by Martha Hix
She studied him, trying to assess the name of this new game. Recreation for an idle hand, perhaps? Rather than answer, she said, “Help me, Rafe. You’re a musician. What is this music?”
“How do you know I’m a musician?”
“Don’t . . . don’t be absurd. It’s well known that you are a guitarist.” Olga told me so.
He hooked an ankle with one of hers, and his palm smoothed over her shoulder, before his thumb flicked her breast ever so lightly, ever so exciting. “Tell me what you know about me.”
Her heart pounded when his thumb made another foray at her breast. “Y-you’re a dangerous man,” she managed to answer. What do you mean to do with me?
“I am not dangerous. I am a simple Mexican bull breeder.”
“And the pope is just a Catholic.”
Rafe chuckled and relaxed back in his chair, bringing the wine goblet to his infinitely kissable lips, and the look that he gave her was one that pulled—pulled? No! Yanked—her into the flare of his incendiary gaze. “You are the dangerous one, querida. Brave, unwilling to give in. That’s where your beauty lies, in your spirit.”
“Of course. And Yorkshire shoats lay golden eggs. If you’re not dangerous, explain about your uncle. Or explain all this.” She gestured around the restaurant. “A businesswoman turns away clientele, and that same woman lights candles to thank Mexico’s patron saint for your return. Carmelita says you gave up the bullring for a more noble cause. Did she tell the truth?”
“She did. The suerte de matár began to sicken me with its violence. I likened it to the violence and brutality wreaked upon the luckless of this country.”
“You amaze me.”
“Is that good or bad?” he asked, and leaned forward to trace his fingertip along her jaw.
“Good,” she answered, not certain whether she meant his history or his touch, for her face tingled where he stoked. “You must have been an impressive rebel in your heyday, Rafe.”
His chest puffing, he smoothed his hair back. “I was.”
“I’d like to hear all about it.”
“Let’s not discuss bygone days.”
“Let’s do. I’m thinking—”
“Shhh.” He took her hand in his. “Quit thinking, little witch. You overtax your brain with all your suppositions and theories.” His knee settled against hers. “Dance with me.”
Gracious, his was a tempting offer, but Margaret was no vision of suppleness and form on the dance floor. In fact, Frederick the Crumb, after leading her in a polka at the German Club in San Antonio, had made snide allusions to Hugo’s Quasimodo gamboling on the Ile de la Cité. “I don’t dance.”
With his thumb Rafe wiped a line of condensation down from his glass. “At all?”
“Not to this. It is much too vigorous for me.”
“You have been in Spain. Did you not dance the flamenco, querida?”
“The flamenco is for gypsies.”
“Let yourself be a gitana tonight.” His lips twitched as he studied each of her features in turn. In a voice soft, quiet, attentive, he asked, “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” Thinking of golden earrings and the flaring skirts of gypsy dancers, she took a sip of the icy sangria. She wasn’t prepared to make a fool of herself, but the idea of spinning around the dance floor did have its charms. “I’m quite recovered, thank you. My long nap was what the doctor ordered.”
“That is good. For you will dance with me.”
The drums went rap, tap, rap . . . deep and low. Rafe stood, offered a hand that she waved away.
“Do you deny me because you haven’t settled your mind about this music?” Not giving her time for a reply, he said, “It is the sound of a place you should know well. It is the sound of Cuba. Have you not been there?”
“No.” The McLoughlin interests were wide in Spain’s misbehaving child in the Caribbean. Plus, Papa and Mama owned a sugar plantation and rum distillery outside Havana. They used to visit the island frequently. And Cuba was the center of her father’s political crisis, but . . . “No, I haven’t.”
“I’m surprised. But Cuba is far away. And tonight. . . we shall dance.”
“I said no.”
Unlike the merchants of this city, Rafe understood the word no. He moved a couple of footsteps toward the musicians, presenting his back and centering his attention on the bandstand. One wide shoulder stirred, in time with the music. The stark white of his shirt, the blood red sash at his waist, those tight black britches—this attire seemed perfect for a lithe body such as his. But what was he about? Did he intend to dance for her?
