Bed of Roses (21 page)

Her mouth went dry; her heart raced. She couldn’t swallow, could barely think.

Santa Maria,
he was coming. When, she didn’t know, but he would come.

She gazed at the mountaintops. Even now was Luis somewhere near.

Taking deep breaths and forcing herself to concentrate on other matters, she managed to pull her emotions back together. A sigh gathering deep within her, she stopped beside Coraje’s corral. The stallion’s eyes filled with violence as soon as he noticed her.

“Grandfather loved you, Coraje,” Zafiro whispered to him. “You were always spirited, but perhaps you are mean now because you miss him as much as we do.”

She tossed several apple cores into the paddock, watched Coraje devour them, then entered the barn and divided the rest of the apple cores and peels between Pancha, Rayo, and Mister. When the gentle animals began chomping into the sweet treat, she wandered around the barn, noting the next-to-nothing mound of hay, the holes in one wall, and Sawyer’s trunk.

It sat in a corner of the stable, its top coated with dust and bits of straw. She ran her fingers over the lock, wondering over and over again what the trunk contained.

She understood why Sawyer wouldn’t open it. Understood that its contents were somehow connected with the memories he was loath to remember.

But her understanding did nothing to quell her curiosity. She stared down at the trunk for a few moments longer, then looked around the barn again and spied a row of tack that her men had once used on their mounts.

A wave of nostalgia surged through her. One of her earliest memories was that of her grandfather and his men cleaning and oiling their tack to keep it soft, supple, and gleaming.

But now rust coated the bridle bits and the stirrups. Cobwebs and thick layers of dust covered the stiff leather of the reins and saddles. As she examined the riding equipment, Zafiro knew a sharp stab of sadness.

Suddenly, it didn’t matter to her that the bridles and saddles would never be used again. They were treasures from the past, the same as Tia, Azucar, and the men. As such, they deserved whatever special care she could give them.

She hurried back to the house and gathered supplies: a bit of lard, some vinegar, a bucket of water with a small measure of soap in it, and several freshly washed rags. Armed with the cleaning supplies, she returned to the barn and sat in the middle of the floor with all the old, dirty tack spread around her.

By the light of the two old lanterns she’d lit, she wiped away all traces of dust and cobwebs from the riding equipment. Vigorous rubbing with the vinegar removed the rust from the bridle bits and other iron trappings. She then set about cleaning the dirty leather with the soapy water. A while later, when the tack had dried, an application of the lard gave the leather a luxurious gleam.

Tired, but pleased with her work, Zafiro sat back against Rayo’s stall door. As she relaxed she looked at other objects in the barn: an old shovel, a few empty barrels, a stack of discarded burlap bags, and several wooden boxes.

She rose from her seat on the barn floor and opened the wooden containers. Inside them she found a handful of old bullets, a belt buckle, a dented tin cup, a wadded-up red kerchief, a deteriorated piece of dynamite, a coiled black whip, and a pair of handcuffs.

She shut the boxes, then spied another, a long wooden crate that sat in a pool of shadows next to the barn wall.

Her gaze rested on the crate. Years had passed since she’d last looked at its contents. Lingering nostalgia compelled her to look at them now.

The hinges on the wooden box creaked as she lifted the lid. Inside, cloaked in the bloodstained serape he’d died in, lay her father’s guns, two pistols and a rifle.

Wrapped and boxed though they’d been, the heavy weapons were still badly rusted. Zafiro seriously doubted they were even serviceable. But it didn’t matter. They’d belonged to her father, and she handled them as though they were wrought of pure gold and studded with diamonds.

Lost in her reverie, she started when Sawyer’s heavy footsteps broke through the musty silence of the barn. “Sawyer!”

He didn’t even acknowledge her presence with a glance, but merely walked to the back wall of the barn and placed his ax and his saw on the shelf where he’d found them weeks ago.

“Sawyer, wait,” Zafiro called when he headed toward the barn doors to leave. Quickly, she laid her father’s guns back in the wooden crate. “I have been trying to tell you something very important for weeks, but—”

“I’m busy,” he flared, stopping for a moment to turn and glare at her. “Busy rebuilding your home. I’m nearly through now, Zafiro. All I have left to do is fix this barn wall and fence in two pastures—”

“Yes, and I am very thankful for everything you have—”

“Consider it a promise kept.” He growled the words at her, then proceeded toward the barn doors again.

