Dragon's Eden (3 page)

“What about Jen? Or are you as much his
prisoner as I am?” he asked, his voice silky and arrogant. His
victory over her had been quick and all too easy. “I don’t know
what he’d do to you, but I’m sure he’d love to have an excuse to
stick another needle in me.”

“You were drugged for your own protection.”
She repeated the words she’d been told, though had it been up to
her, she would have found another way to control him.

“At least you’ve got part of it right,” he
said.

A gull’s screech shattered the quietness of
the night, and the man holding her reacted with the speed of a
lightning strike, tightening his grip on her and whirling toward
the sound in a half crouch. His hair moved in a silken wave to
slide down his back. They stood motionless for the space of a
breath. When he straightened and turned to her again, she was
face-to-face with the dragon.

Startled, she attempted a retreat, but
Jackson’s hand held her firm, keeping her within the dragon’s
domain.

The creature’s emerald-green eyes regarded
her with remarkable possessiveness from across the tawny expanse of
her captor’s chest, but whether the dragon possessed him or wanted
to possess her, she couldn’t tell. She only felt the power of the
lifelike image gracing the man’s body from his left shoulder down
to his waist. Wings held the creature aloft. Green-and-blue scales
arced along its serpentine spine. Flames licked from the beast’s
mouth, both red and gold, warming the skin above where the man’s
heart lay.

Dragon fire, Sugar thought, wondering at the
heat such a creature could bring forth, wondering about the man who
could contain it.

“You’re smaller than I thought,” he said,
his grip loosening the barest of degrees.

The softer sound of his voice brought her
gaze up to his, and her breath caught in her throat. He had opened
his eyes. They were the color of the dragon’s, but warmer, much
warmer, with amber highlights and streaks of a darker brown. His
thumb caressed the inside of her wrist, and her pulse leaped into
overdrive.

Jackson let his gaze trail over the woman’s
face, and the confusion he’d felt upon waking returned. She was
very unusual looking, intriguing, almost familiar. The shape of her
face was feminine, a delicate heart, but her features were more
childlike, rounded and less defined, suggesting an innocence he
found surprising in an accomplice of Sun Shulan’s.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, feeling a need
to reassure her. Her skin was flawless, a golden peach color
divinely designed to complement the sun-bleached blond of her hair.
She was either an angel or the embodiment of a fantasy. He couldn’t
decide which, but there was an otherworldliness about her,
something untamed reflected in the pale crystalline depths of her
eyes. He’d never seen eyes like hers. They were more silver than
gray.

“No. You won’t hurt me,” she agreed. “And if
you let me go now, I won’t hurt you.”

So much for innocence, he thought, but he
didn’t let her go.

“Are you so dangerous?” he asked, one dark
eyebrow lifting.

“I can be,” she said without hesitation, the
gentle lilt of her voice belying her words.

He couldn’t resist smiling. “I’ve been known
to be dangerous myself, and I’ve got at least eighty pounds on
you.”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to take my
chances.” Sugar was bluffing. She couldn’t overpower him, not in
her wildest dreams—but a bluff was all she had. Shulan had told her
to hold this man, and hold him she would, and make sure he came to
no harm. Nothing else had ever been asked in return for the second
chance Shulan had given her. She would not fail.

Jackson’s smile faded. She was serious. Damn
serious. He looked down at her narrow shoulders and her slight
build, at the small hand in his, and admitted he knew a couple of
ways a one-hundred-and-ten-pound woman could render him helpless,
but he doubted if she had anything pleasurably sexual on her
mind.

Too bad. He lifted his free hand to touch
her hair. Slowly, he ran his fingers through the soft blond mass
framing her face and curling around her ears. She wasn’t pretty.
Pretty was too bland a word to describe her sensual appeal and the
contradiction of the fragility of her body when measured against
the strength of her conviction. She had no lush curves to entice a
man, yet Jackson was enticed—surprisingly, thoroughly.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

A dusky rose color blossomed in her cheeks,
but her gaze didn’t waver for an instant. “Sugar,” she said. “Sugar
Caine.”

