Chapter Nineteen #2
His kiss came swift and hard, bruising her lips with its force. Lifting her into his arms, he carried her over to the deep feather bed, rested her in the middle of the mattress, then followed her down, pinning her with his tall lean body.
“We can’t, Ramon. It isn’t safe for you here. If my uncle should hear us—”
“I do not care.”
“I do.” She struggled beneath him, determined to break free. “I won’t let you do this. I want you to go back where you’ll be safe.”
“You are my wife,” he said. “I do not want another. When I am finished, you will beg me to take you home.” He ravaged her mouth again, thrusting his tongue inside the hot moist cavern. His fingers worked the buttons on the front of her night rail, then he stripped it off over her head.
“I won’t let you, Ramon. You have to leave.”
Cursing softly, he left her, crossed to the dresser, jerked open the top drawer, rummaged inside then returned to the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“I do not wish to fight you. I wish only to give you pleasure, to show you the way I feel.” He drew one of her silk stockings from among those he held in his hand, tied an end to the bed post and the other around her wrist. Carly only gaped as he did the same to the other wrist.
He smiled at her with a mixture of fierce desire and infinite tenderness. “I will have you, Cara. If you wish to stop me, cry out for your uncle. But I do not think you will.”
He caught her ankle, wrapped a length of stocking around it and tied it to the post at the foot of the bed.
The last stocking went into place and he secured it to the bed, spreading her wide for him.
Carly’s face went hot that he should see her thus, yet a fierce, wet heat slid into the place between her legs.
She watched him strip away his shirt, her eyes fastened on the ridges of muscle rippling across his broad dark back.
Thick cords and taut sinews bunched on his shoulders as his breeches slid down his long, lean legs, leaving his narrow buttocks bare, and making little shivers dart into her stomach.
When he turned to face her, his shaft rode high and hard against his flat, ridged belly.
“Ramon…” she whispered when he bent to kiss her again, teasing her mouth with his tongue, sliding it across her quivering bottom lip.
Then he was nuzzling her throat, nipping her ear, trailing hot, moist kisses along her shoulder.
He stopped to suckle a breast, laved her nipple, licked it, then bit the end.
He drew the full mound deeply inside his mouth, then moved to her opposite breast, showing it the same fiery attention.
Ramon moved lower, his lips hot and damp against her skin, and paused to ring her navel, raising goose-bumps across her stomach and the flat plane beneath.
Carly gasped as she realized his intentions, started to strain against her bonds at the feel of his warm breath on the damp folds of her sex.
Then he was parting her with his tongue, laving her gently, determinedly, nudging the plump bud at her core into aching arousal.
His tongue slid deeper, curled around her, then plunged deeply again.
He slid his hands beneath her buttocks to lift her against his mouth then suckled the crown of her desire and stroked her with his tongue again and again.
Carly’s body trembled, tightened, her back arching upward until her limbs went rigid and she shattered in mindless release, biting her lip to keep from wildly crying his name.
Bright lights swirled as the pleasure swept through her, so powerful it made her dizzy.
Ramon came up over her, his hard shaft pulsing against her belly, his beautiful dark eyes on her face as he watched her spiraling down from her peak.
“You liked that, querida. No?”
She blushed again, felt the hot embarrassment in her cheeks.
“It is all right, Cara. I liked it too. Can you not tell?” He filled her then, his shaft as thick and hard as she had ever seen it. She struggled against her bonds, wanting to hold him, desperate to draw him deeper inside, only to discover she had already been released.
Moaning at the feel of his heavy length inside her, she wrapped her legs around his lean hips and pulled him deeper, until his hardness touched the end of her womb.
The sensation was incredible, yet in that moment, all of her doubts came crashing in, all of her terrible fears.
With a man as virile as Ramon, sooner or later, there would be children.
Half Anglo children. Would he love them as much as children of his own blood?
What would happen if he discovered she was raised in a Pennsylvania mine patch?
