not at all pleasant as she ruminated on what she would like to
do to him. And he had the nerve to say she was impossible!
She heard him come to his room, checked the luminous dial on her watch bedside her and saw it had gone midnight and hoped he would have the same trouble getting to sleep that she was having. Why should he sleep the sleep of the easy conscience after the way he had been to her?
At last she did fall asleep, but not for long. Had she known the weather pattern of the country better, known about the tormenta, a localised thunderstorm, she would not have fallen asleep at all.
The night had been unusually hot, and it was the rumble of thunder that disturbed her, its dying roll still audible as she came fully awake. And disappearing with the sound went all memory of what she would like to do to the man she had married.
Lightning forked vividly in the sky, and her stomach knotted up in tension as she jerked upright waiting for the thunder to follow. It followed almost at once, making her fingers fly to her ears, and her heart thudded as she tried not to cry out.
Again lightning lit the sky. Lit the whole room, thunder—crashing so loud it was impossible to deaden—hard on its heels. Reggie's mouth went dry, all thought ceasing, as fear consumed her as she huddled in the centre of the bed.
Oh God, I can't stand it, she thought, as thunder came again, cracking with a violence of such force as she had never heard before, Lightning chased it so that she was unsure which came first. Then both came together—the blinding light, the ear-splitting crash. It was right overhead and she wanted to scream in panic. The lifeless faces of her parents haunted her, that memory brought vividly to life.
How many minutes she sat petrified, the storm, the rain lashing the windows, fighting to handle it by herself, she couldn't have said. But when another flash came, making her gasp for breath in her fear, everything around appearing fluorescent, she just couldn't take any more. Like lightning herself she was off the bed, streaking for the communicating door, careless that Severo might throw her out, might still be the cruel, heartless person she had left in the dining room. Thunder, and the door was open. She was through it, calling his name in her terrible fear.
Lightning speared light into the room, her sucked-in breath leaving in a scream. She had a brief moment to see Severo sit up in bed, but in the silence that followed the thunder was too overwrought to hear anything he had to say, but she was pouring out:
`I'm frightened—oh, Severo, I'm so frightened! Please—p-please let me stay with you.'
Lightning lit the room again. She saw his lips move but heard not a word. She saw only that he had pulled the bed sheet back from the other half of the double bed, and as thunder continued in the most deafening racket overhead, she needed no second invitation to hurl herself across the room to the bed and into his arms, barely aware that he hadn't rejected her.
`I can't help it,' she cried when the noise abated temporarily, clinging to him, unaware that only her thin nightdress separated them and nudity. She was completely in the grip of her fear as she babbled out the way her parents had died, the fact that she had been in the car with them, and her fear of thunderstorms ever since.
Severo cradled her for long, long minutes, his voice soothing, his touch on her bare arm as he stroked her in comforting movements quieting when thunder, not sounding so loud now, came again. But thunder was still
about and Reggie was terrified the storm might return.
`Will will it come back again?' she asked tremulously, her fear apparent though rhyme and reason were trying to get a footing.
`It may, querida,' he told her quietly, continuing to stroke her with one hand his other arm about her trembling shoulders. 'It does sometimes.'
`Oh?' escaped fearfully, then she was suddenly aware of him where before she hadn't been. 'I'm—I'm sorry,' she stammered, conscious of that movement of his hand on her arm, his arm around her. Knowledge came, when she discovered she had her arms around him, that it was a warm muscly bare back she was touching, that he didn't appear to have anything on!
`Do not be sorry, my sweet one,' Severo answered in a low tone. 'Who else would you come to in such a moment but your husband?'
Reggie would have moved her arms from him then. But a low rumble of thunder, sounding very much to her sensitive ears as though it was on its way back, had her hands gripping against him.
`I'm such a baby,' she groaned apologetically, and said no more because Severo had placed gentle lips against hers. It could have been a kiss of comfort—she wasn't sure.
`Your fear is understandable, little one,' he said softly, unhurriedly moving her as he spoke till she was lying on her back. 'It must have been a tremendous shock to your young system to have been in such an accident, apart from anything else.'
His hand had resumed its stroking of her arm, only this time it seemed to her to be more of a caress, and when thunder sounded to be coming closer, her hands clutched at the back of him, bringing his chest down against hers.
`Severo,' she gasped, this time not knowing if she called his name because of the thunder, or why .. .
`Shh!' he hushed her, and this time when his lips met hers, her own parted to meet them.
Then the thunder was in her heart, her heart thundering as though it would leap from her body. For Severo's caresses were becoming more intimate. The straps from her nightdress were slipped down her arms, her naked shoulders caressed, drawing a need from her to touch him, making her hands rove his back, an awareness of him as a man, as her husband, sending a thrill of sensuous pleasure through her, thoughts of where her actions were leading, her response to him, not touching her.
Then suddenly the lips that had been teasing hers alive were bringing a pressure to bear that told her, as well as the hand that left her shoulder and had her gasping as he touched her uncovered breast, that this was for real.
