“I don’t ride her,” he said. “I’m too big for her.” He patted the horse where there was no saddle. “She’ll like you though. You’re both little.”
“I’m not getting on her. She’s wild.”
“She knows me,” Buckley said. “And I told her about you.”
The horse didn’t startle at Buckley’s touch. “How do you get her to stay?”
“She don’t stay the night, but if you let her go, she’ll let you find her the next day.”
“I don’t know how to ride bareback.”
“I’ll teach you. Her withers are just about flat. She’ll never fit a saddle, but she’ll be good for you to learn on. I’ll get you on her tomorrow.” He saw the first blush of the sun on the horizon, and sent la ruana off toward the thread of light. “She don’t like being around in the morning.” La ruana grew smaller in the distance, a flush of pink in the moonlight.
El caballo blanco nodded goodnight, but Adabella grabbed him before he could go. She slid one hand on the back of his neck, the other on his waist, and although he startled, he didn’t pull away.
She kissed him like she had thought of kissing him at night, his tongue hot between her lips. She still hated him for his silence, but she could not help thinking of him on his nightly paso de la muerte, chasing a pink horse that may or not have been a trick of the light. She thought of la ruana trusting him both for his sureness and his humility, his rough fingertips but gentle hands.
She gripped his thighs through his jeans, her body close enough to feel him harden. She ran her hands over his shirt, the fabric sticking to the perspiration on his chest. It was another thing to hate him for—that he was dressed, while she was in her nightgown with her hair unbrushed. She let him feel it when she untied the faja, lifted his shirt, and dug her nails into his lower back until she could smell the salt and iron of his blood. She heard the catch in his breathing, but it only got him harder.
He ran his hands through her hair, his fingers catching on new tangles. He grabbed her so hard she felt as though his hands would burn through her nightgown, leaving her naked. It made her wonder how she had gone years looking at him without knowing what his hands felt like. The only touch of his she’d ever known was the passing brush of his forearm or him helping her onto a horse. She wanted every touch she hadn’t had, like she’d shared a deep sleep with the girls in the cuentos de hadas, the fairytales of her aunt’s storybooks.
She pushed him up against the ash tree and slipped loose each of the buttons on his fly—not slowly like she had imagined, but quickly enough that he seemed surprised to have that part of him hard and naked so fast. She knew from the set of his teeth that she’d ignited the same wildness that sent him off on los pasos de la muerte.
He grabbed the backs of her thighs, taking her weight as she gripped her legs around his waist. It was dark enough, and she was drunk enough on the heat of his body that she might not have known he’d turned her if she hadn’t felt the ridges of the ash tree’s bark digging into her back. He pushed up her nightgown and pulled aside the lace between her thighs, her wetness coming off on his fingers.
At first she wished he couldn’t feel it, but she heard his groan, like he wanted it. His fingers swam over her as though he’d found the sugar water at the heart of an agave.
She reached between their bodies and stroked her fingertips over him, provoking him until he let her guide him inside her. It hurt like she wanted it to, like tapping her fingers on dry ice, like her nails on his back must have hurt him. She thought she felt him get harder. He heard the soft noise from the back of her throat and asked her whether he should stop, but the sound and warmth of his voice on her neck made her open. She bit his shoulder to show him how it hurt, like dry ice, so cold it stung with heat.
He bent his head to catch her mouth, and she drew in his tongue. His hands fidgeted with her hair and her nightgown, wanting to touch that agave heart again, but he didn’t, and she knew he was thinking of the calluses on the tips of his fingers.
She grabbed his hand and forced it between them, guiding his fingers to la perla, water-slicked as the moon in the river. Those calluses gave his touch the warmth and grain of late afternoon sand, like it was the desert making love to her, the whole sky, all that blue.
It was winter the day she became the wife of el caballo blanco. Adabella’s mother strung a dozen piñatas estrellas, each as blue as the llano sky, from the ash tree to mark the day. The children were already sleeping off the sugar from the wedding cajeta, and did not care for knocking them down. It was cold enough the paper gathered hoarfrost, and it glittered in the December morning like amethyst, blue and raw.
By Christmas, the ice would thicken and curl into petals and frost flowers, and Adabella and Buckley would see it from their window, una estrella fugaz held in the ash branches. In the spring the ice would give, and the paper would yield its thorn apples and coins of sugar cane like constellations letting stardust fall to Earth.
La ruana came to the ash tree just after midnight. The Rocío men did not see her come; they thought el caballo blanco and his wife were lying together for the first time. Buckley helped Adabella onto the horse’s blush-colored back, and then vanished into the dark. The mare’s body was warm under her thighs and hands, her mane full of the scent of sweat and earth and dust-covered strawberry blossoms.
