Chapter Seventeen #4
His body went still. For a moment, he did not breathe. He was shaking as he eased himself away from her, letting her legs slide gently to the ground. He looked at the tears on her cheeks, then glanced off over her head. For seconds he just stood there. Then he started to unbutton his shirt.
Carly watched him strip it away, bend to pull off his boots and breeches. She made no move to leave, just watched him undress, caught up in the movement of muscle beneath his dark skin and wanting to reach out and touch him. Naked he drew her toward him, began to remove the balance of her clothes.
Carly said nothing as he pulled the pins from her hair, letting the heavy dark copper coil fall free, sifting his long fingers through it.
Bending down, he lifted her up and she slid her arms around his neck.
Kissing her softly, he waded into the water and lowered himself into the pool, taking her with him below the surface of the pond.
In a shower of cool, misty spray, they came back up, entwined in each other’s arms, his black hair glistening like jet in the afternoon sunlight.
He took her again, there on the bank of the pool, and afterward smoothed strands of wet auburn hair from her cheeks, trailing cold fat droplets over her heated skin.
“I heard about the raid,” she said softly after a time. “I was worried about you and the others. My uncle searches for you even now.”
“He will find nothing. Unless you decide to tell him who I am.”
“You know I won’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because I care about you and the others … no matter what you believe.”
Ramon said nothing for the longest time, just watched her in that dark, pensive way of his, a look that reached clear to her soul. Finally he came up on an elbow. “The hour grows late. It is time for me to leave.”
Her throat went tight. She knew he would go, and yet she had hoped … prayed …
“You wanted me. I thought … hoped that perhaps it was more.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Always I have wanted you, Cara. Always. Even your betrayal has not cooled the fire I feel inside me.”
Her heart twisted, seemed to cleave in two. Was there nothing that would make him believe her? Carly watched as he rolled to his feet, all lean grace and supple strength, and began to pull on his clothes.
“You are my weakness, Cara,” he said. “Nothing I do makes me forget you. Not even the memory of you lying with my cousin.”
She stiffened, anger flashing through her, helping to override the pain.
How easily he accused her, how ready he was to believe the worst. “You think you’re different, but you’re not.
You’re exactly like my uncle. Your hatred is the same, your predjudice.
… It blinds you as surely as it does the Anglos you despise. ”
His shoulders went rigid. He forcibly relaxed them and continued to pull on his clothes.
“You think you can come here and take what you want,” she continued, “that you can use me and throw me away. Well, you’re wrong, Ramon. My pride is as great as yours … and so is my honor. If you walk away from me now, if you continue to believe as you do, I’ll never let you near me again.”
For a moment, he stood stock still. When he turned to face her, anger hardened his features once more. “You are my wife. As long as that is so, you belong to me. I will take you whenever I wish it. I will use you as my cousin would have done.”
Carly swallowed past the hot tears clogging her throat. “You’re a ruthless, brutal man, Ramon. Time and again I have seen it, but each time you make me forget.” She watched him walk toward his horse, slide a boot into the stirrup and swing gracefully up onto the stallion’s back.
“I very much enjoyed the afternoon,” he said. “Perhaps I will come for you, take you to Llano Mirada. Now that Miranda is gone, I have need of a whore.”
The angry tears surfaced, began a scalding path down her cheeks. “Step one foot on my uncle’s land and if he doesn’t kill you, I swear to you I will!”
His mouth twisted up. “Perhaps it would not matter. Perhaps I am already dead.” His face seemed carved in granite, his eyes a dull lackluster brown that held none of their earlier fire. For the first time Carly realized he was hurting as badly as she.
“And perhaps one day you’ll see the truth,” she said softly. “Unfortunately by then it will be too late.”
Ramon said nothing more, just stared at her for long, tension-filled moments. Then he settled his flat-crowned, black felt hat down over his forehead, spun his horse, and thundered away.
The minute he was gone, Carly dissolved into tears.
If she thought the pool might soothe her, she had been sorely mistaken.
The pain was back, knifing through her insides, calling her ten kinds of a fool.
She wished she could ride away and never look back, that she could forget the heartache of loving Ramon and the hurt she suffered whenever he was near.
Instead she climbed up on her horse and started back toward the house, grateful her uncle was gone, that the tears on her cheeks would go unnoticed, that the pain in her heart was a pain she would suffer alone.