She watched, mesmerized, as his body moved ever so lightly to the primitive beat, then made a half turn. In profile, a lock of hair having fallen to his brow, he squinted at the stars before dropping his chin as if in thought. One foot tapped in rhythm, and he became as one with the music. Lithe of motion, hypnotic in effect, he must have looked like this when he’d lured the toros to him.
He lifted and swung his chin, extending a hand in silent invitation. She didn’t move. “Come to me, querida.”
Something invisible pulled her, something such as a moth to the flame. On her feet Margaret went into the Eagle’s arms—and they were warm, strong, encircling. Yet she remained jumpy. “I have two left feet. I don’t know what to do.”
“Just follow my lead,” was his creamy reply. “Dancing is an expression of letting go one’s reserve. Soar with me, paloma.”
Unable to argue giving over control—not particularly wanting it at this point, for she had tumbled headlong into dementia—she let him twine his fingers with hers. Gyrating his hips and lifting their joined hands high, he threw back his head and emitted a groan as earthy as the music. She stepped closer, and when she did, she felt the heat of his body, the raw power of it, the invitation of a journeyman lover.
Rafe’s gaze never leaving her, he released Margaret’s fingers and began to dance around her, his muscled form moving expertly, erotically. “Follow your desires, amorcito. Do as your feelings demand.”
Her weight rocked from one foot to the other. As if they had minds of their own, her feet vibrated in step with the sounds. Her nervousness vanished as the mood of the evening enveloped her.
Utterly agile, ever nimble, Rafe inched closer, his chest touching hers. Excitement flashed through her. Drunk on the dance, on him, she rolled her shoulder to his. “This must be what it feels like to fly,” she murmured thickly.
“Sí, sí, mi paloma.” The tip of his tongue touched her earlobe. “Fly high, paloma. Fly free.”
He was taunting her, daring her, beseeching her. She loved it. Suddenly the music switched rhythms, but neither she nor Rafe missed a step, and her body curved to his. He growled deep in his throat, and ground his hips against her pelvis. The difference between them, the feel of their heated bodies in contact . . . oh, my! All of a sudden one of his arms braced her waist, the opposite hand twining with her fingers anew. Around and around he twirled her, their toes tapping, their fingers snapping, their hearts beating fast. In tune with each other.
“ ‘España Cañi,’ ” she murmured when he whirled her around.
“Sí, querida. ‘España Cañi.’ The procession for the bullfighters.”
She had heard this song in Ronda, a town built high on an olive-dotted precipice in the Sierra Nevadas of Andalusia. It was a village famed for its bullring, and home to the late Francisco Romero, the first matador of great fame. In Ronda, as well as when Rafe had played these strains on his guitar, she’d never known this clarion call to blood sport could also become a song of seduction. Not until now. The song lured her, pulled her to Rafe—to his eyes and lips and body movements. She trembled, her flesh heated to the scorching point, as he made love to her without ever touching her intimately.
The trumpet lifted. The musicians brought the music to a crescendo, and began to gather and pack their instruments. And Rafe pulled Margaret even closer.
“Te quiero, Mah-gah-reeta. Hoy.”
For whatever reason, and she didn’t wish to study on it, he wanted her. Now. She wanted him . . . now. And the musicians departed. So had Carmelita and the waiter. Margaret and Rafe were alone.
Ten
Margaret smiled into his eyes. “I want you, too.”
Rafe carried her into the small darkened room where she had napped the day away, then laid her on the cot. She rolled to her side, making room, and he stretched out next to her. Her greedy fingers went to his chest, her every action a celebration. She hummed low in her throat at how the flesh-toasted cross felt in relation to chest hair soft as a sigh.
It was the same as she remembered it . . . from long ago. “So very, very nice.”
“I’m pleased you approve,” he said silkily. “The cross was a gift from my sister. María Carmen.”
Of course, Margaret didn’t correct him.
He dispensed with her hairpins, murmuring, “That’s better.”
