Authors: Janet Dailey
“Where will we ride?” Sheila turned her head to meet Ráfaga’s gaze.
Instead of looking at her, she found him watching the bouncing of her breasts, their fullness alternately relaxing and straining against the material of her cream-colored blouse. Immediately, Sheila reined the mare in,
her cheeks flaming scarlet. Ráfaga stopped his horse, too, his dark gaze sliding up to her face.
“Do not be embarrassed,” he said smoothly. “It is an altogether pleasing sight.”
“You invited me for a ride,” Sheila reminded him with icy disdain, “not to endure any disgustingly lewd looks from you.”
There was a wicked glint in his eyes, but he merely nodded once and nudged his horse forward again. “We will ride to the far end of the canyon,” he said, finally answering her first remark.
At the touch of the reins, the mare immediately moved out to match the loping canter of Ráfaga’s bay. “Can’t we go outside the canyon?” Sheila glanced to the pass through which she had entered the canyon stronghold so many days ago.
Ráfaga gave a negative shake of his head. “Perhaps another time we will.”
With the half-promise, Sheila had to be content. But the ride was a tantalizing taste of freedom. She sensed the fleetness of the mare in her long-reaching strides and perhaps the ability to outdistance his bay horse.
After cantering across the meadow to the far end of the canyon, Ráfaga turned into the trees. They wound their way through the grove, dodging limbs and thick brush at a fast walk.
Within the trees, the air was oppressively humid from the recent rain. Soon Sheila felt the clinging dampness of her blouse as disturbed branches sent minuscule showers spraying over her.
Looking through the trees, Sheila glimpsed the rear wall of an adobe building. It was the one she shared with Ráfaga. Their ride had nearly brought them full circle. Ahead there was a shimmer of silver glistening through the leaves. Minutes later, they rode into the clearing by the spring-fed pool and slowly walked their horses around it.
Sheila lifted her thick hair away from her neck, letting the small breeze cool her skin. “The pool looks inviting,” she murmured unconsciously.
“Would you like to bathe here after the ride?” Ráfaga inquired blandly.
“What?” She looked at him blankly before realizing she had spoken aloud before. “Yes, I would,” she answered quickly.
The brief nod he gave seemed to indicate she had his permission. Sheila bristled at his autocratic attitude, but he didn’t notice as he reined his horse into the lead. Soon they were riding out of the trees, with the corral just ahead. Again the man emerged from the canopy of the shed as they rode up.
“Did you have a good ride?” He held the mare’s head while Sheila dismounted.
“A very good ride,” Sheila assured him, running a hand over the mare’s long neck. “Arriba was a well-mannered lady.”
“She behaved herself, no?” he smiled. “She did not try to run away?”
“No. She was perfect.” She returned the smile.
“You like her, no?”
“I like her, yes,” Sheila laughed.
“Then she is yours.” His hand swept the air, palm upward, to indicate the mare. “I give her to you.”
“You can’t be serious!” Sheila protested. She glanced at Ráfaga, who was standing to one side, watching with distant amusement. “You’re not actually giving her to me, are you?”
“
Sí, sí
” he insisted. “Arriba is yours. I give her to you.”
Bewildered, Sheila looked again to Ráfaga, uncertain what to do. Amusement glittered in his eyes. There was an almost imperceptible nod of his head. Sheila took it to mean she was supposed to accept the horse as a gift.
With a confused smile, Sheila nodded her acceptance.
“Gracias.
I don’t really know how to thank you. She’s such a beautiful mare.”
“If she please you, that is enough,” he said.
Still, Sheila hesitated, wondering if something more was expected of her. The mare butted her head against
the Mexican’s chest, wanting the bridle removed. The roan horse was now Sheila’s. Was she supposed to see to its care?
A hand closed around her elbow. “We must go,” Ráfaga stated, indirectly providing an answer to that question.
“Is he really serious about giving me the mare?” she questioned when they were out of the man’s hearing range.
“
Sí
, he is very serious.” The slashing grooves deepened at the corners of his mouth, as if concealing amusement. “But he will be surprised if you take him literally.”
“I don’t understand.” Sheila shook her head, more confused now than before.
