Authors: Nan Ryan
Amy, pressed against the lean, naked strength of him, said with trusting devotion, “There is no reason, Tonatiuh. I belong to you.”
“Sweet love,” he murmured, and urged her over onto her back once more. He yanked the heavy gold medallion up and slid it over his shoulder to fall on his back so that it wouldn’t hurt Amy. He lay on his stomach beside her, his torso partially covering hers. Anxious, and more afraid than he’d ever been in his life, he began kissing her. And as he kissed her, his hand cupped her warm, firm breast, his fingertips gently plucking at its crest.
Luiz was as pure and as unschooled in the ways of love as was Amy. Terrified that he would hurt her, yet wanting her so much he felt he couldn’t wait another second, he continued to kiss and caress her, hoping he would somehow know when she was as ready as he.
Amy clung tightly to him, on fire from his kisses, devastatingly stirred by the touch of his gentle hands on her tingling flesh and by the heavy, hardness pulsing against her belly.
When Luiz lifted his head and gazed down at her, Amy murmured breathlessly, “Tonatiuh, I don’t know exactly what I am supposed to do. You’ll have to show me.”
A muscle danced in his jaw. He said, “We learned to kiss. We will learn to make love together.”
He kissed her again and his hand swept down over her stomach and went between her legs. He gently pressed his middle finger to her sensitive flesh. And felt a fiery wetness. He dipped his fingertip into that wetness and slowly spread it upward. Amy winced with the pleasure of it and her back arched.
Eyes sliding closed, she said, “Tonatiuh, may I touch you the way you’re touching me?”
Surprised but pleased, he answered, “Nothing would make me happier.”
She smiled dreamily, rolled up to a sitting position, and urged him down onto his back. Her eyes wide with wonder, she shyly reached out with both hands and wrapped them tentatively around his powerful erection. Awed and awkward, she clasped him as if he might break. And blinked with delighted surprise when he stirred involuntarily in her hands.
While she could have been content to play and explore all afternoon, Luiz was terrified that any second he would explode in shuddering release. Teeth clenched, heart pounding, he lay there for only scant seconds, in sweet agony, before he pushed her hands away and anxiously sought his place between her legs.
He thrust into her and felt the tightness and the tearing and saw the look of pain that came into her eyes. But he couldn’t stop. He had no notion how to control his out-of-control body. He pumped wildly into her, the pleasure so intense he moaned with ecstasy. In seconds it was over.
For a time they lay entwined, Luiz murmuring words of love and apology, anxiously assuring her that he’d never hurt her again. Promising he would learn to become a better lover. Amy, kissing his worried bronzed face, consoled him and swore that she loved him so much that being in his arms was ecstasy.
Luiz carried her to the river and bathed her with such loving tenderness, Amy derived far more joy from the bath than she had from the actual act of love.
Sweeter still was when they got out of the water and Luiz lifted her in his arms and carried her all the way up the trail to the rock overhang beside the falls. They stretched out to let the sun dry their bodies. Peacefully they lay in each other’s arms as the sun began its slide toward the western horizon.
Sighing, Amy placed her hand atop the gold medallion resting on Luiz’s smooth chest and murmured lazily, “Tonatiuh.”
“Yes?”
“Tell me more about the Sun Stone.”
H
E SMILED, KISSED HER
forehead, and his hand covered hers atop the glittering gold medallion. Sighing deeply, his smooth bronzed face changed subtly. His classic features took on a dreamy, trancelike appearance as legends and images and voices from the past came forth to rule his consciousness.
“The gold disk I wear represents the huge Sun Stone that rests in the old temple in Mexico City. The stone depicts the Aztec cosmos—our gods, our cultural rites—and the calendar by which my people calculated time. In the very center is the face of Tonatiuh, our Sun God, from whom I take my name.” He fell silent. His breathing became very heavy, almost as if he were asleep.
Amy’s fingers tightened on the medallion and she said softly, “Go on, please.”
“Mexico City was
our
city. The Aztecs’. Our patron god, Huitzilopochtli, led his people out of the distant northern land of Aztlan and into Mexico. He promised his followers a place that would be theirs. They would know where to build their city because they would see an eagle perched on a great cactus devouring a serpent. Huitzilopochtli led them onto an island and they found the eagle on the cactus. They settled there and called their city Tenochtitlan—Place of the Cactus.”
