Or the way she licked her lower lip when she saw how he looked at her.
“There’s more than one kind of need, Zafiro,” he gritted out, barring the barn door with the board. “I know you’re familiar with many of them, but now, right now, I’m going to show you one need in particular. A need that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have not—I repeat, not—forgotten the skills you think I have.”
Before she could begin to understand what he meant, she saw a predatory gleam leap into his eyes, and then he started toward her. The broad-shouldered, hard-muscled power of him seemed a perilous thing to her now, for his quick, purposeful, and silent stride was that of a man who knew what he wanted…
…and had every intention of taking it.
Chapter Ten
“Saw-Sawyer?”
His shadow fell over her. Like a live thing it consumed her, swallowing her wholly into him.
And their bodies had yet to touch.
She took a step backward, both wanting and fearing his advances. “What—”
He gave her no chance to finish speaking. Rather, he whipped her into his embrace as though she were made of nothing but breath and pulse. Circling his right arm around her back and dragging her next to his chest, he heard her sharp intake of breath and saw her breasts rise. Whether she gasped with shock, anger, or excitement, he didn’t know.
Nor did he care.
He threaded his fingers through the velvet cascade of her hair and held her steady for his kiss. One corner of his mouth rose in a slight smile, a slow, crooked smile that he knew would tell her exactly what he was about to do.
A smile that told her he knew exactly what she was about to feel.
He kissed her not like a man who had no knowledge of how to kiss a woman, but like a man who craved and now drank fully of a sweetness too long denied him. Parting her lips with his tongue, he prepared to show her that he was about as lacking in sensual skills as a fire was its searing heat.
She sighed into his mouth, and he felt a strong tremor surge through her soft body. He smiled again, this time inwardly, and then he plunged his tongue between her lips, penetrating her mouth with a motion and rhythm that he willed her to understand was but a hint of the deeper, more intimate invasion to come.
His hand dipped down her back to cup one firm cheek of her bottom. His fingers kneading her firm flesh, he pushed her snugly into him so that his hips cradled hers, so she could feel the turgid length of his arousal.
So she could begin to imagine what else he was going to do.
And still he kissed her hungrily, his senses further provoked when a moan of pleasure escaped her lips, the soft and beautiful melody of a woman’s desire.
“I was right,” he murmured, his mouth still clinging to hers. “I knew you’d be like this. So soft, sweet, so full of passion. I knew it, Zafiro.”
In answer she pressed herself even closer to him, grinding her hips into his, taking his hand and squeezing his fingers over her breast, and trying desperately to remember the many other things Azucar had described.
“Not so fast, sweetheart,” Sawyer whispered, removing his hand from hers. “This time we do it my way, not Azucar’s.”
“But I want—”
“I know what you want, and I’m going to give it to you.”
At that she pulled her head away from him so she could see into his eyes. The absolutely smoldering expression she saw in them nearly caused her knees to buckle. “You…you have forgotten nothing.”
He flashed her a satisfied smile right before he claimed her mouth for another kiss. Grasping a handful of her skirt, he lifted the coarse cotton up over her legs until he felt the bare skin of her trembling thighs beneath his palms. Her skirt now bunched up around her waist and kept in place by the pressure and weight of his own body, he attended to the buttons on her blouse, finding the fastenings delightfully easy to open.
While he slipped his hand inside her gaping bodice and molded his fingers around one full breast, he ceased the sensual plundering of her mouth and planted a trail of warm kisses over the graceful slope of her throat and down the silken expanse of her upper chest, finally taking her nipple between his lips and flicking the tip of his tongue over the stiffening peak.
Her sapphire grazed his cheek. Her breasts were warm and supple. The blue jewel was hard and cold.
The contrast awakened more excitement within him.
“Sawyer,” Zafiro breathed. Hot rushes of feeling shot through her veins. She threw back her head and arched her back.
He felt the ends of her long, black hair brush the top of his hand as he continued to rub and massage the globes of her tight, sexy bottom. His own need blistered, melting through him and testing the very boundaries of his control.
Wanting more of her—all of her—he lowered his hand down to the back of her thigh, and then around.
Around to the front, to the patch of ebony silk at the juncture of her legs. She stirred restlessly against him, against his chest and his palm, but he knew that her ardent response was only the beginning of her ultimate surrender to his touch.
Before this encounter came to its end he would have her writhing beneath him, murmuring hot incomprehensible words into his ear, and he would see her eyes burn with the full knowledge and understanding that he had, indeed, retained his ability to bring to life and satisfy a woman’s desire.
Those ends in mind, he skimmed his fingers through the soft nest that covered her feminine mound, and he found her hot, wet, and slick.
“Sawyer!” Zafiro cried, stunned with surprise and pleasure at this unexpected thing he did to her. She felt his fingers slide between the petals of her sex, toward the very center of her womanhood, and then he withdrew them, not completely, but to the hidden apex of her nether lips.
Over the most sensitive spot she ever imagined her body possessed. The pebble of flesh quivered beneath and seemed to push at the thick pad of his finger, like a form of life bursting forth from a tight little seed.