`Severo,' she breathed, but it was only a half hearted protest, for his mouth had transferred to the hardened peak his hand had moments before captured, and as his lips moulded, embraced that sensitive area, she just had to hold him tightly, unable to deny the pleasure he was giving her.
When he found her nightdress an encumbrance, his hands moving upwards with the material against her leg, then thigh, her objection as she felt his hand on her hip had her halting him for the briefest of moments as he would have removed her covering.
`What is it, querida?' he asked softly, just as though he knew she wasn't really objecting at all.
'I...' She was swamped suddenly with shyness. 'Oh, Severo,' she said, 'I didn't mean to stop you,' and, glad of the darkness, for her colour was scarlet, 'It's just—I've never—been this way with a man before.'
She didn't know how she expected him to take that, but his hands left her body to come either side of her face, where gently he kissed her lips. 'You don't have to lie to me,' he said quietly as though he understood these things.
I'M not lying, Severo.' Something in her voice, some honesty it would have been impossible to miss, had him still for tense seconds. 'You're the first man ..
She didn't finish. With a wondrous gladdened murmur of, 'Oh, amor mio!' Severo gathered her to him. And then with a tenderness, a gentleness she would have thought unbelievable had she not witnessed it at first hand from the tall, often aggressive, many times angry man she knew him to be, he set about making love to her in a way that had her enchanted.
Her nightdress had long since been dispensed with when with a touch that had her yearning for more his hands caressed her satiny skin and he whispered, oh, so gently, `Your pain will be my pain, querida.' She knew then the moment to leave her girlhood behind had arrived. She raised her hands to his face and kissed him, letting him know that whatever happened in this new territory for her, she was totally in accord with wanting to be one with him.
CHAPTER TEN
LAST night's storm might never have been when Reggie awoke. From where she lay she could see a clear cloudless sky, sun streaming in through the window. She made
no attempt to get up; she had realised at once that she was alone. She turned her head to see the dented pillow where Severo's head had lain, and a bemused expression settled on her face.
Never had she suspected such depths of tenderness in a man, such perfect understanding. What had happened between them, painful as Severo had intimated it would be, had also been something so privately beautiful, she
just couldn't regret that it had happened. With her nonexistent knowledge it had come to her that Severo was holding back the full power of the passion in him, unbelievably his first thought being to make it the wonderful thing it had been for her.
Alone, where only she could know such thoughts went on in her head, her colour came up as she found herself thinking—The next time ... Then the door opened. She met Severo's gaze full on and her colour deepened further to a rosy pink that burned her cheeks.
Shyness had her eyes scurrying downwards before she could read the expression in his face. And she just had to wait for him to speak first in case she made a fool of herself by being nice to him, if he had returned to .being the short-tempered brute he had been at dinner.
Her colour receded as the silence stretched, her expression going wooden that there was no spontaneous comment coming from him.
`So,' the silence was at last broken, but his tone was not very inviting, 'this morning you hate me, do you not?'
`Hate you?' Her face turned upwards, her eyes on his hard expression. 'Why should I hate you?' The query came quickly, and she coloured again, knowing full well to what he was referring.
`I see your memory is not at fault,' he said, observing her heightened colour and not having any trouble in knowing the cause for it. 'Do you not hate me, then, for making you forget your fear of thunderstorms?'
`The storm had passed over when ...'
`The thunder had returned with even greater ferocity when I took from you what you were saving for dear Clive.'
Startled, she fixed her eyes on his, her mouth falling slightly open in wonder. Had she been so enraptured by his lovemaking that she had heard nothing except his
gently encouraging words whispered close in her ear? Then his sour comment about her saving her virginity for Clive hit her, and her lips firmed.
About to fly at him, she checked. It had all been so new and beautiful for her, she couldn't, wouldn't, have it spoiled by an angry quarrelling with him. It was still new, precious somehow.
`I can't hate you for—for last night,' she told him quietly. `To do so would mean I put the blame for what h-happened entirely on you.' She found it difficult to carry on, she had long since found the bed sheet of the utmost interest, but struggled on, 'Had I been myself I would never have come to your room, but I wasn't myself. I was half out of my mind with fear. I—I never gave thought to what might take place once I'd flung myself into your arms the way I did.'
She wished he would say something so she needn't go stumbling on. But from his silence, and she just couldn't look at him to see how he was taking what she was saying, it was left to her to show him she thought that if blame there was, then in fairness she accepted an equal portion.
`You—know now I knew little about—er—that sort of thing,' she said, trying not to get cross that he wasn't helping her out, 'but I know enough to know I created a situation a man would have to be a saint to ignore—clinging to you the way I did with—er—only my nightie on.' She stopped, knowing she was getting all round her neck with her vindication of him. Then thinking she had said more than enough, she lifted her head, and ended, `You only meant to comfort me ..
`Dios!' The exclamation broke from him, the first thing he had said in an age. Then with a sardonic note of laughter, 'You think it was only for your comfort that I took you?'
The harshness of him had her sitting up, the sheet falling from her bare shoulders, his eyes on them reminding
her what they both knew; that underneath the sheet she was naked.
`I ...' She was lost for something to say in the confusion of knowing that from where he stood he could see what she had only just spotted, that her nightdress was on the floor in full view. He had known she hadn't a stitch on since he had first entered the room.