Luiz’s eyes moved rapidly beneath his closed lids, as one who is sleeping deeply.
“They built their pyramids of the sun and of the moon. They had their religion, their art, their poetry. Their riches. They bothered no one. Then my father’s people came from Spain. Moctezuma, the supreme emperor of the Aztec, believed that the Spaniards were white gods come out of the sea. So he allowed Cortez and his conquerors to march unopposed right into his beautiful city and seize it.”
Amy was looking at Luiz’s face. His eyes were still closed, but his face had gone rigid.
“The Spaniards took our most beautiful women for their own. But not from my Aztec ancestors. Their bloodline remained pure until my mother married my father. I am the first
mestizo
—mixed blood—in either my father’s or my mother’s family.”
“Yes, I know,” said Amy softly. “Don Ramon said it was meant to be—that your mother told him so.”
The tenseness left Luiz’s face. “This is true. My mother’s
tonali
—her fate—was to have a son by a pure-blooded Spaniard.” A smile began to play on Luiz’s lips. “She gave him a great deal more than me.”
Amy smiled too. This was her favorite part of the story. The part where the wild and beautiful hereditary Aztec princess left her infant son alone atop a basalt mesa.
Without prompting, Luiz began to speak of that day when the goddess Xochiquetzal had left husband and son and returned to her people.
“It was the first August of my life,” said Luiz, his voice low and soft. “It was nearing noon and I was asleep. My mother awakened me. It was hot, very hot. She gave me a cooling bath and when she had finished, she did not dry me off or put any clothes on me.
“Instead, she carried me outdoors and, holding me in one arm, she climbed up on the bare back of my father’s favorite stallion and rode away from our little adobe home. When we had gone many miles across the parched deserts, my mother guided the stallion to the top of a flat mesa. She dismounted, walked to the very center of the black basalt tableland, and lay me down.
“She sat on her heels beside me.
“For a long time my beautiful mother stared down at me with those dark, exotic eyes. Then she kissed me, and I felt the wetness of her tears against my face. She said, ‘My son, I love you. But I can no longer stay. I am going back to my people, but I leave something in my place.’
“She took the gold Sun Stone medallion from around her throat, held it to her lips, and kissed it. Then she struck the rock with the heavy gold disk and, looking into my eyes, she said in the Nahuatl tongue, ‘From this barren rock will flow a cold, clear life-giving body of water. I give to you, my little Tonatiuh, the water and the Sun Stone. The water to make you rich. The Sun Stone to protect you from evil.’
“She placed the medallion on my stomach and fastened the heavy chain around my neck. She held out her hand to me and I clasped her little finger in my fist. She smiled and said, ‘Ask your father to forgive his restless princess. Tell him the prophecy is complete. The time has come for me to go.’
“Then she rose and left me there, naked and alone.”
Luiz fell silent, smiling.
Amy, easing up on an elbow, studied his handsome face. Leaning close, she softly kissed his closed eyelids and said, “Tonatiuh, I have, of course, heard the story from Don Ramon. But … you were only an infant, just four months old. How could you possibly know how your mother looked? What she said when she left you?”
Luiz’s eyes opened. His smile fled and he looked intensely at Amy. “Don’t ask me how I know. But I know. I can’t explain it. But I know exactly what happened and everything my mother said that day. I still remember how she looked.”
Amy stared at him. Nodding, she said, “I believe you.” She lifted the gold medallion and held it in the palm of her hand. “Your mother told you the Sun Stone would protect you from evil?”
“Yes.”
Amy pressed her lips to the gleaming disk. “Then be careful that you never lose it.”
“I will,” Luiz said. He grinned suddenly and rolled up into a sitting position. “And I’ll be careful not to lose you as well. Which means we’d better be getting back to Orilla before they start to wonder.” He took the medallion from her, leaned down, and kissed her. Her arms went around his neck.
“Yes. I promised we’d be home by sundown,” she said.
“Then we’d better get our pants on.”
Laughing, they hurried back down the trail to put on their clothes. Soon they were dressed, but Amy asked Luiz to give her a minute to brush out her tangled hair. She rummaged around in her reticule for her hairbrush, became frustrated when she couldn’t find it, sat down on her heels and poured out the reticule’s contents.
“Here you are,” she said aloud, and snatched up the gold-backed hairbrush.
