He eased the cloth down and away, exposing her to his gaze. “What a wonder you are,
querida
.” When he captured her naked breast with his hand, Sloan froze.
He stayed exactly as he was, waiting for her to accept his claim. “
Te adoro,
Cebellina,” he murmured in her ear.
It felt too good. How could it feel so good? She had thought Tonio had given her all the pleasure a woman could feel. He had said so, had he not?
But it was as nothing compared to what she felt now. Sloan bit her lower lip to stifle her cry of dismay. She almost could not bear the comparison, because it made her realize what a very gullible young woman she had been.
She sought out Cruz’s hand on her breast and traced the heavy knuckles, the slender fingers, all of them making up a hand that possessed incredible strength but touched her with tenderness.
Why was she fighting this? She wanted him to touch her. He was her husband. It was his right to touch her in any way he pleased. And that he chose to please her, well, she would be a fool indeed not to recognize the difference between what Tonio had given her and what Cruz was offering.
She ignored her pounding heart and pressed gently on the back of Cruz’s hand, hoping he would realize she liked what he was doing and wished him to continue.
She felt her body tensing with anticipation as his fingers began to move slowly, gently finding the rosy tip of her breast and teasing it until she groaned deep in her throat from the pleasure. She writhed upward under him, wanting his mouth on her breast, wondering how it would feel, but too shy to ask for it.
As if sensing her need, he lowered his head to possess her.
His tongue came searching first, barely touching her nipple. She hissed out a breath of air. He teased her, licking, then withdrawing, until at last she grasped his hair in both hands and wouldn’t let him go.
When she heard him chuckle, she stiffened.
He immediately lifted his head to look at her. “What is wrong, Cebellina?”
“Are you laughing at me?” she whispered. “At my . . . at my need . . .”
“It is
joy
I am feeling, Cebellina, that is all,” he said urgently.
She stared into his hooded eyes, silvery-blue in the moonlight and saw no sign of the ridicule she had feared was the source of his laughter. She found only wonder and delight . . . and desire.
“I . . . I want to touch you,” she said. “Will you take off your shirt?”
He sat up and slipped off the plain wool shirt he had worn to their wedding. She stared at his chest, liking the whorls of thick black hair that covered his bronzed skin. She reached out without thinking and threaded her fingers into the wiry mass.
“It’s so soft!” she exclaimed. “I’d forgotten how—”
He stiffened against her hand and she realized her mistake. She had reminded them both that this was not her first time with a man. Cruz was second. His brother had come first.
She awkwardly withdrew her hand.
Cruz was the one who reached out again. He took her hand and placed it back on his chest. His voice was commanding. “Touch me,
querida
. Feel that I am different. Feel that I am not my brother.”
She looked up into his sapphire eyes and found a gleam of savage possession. He demanded her acquiescence, and she discovered she had no choice except to obey him. Her lips followed where her hands led.
“Your skin is so warm. And salty,” she murmured. She brushed her cheek against his chest, liking the feel of his rough hair and the hard muscle beneath it. She heard the pounding of his heart, racing at least as fast as her own.
Her hands roved over his sinewy shoulders, down his strong, heavily veined forearms. Then she placed them on his chest and ran them tauntingly through the whorls of crisp black hair, following the triangle down his stomach to its apex at the line of his trousers.
“Take them off,” she ordered, her voice teasing.
“Take off your skirt,” he replied.
She looked up into his face only to find all playfulness gone. His lambent gaze held hers as he slowly stripped off her skirt and pantalets. A moment later he had bared his powerful body. From beneath lowered lashes, Sloan surveyed his broad chest, his narrow waist, his lean flanks, and that other masculine part of him that demanded attention.
“You are so . . .” Sloan didn’t want to, but she couldn’t help comparing him to Tonio.
Tonio had been a boy. Cruz was a man.
“Come, Cebellina. It is time we became man and wife.”
He played her body like a harp, finding the sweetest notes, plucking the strings, fanning them, then plucking them again. Holding her, stroking there, strumming high and low, he orchestrated their love song, until the music had caught them both in a crescendo of excitement.