For your information, little miss innocent,' said the man who had taken that innocence from her, 'the thunderstorm last night only precipitated my intentions.'
`P-precipitated?'
`It has been my intention to possess you from the moment I first laid eyes on you.'
If she had started this conversation by being totally honest, then it appeared Severo was treating her with the same courtesy. But what he was actually saying was taking an age to sink in.
`But ' her face was showing her puzzlement, 'but
that wasn't in the agreement.' Then as shock took her and it came to her exactly what he meant, an awful letdown feeling came over her so that she might have broken down and wept had not anger come to stiffen her backbone. And then fury was spurting from her.
`So you wanted your money's worth! It wouldn't have mattered which one of us you took as your—bed partner—would it, Bella or me?' He went to interrupt her, but she felt too let down, too angry to let him. 'You'd agreed on ten thousand pounds for a wife—an English wife,' she corrected savagely, 'and you meant to have value for money right down to the last peso, didn't ...'
`Your sister left me cold.' His anger flared, slicing through hers.
`Yet you would still have done to her what last night you did to me, what you've meant to do all along,' her fury refused to be shouted down.
`No.'
Just that one word, said quietly, but with such definite meaning to it, Reggie's anger dipped and she was confused once more. 'No?' she repeated, and was absolutely astounded when he explained that negative but loaded word.
`Aside from the fact that I never at any time had any intention of marrying your sister, her hard eyed beauty left me cold.'
`No intention of marrying her!' She couldn't take it in. `But—but the wedding date was fixed!' and, still gasping at what he had said, `Abuela spoke of it that first time I saw her.'
`Marriage between your sister and me was never discussed,' he told her blatantly. 'I decided that you I would marry, and when—telling Abuela we had the night before set the date.'
For several long utterly confounded seconds, Reggie just sat and stared at him. Then red-hot fury like no other she had ever experienced stormed in.
`You tricked me!' came screaming from her.
`Are you saying you aren't glad I did?' he mocked, seemingly immune to her rage.
She was in so much of a lather then, not certain he wasn't referring to the joy he had given her in this very bed, or the fact that she had married herself to a wealthy rancher, that she only just remembered her nakedness. Unable to fly from the bed and scratch his eyes out, she looked for some solid object to hurl at him. The book she grabbed from the bedside table was a heavy tome, heavier than she had thought, but temper gave her strength for all her aim missed.
Having giving physical energy to her fury, she felt embarrassment oust it as with fiery eyes she followed Severo's kindling gaze. A horrified gasp left her as she saw the bed sheet, understandably, had slipped and she
was sitting naked to the waist, her uplifted curves, rose-tipped breasts that had known his tender rousing to fullness, exposed and being greatly admired.
`Don't waste all your heat in anger, querida,' Severo said softly, his temper gone as he appreciated what last night had been hidden in the darkness. 'I can think of a much better avenue to direct your fire.'
Cocooning herself in the sheet, Reggie heard the fishwife in her screaming at him to, 'Get out!' and sat there seething when casually he picked the book up off the floor and placed it on the dressing-table, and as casually obeyed, his amusement getting the better of him in the deep sound of a laugh as the door closed.
`Vile pig!' she muttered, and continued laying her tongue to words that would have made her grandparents wince, for the five minutes or
so that elapsed before a tap On the door showed Juana, looking not at all surprised to see her in the master's bed, bringing in a tray of tea.
Without embarrassment, which was more than could be said for Reggie, Juana picked up the nightdress from the floor and laid it on the bed, her eyes showing her happiness that the quarrel Maria thought had happened between master and mistress had been made up in a proper manner.
Reggie was still fuming after she had showered and dressed. She had no idea what Severo Cardenosa intended to do with his day, but it was for sure he wasn't going to spend it with her.
Deliberately she skipped breakfast, nor did she tell anyone where she was going. She wasn't sure herself. Certainly not to her favourite spot. If Severo came looking for her that would be the first place he would look.
Not wanting to use any of the normal exits where she might be seen leaving, she climbed easily out of her bedroom window, and furtively looked around. Making sure
no one was about, she headed away from the estancia, for once unaware of the beauty that lived and breathed throughout the whole of Cerros de Cielo.
After walking for about an hour, she came to a dip in between two hills, and finding this the ideal hiding place, since no one would see her there not unless they climbed the first of the hills, she sat down with only a bumble-bee searching for nectar in the wild flowers for company.
To think she had been so ready to take her share of the blame! She had seen it as her fault for provoking Severo by her thinly clad femininity into making love to her. Yet all the time he had been waiting for such a moment. By his own admission, too, he had married her when that had not been part of the bargain he had made with Bella. Oh, how could she have been so green, so innocent! She had walked into his parlour every step of the way. The swine! She hadn't finished calling him names, not by a long chalk. He had known perfectly well she wouldn't contact Bella. She had trotted out too much information about Bella and James for him not to be certain of that. So certain that he had even had the nerve to point coolly to the telephone that day she had challenged him that marriage had not been part of the contract.
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