Anyone would have grinned at that, including
Jackson, except his gaze had drifted to her lips as she’d spoken.
When she’d said Sugar, all he could imagine was how incredibly
sweet her mouth would taste.

She was lovely, all feminine and delicate,
and Jackson wanted a taste of her, one kiss, one soft, slow, sweet
taste of Sugar Caine.

His grin came then, but it was more at
himself than at her name. He’d sworn off wild women a summer ago,
and the woman in front of him was wild in ways only a kindred
spirit would recognize.

“So, Sugar.” His grin turned mocking. “Where
did Shulan leave me this time?”

“At the edge of the world.” Sugar chose her
words carefully. He was no invalid, and she didn’t want him getting
himself hurt or killed trying to leave her home. There was no
escape from Cocorico. Her job wasn’t going to be taking care of
him; it was going to be making him believe that one irrefutable
fact.

“Past this point there be dragons and all
that?” he asked, the brief deepening of his smile implying he’d be
right at home anyplace there were dragons.

“And all that,” she confirmed.

“No,” he said, looking around him. “I’ve
been to the edge of the world a couple of times, and this isn’t it.
Not even close.” His gaze came back and settled on her, measuring
her, and making her damned uncomfortable.

She glanced away and pretended indifference
to his attention. They were physically too close for the kind of
scrutiny he was giving her, too close for her peace of mind. She
had never been good at hiding her thoughts and emotions, and of all
people, she didn’t want him seeing her weaknesses—not when wanting
someone like him could easily be her greatest weakness. Someone
strong and masculine, and so breathtakingly beautiful she could
hardly take her eyes off him. Someone to share her life. Someone
who could hold her in the night.

She tried to remove her wrist from his hand,
but he didn’t relent his hold on her.

“Why are you here alone?” he asked.

So much for hiding her weaknesses, she
thought, disgusted with herself. Did she look lonely without even
trying? Had years of banishment made her utterly transparent?

Well, he wasn’t going to get an answer, not
even if hell froze over.

“Okay,” he said, as if he’d read her mind.
She gave him a startled glance. “How about why Shulan brought me to
you?”

“To keep you safe,” she said, believing
honesty was always in her best interest, even if it sometimes took
a backseat to silence.

“Then you know about Fang Baolian?”

Her admission consisted of a quick lowering
of her lashes, the way she would have admitted to any unsavory bit
of knowledge. She knew the Dragon Queen of the South China Sea.
Baolian was the bane of her existence.

“She’ll kill me if she finds me,” he
continued, as if he were speaking to a child, explaining the facts
of life.

She lifted her eyes and met his gaze
squarely. “She won’t find you here.” Her tone was adamant, her
facade one of unadulterated confidence. It had to be, as much for
herself as for him.

Jackson looked down at the woman he held
using barely half the strength of one hand, once again surprised by
the intensity of her conviction. For someone who looked so soft,
she had unexpected steel in her backbone.

“What makes you so damn sure?” he asked. Of
everything, he wanted to add, but refrained. He knew she’d been
bluffing before, about being a danger to him, unless she had the
blood of a martial-arts master flowing through her veins. A
possibility, he conceded, but for all that steel in her backbone,
her body wasn’t honed to such a radical degree. He liked to think
she wasn’t bluffing now, though. The last thing he wanted was for
Baolian to find him trapped on an island without an arsenal at his
disposal.

“Because she’s never found me,” Sugar said,
and pulled on her wrist. “Now let me go.”

Jackson tightened his grip, letting her know
he wasn’t ready to release her. “Why would Baolian want you?”

“For the same reason she wants you.” She had
stopped struggling, but her body remained stiff and resisting.

Without meaning to, he laughed. “I don’t
think so, Sugar.” His gaze dropped to the soft swell of her breasts
beneath her white T-shirt. “Not unless Baolian has more eclectic
tastes than I thought.”

“Not to bed me,” she said, color rising in
her cheeks.

“So Shulan told you about that part
too?”

“Shulan told me what you believe.”

“What I believe?” She was full of surprises,
Miss Sugar Caine was. He thought back to the last time he’d seen
Baolian, stretched out on a bed in a Jakarta luxury hotel, a
beguiling smile on her exquisite face, a diaphanous negligee draped
across her body, artfully exposing her lush curves.

