Bed of Roses (18 page)

“And do not think that the men did not enjoy me,” Azucar boasted again, patting Zafiro’s hand. “They did. So much that many of them spent every
peso
of their work pay to have me.”

“Yes, I am sure they did, Azucar.” Zafiro rose from the chair and began to amble around the room, all the while marveling over the fact that Sawyer had wanted to make love to her.

“Men,” Azucar said, and sighed a long sigh. “They are not like women. Sometimes a woman, she does not have the mood for lovemaking. I do not know why this is so, but it is not like that with men. They are always ready for a woman. Men will do almost anything for a good time between the sheets. Anything at all.”

“Yes,” Zafiro answered absently. “Anything at… Anything…”

By the stove Zafiro stopped and slowly turned toward Azucar, the old woman’s words flowing through her senses like the scent of beautiful perfume.

Men will do almost anything for a good time between the sheets.

Sawyer, Zafiro thought. He wanted her. Wanted to make love to her.

She’d seen and felt the proof of his desire when she’d nearly pulled it off.

If she let him make love to her, if she gave her soft, warm tunnel to him, would he consent to listen to her story about Luis? Would he agree to help her men remember their skills?

Men will do almost anything for a good time between the sheets .

“Azucar?”

“Yes?”

Zafiro returned to the table and sat back down with the seasoned lady of the evening. “I know you’ve already told me almost everything there is to know about what men and women do in the bed, but would you mind very much telling me again?”

“Mind?” Once again, Azucar laughed. “Oh, Zafiro, my lovely girl, nothing would make me happier.”

And when Azucar began to describe and explain the many aspects of lovemaking, Zafiro memorized every word.

Chapter Eight

H
er mind nearly bursting with
all the information Azucar had imparted, Zafiro stood naked in front of the mirror that hung inside one of the doors of her armoire, and held the red gown up to her shoulders.

The black lace that trimmed the dress was rather droopy, but the scarlet satin still shimmered. And although the gown was a good four or five inches too short, Zafiro remembered that Azucar said men liked to see the turn of a woman’s ankle.

It was the dress of a true seductress. “Azucar let me borrow it,” she informed Jengibre and Mariposa, both of whom watched her from the bed. “I told her that I only wanted to see what it looked like on me.”

While the animals stared at her, Zafiro slipped into the dress, amazed and delighted by how wonderful the soft satin felt against her bare skin.

The gleaming fabric clung to each curve and line of her body. Accustomed as she was to seeing the dress hang on Azucar’s bony frame, Zafiro hadn’t realized how snugly the gown was supposed to fit.

The lace-trimmed bodice hugged her breasts and plunged low in the front, barely covering her nipples, and a high slit up the left side of her dress showed her leg all the way up to the top of her thigh.

“Do you think this dress will make Sawyer’s eyes bulge?” she asked her pets. “Azucar said that men’s eyes always bulge out when they see a woman dressed in such finery.”

She studied her hair. Men liked to unpin a woman’s hair right before lovemaking began, Azucar said. They liked watching it fall down a woman’s shoulders, and then they liked to push their fingers into it. Trouble was, Zafiro didn’t have any hairpins. And she didn’t want to use forks, the way Azucar had. Deliberating, she looked around her room in search of some other kind of item that might work.

Finally, she spied the vase of freshly picked red roses that sat on her bedside table. Fifteen minutes later she finished twisting her long, thick hair into loose knots on the top of her head, all of which she kept in place by working the thorny stems of the crimson roses into and through strategic places.

Now for the cosmetics. Azucar had explained that colored cheeks and lips and dramatically lined eyes roused a man’s appreciation of beauty, and so Zafiro had also asked to borrow Azucar’s box of face paints, all of which Azucar made herself with whatever ingredients were available to her.

Zafiro opened a small pot and saw that it held a greasy, beet-red substance. Remembering how rosy Azucar’s cheeks always were, she decided the red stuff was for her face. She smeared onto her cheeks two perfect circles. Then, so her mouth would match her cheeks, she smoothed a bit of the red grease on her lips.

It didn’t smell very good. In fact, it smelled rancid, as if it had gone bad.

