Authors: Nan Ryan
“No, Mrs. Parnell,” he replied, his dark gaze holding hers, “It
is
sad. I want you. I want to hear you say that you want me. But there’s so little time …” He shrugged his wide shoulders and left the rest unsaid.
Amy’s heart immediately leapt in her chest. He was leaving! The dispatch from President Juarez he’d received four days ago and about which he’d never revealed the contents—it was his orders to lead his troops back into battle. He was telling her this was to be his last night.
An involuntary tremor raced through Amy’s slender body. Her slippered foot came down atop Luiz’s instep. Her tensed body slammed into his.
“I—I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I’m so clumsy tonight. Forgive me.”
“It is all right.” His voice was low, soft. “I have you. I won’t let you fall.” And his cold jet eyes grew unfamiliarly warm.
His hands spanned her rib cage, the thumbs lightly grazing the sides of her breasts. He drew her closer and pressed her face gently to his hard shoulder. Amy didn’t see the devil lurking in the depths of those changing black eyes.
Nervously she wet her lips. “Ah … when you said there’s so little time left, did you mean …”
“Shhhh,” he gently interrupted, and pressed his smooth cheek to hers. Amy felt his long silky lashes stir restlessly against her face and knew his eyes had closed. “If I’m to have you for only one dance,” he whispered, “let me enjoy it while I may.”
Amy automatically nodded, stirred by an unusual tenderness in his voice and by the unsettling emotions his tone evoked, emotions she did not fully understand.
Held closely in his arms, Amy felt her taut body relaxing, molding itself to his. He was an expert dancer, smooth and easy to follow. She moved perfectly with him to the slow, provocative beat of an achingly pretty Spanish love song.
Her arms locked behind his dark head, her eyes sliding closed, Amy was affected by the moving sentiment of the ballad and by the knowledge that the leanly muscled arms holding her so tightly would soon hold her no more.
He was leaving!
El Capitán Luiz Quintano would rise at daybreak and ride right out of her life. After a few days—or weeks—it would be just as if he had never been here. In time her terrible guilt would fade.
Everything would be as it had been before. Her existence would be as it had been before the fear, before the shame, before the ecstasy.
Before El Capitán.
Routine. Respectable. Safe.
Lonely.
The beautiful love song ended. Luiz’s hands dropped away from Amy. He took a step back.
“I enjoyed the dance,” he said gallantly, now the polite Spanish grandee. He smiled winningly and added, “But it made me very thirsty. Are you thirsty?”
“A little,” Amy admitted, knowing she should return to the hacienda at once. But wanting to stay here with him far more.
With a gentle hand on her arm, Luiz guided Amy through the rowdy crowd toward one of the liquor stations. When they stood before a table loaded with bottles, some overturned, some empty, he asked if she had ever tasted tequila. Amy shook her head. She had never tasted anything stronger than wine. She told him as much.
Luiz reached for a full bottle of tequila. He had no trouble persuading her to say yes to one small jigger of the fiery, potent liquor distilled from the desert’s hearty century plant. He poured, handed her the full shot glass, and Amy started to turn it up immediately.
He laughed.
“Wait,” he said, and reached out to stay her hand. “You have to do this right.”
“I do?”
“Give me your left hand.” Amy frowned but held out her hand. Luiz sprinkled salt into her palm, picked up a slice of lemon, and instructed, “Lick the salt from your hand, take a bite of this lemon,
then
drink your tequila.”
Amy looked skeptical, but put out her tongue and gingerly touched it to the salt in her palm. Luiz held out the lemon and she dutifully took a bite, immediately making a sour face. He smiled and motioned for her to drink. She turned up the glass and drank down the tequila as if it were orangeade. As soon as she swallowed, her eyes grew wide with horror and began to water. She fanned herself frantically, drew in anxious gulps of air, and looked up at Luiz as if he had played a dirty trick on her.
He caught her to him, brushed his lips to her temple, handed her a glass of cool water, and said, “I am sorry,
querida.
Are you all right?”
Feeling the liquor’s fierce heat spread through her chest and out into her arms, Amy was shocked by its powerful and immediate effect. Already her head was beginning to feel fuzzy and she wondered if she had heard him correctly. Had El Capitán really called her sweetheart?
