Chapter Nine #4
He didn’t go far. He hadn’t lied about the danger of mountain lion and grizzly. He had seen fresh bear sign just that afternoon. And wild cattle, with their long, sharp horns and vicious tempers, could often be the most deadly of all.
Still, he was able to return with a nice, plump rabbit, which Carly skinned and they roasted on a green willow bough over the flames.
Afterward, he sat with his back propped against a granite boulder, watching her beside the stream, cleaning the grease from their tin utensils while he smoked a slim cheroot.
When she finished, she sat in front of the fire a few feet away, curling her shapely legs beneath her, eyeing him somewhat warily.
She picked up a small leafy branch that was lying in the dirt and began to twirl it between her fingers. “I was wondering…” She looked up at him, her pretty face outlined by the low-burning flames, “the night of the raid … why did you take me?”
He pulled the cheroot from between his teeth, trying not to notice the rich dark copper of her hair.
“Because it was my brother’s intention. I saw it in his eyes as he rode toward you.
In that moment, just after they shot him, I felt as if I were Andreas, as if his will were mine and I was doing what he would have wanted. ”
“Your brother would have taken me?”
“Si. He had seen you the day of the horse race. He wanted you even then.”
Her tongue ran nervously over her ruby lips, and Ramon’s groin tightened.
“Your … your brother would have raped me?”
He took a draw on the slim cigar, slowly released it, and watched the smoke drift into the clear night sky. “I do not know. Never had he done such a thing … but then he had never been with a woman who was the niece of his most hated enemy.”
She pondered that in silence, then leaned forward, the firelight giving her smooth pale skin a rosy glow. “Would you have let him?”
Ramon looked into her lovely face, thinking how small and innocent she was, how soft and womanly, and knew he would not have let his brother touch her. “No.”
Her expression shifted, subtly changed, and she smiled at him sweetly. “Perhaps I was not so wrong about you as I thought.”
He smiled into the darkness, took another long draw on his cigar. “If that means you do not find me quite so despicable, I hope that is the truth.”
She laughed softly, then seemed to grow more thoughtful.
Shadows mingled with the firelight, forming patterns on her long, dark auburn hair.
He tried not to notice when her torn blouse gaped open, exposing creamy skin and a portion of her lush, upthrusting breasts.
His blood began to thicken, to pump with a heavy rhythm through his veins.
Heat eddied low in his groin, strengthening his arousal, and he was glad that he sat among the shadows.
“What is it you are thinking?” he asked.
She absently twirled the leafy branch. “I was remembering what you did yesterday.”
“You were thinking that I was the man who killed Villegas?”
“No. I was thinking of the way you held me, spoke to me so gently.” Her eyes held his as she gazed at him across the distance between them.
“Someone spoke to me that way before, on the nights that I was sick. I tried to remember. For a while I thought it was a dream. It was you, wasn’t it? You were the man beside my bed.”
He had wondered if she would recall. “Si, I was there.”
“It was you who cared for me. I remember you bathing my forehead. One night I woke up and … you were praying.”
Ramon smiled softly. “Si, querida. For once God heard my prayers.”
Something flickered in her eyes. She looked at him as she never had before. “Thank you.” It was little more than a whisper.
Ramon said nothing. For a while she watched him, studying his face as if she tried to read his thoughts, then she rose and crossed the clearing toward the bedroll she had placed some distance from his.
Tonight he was grateful she would not be sleeping so near.
With each step she took, her small ankles showed beneath the hem of her simple cotton skirt and he recalled her shapely legs, the way she had shivered when his hand ran up her thigh.
Her full breasts quivered against her blouse, reminding him how round and full they had felt when he had cupped them.
His shaft grew harder still, and with every movement of her hips, a painful ache throbbed at the front of his breeches.
It took all his effort at control not to go to her, to drag her beneath him, push up her skirt, and drive himself inside her. She was a hunger he couldn’t assuage, a fever in his blood that nothing seemed to ease. And yet he could not take her.
He felt tied in knots, mired in lust, felt the same hot roiling frustration that he had once felt for Lily.
But Lily was a woman, not a girl, a vixen practiced in the ways of a woman.
Finally she had come to him, welcomed him into her bed.
Beneath a pale Seville moon, he’d had four glorious weeks with Lily, most of it spent between her long, white, shapely legs.
He’d been nearly obsessed with Lily—until he discovered he wasn’t the only young fool who shared her bed.