“Well,” she said to Jengibre and Mariposa, “the smell will probably go away after a while. And I can always wear some scent to cover it up.”

Next she found a matchbox full of black powder and a matchstick whose end was covered with the black powder. The black dust looked like soot, and she realized it was for the eyes. Using the matchstick as an applicator, she lined both the top and bottom lash lines of her eyes, then she stood back and examined her face.

It certainly was colorful, she thought, and her eyes certainly did stand out.

Sawyer’s appreciation of her beauty would certainly be roused.

She decided to go barefoot. The only shoes she had were her boots, and they were old and covered with mud. Too, they made loud clodding noises when she walked, and tonight she had to be the very essence of grace and femininity.

Because Azucar said men liked light-footed women. Light-footed women whose hips swayed and breasts jutted out.

For a final touch, and with the hope that a bit of scent would overcome the unpleasant smell of the rouge, she sprinkled homemade rosewater over her neck and shoulders.

“I am ready,” she murmured to her pets. “Ready to give Sawyer so much passion that he will not be able to say no to anything I ask of him.”

She retrieved a scrap of paper upon which she’d jotted down a list of passionate things that Azucar said men liked to hear. Slipping the note into the bodice of her gown, she looked toward the window.

It was almost nighttime. Already she could see a few stars glimmering in the darkening sky. Sawyer would be in the barn soon. The last chore he performed at night was feeding and watering Pancha, Rayo, and Mister.

But he’d find more than the cow, the burro, and the mule in the barn tonight.

He’d find Zafiro.

And ecstasy.

S
awyer tossed a pile of hay
over Coraje’s paddock fence, barely moving away in time before the ill-tempered stallion lunged his huge head over the railing and bared his teeth. “Son of a bitch!” Sawyer shouted, watching as the horse bucked and reared.

Why Zafiro kept the malicious animal was beyond Sawyer’s comprehension. Who cared if the horse would come when he heard a whistle? No one could get near him, much less ride him.

Hearing Pancha, Rayo, and Mister calling from inside the barn, Sawyer picked up the two buckets of water he’d brought from the stream and entered the shabby stable. Ordinarily, he would have had to light the lantern that hung from a nail beside the door, but not tonight.

Soft light already filled the animal sanctuary. Bewildered, Sawyer saw a multitude of lighted candles scattered throughout the barn. He walked farther inside, wondering who had created such a fire hazard.

Probably one of the old outlaws, he thought. Maybe Pedro had decided that this night was the night of the Savior’s birth, and the candlelight was supposed to be the light of the star of Bethlehem.

Ten or fifteen minutes more and the light of the star of Bethlehem would have turned poor Pancha, Rayo, and Mister into the biggest banquet of roasted meat La Escondida had ever seen.

Shaking his head, Sawyer approached the animals’ stalls, but stopped when he saw his trunk lying nearby.

He closed his eyes against the instant crash of something horrible that grabbed at him, but a long while passed before the feeling released him.

Dammit, what was in the trunk?

He didn’t know.

Didn’t want to know.

Not yet.

Breathing deeply to steady himself, he poured the clean, fresh water into the animals’ water troughs. He then gave the hungry beasts several scoops of grain, making a mental reminder that he had to somehow replenish the dwindling supply of feed.

Watching Pancha, Rayo, and Mister munch their oats, he rubbed the back of his neck and pondered the idea of fencing two pastures, one for Pancha and Rayo and another for Coraje. If they had an enclosed place where they could graze, they wouldn’t need so much hay or grain.

He wondered if there was enough grazing area within the confines of the hideaway. Deciding to investigate the possibility in the morning, he began blowing out the candles.

“Do not blow them out, my handsome buck.”

Startled, and with his mouth still pursed from blowing the candles, Sawyer turned around and saw Zafiro close the barn doors. She then slid into place the board that locked the two weathered portals.

“We must have our privacy,” she explained, dusting off her hands. “With the board barring the door, no one can come in and interrupt us.”

Dumbstruck, Sawyer stared at her. If he didn’t know better he would have sworn she was wearing one of Azucar’s dresses.

The gown sure looked different on Zafiro.