Only vaguely aware of her own actions, she clutched at Sawyer’s massive shoulders, thankful for his strength, for if he so chose to release her from his embrace at that moment, she would have tumbled to the floor in a heaving heap. Her entire body felt gloriously alive with exquisite sensation that engulfed her with a need so sweet and fierce, she felt she would come apart like a string of beads if she did not somehow find the means with which to appease her hunger for him.
She raised her head and placed her hands on his cheeks, her nails biting into his temples. “Faster,” she whispered.
He knew she didn’t understand her own command.
Didn’t have the slightest idea what she was demanding he do. On the contrary, her order was innocent. Ignorant.
Releasing the hardened crest of her breast from between his lips, he lifted his face to hers. What he saw excited the hell out of him.
Her face sparkled and her eyes glowed with unqualified passion. He’d thought her beautiful the first time he’d seen her.
But now…the way she looked now…with her lips swollen from his bruising kisses, with her thick tumble of sable hair falling around her gorgeous face in wild disarray, and with her fresh, never-assuaged female need emanating from her every pore…
Faster, she’d said.
He obeyed her and lightly pressed his thumb against the sweet jewel of her femininty, circling the tiny pearl in such a way as to sire deeper pleasure within her slender, straining body. “How do you feel, Zafiro?” he murmured.
“I…” she panted, “I am almost on the seventh cloud.”
He smiled at that. “Or could it be that you’re somewhere in between cloud nine and seventh heaven?”
“Yes, that is where I am going.”
“Well, let me make sure you arrive.” Sensing that her release was but a heartbeat away, he eased her to the floor of the barn, his hand never leaving its spot between her thighs. When she was lying on her back with her knees slightly bent, he stretched out beside her
and took her lips in another searing kiss.
He swore he could hear the thunder of her heartbeat. Wanting to intensify her pleasure even further, he penetrated her, first with one finger, then with two.
“Sawyer!” With one strong action Zafiro clapped her legs together, imprisoning his hand between her thighs. “Azucar did not tell me—”
“Then Azucar left out a lot. A whole lot.” Unmindful of the way she’d squeezed her legs together, he moved his fingers within her, his breath coming in pants when he felt her virgin passage begin to tighten and pulse. She felt so good to him, so small, hot, and so wet that he felt as though he were drowning in the pure sensuality he’d found within her tremulous body.
He felt the first quivers of her climax even before she gasped and called out his name again.
Dammit, he was hot for her, so hot that no reason he could think of effectively dispelled the notion to have her then and there. Her body, her sweetness… He wanted everything she had to give him.
With his free hand he worked at the confines of his breeches, freeing his swollen manhood and feeling an almost uncontrollable urge to thrust himself inside her.
“Oh, Sawyer,” she whispered. “Sawyer.” Bright and blazing bliss shimmered through her limbs, her belly, her womanhood. Almost unendurable in its shattering intensity, the pleasure was the strangest, most wonderful experience of her life, and she hoped it would never end.
But it gradually began to lessen, calming from flames that licked through her to mellow sparkles that left her sated and so completely relaxed that she felt she would fall asleep within moments.
She blinked up at Sawyer, but she was too filled with wonder to speak. Instead, she gave him a smile, then slipped her fingers through the thick mass of his dark gold hair.
Sawyer had just maneuvered himself over her hips when he saw her looking at him.
His entire body stilled, his heartbeat the only part of him that moved.
Her eyes looked like those of a young doe, full of gentleness, sparkling with happiness.
Glowing with trust.
Somehow, her tender expression broke the fever of his desire for her.
He knew she wouldn’t stop him if he proceeded with his sensual intentions. On the contrary, she’d welcome the opportunity to experience the full circle of sexual intimacy.
But this was no harlot he’d found in some saloon or brothel.
This was Zafiro.
In the space of only a moment he remembered and pondered all the many things that had never been hers. Things she’d not had as a little girl and would never have as a woman.
A mother or a real home in a town. Proper schooling. Friends her own age, pretty clothes, or a sweetheart.
She’d never had a man make love to her either.
Make love to her? This—what he was about to do—it wasn’t lovemaking.
It was rutting, pure and simple. A quick roll on a hard, hay-strewn floor in a mice-infested barn.
Zafiro deserved better.
Quickly, he readjusted his breeches. She might have learned a great deal from a whore, but she wasn’t one, and he’d be damned if he was going to treat her as though she were.
“Sawyer?”
He sat up and moved his hair out of his face. “Zafiro, I’m sorry. Things got out of hand.”
“They could have gone further. Why didn’t they?”
He pulled her skirt down over her legs, reminding himself that she couldn’t help being so bold. Not only was her openness a part of her character, but as far as he’d been able to determine no one in her life had ever taught her that good girls demonstrated modesty in everything they said and did.
Good girls? He shook his head.
It was Zafiro’s profound goodness that enabled her to take such wonderful care of her elderly companions.
