Dragon's Eden Read online

  Dragon’s Eden

  Tara Janzen

  First published by Bantam/Loveswept, 1995

  Copyright Glenna McReynolds, 1995

  E-Book Copyright Tara Janzen, 2012

  E-Book Published by Tara Janzen at Smashwords, 2012

  Cover Design by Hot Damn Design, 2012

  E-Book Format by A Thirsty Mind, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  Table of Contents

  Reader Letter

  Titles

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Excerpt: Avenging Angel

  Excerpt: A Piece of Heaven

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to the Tara Janzen line of classic romances! New York Times Bestselling author, Tara Janzen, is the creator of the lightning-fast paced and super sexy CRAZY HOT and CRAZY COOL Steele Street series of romantic suspense novels. But before she fell in love with the hot cars, bad boys, big guns, and wild women of Steele Street, she wrote steamy romances for the Loveswept line under the name Glenna McReynolds. All thirteen of these much-loved classic romances are now available as eBooks.

  Writing as both Glenna McReynolds and Tara Janzen, this national bestselling author has won numerous awards for her work, including a RITA from Romance Writers of America, and nine 4 ½ TOP PICKS from Romantic Times magazine. Two of her books are on the Romantic Times ALL-TIME FAVORITES list – RIVER OF EDEN, and SHAMELESS. LOOSE AND EASY, a Steele Street novel, is one of Amazon’s TOP TEN ROMANCES for 2011.

  She is also the author of an epic medieval fantasy trilogy, THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE, DREAM STONE, and PRINCE OF TIME.

  Titles

  Classic Romances

  Scout’s Honor

  Thieves In The Night

  Stevie Lee

  Dateline: Kydd and Rios

  Blue Dalton

  Outlaw Carson

  Moonlight and Shadows

  A Piece of Heaven

  Shameless

  The Courting Cowboy

  Avenging Angel

  The Dragon and the Dove

  Dragon’s Eden

  Medieval Fantasy Trilogy

  “A stunning epic of romantic fantasy.” Affaire de Coeur, five-star review

  The Chalice and the Blade

  Dream Stone

  Prince of Time

  River of Eden – “One of THE most breathtaking and phenomenal adventure tales to come along in years! Glenna McReynolds has created an instant adventure classic.” Romantic Times – 2002 BEST ROMANTIC SUSPENSE AWARD WINNER

  Steele Street Series – “Hang on to your seat for the ride of your life... thrilling... sexy. Tara Janzen has outdone herself.” Fresh Fiction

  Crazy Hot

  Crazy Cool

  Crazy Wild

  Crazy Kisses

  Crazy Love

  Crazy Sweet

  On the Loose

  Cutting Loose

  Loose and Easy

  Breaking Loose

  Loose Ends

  SEAL Of My Dreams Anthology

  All proceeds from the sale of SEAL Of My Dreams are pledged to Veterans Research Corporation, a non-profit foundation supporting veterans medical research.

  Panama Jack, by Tara Janzen

  For more information about Tara Janzen, her writing and her books please visit her on her website www.tarajanzen.com; on Facebook http://on.fb.me/mSstpd; and Twitter @tara_janzen http://twitter.com/#!/tara_janzen.

  Prologue

  The island floated on the horizon in a darkly azure sea, its windward edge painted into visibility by the rising sun. Jackson Daniels leaned closer to the seaplane’s window, watching the blush of dawn spread up the eastern flank of a tall, jagged mountain. Morning mists wreathed the peak with gossamer clouds and liquid sunshine, making the island look like paradise, a tropical heaven on earth.

  He turned away from the window, letting out a short sound of disgust. Given the way his luck had been running lately, his money was on the island being just a new version of hell.

  He looked down at the shackles on his ankles, the handcuffs on his wrists, and the chain running between the two inconveniences. It didn’t matter what the island turned out to be, he wasn’t going anywhere, neither to heaven nor hell without his jailer’s permission. That was for damn sure.