La ruana knew the way to the wild corner of the llano. Adabella found Buckley out there, beneath those handfuls of stars, on the back of a horse too pale to be branded. They rode la ruana and that white mesteño toward the edge of the sky, until the sunrise turned the horizon pink as rock salt, and it was time to let them go.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
RANDI ALEXANDER writes erotic romance and has published with The Wild Rose Press. When she’s not writing about cowboys, she’s biking, snorkeling, or practicing her drumming in hopes of someday forming a tropical-rock band.
CHEYENNE BLUE, who also writes as Maggie Kinsella and Charles LeDuc, has appeared in over sixty anthologies, including Best Women’s Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Lesbian Love Stories, Girl Crazy, Lesbian Cowboys, Girl Crush, and Mammoth Best New Erotica. She will have several stories featured in upcoming anthologies in 2011 and 2012.
MICHAEL BRACKEN, an award-winning writer of fiction, non-fiction, and advertising copy, is the author of almost nine hundred short stories, several of which have appeared in Cleis Press anthologies.
CHAPARRITA has a fiery passion for sex, writing, travel, yoga, and anything juicy and stimulating. She’ll be featured in Best Women’s Erotica 2012 and has been featured in Clean Sheets. She’s lived and loved around the world, but currently calls the U.S. her home.
NENA CLEMENTS lives with her husband and the last two of her four children and a whole mess of animals on a quiet little place she refers to as “her piece of heaven” in rural Arkansas. She loves to transport her readers to a place where “happy ever after” is a reality.
SEDONA FOX is new to the romance and erotica world. She resides in Pennsylvania with her loving husband and animals. Currently, Sedona is working on a series of paranormal romance novels.
TAHIRA IQBAL is a UK-based writer who currently works in the film and TV industry, but writing is and will always be her first love. You can find her erotic vampire short story “The Queen,” in the Red Velvet and Absinthe anthology published by Cleis Press.
LORELEI JAMES, New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author, pens the Rough Riders and Blacktop Cowboys series—contemporary erotic western romances about cowboys and the women who love them. Lorelei’s books have won the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award and the CAPA Award. Lorelei lives in western South Dakota.
CAT JOHNSON is known for her creative research and marketing techniques. Consequently, some of her closest friends/ book consultants wear combat or cowboy boots for a living. She owns a collection of camouflage and western footwear for book signings, and she sponsors real live bull riders.
M. MARIE lives in the
heart of downtown Toronto, Canada, and has a profound passion for art and the theatre. Having previously won several young writer awards for her poetry and short stories, she is excited to now be enchanting new readers with her erotic writing.
LISSA MATTHEWS lives in North Carolina, right smack dab in the middle of NASCAR country, with her husband, two children, and seven cats. When not at the races, she can be found drinking coffee, writing, baking, or watching college football. Sometimes she can be found doing all these at the same time…
ANNA MEADOWS is a part-time executive assistant, part-time Sapphic housewife. Her work appears in six Cleis Press anthologies, including Girls Who Bite. She lives and writes in Northern California.
CARI QUINN, by day, saves the world one Photoshop file at a time in her job as a graphic designer. At night, she writes erotic romance, drinks way too much coffee, and plays her music way too loud. Oh, and she laughs. A lot.
CHARLENE TEGLIA has garnered several honors for her novels, including the prestigious Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award. Her work has been translated into Spanish, Thai, and German, excerpted in Complete Woman, and selected by the Rhapsody, Doubleday, and Literary Guild Book Clubs.
KIMBER VALE is an avid reader, writer, and gardener. She worked as an RN in a previous life. Currently, she raises three small people and puts fantasies to computer screen.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
DELILAH DEVLIN is a prolific and award-winning author of erotica and erotic romance with a rapidly expanding reputation for writing deliciously edgy stories with complex characters. Whether creating dark, erotically-charged paranormal worlds or richly descriptive historical and contemporary stories that ring with authenticity, Delilah Devlin “pens in uncharted territory that will leave the readers breathless and hungering for more” (Paranormal Reviews). Ms. Devlin has published more than a hundred erotic stories of multiple genres and lengths. She is published by Avon, Berkley, Kensington, Atria/ Strebor, Black Lace, Harlequin Spice, Ellora’s Cave, Samhain Publishing, and Cleis Press. Her published print titles include Into the Darkness, Seduced by Darkness, Darkness Burning, Darkness Captured, Down in Texas, Texas Men, Ravished by a Viking, and Enslaved by a Viking. She has appeared in Cleis Press’s Lesbian Cowboys, Girl Crush, Fairy Tale Lust, Lesbian Lust, Passion, Lesbian Cops, Dream Lover, Carnal Machines, and Best Erotic Romance (2012). Girls Who Bite, Delilah’s first effort as an editor for a Cleis collection, was released in 2011.
Copyright © 2012 by Delilah Devlin.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by Cleis Press, Inc., 2246 Sixth Street, Berkeley, California 94710.
eISBN : 978-1-573-44828-4
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