Midnight Rider (35 page)

“You will not need clothes … at least not yet.”

A wave of heat rolled through her.
Dear God.
She looked into those hot dark eyes, saw the hunger he made no attempt to disguise, and a tingling warmth filtered into her stomach. God in heaven, she still wanted him. Perhaps more in that moment than she ever had before.

He must have read her thoughts for his mouth curved wickedly. “So … you feel it, too. I had wondered.…”

She turned away from him, trying desperately to control the quaking that had started in her limbs. “Get away from me, Ramon.”

He simply caught her arm, turned her around to face him. “I do not think so.” He dragged her hard against him, took her mouth in a savage kiss. Carly broke free, drew back a hand and swung it wildly toward his cheek.

He caught her wrist before the blow connected. “Once I allowed that to happen. Perhaps I wished to feel the pain. That time is past.” He kissed her again, roughly, brutally, his mouth slanting hotly over hers, his tongue thrusting deeply between her teeth.

She meant to fight him. She knew what would happen if she didn't. Inside her head, her mind screamed a warning:
Don't do this! Think of the pain! After he's gone, it will be unbearable!
Her palms pressed flat against the muscles across his chest, pushing him away even as her lips clung to his, begging him to continue.

A small sound seeped from her throat, a sound of pain and surrender. She wanted Ramon, she loved him as she never would another. Her fingers curled into the front of his white lawn shirt. Her lips softened beneath his bruising kiss and her tongue slid gently into his mouth.

Carly heard him groan. His long brown fingers pulled the ribbon at the front off her chemise and her breasts spilled forward into his waiting hands. He massaged the heavy roundness, molded them, plucked hard at her nipples, making them throb and distend. He pulled the string on her pantalets and shoved them down over her hips, then his fingers were caressing her, kneading the curve of her waist, moving lower, smoothing over her buttocks then sliding between their bodies, lacing through the burnished hair at the apex of her thighs, and stroking the folds of her sex.

He eased her back a step, until she felt the rough bark of a tree against her shoulders. Her head fell back, exposing her throat to the onslaught of his kisses. His lips moved hotly across her shoulders. He lowered the straps on her chemise to bare her breasts and began to suckle there, drawing her deeply into his mouth.

“Ramon…” she whispered, his name a cry of agony, a well of sorrow, and a fissure of erupting heat. He lavished hot kisses on her other bare breast, took it deeply into his mouth, then bit the crest until it throbbed with pleasure. Carly arched against him, her body on fire and shaking all over, the core of her burning with slick, damp heat. Then he was unbuttoning his breeches, freeing his long hard length. Lifting her up, he wrapped her legs around his waist, his slim dark fingers gliding over her pale flesh, sliding deep inside her.

“You know you want this, Cara. Put your arms around my neck.” Mindlessly she obeyed. He was spreading her wide for him, positioning his rock-hard length between the plump wet folds at her core. He teased her deliciously, then his hold grew more firm and he plunged deeply, burying himself to the hilt.

Carly bit her lip to keep from crying out as his hands gripped her bottom, lifting her and filling her, impaling her again and again. Wildly, he drove himself inside her, thrusting deeply, pounding, pounding until she couldn't think for the fiery heat coursing through her and the clatter of her heart against her ribs.

“Te quiero,”
he whispered.
I want you.

“Yes…” she whispered. “I want you so much.” So much she was certain she would die of it. And in a way she did. For the tightness coiling low in her belly exploded into light and stars that were not of this world. Carly whimpered at the pleasure raging through her, at the hot, bright sweetness that ran through her veins like melted honey.

“Ramon!” she cried out softly.

“
Si, Cara …
I am here … buried deep inside you.”

He held her a moment, suspended in pleasure, then plunged fiercely, once, twice, faster, harder, deeper. Her body ignited, erupting once more into fiery delight, spinning out of control. Ramon's body stiffened as he reached his own release and his hot seed spilled into her core. Unconsciously her arms went tighter around his neck and she rested her head between his neck and shoulders. Tears burned her eyes and started to slide down her cheeks.