  The plane banked, and Sher Chang, the brutish behemoth sitting next to him, jerked him back from the window, grabbing him by his wounded shoulder and digging his fingers in hard. A curse lodged against Jackson’s teeth. From the seat in front of him, he heard a woman’s murmured command to release him. Sher Chang complied, and Jackson slumped forward into a silent ball of pain.

  He knew from experience that any show of weakness on his part would be met with a generous dose of injected painkillers, just as any show of strength was met with an added shackle and chain. He couldn’t win. He’d been at the mercy of the woman and her gang of Chinese pirates since . . . since forever, it seemed.

  A wry grin curved his mouth. The situation could have been worse. Instead of the young woman named Sun Shulan sitting in the front seat of the seaplane, his jailer could have been her mother, Fang Baolian, dreaded pirate queen of the South China Sea and the lady who’d had him shot for refusing her sexual favors.

  “Stop worrying, Jen. You’re like an old woman,” Shulan said in Cantonese, her voice rising enough for Jackson to hear her over the drone of the engines. She sounded exasperated with the old man in the seat next to her. “She will accept him onto the island, and she will take care he is not harmed. I can do no better for him than to bring him here, away from Hong Kong and my mother’s spies.”

  She? Jackson thought, his body tensing in spite of himself. He didn’t need another “she.” He didn’t want another “she” running and ruining his life. He’d always known maritime bounty hunting was dangerous work—pirates had only gotten more daring and more ruthless over the centuries, not less—but he’d never thought it would be a woman who finally brought him to his knees, let alone three: Baolian, the “hell has no fury like a woman scorned” contingent; Shulan, the one who had saved him for reasons he’d rather not believe; and now the new “she,” the one who would take him and keep him on a small strip of land floating between the earth and the sky.

  He, the hunter, had been trapped by women, captured by women. His only consolation was in knowing his brother, Cooper, had survived Baolian’s ambush on the godforsaken beach south of Singapore where he’d been shot. Shulan had sworn that was true, and Jackson believed the pirate princess. It was easy to believe her when she held his hands in hers and gazed at him with her warm amber eyes, her expression sweetly innocent, assuring him she only had his welfare at heart. It was harder to believe her when she had an extra chain added to his bindings. He wished she would hurry up and ransom him, get the whole ordeal over with. He could imagine no other reason for her interference in her mother’s fit of deadly pique, despite her wild story of him being her long-lost half brother.

  The plane droppe
d in altitude, making a slow descent into the mist. Within seconds, they were enshrouded in impenetrable fog. The mountain and the island’s rolling green hills were gone, along with the azure sea and the streaking brilliance of dawn across the horizon.

  An unexpected calm overtook him in those silent moments of blind flying, a peace he shouldn’t have felt. Maybe it was merely acceptance of the inevitable, but it felt like something more, like a promise of life, or joy.

  The fanciful thought brought another wry grin to his lips. Joy. Right. He was losing it.

  “Sedate him,” Shulan ordered, and his peace shattered.

  He swore, a vicious sound that had no affect whatsoever on his jailers. He felt the prick of the needle and the flood of warmth that always preceded a deep, dreamless sleep.

  “When he’s out, take off the cuffs and chains, and be careful with him.” Shulan’s voice came to him as if from a far distance. “If he drowns in the surf, I’ll turn you all over to my mother!”

  Hell, he decided in one last hazy thought. Not life. Not joy. The island was going to be pure hell.

  One

  Sugar Caine stood next to the wicker chair closest to the bed, her gaze traveling the length of the man sprawled facedown across the tumbled disarray he’d made of her sheets. He was naked and beautiful . . . so beautiful, his body intrinsically sensual, a tawny, seductive landscape of lean, muscled curves and hard planes. Just looking at him started a wave of longing in her heart. She’d been alone for so long.

