by Flora Kidd
'By your hands. Jovita's are like a bird's claws. Yours are but you haven't answered my question. How many men have you massaged in the way you've just massaged me?'
She had only massaged female patients in the hospital in England. Body massage of male patients had been done by male therapists.
'None,' she replied, pulling the covers up to his waist again and sitting down on the edge of the bed.
'I'm glad,' he muttered. Tor dios, if there were any I'd have to find them and kill them because they had
felt your hands before I had!'
`Do you have to be so violent,' she exclaimed, and added as a thought struck her, 'Or so jealous?'
'So! Now I am violent and jealous as well as arrogant, unprincipled, deceitful, immoral and depraved,' he said in a savage undertone. 'I am the sort of man you don't care for.' He turned and heaved himself into a sitting position. 'Then why have you come back?' he shot at her.
Above the dark blur of his beard stubble his face was pale, the high cheekbones very prominent, but his eyes glittered with pale fire beneath heavy lids as their glance raked her.
'Did Eugenia send for you and tell you it was your duty as my wife to come?' he sneered.
`No, she didn't.' His attitude confused her. 'I came because ...' She stopped. She couldn't look at him because the urge to reach out, pull him into her arms and cradle his head against her breast to comfort him in his pain was overwhelming. She swallowed and said tonelessly, 'Why didn't you tell me you were going to fight on Wednesday?'
`Because I didn't know until that morning. The matador from Mexico who should have performed was taken ill and Diego asked me to substitute for him. I went back to the house to tell you, but you weren't there.' He gave her such a scornful glance that she felt shrivelled and he said dryly, 'Thanks for the note. It was most explicit. That's why I'm surprised you're here —I thought you'd left me.'
She bowed her head, tormented by the knowledge that he wouldn't be lying there half-drugged with painkilling pills if she hadn't left that beastly note.
'Oh, I wish I'd known, I wish I'd known,' she moaned suddenly. 'I wouldn't have gone to Medellin if I'd
known you were going to fight. It's my fault you were hurt.'
'Your fault? What the hell gives you that idea?' he demanded stiffly.
'Diego told me that you mustn't be disturbed in an way before you go into the arena. He said that's what happened at Manizales.'
'Did he?' His laugh was short and sardonic, making her look at him in surprise. He was leaning back against the pillows watching her with wary narrowed eyes. 'And so you assumed that note of yours disturbed me
Diego tells a good tale when he wants to.'
'What do you mean?' she asked, quivering again with pain in reaction to his cynicism.
'I asked him to do his best to persuade you to stay and watch the fight on Tuesday,' he drawled. `So he told you that story in order to touch your conscience. Not a bad psychologist, is he? You stayed not because you didn't want me to be hurt but because you didn't want to have a guilty conscience.'
'But you were disturbed before going into the arena at Manizales,' she blurted, in bewilderment. 'Jovita told me you were very upset when you heard your brother had committed suicide.'
Tor dios, you've been having a great time, haven't you, checking up on me behind my back?' he jeered. 'And now that guilty conscience of yours has brought you rushing to my bedside. Why? Are you afraid I'll die
- without forgiving you? Then let me ease it for you. It was my own fault. I was showing off as usual, giving the crowds a few thrills for their money, both at Manizales and in Copaya the other day. I let the bulls get too near and didn't jump out of the way quickly enough. At Manizales it was a big bull which still had a lot of spirit and fight left in it. On Wednesday it was a little bull,
young and perhaps timid. It was just coincidence that it happened on the day you decided you'd desert me. The other ,was coincidence too.'
The low-pitched jeering voice stopped. She couldn't have felt more hurt if Juan had taken a whip in his hand and had scourged her with it, Sorrel thought.
It wasn't your fault,' he went on, his voice slightly muffled. 'Now get out, go back to Medellin or England or wherever it is you want to be. I don't want you hanging around me just because your conscience is pricking you.'
She looked at him. He had turned away from her so she couldn't see his face.
`I'm not hanging around you because I feel conscience-stricken,' she said. 'I've come back because I ... I ... think I might be in love with you.'
He turned, his head, opened one eye to look at her and his mouth twisted sceptically.
'Might?' he repeated mockingly. 'You think you might? What good is that to a man with hot blood in his veins like me?'
'It's true,' she retorted, feeling the old familiar irritation flare up in reaction to his taunt.
He turned his head away from her again.
'Go away,' he groaned. 'Leave me alone to get on with my dying.'
`No, no ! ' She was frantic, not knowing what to do or say to convince him. In desperation she pulled back the bedcovers and lay down beside him, putting her arm about him, pressing herself against his back. 'Juan, you're not going to die, I won't let you die because I love you and I want you to live so I can stay and live with you. You said once that was what you wanted, and now I want it too because I've found out I love you, love you. Do you hear?' Tears flowed suddenly from her
eyes to wet his skin. 'Oh, Juan, what can I do to convince you? Please tell me!'