“Ramon,” she whispered. “I love you so much.”

His body went still. For a moment, he did not breathe. He was shaking as he eased himself away from her, letting her legs slide gently to the ground. He looked at the tears on her cheeks, then glanced off over her head. For seconds he just stood there. Then he started to unbutton his shirt.

Carly watched him strip it away, bend to pull off his boots and breeches. She made no move to leave, just watched him undress, caught up in the movement of muscle beneath his dark skin and wanting to reach out and touch him. Naked he drew her toward him, began to remove the balance of her clothes.

Carly said nothing as he pulled the pins from her hair, letting the heavy dark copper coil fall free, sifting his long fingers through it. Bending down, he lifted her up and she slid her arms around his neck. Kissing her softly, he waded into the water and lowered himself into the pool, taking her with him below the surface of the pond. In a shower of cool, misty spray, they came back up, entwined in each other's arms, his black hair glistening like jet in the afternoon sunlight.

He took her again, there on the bank of the pool, and afterward smoothed strands of wet auburn hair from her cheeks, trailing cold fat droplets over her heated skin.

“I heard about the raid,” she said softly after a time. “I was worried about you and the others. My uncle searches for you even now.”

“He will find nothing. Unless you decide to tell him who I am.”

“You know I won't do that.”

“Why?”

“Because I care about you and the others … no matter what you believe.”

Ramon said nothing for the longest time, just watched her in that dark, pensive way of his, a look that reached clear to her soul. Finally he came up on an elbow. “The hour grows late. It is time for me to leave.”

Her throat went tight. She knew he would go, and yet she had hoped … prayed …

“You wanted me. I thought … hoped that perhaps it was more.”

Something flickered in his eyes. “Always I have wanted you, Cara. Always. Even your betrayal has not cooled the fire I feel inside me.”

Her heart twisted, seemed to cleave in two. Was there nothing that would make him believe her? Carly watched as he rolled to his feet, all lean grace and supple strength, and began to pull on his clothes.

“You are my weakness, Cara,” he said. “Nothing I do makes me forget you. Not even the memory of you lying with my cousin.”

She stiffened, anger flashing through her, helping to override the pain. How easily he accused her, how ready he was to believe the worst. “You think you're different, but you're not. You're exactly like my uncle. Your hatred is the same, your predjudice.… It blinds you as surely as it does the Anglos you despise.”

His shoulders went rigid. He forcibly relaxed them and continued to pull on his clothes.

“You think you can come here and take what you want,” she continued, “that you can use me and throw me away. Well, you're wrong, Ramon. My pride is as great as yours … and so is my honor. If you walk away from me now, if you continue to believe as you do, I'll never let you near me again.”

For a moment, he stood stock still. When he turned to face her, anger hardened his features once more. “You are my wife. As long as that is so, you belong to me. I will take you whenever I wish it. I will use you as my cousin would have done.”

Carly swallowed past the hot tears clogging her throat. “You're a ruthless, brutal man, Ramon. Time and again I have seen it, but each time you make me forget.” She watched him walk toward his horse, slide a boot into the stirrup and swing gracefully up onto the stallion's back.

“I very much enjoyed the afternoon,” he said. “Perhaps I will come for you, take you to Llano Mirada. Now that Miranda is gone, I have need of a whore.”

The angry tears surfaced, began a scalding path down her cheeks. “Step one foot on my uncle's land and if he doesn't kill you, I swear to you I will!”

His mouth twisted up. “Perhaps it would not matter. Perhaps I am already dead.” His face seemed carved in granite, his eyes a dull lackluster brown that held none of their earlier fire. For the first time Carly realized he was hurting as badly as she.

“And perhaps one day you'll see the truth,” she said softly. “Unfortunately by then it will be too late.”

Ramon said nothing more, just stared at her for long, tension-filled moments. Then he settled his flat-crowned, black felt hat down over his forehead, spun his horse, and thundered away.