  Jackson was his name. Jack Sun. His dark hair fell forward, hiding his face and draping his shoulder before disappearing underneath him. Sunlight filtering through the jalousies that covered the leeward windows made stripes of light and darkness across his broad back, but most of his body was veiled by the deepening shadows of a Caribbean afternoon. The soles of his feet were callused, as were the palms of his hands. One shoulder was bandaged with white gauze, and the rest of him was simply perfect.

  A soft groan escaped him, a breath of pain as he shifted. Concern drew Sugar’s brows together. She leaned forward ever so slightly, ready to help him if he needed help, even while she prayed he wouldn’t. She didn’t want to touch him. She didn’t dare. She couldn’t afford to get that close to so much trouble, and he was trouble of the worst kind, a magnet for danger, a man marked for murder by Fang Baolian.

  With the grace and languor of a slowly awakening animal, he rolled onto his back, sending a silky cascade of ebony hair sliding across his torso. The dark strands reached his waist, curving across his sleekly muscled chest and abdomen like a river of black satin. She’d wondered how long his hair was. When Shulan’s men had carried him up from the beach at dawn, it had been impossible to tell. The sky had still been too dark, his hair tangled in his ragged clothes. Her concern then had been more for his vital signs than his physical attributes.

  She wished she could still say the same. Her gaze lifted to his face, and she felt warmth bloom in her cheeks. He was easily as beautiful as his half sister, Sun Shulan, and equally exotic, a rare blend of East and West. Thick black lashes fringed his closed eyes. His eyebrows were dark with a slight curve, more like a red-tailed hawk’s wings than a shorebird’s. She wasn’t surprised. Even wounded and sound asleep, he had the aura of a predator.

  The blush she wouldn’t have admitted to for the world deepened as her gaze strayed to the juncture of his thighs. He was beautiful, his hair there silky and dark, his manhood glorious. Chastising herself, she reached down and pulled the top sheet up to his waist, for all the good it did her. A moment later he’d worked the sheet back off.

  “That boy, he likes being naked, Sugar.”

  Sugar took a moment to clear her throat before she agreed with her friend. “I know, Carolina,” she said, looking up at the tall black woman standing in the open doorway.

  “You want I should tell your papa that boy is here?” Carolina asked, tying a bow in the yellow sash belting her tangerine-colored dress.

  “No. Not yet.” Sugar knew Dr. Thomas Caine would be apoplectic if he knew his daughter was harboring a bounty hunter who had crossed Fang Baolian. It would remind him too much of her youthful mistakes and a past best forgotten—though it could never truly be forgotten.

  “I don’ know why they brought that boy here,” Carolina said. She tilted her head and clipped a large tangerine-and-yellow earring on one ear. “It don’ make no sense, no how. They should’ve taken him to Kingstown and let your papa have him.”

  Sugar had told her old friend as much, but Shulan had assured her that the man she called half brother wasn’t in danger of dying. He’d been treated by the finest doctors in Hong Kong and spent weeks recuperating there before Shulan had transported him halfway around the world to the Caribbean. He did need care and watching over, but nothing beyond Sugar’s skills.

  Mostly he needed protection, Shulan had said, protection and confinement—for his own good.

  Sugar had understood what was being asked of her: repayment of a debt left too long unpaid. Shulan had given Sugar a sanctuary when she’d most needed it. In return for that salvation, the pirate princess wanted her to hold this man at Cocorico Bay, Sugar’s refuge at the end of the world, where her home hugged sheer rock walls and the sea offered the only escape.

  She wasn’t so sure Shulan had been right about her half brother’s health. The only sign of life he’d given all day, besides his breathing and occasional movement, had happened between the time when Shulan and her cohorts had left him fully clothed on the bed and a half hour later, when Carolina had gone in to check on him and let out a little scream of shocked sensibilities.

  What would possess an injured man to use his last ounce of strength to take his clothes off was beyond Sugar’s understanding. Unless, even injured and drugged, the pile of coolie clothes they’d found at the foot of the bed had offended him as much as they had offended Carolina. Carolina had immediately carried them over to the cabana and dumped them in the ragbag, grumbling about having no bondslaves on Cocorico.

