only recourse had been to run.
Once more Tarak kneaded the muscles in his leg, harder this time so he could feel the pain and remind himself that he was alive.
Why had fate saved him? Was he a better man? He doubted it.
Sheppard had been a money-hungry bastard but good at his work. O’Neill had been a marvel with explosives, and he had taken an unnatural thrill in blowing things up. But Grace was neither. Grace had been a friend. A loner. A good soldier. He’d had Tarak’s back more than once. He’d been trustworthy and in the soldier-for-hire business that kind of reputation was gold.
And now his body was rotting someplace in a South American jungle. Food for the native inhabitants.
Grace didn’t deserve that. None of them did. On the way out of that mess what consumed Tarak was why he had survived. He could see no reason why fate had been so kind to him. The dark thoughts had forced him to seek answers, and the only place he could think to begin such a journey was here. Among his mother’s people.
He’d been right. After a few weeks at the monastery with help from his mother’s uncle, Punab, he’d started to realize it was time to let go of the guilt. Time to move on with this life.
Which ultimately led him to the question…what next? He’d been thinking about his future when the fever had grabbed hold of him. It had occurred to him, even as he felt his fever spiking, that the wound in his leg should have been healing. Only it hadn’t been.
The next thing he knew he was waking up in a dark room with a nun wearing a sweat-stained wimple leaning over him.
And there was the other nun. With the strange habit and the skin that seemed to glow.
Tarak shook his head. It had been the fever. It must have been. It had grabbed control of his mind and had shown him ridiculous images. A woman who glowed with gray eyes that did not fit her face.
Had she even been real?
The answer to his question had him gasping. He moved around one of the orchid bunches in his path and froze. His breath caught as he tried to process what he was seeing.
He watched a waif—for surely she was not human—carefully sponge water over her arm, her breasts, her belly and her hips. Letting the droplets crawl down her body into a flat basin under her feet.
Tarak was on the east side of the compound, away from where he knew the monks studied in the morning. He would have expected the courtyard to be empty until noon, but here was the mystery woman from his delirium in the midst of her bath. The partition she used to block the view of onlookers closed her off to the west side of the courtyard, but she obviously hadn’t expected anyone to be walking along the east corridor.
There was no question it was her. He knew without seeing the color of her eyes. They were closed. Maybe to better feel the touch of the sponge and water as she ran the rough material over her body. Or maybe simply because she’d gotten soap in her eyes. Whatever the reason, he was grateful because it kept her from being aware of his presence for a time. With the three-sided screen at her back it was as if she was on display just for him.
His personal Venus.
He’d been wrong about the fever stealing his sanity. Her skin did glow. A luminescent sheen that made her almost ethereal. He yearned to touch her. It wasn’t just the natural hunger of man for a woman. Although based on his body’s quick and urgent response there was that as well. It was like being in the presence of art. Like a marble statue that cried out to be caressed. Only this woman wasn’t cold stone, she was living flesh.
She dropped low to dip her sponge in the water, swishing it about. Her eyes opened. He could see her lashes flicker as she concentrated on her calves. Then she reached her hand over her back, the sponge barely making it a quarter of the way down her spine. Suddenly the temptation to help her finish the job was too much.
He stepped forward, forgetting to accommodate his injury by letting his right leg take the bulk of his weight, and a rush of pain shot from his thigh to his brain, forcing a small sound past his lips.
Instantly the waif became aware of his presence. Her arms wrapped around her breasts and the sponge dropped into the pool of water at her feet. Her eyes were round with fear and Tarak felt instantly ashamed. In reality he’d behaved no better than a Peeping Tom. But while he chastised himself for it, he certainly didn’t regret it. He wouldn’t have missed this show for the world.
Her eyes, however, were still wide with terror.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said gruffly in English although he repeated the phrase in Hindi.
He assumed her fear stemmed from the thought that he would rape her, but after his words she stood slowly. One arm shielded her femininity from him. The other she wrapped securely around small but pert breasts.
“Do not come any closer,” she said in English.
“I won’t. I promise,” he replied. “You didn’t expect anyone to be on this side of the courtyard?”
“They are all in study. I did not expect you to be up and walking so far.”
Tarak nodded, then glanced around the washing area. “You bathe here instead of with your sisters down by the river?”
An irrational bolt of anger accompanied his statement. Yes, the monks were celibate but they were still men. There were times a man’s sexuality couldn’t be so easily controlled with meditation. A woman so beautiful it hurt to look at her could incite the weak-willed to dangerous acts.
“Yes. I cannot bathe in the river.”
He heard her words, but they made no sense. “Well, you shouldn’t bathe here. Anyone might come along and…”
“Like you.”
“Worse than me.”
“If you mean the monks, they know better than to touch me. The villagers, too. I am safe from everyone who knows me, but you do not. You must stay back.”
“Have I taken a step forward?”
Slowly she shook her head.
There, he thought, satisfied. The beginning of trust. “I’m not a boy to be controlled by my desire. But if I were…” He smiled softly. “You would certainly be a danger to my self-control. Do you have something to dry yourself off?”
He watched her glance toward the robe she’d left hanging on the edge of the partition, but he realized she would have to either drop her arms or turn around and give him an altogether different view of her body to reach it.
A gentlemen would have turned his back. Tarak could almost hear his father’s stiff English voice in his head ordering him to turn around and allow the woman her privacy. That nostalgia for his father won out against a hard urge to see if her ass was as shapely as the rest of her.
Tarak turned his back to her. “Hurry,” he warned.
He heard the ruffle of movement as she stepped out of the basin and reached for her covering. He counted to what he was sure was a fair five seconds in his head before turning again. The silk material she wore fluttered to her feet and he sighed with disappointment.
“Who are you?” he wanted to know.
An expression crossed over her face that he couldn’t name. Sadness or maybe confusion, as if she didn’t know how to answer such a basic question.
“Your name,” he said, making it easier for her.
“I am Lilith.”
It didn’t fit her, not at all. But he didn’t press. “Your surname?”
She shook her head. “I have no surname. My…father would not give me his.”
He didn’t know what to say to that so he offered his own name as a way of building further trust. “I’m Tarak Hammer-Smith. My father was English, but my mother was Indian. She was a niece