Forbidden Jewel of India

Then Anusha moaned and stirred, her fingers clenching into the sand. She must have been stunned, he realized, as the snake swayed back, raising itself to strike the closer figure. There was no time for subtlety or calculation. Nick launched himself into the narrow space between her body and the cobra, his left arm coming up to take the strike, his right swinging round to plunge the knife into the body below the hood as its fangs fastened on his wrist.

As it bit he slammed his left fist down on to the ground, taking the snake with it, pulled out the knife, struck again and ducked back instinctively as another knife flashed down past his shoulder to slash into the thick, writhing body. Nick wrenched his arm free from the fangs and fell back, pulling Anusha with him away from the creature’s thrashing death throes.

‘It bit you.’ She twisted in his arms, tore at his sleeve. ‘A tourniquet, hurry. Then we must cut the wound, squeeze—’

‘It did not bite me.’ Nick tried to get a grip on her, steady her so he could check her for injuries, but she pulled free and caught at his clothing, as intent on his wounds as he was on hers.

‘Do not be a fool, of course it bit you. We have minutes at most. Less, if it caught a vein.’ There was a thready note of panic beneath her sharp orders. Nick ripped back the sleeve so she could see his arm and the leather wrist band he wore to support an old injury when he was riding for long distances. ‘Oh.’ She touched the two deep indentations in the leather with a shaking finger. ‘Did it go right through?’

Had it? With a sick twist in his gut Nick unlaced the strap. The skin beneath was marked by the pressure of the bite and she caught at it, stretched it smooth with both hands to check for punctures, then snatched up the leather and held it to the light.

‘Oh,’ she said again and swayed where she huddled in the dust. ‘But it might have missed the strap. It might have killed you.’

‘And you might have broken your foolish little neck,’ he snapped, his fear for her mixing with his body’s reaction to the struggle with the cobra, that sickening realisation that it might have left its venom in his body. He hated snakes, would sooner face a tiger than a big king cobra, and his stomach was churning now. What if he had hesitated, had let that fear master him? Anusha

would be dying in his arms now.

Stop it, he snarled inwardly. Imagining death slowed you down, got you killed. You did not hesitate, you are both alive.

The snake had ceased to twitch. Anusha was the only target for his feelings. ‘What the devil were you playing at? Are you hurt? Have you broken anything?’

‘No, I am not hurt. Why are you angry? I helped you, I had my knife—’ Her turban had come off, her hair lay in a coil as thick as the great snake across her heaving breast and her face was paler than he had yet seen it. She still clasped his left forearm with both hands, then released it with a sob and burrowed into his lap as he sat on the crushed grass.

Instinctively his arms closed, cuddling her close. Against his body he could feel her, rounded and slender and trembling, and he smoothed his hand down her back, the fine hairs escaping from her plait catching on the roughed skin of his palms. Could she feel his heart pound, his pulse race? Was it the aftermath of the encounter with the snake or something far more dangerous, a response equally as primitive?

Lust burned through his veins, the desire to possess, to celebrate being alive, to bury the memory of that second when the flat black eyes had locked with his and he looked at his death. And he wanted her, wanted this woman who was an innocent and who must stay that way.

Anger was the only way to deal with it, anger at himself, anger at the woman in his embrace. ‘What the hell are you doing with a knife? You are not safe out with a weapon.’

Anusha recoiled against the cage of his arms, the pressure of her squirming backside on his groin only inflaming both desire and temper even more. ‘Of course I have a knife! You saw it when the maharaja’s men came. And I can use it.’ She was shaking still, but with shocked anger, not with fear now. ‘They will not take me alive. I—’

‘If they take you alive, someone can rescue you. If you are dead, you are dead and a lot of use that will be, except to start a war,’ Nick snarled as he opened his arms and she fell with an undignified thump from his lap to the ground.

He got to his feet and pulled the knives from the limp body of the cobra. Hers was an expensive, deadly little gem with a damascene blade and a jeweled-ivory handle. He wiped it and stuck it in his boot next to his own. ‘If you have lamed Rajat...’