Their lips met, their arms winding round each other, and her fingers now furrowed through the thick hair at Rafe’s nape. Trailing kisses to her ear, he whispered, “I have gone loco for the need of you.”
Her passions climbed to an even higher level, as he continued kissing and caressing her. The scent of him filled her senses richly, deliciously, with overtones of sandalwood cologne, not at all cheap. Her head lolled backward as he sipped from her throat and drew the drawstrings of her blouse below her breasts.
“They . . . they aren’t much,” she said worriedly, as he eased back to gaze upon the muted sight of her. “Not like they used to be.” Not like Olga’s.
“For me,” he said, echoing a reference he’d made about himself, back at his ranch, “big things come in small packages, querida.”
His head dipped to take a crest into his mouth; her fingers tangled in his hair, she pressed him to her. He suckled and laved and caressed, laved and suckled and stroked, giving each breast its share of attention. Both peaks grew hard as pebbles. Her woman-place became heavy, aching for surcease. Never, not even in her wildest dreams—not even in her recollections of the night his hands had sought her hidden places and she’d encouraged him onward—had she imagined the preamble to coitus could be this . . . stimulating.
A low growl issued from Rafe’s throat as he groaned, “You’re amazing. I thought you’d be an icicle. But you are hot as the most blistering day of July. I like the surprises of you.”
His praise thrilled her, left her feeling as if she were the world’s most special woman, which was a wonderful feeling for a woman long ignored and much too insecure about her appeal. Her qualms vanished. Enraptured, she kissed him, but he took the aggressive role, his tongue slipping into her mouth.
“I’m going to undress you,” he whispered when he dragged his mouth away; his toes traced her ankle.
“Yes, do.”
“And you will do the same for me?” he asked.
Strip him? Cowardice and inexperience reared, now that she was on the brink of experiencing the Big Secret, yet she whispered in return, “With pleasure.”
“I wish to kiss you. Everywhere. But first . . .” He took her hand and guided it to the warmed silk of his trousers; he made her fingers fasten around the abundance of him. “Know your power, cariño. This is what you do to me.”
“Oh, my.” In the shadow of the Alamo she’d wanted to explore his flesh as he explored hers, but she’d gotten no further than his chest when a constable had shouted them apart. There was no one to stop them tonight. “You are finely made.”
A world of wonders fit him. He was rigid and hard—so very hard, like a brick. Hot, hot like a kiln. And he was large, very large. She ached to have him in her, yet her curiosity begged appeasing. “Do you hurt?”
“Very much.” He nuzzled her neck. “You will make it better.”
Ever inquisitive, she found herself much in awe of how the male appendage functioned. Olga, when newly wed, had been a wellspring of information about sex, but the intricacies of physiology were sadly lacking. When Margaret tried to get to the bottom of a list of questions, Sister Ninny had gotten all flustered and Victorian-acting. Charity, too, had expounded on the beauties of passion, but, like Olga, she was no scholar and didn’t reckon on matters in a studious fashion. Passion was one thing, a fertile mind another. “I wonder how it gets hard like this.”
“It is you, amorcito. Just being around you does it.”
“Rafe, you’re exaggerating. I’ve been in your company numerous times, and I would have noticed if you’d gotten this way. Only the blind would miss it.” Blind. Don’t think about Olga’s affliction. “Aren’t you going to say something?”
“Margarita . . . not now. Later.”
“But, Rafe—”
“Shhh. Be quiet.”
“I will not.”
“Mujer. I am trying to make love to you.” His hand smoothed over her hip. “Hush, or you’ll spoil the mood.”
“All I asked is how your you-know-what got hard. If you don’t know, please don’t worry about appearing stupid. I share your ignorance.”
No longer thrilled with her surprises, he uttered a string of curses while rearing back from her. “If you want to know how one goes soft, observe!”
She’s gone. Lost to me. Life ain’t fair.
