Moonlight and Shadows (21 page)

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Jackson woke slowly, drifting in and out of
consciousness and confusion. His first realization was that he’d
been drugged again, and he swore it would be the last time. Next
time the bastards could just kill him and get it over with.

Right. A grin graced his mouth, and he let
out a short laugh. His self-righteousness had a habit of drawing
the line at actual death. He was definitely not martyr
material.

He stretched, lifting one arm above his head
and lengthening his torso. Damn, he wished he could open his eyes.
They felt as if they’d been weighted down, but he knew that side
effect of the drug would soon pass. All he had to do was wait.

His grin returned. Waiting had never been
his strong suit, and he’d already waited long enough for his body
to heal. Shulan had taken him on a hell of a ride, but it was time
to get off before she did something terrible, like run back to her
momma using him as a peace offering.

He tilted his head back to loosen the
tightness in his neck, and a sigh escaped him. God, he wanted to go
home.

Sugar stood transfixed in the doorway,
holding a water pitcher in her hand, mesmerized by the slow stretch
and release of his muscles and the play of emotions across his
face. His frown had been brief, while his smile kept returning, as
if it couldn’t be contained. The pleased curve of his mouth was at
once both sensual and wry, revealing straight white teeth and an
unexpected confidence.

She knew what drugs he’d been given, and he
should be waking in a state of weakness and confusion. Instead he
looked like the picture of health. It was disconcerting to realize
she’d waited the rest of the afternoon and part of the night for
him to wake, only to find that when the moment arose, she wasn’t
prepared to deal with him.

He laughed again, and the soft, deep sound
rolled over her like a heat wave. She’d never seen anything like
him—an animal as fresh and beautiful as God’s new day, uncoiling
from sleep with grace, supple muscles stretching, his smile
spreading.

His thick-as-sin lashes were still fanned
across his cheeks, though, and that bothered her. Not being able to
open his eyes must be an aftereffect she hadn’t been told about. He
didn’t seem distressed by the hindrance, far from it. The way he
laughed made her think he was as content as a cat, in love with the
night whether he could see it or not. His laughter made her feel
that she’d missed something wonderful, that the hours, and the
moonlight, and the clouds slipping across the sky knew a particular
mystery they had shared only with him.

She could believe a woman would shoot him
for walking away from her bed. He was magnificent.

She moved slightly to redistribute the
weight of the pitcher, then froze as he stilled on the bed, every
muscle tensed, every sense alert. He was a predator readying for
the kill. The only movement was the beat of his pulse, showing in
the veins outlined against the hard curves of his arms. His eyes
hadn’t opened, but she felt as if he were staring right through her
to where her heart had suddenly stopped.

In the next instant his countenance changed.
He cocked his head, sending a fall of hair sliding across his
chest. A look of confusion drew the winged curves of his eyebrows
closer together.

“Woman?” he asked, his voice a husky
counterpart to the easiness of his laughter.

She hadn’t given him a clue, not one. She’d
done nothing but stand in the doorway, and yet he knew. For a
second the thought that Carolina might have been right about his
magical powers crossed her mind. Just as quickly, she dismissed the
idea. He was a bounty hunter with a dragon tattoo. Nothing more—and
nothing less.

“Yes,” she said, tightening her hold on the
pitcher, hoping her answer would keep him from coming off the bed.
She’d been going in and out of his room all evening. It hadn’t
occurred to her that she might need protection from him.

“But not Shulan,” he said, sounding
surprised but not disappointed.

“No.”

“Where is she?”

“Gone.”

It seemed to be the answer he expected.

“So you are the new ‘she.’ My new
keeper?”

Sugar nodded, despite his confusing
statement. Then she realized her mistake and spoke. “Yes.”

A smile eased across his mouth. He came up
on his elbows, looking for all the world as if he were assessing
her. “And what are your plans for me, island woman?”

His tone suggested a world of possibilities
Sugar wasn’t about to entertain, not with him looking so incredibly
at home in her bed.

“Shulan left another man,” she said in
warning.

His
smile
retreated into wryness. “The ancient one? Jen Ch’eng?”

“He hasn’t introduced himself, but yes, he
is very old.”

“It’s Jen,” he said, this time sounding
disappointed but not surprised. With a sigh, he relaxed back onto
the bed. “Better Jen than Sher Chang, though. That steroided
bastard hurt me one too many times.”

She felt a flash of anger at his words.
She’d sensed the huge man’s cruelty. Shulan lived in the kind of
world where men like Sher Chang were necessary, but Sugar would not
have allowed him to stay on her island.

“Do you have anything to drink?” her patient
asked. “I’m thirsty.”

She glanced down at the full pitcher. Maybe
he was a magic man.

Eyeing him carefully, she walked over to the
bedside table and reached for a glass. Before she could lift it off
the table, his hand snaked around her wrist and closed tightly. The
water pitcher dropped from her other hand, landing hard on the
table and splashing water on the cloth. Sugar gasped, more at the
suddenness of his attack than at any pain he was inflicting.

“Don’t scream,” he said, pushing himself up
with his free hand and swinging his legs over the side of the
bed.

“There’s no one to scream for,” she gritted
out between her teeth, furious with herself for having been caught,
and by a blind man at that. She tested his grip with a quick jerk
of her arm. He jerked back, coming to his feet and bringing her
flush up against his body.

Her heart stopped a second time.

They were standing toe-to-toe, his knees
meeting her thighs, his chest rising and falling in front of her
nose. He was taller than she’d thought, more powerful —and more
dangerous.

“No one?” he asked. “On the whole
island?”

She wasn’t going to answer. He’d find out
the truth soon enough.

“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.

* * * * * *

Read on for an excerpt from A Piece of Heaven.

Travis Cayou dropped his saddle on the
floor, then dropped his backside into one of the molded plastic
chairs lining the wall of the Laramie, Wyoming, bus station. Damn.
He hurt everywhere, bad in the places he hadn’t broken, and worse
in the places he had.

Rain poured down on the white cinder-block
building, streaking the outside of a picture window that framed a
muddy Second Street and not much else. Looking around, Travis
didn’t think the dusty posters tacked to the other three walls gave
the wet view much of a run for its money, not at first glance. But
he was close to home, and that’s what counted. The only thing that
counted.

Inhaling deeply and moving in slow motion,
he organized himself into the chair. The spurs on his boots jangled
a backdrop to his low groan as he stretched his legs out. He took
it easy on his right knee, not stretching it too much, just enough
to ease a kink or two. The next time some damn bronc decided to
kiss the fence, he was getting off first. He swore he would,
whether he’d lasted the eight seconds needed to score or not.

Worse yet, he hadn’t done any better on his
bull ride. That animal had wanted to eat him. He thought he’d
ridden every kind of bull that had ever been seen. He’d had them
buck and spin so tight, they made their own whirlwind. He’d had
them crash beneath him, or worse, try to climb out of the bucking
chute with him on their back. But he’d never seen anything like Mad
Jack. The next time that particular bovine’s number came up with
his, he was walking away. He swore he was. They could have his
entry fee.