The minute he was gone, Carly dissolved into tears. If she thought the pool might soothe her, she had been sorely mistaken. The pain was back, knifing through her insides, calling her ten kinds of a fool. She wished she could ride away and never look back, that she could forget the heartache of loving Ramon and the hurt she suffered whenever he was near.

Instead she climbed up on her horse and started back toward the house, grateful her uncle was gone, that the tears on her cheeks would go unnoticed, that the pain in her heart was a pain she would suffer alone.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

Ramon didn't return to Llano Mirada. He would have liked to—there his thoughts did not stray so often to Caralee. But they had just completed a raid and he must remain at home in order to allay suspicion. He rode the stallion hard all the way back to Las Almas, craving the demands that mastering the powerful animal exerted on his strength, and the cleansing of the sun and the wind.

He didn't want to think of Carly and the powerful yearning he had suffered the moment he had seen her by the pond. He didn't want to recall the way he'd been drawn to her almost against his will. Just seeing her there, in the place where they had made such beautiful love, made his blood heat up, seethe like molten lava beneath his skin. The need to touch her, drive himself inside her, had been nearly overwhelming.

He had done it to punish her, he told himself. And simply because he wanted her. He was her husband, no matter how many men she might lie with. She belonged to him and he could do with her as he wished. He told himself he had needed a woman. She was there and taking her would please him. He gave himself a dozen different excuses but none of them was the truth. He had gone to her because he had no other choice.

She had said she loved him. Again and again she had told him that. He hated her for it. For making him still want her. For making him still love her.

Ramon leaned forward over the saddle and topped the ridge at a gallop, the stallion raising dust as its sleek, golden body stretched to the task, white mane and tail flying out behind. Finally he pulled back on the reins, slowing the animal to a high-stepping walk. Rey was lathered and beginning to tire, and so was he. Thinking of the past did no good. Whatever he felt for Caralee was over and done. He had other problems to consider. His mother had been feeling poorly and he was worried about her.

And he was worried about the boy.

He could still remember the terrible look on Two Hawks's face when the young boy had approached him about Caralee.

“Don Ramon?”

He was out in the barn, currying Rey del Sol, who stood placidly in his stall while little Bajito slept in the straw at his feet. “
Si, muchacho,
what is it?”

“Mariano says the senora will not return.”

Ramon's long fingers curled tighter over the brush that stilled halfway down Rey's muscular neck. “
Si,
that is so.”

“Why, senor? I thought she liked it here. She told me she was happy.”

He dragged the brush over the stallion's powerful shoulder. “Sometimes such things just happen.”

“But she is your wife. Among my people, a wife must stay with her husband. Is it not the same with your people?”

Ramon ignored the knot balling hard in his stomach. “
Si,
but … there are times when things do not work as we plan.”

Big dark eyes stared up at him. “She did not leave because of me? Because of what happened in the village … because I killed a white man?”

Ramon shook his head. “No, Two Hawks. You did only what any man would have done. You were trying to protect your loved ones. The senora understood that. Her leaving had nothing to do with you.”

But Two Hawks didn't seem to believe it, and in the weeks Caralee had been gone, the boy had become even more distant and brooding. It worried Ramon, though he didn't know what to do to help him.

It wasn't until six days after his return from the pond that the notion struck him, six days of trying not to think of Caralee. Yet it was seeing her again that had finally given him the idea of what he might do about the boy. It was early in the morning when he went to the corral in search of him.

“You wished to see me, Don Ramon?” Two Hawks approached at a run, his slim face covered by a sheen of perspiration.

“There is something I need you to do,
muchacho.
There is a bundle of the senora's things sitting on the couch in the
sala.
I want you to take them to her at Rancho del Robles.”

He blinked and the blood seemed to drain from his face. “You wish me to go to the senora?”

“
Si,
that is right.”

“Wh-what if she does not wish to see me?”