No. He hadn’t mistaken the invitation. Nor
had he mistaken Baolian’s malice when he’d declined to ensnare
himself in her sensual web. The Dragon Queen had made it very clear
that from the moment he walked out of the hotel room, he would be
living on borrowed time. Her sibilant rantings still echoed in his
dreams whenever they edged toward nightmares, which invariably
happened when he fell asleep while shackled and chained.

“And what do you believe?” he asked,
curious, but not doubting his own conclusions. Baolian had wanted
him, and she’d wanted him dead when he hadn’t wanted her.

“I believe the truth.”

“Which is?”

“Baolian planned to kill you whether you
slept with her or not, but she would have enjoyed your death more
if she’d first slept with her lover’s son. As it stands, she feels
cheated. If she finds out you’re alive, she’ll want to balance the
scales before she assigns another assassin to murder you. But this
time she won’t want sex, she’ll want torture.”

The word
naive
had
been floating across Jackson’s mind every time he looked at her.
Her face, so open and readable, demanded it, but she’d just shot
that theory all to hell. No woman who talked about sex and torture
in the same breath, without a qualm, was naive.

“Baolian would torture you?” he asked,
though he really didn’t want to hear the answer. The woman’s skin
would bruise too easily. With just his hand he could break her
wrist, or her neck. Physically, she was no match for what Baolian
could do to her. But with torture, it never came down to the
physical. Bodies broke. It wouldn’t take that much more pressure to
break his arm than it would to break hers.

Spirit was what got people in trouble.
Spirit was what wouldn’t give way or give up when surrender—even of
life itself—was the only way out.

“I’m not planning on giving her the chance,”
Sugar said, silver fire in her eyes. “If she wants me, she’ll have
to kill me.”

For Jackson, the stakes changed as simply as
that. He bore the mark of Baolian’s assassin. He could only imagine
what marks Sugar bore.

He released her. “Where am I?”

Sugar immediately moved away from him,
giving herself some much-needed distance. “You’re in my bedroom,”
she said, rubbing her wrist and taking another step backward,
making sure to keep her gaze level with his. “And you’re naked. So,
if you don’t mind, there are clothes laid out for you on the
settee.” She gestured toward a rose-colored couch in the corner of
the room. “The plumbing is archaic and out back, and if you want to
eat, you may meet me in the kitchen after you’ve dressed.”

Before she could make her getaway, her gaze
slipped, in total disregard of every mental command she had given
her eyes. The lapse only lasted a second, but a second was enough.
She hurried out the door with her cheeks burning. Damn the man.

Jackson watched her make her escape, hiding
a grin at her curiosity and embarrassment, and reminding himself
she was off limits no matter what kind of looks she gave him, or
where. He wasn’t in the market for a woman, not even one as
intriguing as Miss Sugar Caine. He was in the market for a life,
his own, the one Baolian had tried to end, the one Shulan had
usurped. If it was true what Sugar had said about there only being
her and Jen to keep him, then he had as good as won. It took more
than a pretty woman full of mysteries and an ancient
wushu
master to hold him captive. Shulan had finally
underestimated him.

Without his keeper’s presence to distract
him, he took a minute to look around the room. What he saw was
almost as otherworldly as the woman. There was no electricity. The
soft light he’d seen her by came from a kerosene lantern. There
wasn’t any glass in the windows. They were covered with slatted
wood shutters—jalousies—and nothing else.

He noted the pale aqua sun-washed color of
the walls and the worn appearance of the furniture. A blue dresser
with a lace cloth draped over its top was pushed up against the
wall beneath one of the windows, and like the bedposts it needed
paint. The cushion on the wicker chair had been patched. One of the
jalousies was hanging askew.

Still, the whole of the room was inviting.
Wind chimes captured the night breeze and made music. Outside, the
ocean beat upon the shore in a primal rhythm, reminding him of
home. There was a sweet smell in the air, of flowers and Sugar,
triggering a memory less than two minutes old and of a woman he’d
barely met.