“It is a courtesy gesture,” Ráfaga explained with an indulgent gleam in his dark eyes, “to show his generosity. It would have offended his dignity if you had not accepted it, but he also expected you to tactfully leave the gift behind or give him one of equal value.”
“I see,” Sheila murmured.
“It is a custom of my country, a touch of chivalry. We say ‘my house is your house,’ and we mean it very sincerely, but we do not expect that you will take it and sell it.”
“I should hope not.” She laughed briefly, glancing up to his face in time to see a faint smile touch the hard line of his mouth.
Her pulse accelerated upon seeing the way the smile changed his rough features. Sheila realized how relaxed she had become with him and immediately stiffened, pulling her arm from the light grip of his hand. How could she find him so charming?
Having gathered soap and a towel from the house, they arrived at the spring-fed pool. Sheila knew it was useless to ask him to turn around while she undressed. Instead, she turned her back to him, stripping with disguised haste so that she could seek the concealing waters of the pool, where his appraising eyes couldn’t see her nakedness.
A sound caught Sheila’s attention. She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes rounding in surprise. Ráfaga was minus his boots and shirt, his bronzed torso gleaming naked in the sunlight.
“What are you doing?” she asked accusingly.
“Do you expect me to bathe with my clothes on?” countered Ráfaga. Not expecting her to respond to his rhetorical question, he began unfastening his pants.
Sheila quickly turned her head, the heat of anger and embarrassment flushing her cheeks. There was a second in which she was incapable of movement. She
should have expected this, she told herself. After last night, she should have expected anything. Foolishly, however, she had not.
She reached for her clothes, lying on the ground near her feet. “Just because you’ve forced me to sleep in your bed does not mean that I’m going to bathe with you!”
Before Sheila could make the first move to put back on her clothes, strong arms were swinging her off her feet. The bareness of her soft hip felt the hard muscles of his stomach, and her nipple was tickled by the cloud of dark hairs on his chest.
Her stifled shriek of protest went unheeded as he cradled her firmly in his arms. Holding herself rigid, Sheila glared into his implacable features.
“Put your clothes down,” Ráfaga ordered, “unless you wish to get them wet.”
“Don’t you know how much I despise you?” Sheila hissed futilely.
“Is that why you always challenge me?” The complacent glitter of his cold, dark eyes was mocking, almost daring her to fight him.
Trying to struggle would be useless. Ráfaga would simply carry her into the water, dry clothes and all. Perhaps it was overcoming her resistance that he enjoyed, Sheila thought angrily. If it was, this time she would disappoint him.
Stiffly, she dropped her clothes to the ground, neither relaxing in his arms nor trying to twist free. He carried her into the pool and not until he was waist-deep in the water did he withdraw the strong arm from beneath her thighs, letting her feet glide down to the bottom of the pool.
Sheila felt a childish urge to splash the cold water at his arrogant patrician features, but she resisted the temptation, knowing it would only provoke him into retaliation. And she knew too well his brand of retaliation.
Sheila was shorter than Ráfaga by several inches, and the cool water lapped at the upward curve of her breasts. The arm at her back was removed, his hand surfacing to offer the bar of soap to her. She looked
at it for tense seconds before taking it, carefully avoiding any contact with his hand.
Ráfaga turned in the water, facing away from her. Startled, Sheila didn’t understand his unexpected rejection of her, his failure to attempt to seduce her in this idyllic, sylvan setting. Not for one minute did she believe he wanted only to bathe and nothing more.
“Wash my back,” he commanded smoothly.
Her head jerked, her eyes throwing daggers at the vulnerable space between his shoulder blades. A scathing denial of his order was on the tip of her tongue. Sheila sank her teeth into her lower lip to forcibly silence a retort. That was what Ráfaga expected, and she knew he would take delight in forcing her to obey.
Stifling her resentment, she began to methodically soap his back, spreading the lather over the sinewy muscles of his shoulders and ribs. The lather gave a silken feeling to his hard flesh. It became increasingly difficult to remain detached while she washed him.