He turned slowly until he was facing her, his eyes still narrowed and watchful.
'You could try kissing me,' he suggested softly. 'You don't have to be shy with me now that we're married.'
She put her lips to his mouth. His lips felt dry and hot, but they pressed back with a fervency which sent desire leaping along her nerves so that she reached out a hand to touch his scarred cheek gently and then smooth back the thick hair from his ear.
'Te quiero, Sorrel. I want you, Sorrel,' he said in Spanish. 'I want you now, with every part of me.'
'Wanting isn't the same as loving,' she replied in English, quivering with delight as his lips visited the hollows of her throat and then the cleft between her breasts just revealed by the bodice of her nightgown.
'In Spanish it is,' he said also in English. 'Listen. Te quiero—I want. Te quiero—I love you. Te quiero muchismo—I love you very much. If you didn't know that before, your mother didn't teach you Spanish very well,' he mocked. 'And I always make love in Spanish, so I've been telling you ever since Monday afternoon I love you and you wouldn't listen to me. I love you and want you, and I can't lie close to you like this without wanting to show how much I love you.'
He slipped his fingers under the strap of her nightgown and began to slide it off her shoulder.
'Do you have to wear this?' he asked. 'It comes between us, and I don't want anything to come between us anymore. There have been enough barriers.'
She edged away from him a little, not wanting to go, but afraid he might open up the wound in his left arm if he did anything too energetic.
'I only came to see if you were comfortable,' she
`I can sleep in the other room.'
`No,' He dragged her back against him and for a moment she was helpless beneath the passionate onslaught of his mouth against hers. 'You'll stay here,' he added thickly, against her cheek. 'And we'll sleep together tonight and every other night. It will be your punishment for leaving me so soon after we were married.'
`Sweet punishment,' she said, nestling against him. `But in a way I'm glad I left you—I mightn't have found out I loved you if I hadn't. Have you really loved me since we met?'
`Si. Not at first with the mind, you understand? Only with the eyes. When I first saw you in the refugio. In looks you were all I had ever searched for in a woman. You remember how I kept staring at you?'
`Oh, yes, I remember, and I thought ... I thought ...'
`You thought bad thoughts about me,' he accused. `And I began to find out you were different from any other woman I'd ever known. Even though you were hurt and lost you put on a brave show and I admired your independence. You answered back when I taunted you and did some taunting of your own. In fact you presented a challenge I hadn't met before and I began to think what fun it would be to live with you for a while. But I couldn't get through that defensive barrier you'd built up around yourself, in the short time we were together. I didn't know of any way I could meet you again, so I threw out a wild lure, told you to come and see me if you needed help.' He laughed softly on a note of triumph. 'It worked far better than I had expected. You came here. The next move was to persuade you to stay.' He sighed. 'In the process of doing that I discovered how innocent and vulnerable you were and a great urge to protect you as well as keep you for myself
made me realise I wanted you to be more than a playmate. I wanted you to be my wife, not just to convince Ramon Angel that I wasn't interested in his wife, although it did occur to me that if I married it would be a better way of convincing him than the way you had suggested.'
'Oh.' Sorrel felt suddenly very humble as she realised what Juan had meant when he had told her he had married her in the hope of stopping gossip about himself and Monica. 'I ... I ... didn't understand,' she muttered. 'Oh, Juan, I'm sorry I was so mean to you that morning.'
'I am sorry too,' he agreed with her with his usual devastating honesty. 'I was very hurt. I can't remember having been hurt by anything a woman said to me before, and it was a new and frightening experience. It made me realise how involved I had become with you, and that made me angry. I said things to you I've regretted saying ever since. I'm not surprised you ran away, and I didn't believe you'd come back.'
'If you hadn't been gored in the arena would you have followed me?' she had to ask.
'I might,' he drawled aggravatingly. 'But then I might not.'
`Pride,' she accused softly.
`Si. You can add it to that long list of my vices you've been making,' he said ironically. 'But tell me, querida, would you have sunk your pride and come back to me if I hadn't been gored?'
'I don't know,' she whispered, reluctantly truthful because he was. 'But I think I might.'
`So let's not talk about it anymore, hmm?' He smoothed the gown away from her with gentle fingers. `Let's make the most of being together here and now. Let's make love to each other, my lovely Sorrel.'
But you're weak, from loss of blood,' she protested anxiously.
`You think so?' he drawled. 'Then you'll have to help me, won't you? Let me show you what to do. First you must kiss me again, on the mouth, and while you're doing that I'll show you what to do next. You needn't worry about it being wrong to do it with me, because I'm your husband and it's done in all the best marriages —where there is love, of course.'
He was taunting her gently, lovingly, but when she pressed her lips against his he responded with a fierce passion and at once the melting sensuousness flooded through her body, sweeping away all defences and committing her forever to the of love.