The wind lowed like a mournful steer. A tumbleweed rolled end over end to crash against the train depot wall. That hot desert zephyr then burst, blowing Tex McLoughlin’s Stetson off his head, all ten gallons of it landing on the steel tracks that glinted in the unrelenting sun. These were the tracks where the westbound train had departed ten minutes ago. Natalie Nash had not been aboard, either on arrival or at departure.
A piece of newspaper whirled across Tex’s path. He glanced upward and to the right, to the parched and serrated peaks of Mount Cristo Rey, then to the left, in the direction of the flatter foreign land across the river. It seemed to reflect his emptiness, the loneliness of the desert.
A carriage pulled out, taking a quartet of men away. Apparently, they too had waited in vain for an arriving passenger. Tex had seen them here yesterday; today the one in charge had said in Spanish, “She betrayed me. Once more the bitch has let me down. She’ll never do it again.”
The world was full of woebegone men, Tex decided, and glanced up the tracks, toward Alpine. “I shouldn’t’ve listened to Maggie,” Tex said, grieving to the only other being in sight, a black-and-tan mutt who’d taken up with him this morning. “I should’ve stayed put in Alpine. And done what I wanted to, not what I was expected to do.”
For all his twenty-two years, Angus Jones McLoughlin had been the dutiful scion carrying the required baton. Gil and Lisette McLoughlin’s surviving son would raise cattle and younguns on the Four Aces Ranch. This was how it was done in Texas. A man wouldn’t even have to be too clever in the doing, since most ranches were money-making propositions already, the Four Aces a gold mine beyond compare; and even if it wasn’t, the family fortune had been invested and reinvested. Wholly in lucrative enterprises.
So . . . at the proper time and with some retiring little woman at his side, Tex would branch out into politics, following in his father’s footsteps. That’s what you did, when you were a Texan with money in the bank and cattle on the hoof. He’d always felt he wasn’t cut out for the highfalutin sort of life, though. He was a country boy and common cowpoke by choice. For Miss Natalie, though, he would change into anything she wanted, if she wanted.
“Money or nothing else don’t matter,” he lamented to the cur. “She’s gone, gone, gone.”
And all he had to remember her by was a heart full of pain and one small kiss, given just before the train had pulled out of Alpine. Though he barely knew the blonde beauty, he was positive no other woman would ever do for him. Tex was a man who knew his mind.
After spitting a particle of dust from his tongue, Tex reached down to give the mutt a scratch on the ear and to grasp his hat. “Duty calls. I’ve got to find my sister. And fetch our mother.”
His luck, to his way of thinking, had never been that good.
The trip by wagon into the Chihuahuan Desert and toward the Sierra Madres couldn’t be considered anything but a trial. While Rafe was glad to be back in Mexico, his mood was as black and sour as a grizzly bear disturbed in winter.
His aggravation wasn’t necessarily because the wagon was too bogged down with Margarita’s heavy steamer trunks, or because Tex McLoughlin had done nothing but pout like an offended schoolboy. It was because his sister sat next to Rafe on the spring seat and chattered like a damned monkey. She acted as if nothing had happened at Carmelita’s, but Rafe had not forgotten, not for a moment. Losing his potency brought him great shame. It had never happened before.
“She might have had me under some magnifying glass,” he told himself for the tenth time in four days. Since Carmelita’s, he’d made no further attempts at lovemaking, not even when she flirted with him at the quaint inns—mésons—where they took quarters. Had he gotten too old for the feats of a Don Juan? If that first gray hair he’d yanked from his scalp was an indicator, walking sticks and liniment were on the horizon.
Worthless to the ladies, what could he do with the rest of his miserable life? What was his purpose? Paying respect to Hernán’s sacrifice, that was his purpose.
How to accomplish it, that was the question.
On the fifth morning of their journey to Eden Roc, about three hours after they had left the village of Moctezuma, Rafe drove the wagon onward, Margarita beside him, her brother snoring from a makeshift bed atop the trunks. Thank God for those snores. Rafe didn’t know how much more of Young Siegfried’s bellyaching he could take. And if I never hear the name Natalie Nash again, it will be too soon.
“Would you like one of these?” Margarita asked and offered a tin of cookie crumbs.