With every touch, he branded her as his own, demanding that she be his, and his alone.
Their sweat-damp bodies clung, and Sloan shivered as Cruz moved over her, pressing her down on the blanket, raising her hands over her head and capturing her wrists with one hand. He quickly spread her thighs with his knee and lowered himself onto her. She felt the press of his engorged shaft seeking entrance, and panicked.
“Cruz, no! I—”
With a single thrust he was inside her. She was slick and wet, and it was impossible to deny that she had wanted him, that she had been more than ready for him.
“It is done. You are mine.”
The look on his face was fiercely possessive as he tilted her hips and seated himself deeper inside her, laying claim to her. He stroked slowly, drawing out the pleasure.
Sloan felt herself rising higher and higher, driven by the frenzied music of love.
Cruz’s body clamored for satisfaction; he denied it. She must know she belonged only to him; she must accept his possession. His mouth found Sloan’s and he mimed the action of his hips.
He heard the grating, almost animal cries of satisfaction that ground from Sloan’s throat as she arched upward. He felt her body squeezing tight around him, strains of sweet satisfaction rolling over her, and spilled his seed inside her with a cry of exultation.
Cruz lay atop Sloan, their chests moving in tandem as they labored to bring enough air to ease breathlessness.
“That was . . . incredible,” Sloan said.
“
Querida, mi amor, mi vida
,” he whispered in her ear. “
Te quiero
.”
Sloan didn’t know what to say in response to his fervent declaration of love. He must know she couldn’t say the words in return. Because she didn’t love him. Sloan shivered, suddenly aware of the cool night air.
Cruz slipped off her and pulled the blanket around them both. He turned her into his arms, his breath moist against her temple. “Do not worry, Cebellina. The feelings will come.”
“And if they don’t?”
Cruz settled her head on his shoulder, his arm firmly surrounding her, as they gazed up at the moon and stars together. He kissed her temple, and then her mouth. “Let us leave tomorrow’s worries for tomorrow. Tonight is ours to enjoy.”
S
LOAN HAD WONDERED ALOUD ON THE RIDE
back to Dolorosa whether the fact she was now a
really
married woman would show on her face the first time she came eye to eye with Cruz’s mother.
Cruz had laughed and said, “Of course not!”
Sloan wasn’t so sure.
“You will be able to keep your secret for a few more days, Cebellina,” he had said with a smile. “For I must leave you when we return to Dolorosa and finish the roundup. When I return, we will both sit down with my mother and give her the happy news.”
They arrived back at Dolorosa late that afternoon. Doña Lucia welcomed Sloan and Cruz with a forbidding stare, while Tomasita cooed over blue-eyed Betsy, who was once again in Cruz’s arms, her head against his shoulder.
“I’ll take Betsy,” Sloan said as she stepped up onto the veranda. She tenderly brushed the damp bangs away from Betsy’s forehead. “I’ll put her down for a nap in Tonio’s room.”
Cruz watched Sloan turn and enter the hacienda. It was clear she had allowed the little girl to pierce the shell around her heart that she had used to keep Cisco away. He worried that when Betsy returned to her family—and surely her aunt and uncle would want her—Sloan would be forced to face yet another loss.
Sloan had laid Betsy down and covered her with a quilt when she heard a silk skirt rustling behind her. “One of my son’s vaqueros can take the girl to the mission orphanage in San Antonio in the morning.”
“She’ll be staying here until her uncle can be contacted.” In response to any objections Doña Lucia might make, Sloan added, “I’ve already spoken to Cruz. It’s all settled.”
“I see. What if her uncle does not want her?”
“Then I’ll keep her myself.”
Doña Lucia’s brows rose in speculation. “You would not keep your own son, yet you will raise the orphaned child of another? What kind of woman are you?”
Sloan bunched her fists at her sides. “That isn’t really any concern of yours, is it?”
Doña Lucia opened and shut her fan in agitation, but said nothing, simply turned and left the room.
Sloan stared after her. Cruz’s mother had prodded an old wound and found still-proud flesh. She shouldn’t have been so surprised that she could feel ashamed of the fact she had abandoned her son. It had not been one of her better decisions. But she wasn’t going to let Doña Lucia’s words keep her from taking the very best care of Betsy.