She clutched her throat and said, “I’m not sure. I feel strange. My fingers and toes are tingling.”
Luiz was charmed.
With her flushed face, her unbound golden hair spilling around her bare shoulders, a splayed hand gripping her burning throat, she looked adorably young and appealing. For a second he was overwhelmed with the fierce desire to pull her to him and kiss away the hurt.
A muscle twitching in his jaw, he said, “Perhaps we’d better dance.”
He grinned and, lifting a dark hand, he slipped only the tip of his little finger beneath a wayward lock of shimmering blond hair and gently pushed it back off Amy’s face.
And again they danced.
Couples near them smiled and greeted them and loudly thanked El Capitán for giving such a wonderful celebration. Soon a trio of laughing, shouting troopers excitedly approached the pair and everyone stopped dancing to watch the fun.
One of the trio drew out a clean white handkerchief and tied it securely around Luiz’s right wrist. Amy was puzzled, but he didn’t seem to be. He was laughing, the white scar on his cheek coloring slightly, his dark eyes glowing.
When the trooper looked at Amy and said, “
Con permiso
,
señora
?” Amy turned questioning eyes to Luiz.
“Give him your left wrist,
querida.
”
Amy was dubious, but she presented the smiling trooper with her wrist. Thanking her, he swiftly tied it to Luiz’s bound wrist and the whole crowd applauded enthusiastically.
While the thunderous applause continued, Luiz turned his head, spotted Lieutenant Pedrico Valdez and motioned him over. He quietly spoke to Pedrico, who nodded. Luiz put his lips close to Amy’s ear and explained that everyone was having a good time. To be assured of having another dance soon, the hosting couple was
amarrado
—tied together with a handkerchief. They would not be untied until a guest promised to redeem them by giving a
baile del desempeño.
A dance of redemption.
Nodding with understanding, Amy said, “What if no one agrees to give a dance of redemption?”
“Then we must stay tied together forever.”
A shiver swept through Amy’s body as she looked up into those hypnotic black eyes and considered the scintillating prospect of being tied to him forever. The almost mystic attraction of this coldly handsome man caused her legs suddenly to tremble uncontrollably.
“I think the tequila has made me a little dizzy,” she quickly told him.
“Ah,
querida
,” he whispered softly, drawing her into his arms, “I was hoping it was me.”
And again they danced.
This time with their wrists tied securely together. By song’s end, they found themselves dancing near the blazing bonfire. The flames hot on their faces, they looked steadily into each other’s eyes, barely conscious of those around them.
In minutes they were covered with a sheen of perspiration, their faces shiny wet, their clothes damp and clinging to their perspiring bodies.
But they were not bothered by the fire’s glowing heat. Heat of a far more potent kind was slowly, enticingly enveloping the swaying, silent pair.
The one tequila she’d consumed had taken the edge off Amy’s initial nervousness. She no longer glanced warily about, concerned with what people might think. She wrapped her free arm around Luiz’s neck and allowed her body to melt against his, marveling, as always, at the hardness and strength of his long, lean frame.
After a few stirring dances, Luiz offered Amy more tequila. She eagerly accepted. When he gave her a shaker of salt, she coyly sprinkled the salt into his hand instead of her own. Then, looking straight into his eyes, she put out her tongue, touched it to his palm, and heard his sharp intake of breath. She lifted her head and smiled at him. While he stared intensely at her, Amy drank her tequila and set the glass aside.
She then picked up the shaker and carefully sprinkled salt into her own hand. She sweetly offered it to him. Luiz made no move to take her hand. Her glistening lips parted and she lifted her hand closer to his dark face.
“Lick,” she said, her gaze holding his. “Lick it.”
And she thrilled to the pull and play of hard muscle beneath his white shirt as his fingers enclosed her wrist and he lifted her hand as his face lowered.
She squirmed with pleasure from the first electric touch of his silky tongue to her sensitive flesh. Luiz took his time. Leisurely he licked and kissed and sucked at her tingling palm until Amy felt warm and weak, her heart fluttering with excitement. Her eyes on the dark head bent to her, she held her breath, praying for him to stop so she could collect her scattered wits.