“For more than two weeks you have evaded me, disappearing the second you see me, and now you are trying to escape me again. You do this because you are ashamed. But, Sawyer, I have not and will not tell anyone that you have forgotten the sexual talents you might have possessed before losing your memories. The loss of your lovemaking abilities, it does not matter to me, because that is not the reason why I need you.”

He felt a muscle in his jaw begin to twitch. Renewed anger narrowed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and balled his fists.

He raked his gaze down the length of her body, not missing the way her breasts pushed at the thin fabric of her blouse, the way her skirt clung to her rounded hips and lean legs…

Or the way she licked her lower lip when she saw how he looked at her.

“There’s more than one kind of need, Zafiro,” he gritted out, barring the barn door with the board. “I know you’re familiar with many of them, but now, right now, I’m going to show you one need in particular. A need that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have not—I repeat, not—forgotten the skills you think I have.”

Before she could begin to understand what he meant, she saw a predatory gleam leap into his eyes, and then he started toward her. The broad-shouldered, hard-muscled power of him seemed a perilous thing to her now, for his quick, purposeful, and silent stride was that of a man who knew what he wanted…

…and had every intention of taking it.

Chapter Ten

“S
aw-Sawyer?”

His shadow fell over her. Like a live thing it consumed her, swallowing her wholly into him.

And their bodies had yet to touch.

She took a step backward, both wanting and fearing his advances. “What—”

He gave her no chance to finish speaking. Rather, he whipped her into his embrace as though she were made of nothing but breath and pulse. Circling his right arm around her back and dragging her next to his chest, he heard her sharp intake of breath and saw her breasts rise. Whether she gasped with shock, anger, or excitement, he didn’t know.

Nor did he care.

He threaded his fingers through the velvet cascade of her hair and held her steady for his kiss. One corner of his mouth rose in a slight smile, a slow, crooked smile that he knew would tell her exactly what he was about to do.

A smile that told her he knew exactly what she was about to feel.

He kissed her not like a man who had no knowledge of how to kiss a woman, but like a man who craved and now drank fully of a sweetness too long denied him. Parting her lips with his tongue, he prepared to show her that he was about as lacking in sensual skills as a fire was its searing heat.

She sighed into his mouth, and he felt a strong tremor surge through her soft body. He smiled again, this time inwardly, and then he plunged his tongue between her lips, penetrating her mouth with a motion and rhythm that he willed her to understand was but a hint of the deeper, more intimate invasion to come.

His hand dipped down her back to cup one firm cheek of her bottom. His fingers kneading her firm flesh, he pushed her snugly into him so that his hips cradled hers, so she could feel the turgid length of his arousal.

So she could begin to imagine what else he was going to do.

And still he kissed her hungrily, his senses further provoked when a moan of pleasure escaped her lips, the soft and beautiful melody of a woman’s desire.

“I was right,” he murmured, his mouth still clinging to hers. “I knew you’d be like this. So soft, sweet, so full of passion. I knew it, Zafiro.”

In answer she pressed herself even closer to him, grinding her hips into his, taking his hand and squeezing his fingers over her breast, and trying desperately to remember the many other things Azucar had described.

“Not so fast, sweetheart,” Sawyer whispered, removing his hand from hers. “This time we do it my way, not Azucar’s.”

“But I want—”

“I know what you want, and I’m going to give it to you.”

At that she pulled her head away from him so she could see into his eyes. The absolutely smoldering expression she saw in them nearly caused her knees to buckle. “You…you have forgotten nothing.”

He flashed her a satisfied smile right before he claimed her mouth for another kiss. Grasping a handful of her skirt, he lifted the coarse cotton up over her legs until he felt the bare skin of her trembling thighs beneath his palms. Her skirt now bunched up around her waist and kept in place by the pressure and weight of his own body, he attended to the buttons on her blouse, finding the fastenings delightfully easy to open.