Her sensitive fingers felt the slight flexing of his biceps as her hands moved over his left arm. Sheila knew the strength of those arms and hands, strength in punishment and in making love. The latter she could not forget, not with the red welts on his shoulders to remind her.
Sheila moved to his right arm to avoid the sight of the worst wound she had inflicted. The scratches looked angry and sore. She couldn’t help wondering if the soap wasn’t making them sting. She tried to convince herself that she hoped it did, but her mind was too busy trying to control the rising awareness of her senses to be totally vindictive.
Turning at an angle in the water, Ráfaga faced her, presenting the naked expanse of his chest for her ministrations. The aloof mask over his features made her feel like a slave girl washing her master.
His male beauty wiped every other thought from her mind. Her gaze kept wanting to slide below the water level at his waist. Sheila trembled with the effort to
keep her attention focused on the curling hairs of his chest.
Then Ráfaga was taking the bar of soap from her hands. “It is my turn.” His voice was velvet-soft, huskily caressing.
She was without willpower as his hands touched the bare flesh of her shoulders. The soapy lather being spread over her soft skin was an erotic stimulant to the senses that were already aroused by his masculinity.
When his hands cupped her breasts, Sheila felt her nipples hardening in his palms. The massaging action of his strong fingers ignited a fire in her loins, a flaming desire to know the fullness of his possession.
One hand slid to the small of her back beneath the water line while the other continued its sensuous caress of her breast. The buoyancy of the water made Sheila feel as if she floated against him. His hand slid farther down to spread over the softly full cheeks of her bottom. As she was arched toward him, Sheila felt the male hardness of his need.
A fluttering of resistance asserted itself and she pressed her hands against his chest. His mouth opened over her lips, tasting their sweetness to the fullest. There was a roaring in her ears at the demanding mastery of his kiss. Yet, somehow, Sheila managed to cling to her fragile resistance.
While her lips parted under the command of his probing tongue, she kept the rest of her body stiff to his touch. She could feel the beat of his heart beneath her hands and the ripple of his muscles that could so easily overpower her, but they didn’t.
“Do not close your legs to me, Sheila,” he whispered thickly against her lips.
He sounded so emotionless, so detached from everything but his own passion that Sheila had to object to what he demanded of her.
“No.” Her protest was muffled by the incessant possession of his male lips.
“Open them,” Ráfaga ordered.
The arm half-encircling her back tightened in command.
She obeyed willingly and was lifted up to receive the thrust of his hips. Her faint moan of unwilling satisfaction was blocked by his exploring tongue. The water lapped at her skin, but it was unable to quench the fires of their passion now blazing with one flame. Her fingers curled into the black thickness of his hair as orgasmic shudders quaked her body. It was like drowning, then surfacing with a rush to new, dizzying heights.
Mindless, unconscious of time or place, Sheila let him carry her away to the unknown reaches of desire. She ceased to think of Ráfaga as her ruthless captor. Never had she dreamed she could be so totally abandoned in the giving of herself, nor so selfishly eager to receive all that was given back.
When the flames had burned themselves out, it was several minutes before Sheila could fight through the blackness. Opening her passion-drugged eyes, she saw Ráfaga lazily watching her. In her mind, she acknowledged that he owned her body and soul and realized, fatalistically, that no one else would ever hold such power over her flesh and spirit.
She moved her head in silent protest against the fates and discovered with a start that she was lying on the grassy bank. She couldn’t remember Ráfaga carrying her to shore. It frightened her the way his touch could make her forget everything.
He was lying on his side next to her, his hand resting intimately on her stomach. Sheila noticed the smouldering look of satisfaction in his dark eyes. It reminded her of a jungle cat that had just feasted on its prey and was now replete.
“I hate you,” she spat out weakly, knowing it wasn’t quite true.
There was a flash of white as Ráfaga smiled and rolled to his feet. “I wish all my enemies hated the way you do, especially if they looked like you,” he mocked, raking her naked length briefly with his gaze before walking over to dress.
It galled her that he found her words amusing, but it was worse knowing she had given him ample cause to
taunt her. Tight-lipped, she dressed hurriedly. Desperately, Sheila wanted to vow she would never betray herself again, but she doubted it was a promise she could keep.