Free The Tiger's Lady by Christina Skye

everyone and everything around him—the high, arch laughter, the stench of cloying perfumes, and the chill efficiency with which partners were dispatched and money exchanged for an hour or two of mechanical and entirely unemotional coupling.
    He closed his eyes. Suddenly the sharp pungency of drying tea leaves filled his lungs. Before him he saw not dwarf potted palms but green hills lush with young tea bushes, their green arms rising to a cloudless azure sky.
    How he missed all that. And how he hated this chill, damp country with its chill, damp men and cold, greedy women.
    He would leave tonight!
    But that would be quite impossible. There were still too many formalities with the ruby to be completed. And he had purchases of his own yet to make.
    He had not come so far to turn careless now.
    Are you waiting for her? a hard voice asked. Are you delaying in the hope that she might change her mind?
    If so then you’re a damned fool!
    He forced down his distaste and studied the salon, registering the score of faces which now stared back at him with open dislike.
    He found himself wishing one of them would push matters a step further. A good fight would suit him perfectly right now.
    Not that it would wash away the ache of bitter memories. Certainly not the sight of the blood staining the auction floor.
    But none of these thoughts showed on that impassive mahogany face.
    Instead he stood aloof and arrogant, immobile before the host of staring eyes. Strangely enough, the dislike of the men in the salon was not mirrored in the faces of their female partners. They studied the powerful, broad-shouldered Oriental with open speculation.
    How easily this foreign garb captured female attention, the rajah thought cynically. Indeed, the unbridled sensuality of London had come as quite a surprise to him.
    But he was a man with a decided talent for both the giving and taking of physical pleasure. In the rajah’s view sex was merely a natural function of the human musculature and nervous system, and in this as in all else the dark-eyed visitor was conscientious about maintaining a peak physical form.
    In the jungle lightning reflexes and a honed body were the only things that kept a man alive. Fortunately, inventive bed play was an agreeable means of keeping his hard body well-toned.
    Even now he recalled his boyhood tutor explaining that spiritual merit could be attained from the proper congress of male and female. The rajah smiled, watching a sultry blonde in lace stockings and very little else glide toward him.
    If that were true, he planned to accumulate a vast amount of merit this night.
    His smile grew as he remembered some of the more inventive techniques he had learned from old Shivaji. Yes, he had indeed shown an aptitude for the lessons of kama, or sensual pleasure.
    But the smile faded as he looked around the room, thinking how cold and premeditated all this was in comparison to that pink stucco pavilion on the banks of the Ganges.
    And then the rajah saw that Sir John Humphrey was scowling at him with unconcealed hatred. His complexion mottled, the ex-governor bent to whisper something to his companion, awash in feathers and red satin.
    The woman tittered. Sir Humphrey’s lips twisted in a cold, cruel smile.
    Sir Humphrey hated all Indians, of course. In India it was a known fact. The man had kept order, even though he’d bled his districts dry at the same time. Ever the perfect English official, he had enacted tax after tax while the wells ran dry and the villagers starved alongside their cattle.
    Soon the elephant grass was gone and even the leopards had fled.
    Luckily for Sir Humphrey, the Great Mutiny had swept through India and given him something concrete to hate the Indians for. Sickness, murder, and hatred, those were Sir Humphrey’s gifts to India. And for those he’d been rewarded with a baronetcy.
    The rajah scowled. Just looking at the man made his bowels twist in fury.
    As if he’d read the rajah’s thoughts,