And he was one to talk about the carefree attitude she had toward her body and lovemaking! he chided himself. Hadn’t he enjoyed her lack of modesty on more than one occasion?
He certainly had today.
“Sawyer?”
“Button your blouse.”
She heard a hard edge to his voice, as if he were angry with her. Buttoning her blouse, she tried to think of anything that might have irritated him.
When a possible answer came to her, she bowed her head and stared at her lap. “I am sorry if I…did not do everything right. If I did not make your socks fall off.”
“You’re not supposed to know how to do everything right.” A slight grin on his face, Sawyer stood, clasped his hands over his hips, and looked down at her. “And you do knock my socks off, Zafiro. But you need to understand that no matter how many things Azucar has told you, you don’t know what you think you know.”
“I—”
“What I’m talking about is your little performance a few weeks ago right here in this very barn. I know you were trying your best, but I’m not the one who didn’t know what to do that night. As a maiden, there was no way in hell you could have even understood what you—”
“I did not know any more today than I knew then. What is the difference?”
“The difference is that today you weren’t going by the things Azucar has described. Today you were responding to your own feelings, and believe me, today was a hell of a lot more pleasant than that night a few weeks ago.”
“For you too? I mean…I made you happy, Sawyer?”
He wasn’t blind; he saw the hope spilling from her eyes. Her desire to please him… Well, that in itself pleased him.
God, he thought. She would have made some lucky man an exquisite mate.
Part of him, some deep-down part, wished he could have been that lucky man. Zafiro was outrageously bold, obnoxious at times, a bit on the wacky side…
But she was a very caring woman. A sensitive woman. Passionate and generous.
And so damn beautiful that sometimes the mere thought of her was sufficient to play havoc with his heartbeat.
Reaching down to her, he pulled several long strands of straw out of her hair, then outlined the curve of her upper lip with the tip of his finger. “Yes, Zafiro, you made me happy.”
His answer satisfied her at first, but a new thought replaced her pleasure with confusion. “How could I have made you happy?” She frowned, certain she was correct in her thinking. “Sawyer, you did not put your man part into my—”
“It made me happy to make you happy. I—” He broke off, wondering how to explain the way of things to her. “I know you’ve never known a man… I mean, well… There’s never been a man in your life who was close to your own age. A woman like you—a naturally passionate woman who’s been listening to Azucar’s tales for so long—were bound to be curious about things. It made me happy to be the man to show you a little bit. To please you in such a way for the first time.”
She understood what he meant. She enjoyed making people happy too. But the fact remained that Sawyer had not found the same sort of physical pleasure that she had. “You should have finished, Sawyer."
He watched a mouse scurry across the floor near Pancha’s stall door. “If I had, I would have regretted it.”
“You would regret making love to me?” Grabbing Sawyer’s hand, Zafiro pulled herself off the floor and stood before him. “What a compliment, Sawyer Donovan. You have put music on my face and laughter in my heart.”
“Music on your…” What was she trying to say? “Music… Oh. I’ve put a smile on your face and a song in your heart.”
“I am being sarcastic,” she clarified in case he didn’t understand.
“Really?” He looked down at the ground and grinned. “You misunderstood, Zafiro. I didn’t mean that I didn’t want you. I meant that I would have felt bad about it later. Taking your innocence on a dirty barn floor… I doubt seriously that’d be the greatest experience of my life, not to mention yours.”
Mulling over his explanation, she watched as he crossed the barn and threw bundles of wilted grass into the animals’ stalls. “You…you
care about me, don’t you, Sawyer?” she murmured, her realization almost stealing her voice. “If you did not, you would not have thought two times about having a romp between the sheets here on the dirty barn floor. Your consideration, it means you truly and really care about me.”
Oh, damn, he thought. What sort of romantic notion was going through her busy little mind now?
“Sawyer?”
“I’ve been cutting fresh grass for the animals.” He skirted her question. “The hay’s gone, but I’ve found some good grazing area on the other side of the stream. Like I said, I’m going to fence in a few pastures and—”
“Are you falling in love with me?”
“What? Hell, no!”
His sudden shout startled her so badly that she let out a little shriek. And his vehement denial to her question embarrassed and hurt her.
Was it such an awful thing to fall in love with her? she wondered miserably. Were other women in some way better than she was?
She had no way of knowing. Besides Tia, Azucar, and the nuns, there weren’t any other women around with whom she could compare herself.
Looking at everything in the barn but Sawyer, she rubbed the back of her left calf with the top of her right foot. “So,” she managed to say, “you are going to make pastures for the animals.”
“Yes.” He knew he should leave it at that, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t do it to her.
Because he knew exactly what she was thinking—that there was something wrong with her. That she wasn’t good enough for a man to love. She couldn’t help thinking such things. There’d never been a man around to convince her otherwise.
“You’re wrong, Zafiro.”
She still couldn’t look at him. “Wrong? About what?" she asked as if inquiring about the weather.
“About what you’re thinking.” He walked over to where she stood across the barn. “Zafiro, look at me, please.”
Affecting what she hoped was a nonchalant expression, she raised her face to his.
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