“Want me to do it?” Luiz asked, and crouched down facing her.
“No. It won’t take a minute, but thanks.” She drew the brush vigorously through her hair. “You can gather up the stuff I poured out if you want to help.”
Smiling, he nodded, and went about placing the spilled contents back inside the small purse. His eyes fell on a small item that made the smile leave his face.
A ticket. A blood-red ticket with black numbers.
Luiz picked up the ticket, blinked, and read the numbers on it: 6 6 5 6.
His hand began to shake slightly. “Amy, what is this?” He held it up to her.
Hairbrush posed in midstroke, she glanced at the ticket. “What? Oh, that. It’s my railroad baggage ticket from the day I came home from New Orleans.” She went back to brushing her hair.
Luiz, feeling as if he were suddenly suffocating, gripped the ticket with its damning numbers tightly in his palm. Unsteadily he rose to his feet. A sudden breeze rustled the leaves of the cottonwoods and the setting sun plummeted below the distant hills. A sudden chill seemed to slice through the heat of the late afternoon.
An inexplicable fear gripped Luiz. The foreboding dream. The half-remembered warning. The quartet of numbers. 6,6,5,6. Now he knew. Amy had come home on June 6, 1856. 6,6,5,6. Amy was the danger.
His danger.
“No!” Luiz choked out. He reached down and yanked Amy to her feet, kissing her with all the love and fear in his wildly beating heart.
“Tonatiuh, what is it?” she asked anxiously when at last he tore his lips from hers.
He shook his dark head, pressed her close, and Amy felt the trembling of his tall, spare body against her.
His doubts became her own and she gripped his shirt front, closed her eyes tightly, and said, “You’re not sorry we made love, are you?”
“No, sweetheart,” he said, fighting to regain his composure. “And I never want you to be sorry either.”
She pulled back to look at him. “Why would I be?”
He stared into her trusting blue eyes. Loving her as he did, he carefully concealed his growing apprehension.
“No reason,” he said, and grinned at her. His hand slipped down over the curve of her bottom and he gave it a playful little slap. Then he laughed and added, “But we’ll both be sorry if we don’t get home.”
The crumpled red ticket with the bold black numbers dropped from his open fingers, fluttered to the ground, and blew away.
That same evening after dinner, Baron Sullivan found his brother Lucas on the west patio. Alone in the moonlight, Lucas sprawled lazily on a padded settee, his long legs stretched out before him. His booted feet rested atop the low adobe fence that bordered the patio. On his face was a half smile. In his hand was a tumbler of Kentucky bourbon.
Lucas was well on his way to becoming drunk.
Baron sighed and joined his brother. Taking the tumbler of whiskey from Lucas, he set it aside.
“We need to talk, Lucas.”
“Can’t we talk while I drink?” was Lucas’s reply.
“No.” Baron dropped down onto the settee. “I want you to listen to me. We’ve got big trouble.”
“Big trouble? Well, all the more reason I’ll need a drink,” Lucas said, grinning.
“Forget your damned whiskey! I overheard the old man and the Spaniard talking this afternoon. Know what they’re planning?”
Lucas frowned and shook his head.
“A marriage between Amy and the uppity half-breed.”
“We can’t let that happen. I ain’t gonna have no Indian for a brother-in-law.”
“You are if we don’t work fast. Ride into town. Drag Tyler Parnell out of whichever whorehouse he’s in and get him out here to the ranch. I’ll see to it Amy comes down and entertains him.”
“How you gonna do that? She don’t even like Tyler much.”
“Leave that to me. Now get going and don’t come back without him.”
“Whatever you say.” Lucas rose from the settee and reached for his tumbler of whiskey. Baron beat him to it. He tossed the bourbon over the low adobe enclosure and set the empty glass down.
“Little brother, you see to it Tyler hangs around Amy long enough to get her pregnant and I promise you can have all the whiskey you want for the rest of your life.”
Lucas grinned, stepped over the fence, and headed for the corral. Baron returned to the house, climbed the stairs, knocked on Amy’s door, and entered without waiting for a response.
Amy, fresh from a bath and wearing only her nightgown, gasped and reached for a robe. “What do you want? I was about to go to bed.”
Baron walked right past her into the large dressing room. He took down a frilly pink frock, came back into the bedroom, and tossed it across Amy’s bed.