She sought Cruz out in the
sala
and found him riffling through papers on his rolltop desk. “Your mother is . . . upset . . . about Betsy’s presence here,” she said.
Cruz rose and took Sloan’s hands in his. “My mother is not master here. I am. Does that settle the matter?”
“Well . . . yes, I guess so.”
He turned back to his desk.
Sloan noticed he seemed distracted and in a hurry. When he had collected a number of papers in a leather satchel, he turned and found her still standing there.
“Was there anything else you wanted to speak with me about?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then I will say
adiós
. I must join the roundup. I have already been gone too long.”
“I thought you were going to teach me how to run Dolorosa,” Sloan said, realizing that once again she was being left behind. “I thought we were going to be partners, riding side by side.”
“The roundup is no place for a woman.”
“Not even for your wife?”
“Especially not for my wife.”
Sloan saw the banked desire that darkened Cruz’s blue eyes until they were the color of a stormy day. His free hand grasped hers, and his thumb caressed her callused palm.
She felt her skin heating and jerked her hand away, appalled to see how quickly she had succumbed to his mesmerizing touch. “All right, I’ll stay here . . . at least until I can contact Luke and see what’s going on at Three Oaks. Perhaps Rip is ready to have me come home.”
Cruz’s protest was cut off by a shriek of terror from Tonio’s bedroom. Sloan’s horrified eyes met Cruz’s before they both raced toward the room where she had left Betsy.
When they reached the doorway, they found Betsy crouched on top of the pillows at the head of the bed, whimpering. Cisco was on his knees beside her, his small hand patting her shoulder in an attempt to calm her.
“Do not cry,
niña,
” Cisco said.
Sloan hurried to the bed and sat down beside Cisco. “What happened?”
“I did not mean to make her cry, Mamá. I only wanted to play with her.”
Tears had begun to fill Cisco’s eyes. Sloan felt the urge to pull him into her arms and soothe his tears away, as she had done for Betsy, but she caught herself just in time. That way lay disaster.
Because she could not follow her natural inclination, her voice was more harsh than she had intended. “Never mind. I’m sure Betsy will want to play with you later. Right now, though, she’s resting. Why don’t you find Tomasita and see if she wants to play?”
Sloan had told herself that Cisco was too young to recognize her rejection for what it was. The lost, miserable look on his face made it plain she was wrong.
But he only said, “
Sí,
Mamá,” and ran from the room.
Sloan suddenly realized that she hadn’t thought twice about sending her son to seek out Tomasita while she stayed to comfort a child who was not even her own flesh and blood. Maybe Doña Lucia was right. Maybe there was something unnatural about her.
Sloan looked up and found Cruz watching her intently. She dropped her eyes from his. He did not have to speak for her to feel his censure. She had promised him she would treat the children equally. She was somehow going to have to get over the reserve she enforced around her son.
The child on the bed moaned. Sloan settled herself comfortably on the feather mattress, with her back leaning against the ornately carved headboard, before picking Betsy up and cradling her in her arms. She was totally absorbed in the child until she felt Cruz’s touch on her arm.
She looked up, startled, and said, “I thought you had left.”
“We never finished our discussion.”
“Our discussion?”
“Of what you will do to fill your days at Dolorosa while I am gone.”
Sloan absently rubbed her hand against Betsy’s rosy cheek.
“But I see there will be much to occupy your time,” Cruz said brusquely. “I must go, Cebellina.”
“You’re leaving right now?” Sloan didn’t like the bereft sound of her voice. She cleared her throat and said, “How soon will you be back?”
“Not for a week at least, perhaps longer. I want your promise that you will not leave Dolorosa—for any reason—until I return.”
Sloan’s lips flattened in the mulish expression Cruz had learned to recognize.
“I can’t promise anything.”
“If you are not here when I get back, I will come after you.”
Betsy whimpered at the tone of Cruz’s voice.
“You’re frightening her.”
“Be here.
Adiós,
Cebellina.” His hand curved around her nape as he gave her a quick, claiming kiss.