El Capitán didn’t stop until his lips and tongue had licked away every last tiny grain of salt. When it was all gone, he teasingly bit her palm with sharp white teeth. Bit her hard enough to make her wince.
He lifted his head and stared at her. Amy trembled when he drew her tongue-wet palm to his chest and pressed it flat over his heart.
A heart that was beating almost as rapidly as her own.
He kept her hand there while he picked up his glass of tequila and tossed it off in one fiery swallow.
“Dance with me,
querida
,” he said, and licked a missed grain of salt from his full lower lip.
And so once again they danced.
Or if they did not actually dance, they stood with their arms around each other, seductively rocking together, moving steadily closer to the brightly burning bonfire. Unspoken was the shared strangely compelling desire to gravitate nearer and nearer to the fierce heat of those beautiful, deadly flames. Some driving force drew them toward the raging inferno. Swaying together, they moved slowly but steadily around the huge fire, seeking privacy. They found it on the far side, a place to be alone together, to allow smoldering passions to surface fully.
Dancing perilously close to the blaze, flirting with its fury, the hot pair relished the pain-pleasure that belonged to them alone.
Privacy was theirs in the middle of the crowd. The intensity of the fire’s heat kept the other guests well away from their sweltering arena of growing desire. They were free to touch and be touched; to engage in a dance so brazenly erotic, they were as pagans who knew no shame.
It was sweet torture.
They were burning up. On fire for each other. Hotter than they’d ever been before. Their bodies were feverish, temperatures steadily rising.
There was not a dry thread on either of them. They were soaking wet with perspiration, a condition they found curiously stimulating. An added aphrodisiac. The heaviness of soaked fabric pressing against burning flesh that already tingled with sensation was highly arousing.
Through the wet, heavy gathers of Amy’s clinging blue-and-white skirt, she could feel the hot power of Luiz’s fully formed erection pressing insistently against her stomach. Her breasts swelled against the tight yoke of her white Mexican blouse, her taut nipples rubbing against the solidness of Luiz’s broad chest.
Amy licked her lips and slid her free hand between their scorching bodies. Brazenly she unbuttoned Luiz’s white shirt, pushed the soggy fabric apart, and exhaled as she pressed her aching breasts to his sweat-slick skin. She wished that she could push her blouse apart and feel his hot naked flesh against her own. She shuddered with emotion.
She shuddered more deeply when Luiz put a hand into her hair, urged her head back, and bent to drink away the beads of perspiration pooling in the hollow of her glistening throat. When his flaming lips slid up to her ear, he said raggedly, “
Querida
, I cannot stand much more of this. I will have to take you right here where we stand.”
Her breath coming fast, Amy’s forehead sagged against his gleaming chest. “Why do we wait? Let’s leave.”
“We can’t.”
Her head came up off his chest. She looked into his eyes. “We have to. We can’t. … Dear God, not here.”
Luiz groaned and his black eyes were tortured. He jerked their tied wrists up before her face. “Until someone unties us, custom requires that we stay at the dance.”
“No … no. What if no one unties us?” She closed her eyes and pressed her hot face into the curve of his neck and shoulder. “I want you so badly. I don’t think—”
“What,
querida
? What did you say?”
Amy lifted her head and looked pleadingly into his eyes. Her spread hand anxiously caressing his bared chest, she murmured breathlessly, “I said I want you. I want you to make love to me.” Her eyes closed in frustration. “I hurt from wanting you so badly.”
“
Mi querida
,” Luiz said, his voice low and soft.
Her confession was what he’d been waiting all evening to hear. He didn’t remind Amy of what she’d said earlier, that the day she told him she wanted him would be the day on which she died.
Instead he drew her hurriedly back to the other side of the fire and kissed her closed eyes so she wouldn’t see him lift his free hand high into the air. It was the signal for his sentinel to come at once.
Pedrico saw Luiz’s raised arm. He smiled, dropped his cigar, crushed it out under his bootheel, and stepped down off the platform. In seconds he was standing beside the couple who danced alone and apart before the roaring fire.
Smiling, he informed them that a charming
señorita
Maria Guerrero had graciously offered to redeem them. She would give the
baile del desempeño
at her home in exactly three weeks.