camisole. “Damn you, Pagan!”

Pagan’s dark brow crooked. “A little late for modesty, isn’t it, Cinnamon?”

Barrett’s face flushed red with fury. “Barbarian! You may play petty tyrant to your minions at Windhaven but
I
shan’t be one of them, do you hear?”

Pagan’s breath came low and hoarse. Against his will, his gaze dropped to her silken skin, hung with silver beads of water. One drop slid to the budding nipple outlined beneath the wet camisole and hung there suspended.

For raw seconds Pagan tasted desire, felt it roar through his veins.

His eyes turned to smoke as something raw and savage swept across his face. “Barbarian? Perhaps I am at that,
Angrezi.
” His voice was harsh with self-mockery. Slowly his gaze rose, sweeping from her flushed cheeks to her flashing eyes. “How impossibly beautiful you are.”

He said the words unwillingly, as if they were a grave offense. His next sentence was a hoarse growl, barely audible. “In the name of heaven, when are you going to leave me alone?”

Barrett felt her cheeks flush anew. Queer tendrils of heat attacked her solar plexus. “Any—anytime you like, Pagan. Or should I say Viscount St. Cyr?” She laughed, a raw, wild sound. “Let me leave and I promise to trouble you no more.”

Pagan’s fingers bit into her shoulders. “Do you really believe that? Do you think it’s a simple question of proximity? Of availability?” A muscle flashed at his jaw. “I only wish it
were.
But ever since I saw you on the beach I knew it would come to this. That you would be the one who—” With a curse, he bit off what he’d been about to say, his face a harsh mask.

Barrett frowned. “The one who what?”

Pagan’s eyes smoldered over her crossed arms, then down to the slim hips clearly molded beneath her wet breeches. His gaze was hot as a
kachchan
wind, but Barrett shivered beneath it, hugging her arms more tightly to her chest.

Dimly she realized his fingers were rigid but no longer shackling upon her shoulders. She could have broken away then, but somehow she did not, too hungry for his answer to move.

When Pagan finally spoke it was in a hoarse rasp. “The one Ruxley has been waiting for, searching for, all these years. The one who—would get past all my defenses, disarm my logic.” He stopped, his features drawn taut, his eyes ablaze with silver glints like stars against a chill, midnight sky. “And you’re the one who has finally managed what Ruxley and all the others never could. You should count yourself proud.
You’ve finally broken me.”