How would he feel about their children then?
Or perhaps some other question would arise, and he would not accept her word. If he didn’t believe her, he might send her and their children away, or worse yet, keep the children and banish her as he had done before. If he did, she could not bear it.
Her throat clogged with tears. She wound her fingers in his thick black hair to draw him nearer, opening herself to him, taking him deeper still.
She clutched his shoulders and kissed him, a passionate, yearning kiss full of all the love she felt inside but knew she would have to deny.
The wetness burned her eyes and began to slide down her cheeks.
When this night was ended, her life with Ramon must end as well.
This time she would listen to her uncle, maybe even marry Vincent.
She would guard her heart and protect herself from the pain she could not endure.
Ramon thrust deep and hard, pounding with such force he lifted her up off the bed.
Love and passion swirled together, a heady mix that heightened her arousal to a fevered pitch.
She was squirming beneath him, arching upward to meet each of his heavy strokes, matching his frenzied pace with a driving need of her own.
Tonight he was hers. Tomorrow he would be gone. “Ramon…” she whispered again, clinging to him, burying her face in his shoulder.
“Te adoro, mi amor.” I adore you, my love.
She sobbed against his shoulder, clung to him as if she would never let him go.
They reached their peak together, their bodies slick with perspiration as a rising tide of pleasure washed over them.
For a time they did not stir. She should make him go, she thought, the ache rising up, burning in her throat.
She was afraid to imagine what might happen if her uncle found him here.
Instead when he began to kiss her, began once more to grow hard inside her, she only moaned softly and gave herself over to his tender embrace.
It was almost dawn when she awoke, saw Ramon at the foot of the bed, dressed and ready to leave. For a moment the terrible thought struck that he had used her again, had only said he loved her so he could spend the night in her bed. Then she gazed up at him, saw the ravaged hollows in his cheeks.
“Do not look at me that way,” he said. “I meant each of the words I said and a hundred more I did not speak.”
Carly bit her lip, relief so strong she sagged back against the pillow.
“You were crying in your sleep. Do you remember?”
“No.” Her heart squeezed, knotted up inside her.
“You begged me to leave. You said you could no longer trust me. That is the way you feel?”
Her fingers knotted in the sheet. “In some ways I would trust you with my life. In others…”
His jaw went hard. Dark turbulence gathered in his eyes.
“For weeks now, you have held my life in your hands, yet I did not trust you. I tell you this now. From this day forward, I will be the husband to you I should have been before. I give you my solemn vow. No matter what happens, no matter who would speak against you, I will not doubt you again.” He turned away from her and started across the room.
“Where are you going?”
He paused and his eyes fixed on her face.
“When I came here, I meant to take you with me, but you are not ready to leave. You are more afraid of me now than you were that first night in the mountains. But I am no longer afraid of you, or of what I feel for you. I will win you, Cara. And the next time I claim you for my wife, I will never let you go.”
A sheen of tears rose in her eyes as she watched him at the window. With a last soft glance in her direction, Ramon swung a long lean leg over the sill, ducked his head, and jumped to the ground below.
Carly watched him slip into the darkness, her heart aching inside her breast. But the words he’d said would not leave her.
Was it possible to put her faith in him again?
Did she dare to hope that things might work out between them?
He had wanted her to come home, to return with him to Las Almas, the only real home she’d had in years.
It was what she wanted, she realized, more than anything else in the world. And yet she was afraid.
Exhausted, she lay back on the pillow, listening to the silence, then later the sounds of the awakening rancho. An hour passed. Her uncle rode out with his band of armed men, and her fears for Ramon overrode those for herself.
Had he gone to Llano Miranda? She prayed with all her heart that if he had, her uncle would not find him and that he and the others would be safe.
* * *
Two days later, Captain Harry Love, Fletcher Austin, Jeremy Layton, and at least thirty men stormed the pass at Llano Mirada.