While he slipped his hand inside her gaping bodice and molded his fingers around one full breast, he ceased the sensual plundering of her mouth and planted a trail of warm kisses over the graceful slope of her throat and down the silken expanse of her upper chest, finally taking her nipple between his lips and flicking the tip of his tongue over the stiffening peak.

Her sapphire grazed his cheek. Her breasts were warm and supple. The blue jewel was hard and cold.

The contrast awakened more excitement within him.

“Sawyer,” Zafiro breathed. Hot rushes of feeling shot through her veins. She threw back her head and arched her back.

He felt the ends of her long, black hair brush the top of his hand as he continued to rub and massage the globes of her tight, sexy bottom. His own need blistered, melting through him and testing the very boundaries of his control.

Wanting more of her—all of her—he lowered his hand down to the back of her thigh, and then around.

Around to the front, to the patch of ebony silk at the juncture of her legs. She stirred restlessly against him, against his chest and his palm, but he knew that her ardent response was only the beginning of her ultimate surrender to his touch.

Before this encounter came to its end he would have her writhing beneath him, murmuring hot incomprehensible words into his ear, and he would see her eyes burn with the full knowledge and understanding that he had, indeed, retained his ability to bring to life and satisfy a woman’s desire.

Those ends in mind, he skimmed his fingers through the soft nest that covered her feminine mound, and he found her hot, wet, and slick.

“Sawyer!” Zafiro cried, stunned with surprise and pleasure at this unexpected thing he did to her. She felt his fingers slide between the petals of her sex, toward the very center of her womanhood, and then he withdrew them, not completely, but to the hidden apex of her nether lips.

Over the most sensitive spot she ever imagined her body possessed. The pebble of flesh quivered beneath and seemed to push at the thick pad of his finger, like a form of life bursting forth from a tight little seed.

Only vaguely aware of her own actions, she clutched at Sawyer’s massive shoulders, thankful for his strength, for if he so chose to release her from his embrace at that moment, she would have tumbled to the floor in a heaving heap. Her entire body felt gloriously alive with exquisite sensation that engulfed her with a need so sweet and fierce, she felt she would come apart like a string of beads if she did not somehow find the means with which to appease her hunger for him.

She raised her head and placed her hands on his cheeks, her nails biting into his temples. “Faster,” she whispered.

He knew she didn’t understand her own command.

Didn’t have the slightest idea what she was demanding he do. On the contrary, her order was innocent. Ignorant.

Releasing the hardened crest of her breast from between his lips, he lifted his face to hers. What he saw excited the hell out of him.

Her face sparkled and her eyes glowed with unqualified passion. He’d thought her beautiful the first time he’d seen her.

But now…the way she looked now…with her lips swollen from his bruising kisses, with her thick tumble of sable hair falling around her gorgeous face in wild disarray, and with her fresh, never-assuaged female need emanating from her every pore…

Faster, she’d said.

He obeyed her and lightly pressed his thumb against the sweet jewel of her femininty, circling the tiny pearl in such a way as to sire deeper pleasure within her slender, straining body. “How do you feel, Zafiro?” he murmured.

“I…” she panted, “I am almost on the seventh cloud.”

He smiled at that. “Or could it be that you’re somewhere in between cloud nine and seventh heaven?”

“Yes, that is where I am going.”

“Well, let me make sure you arrive.” Sensing that her release was but a heartbeat away, he eased her to the floor of the barn, his hand never leaving its spot between her thighs. When she was lying on her back with her knees slightly bent, he stretched out beside her and took her lips in another searing kiss.

He swore he could hear the thunder of her heartbeat. Wanting to intensify her pleasure even further, he penetrated her, first with one finger, then with two.

“Sawyer!” With one strong action Zafiro clapped her legs together, imprisoning his hand between her thighs. “Azucar did not tell me—”

“Then Azucar left out a lot. A whole lot.” Unmindful of the way she’d squeezed her legs together, he moved his fingers within her, his breath coming in pants when he felt her virgin passage begin to tighten and pulse. She felt so good to him, so small, hot, and so wet that he felt as though he were drowning in the pure sensuality he’d found within her tremulous body.