“I know you must be hungry after your long day of work," Zafiro said huskily, remembering that men liked it when a woman spoke with a low, throaty voice. “But forget about dinner.”

Still standing in front of the barn doors, she drew her gaze down the length of his body. He wore only his breeches and his boots. She’d seen his bare chest before. Many times she’d seen him completely naked.

But things were different tonight.

Tonight she would touch his bare body the way a woman touches her lover. And he, in turn, would do the same to her.

A yearning stirred within her, a hunger that filled her with a sweet, deep ache. Greedily, as if the sight of him were the first course of a splendid feast, she devoured him with her eyes, missing no enticing part of him.

Candlelight coated his skin like the mellow mist of a golden morning, playing over and seeping into every curve, bulge, and crevice of his torso. His long, thick hair drenched his shoulders and chest with drizzles of gold, and his eyes picked up the hue, the tawny hue, gleaming at her like those of a lion who knew he could have anything in the world if he so chose to have it.

And he wanted
her.
This lion of a man, Sawyer Donovan, wanted
her.

Her heart flopped within her breast, like a fish out of water. “Tonight, Sawyer,” she murmured, “you will have only dessert—me.”

She walked toward him, swinging her hips as widely as she could get them to swing, and with her breasts jutting out as far as she could get them to jut. “You like what you see, don’t you, buck?”

Sawyer still hadn’t figured out what he was seeing. He could only gape at Zafiro in pure, unadulterated amazement.

“Your eyes, they are bulging, buck,” Zafiro murmured. Finally, she arrived before him, stopping just far enough away from where he stood so that he could get the full view of her, from head to toe.

As he continued to stare at her with wide eyes, she tried to think of a few more sensuous lines to say to him, things that had worked for Azucar when she’d been in the harlot business. “I have not seen a man like you in a very long time, buck. Just looking at you makes…”

Having forgotten the rest of the line, she dug into the bodice of her gown, withdrew the scrap of paper, and quickly scanned it. “Just looking at you makes me burn with desire. I know that if I do not soon have you inside me I will burst into flames.”

“
What?”

Batting her lashes and smiling, Zafiro slipped the paper back into her bodice. “Your man part,” she whispered. “It is growing long and hard now, isn’t it?”

The only thing Sawyer felt grow was his confusion. “Zafiro, what—”

“We are wasting time with all this talking. Kiss me, buck. Kiss me.” She smoothed her tongue across her bottom lip the way she’d seen Azucar do on occasion.

She grimaced. And trembled with a shudder that went all the way down to her bare toes.

The lip rouge tasted worse than it smelled!
Santa
Maria,
it truly was rotten!

It didn’t matter, she told herself. Kisses were nice, but what men
really
wanted was to push their man part into a woman’s soft, dark tunnel. Azucar said that some men ignored kissing altogether and got straight down to the serious side of lovemaking.

Sawyer was probably one of those men, she decided. After all, she’d never seen him waste a second of time. On the contrary, when he had a job to do, he just plowed right in.

“Come to me, lover,” she invited him, sliding her hand over her hip. “Come to me, and I will take you to heaven.”

Before Sawyer had a chance to react, she threw herself at him, the strength and momentum of her lunge tossing him straight into the small mound of hay behind him.

Zafiro fell directly on top of him. As Azucar had described, she ground her hips into his, all the while making little mewling sounds at the back of her throat.

“Zafiro, for God’s sake, what are you—”

“I cannot wait any longer, buck,” she murmured, running her hand over his bare chest. “You and I know that what is about to happen is something stronger than both of us. Now, take down my hair.”

“What?” He stared at her again, noticing a chicken feather stuck to one of the red circles on her cheeks.

“Take down my hair, buck. Watch it fall over my shoulders, and then push your fingers into it.”

When he made no move to obey her command, she picked up his hand and thrust it to the top of her head.

“Dammit!” he shouted when something sharp pricked his thumb and two of his fingers. Pulling his hand down, he saw blood dotting all three stinging digits. “What the hell—”

Breaking off, he stared at her hair, seeing all the roses she’d stuck on her head. “You’ve got thorns—”