  “If he hasn’t wakened by morning, I’ll make sure he gets to St. Vincent,” Sugar told Carolina. She wondered if Shulan knew what lengths she might have to go for the stranger’s life, what risks might be involved. She hadn’t been back to Kingstown since she’d left with the fear of God in her heart.

  “Your papa isn’t gonna like this. He isn’t gonna like any of this,” Carolina warned, clipping on her other earring.

  “I know. That’s why we’re not telling him, or Mamma either.”

  “What about that man?” Carolina asked, gesturing toward the courtyard.

  Sugar shook her head in resignation. She didn’t know anything about the ancient, fragile-looking man Shulan had left at Cocorico, except he was Chinese and he was there to protect Jackson.

  As she returned her attention to the man stretched out on the bed, a few quaint sayings went through her mind. Ones about chickens coming home to roost and reaping what you’ve sown. She’d learned a long time ago that some mistakes lasted a lifetime. The stranger on her bed was proof of that.

  “I don’ like the look of the old Chinee,” Carolina went on. “You want I should stay?”

  “No.” Sugar glanced at her friend. “You go on back to Kingstown. I’ll be fine. If it makes you feel better, have Henry come back in the morning.”

  “Henry.” Carolina gave a ladylike snort. “That man good for nothin’ at all.”

  Despite her friendship with the old sailor, Sugar couldn’t disagree. Henry, sweet as he was, was truly good for nothing. Too many years of rum and sunshine had taken all the gumption out of him.

  “I jus don’ like leaving you with a foreign devil and a naked boy. That’s all.”

  If the man on the bed had been a boy, Sugar would have had far fewer doubts herself. As for the foreign devil standing guard in the courtyard . . . She glanced out the open doorway at the old man staring at the sea. If a good wind didn’t blow him over, she’d count herself lucky. If a good wind did blow him
over, then she’d have some explaining to do.

  Letting out an exasperated sigh, Carolina strode forward and snapped the sheet up over the sleeping man’s body. Then she bent down and tucked the sheet under the mattress. “If this don’ hold him, nothin’ will,” she grumbled, walking around the end of the bed to do the same to the other side. “I swear, I’ve only covered this boy five times today. I ain’t never seen—”

  She stopped cold, the sudden halt in her speech bringing Sugar’s head up. Carolina had gone pale beneath the café au lait color of her skin. She dropped the sheet and took a step back from the bed, crossing herself.

  “Sweet God A’ mighty,” she murmured. “Obeahman.”

  Obeahman? Sugar turned to stare at the man on the bed. One look at where the river of his hair had flowed onto the bed, revealing the left side of his chest, was all she needed to see to know why Carolina suddenly held him in fear, why she thought he was a sorcerer of the island magic, obeah.

  Sugar was a bit more skeptical, despite his elaborate tattoo.

  “There are no white obeahmen, Carolina,” she said dryly.

  “There was, missy,” the older woman scolded as she crossed herself again. “Once they had a white obeahman on St. Lucia. I seen him myself.”

  “I saw him too. He wasn’t white.”

  “White enough,” Carolina said, arching an aristocratic eyebrow in her direction. “Jus’ like this boy.”

  Sugar tried another tack. “This man came here from Hong Kong. Who would go to Hong Kong to get an obeahman?”

  “Nobody with no sense, that’s for sure.” The older woman huffed.

  Sugar nodded in agreement. “This man is no obeahman.”

  “Well, he sure is something,” Carolina insisted.

  Sugar agreed with that, too, but she wasn’t sure what name to put to him—until she looked again at his tattoo.

  “He’s a dragon man, Carolina, and dragon men have no power in the lower latitudes.”

  Carolina rolled her eyes and cast a droll look in Sugar’s direction. “You, missy, got so much to learn, it ain’t even funny.”