Bed of Roses

by Rebecca Paisley

  And when they were naked, heartbeat to heartbeat, Zafiro knew the most wondrous feelings she’d ever imagined could exist. Sawyer’s skin was warm, his body hard. His size made her feel small, secure, and his scent of wind, pine needles, fresh wood, and hay played further havoc upon her emotions.

  She noticed how very still he lay and realized he was giving her the opportunity to do as she wished. Tentatively, she began to explore the bare length of his body with her hand and her eyes.

  And her thoughts. Slowly, she mused. There was no need to rush. “You were right,” she whispered to him, her hand on his chest. “Azucar does not have a part in what we are doing now. Tonight is my night to learn, Sawyer, and I will learn by doing whatever my instincts lead me to do.”

  “Then I place myself in the hands of your instincts.” Threading his fingers through her raven hair, he smiled at her.

  Dios mío, she thought. His smile could melt the snow from the mountain peaks.

  Mesmerized by his voice, his scent, the very aura of sheer masculinity about him, she traced his nipples with her finger, then with her tongue, surprised and pleased when the sensitive flesh pebbled beneath her touch. Pushing her knee between his legs, she felt his male parts on her thigh and heard his low moan of raw need. She moved her hand from his chest, down the side of his torso, and gently kneaded his firmly muscled buttocks.

  Swearing she could hear his body calling to hers, she inched closer to him, closer still, and her own body moistened with the sheen of desire, trembled with the need for the same pleasure he’d given her in the barn.

  But she wanted to please him too. Wanted to gift him with whatever bliss men were capable of feeling. The question was, how did she give it to him?

  She wouldn’t ask. She would experiment. Try a multitude of things until she sensed she’d found the right one.

  The mere thought of what she was about to do excited her immensely, and she realized that Sawyer had been right when he’d said that giving sensual pleasure was pleasing all in itself.

  Deciding that his ecstasy would most likely stem from the same place hers had, she drew her hips away from his and sat up to look at his man parts. She slipped her fingers through the tawny hair of his loins. It felt thick, soft, and wonderful, and she lingered there for a long moment before moving her hand lower, down to the soft pouch that lay beneath the base of his manhood.

  “Careful,” Sawyer murmured, stiffening slightly. “Do not even think the word snake while holding me there, all right?”

  “This is a tender part of you?” She curled her fingers around the velvety-soft sac.

  “Zafiro,” he began, doing his damnedest to relax. “Uh—”

  “You are at my mercy.” Smiling, she began to examine the sensitive part of him she held. “There are two round things inside.”

  “That’s so if some daft woman yanks one off, I’ll have a spare.”

  Laughing at his apprehension, she bent over him and placed a gentle kiss upon the vulnerable pouch, then let go of him. “I am merciful.”

  Merciful? he thought. She was torturing him with her innocent play! The hardly there kiss she’d given him there made him so hot that he could barely find a shred of control.

  He wondered if she’d kiss him elsewhere. He hadn’t taught her that aspect of sensual foreplay yet, but perhaps her instincts would tell her for him.

  “I am doing well, Sawyer?”

  “If you were doing any better this would be all over in only a few more seconds.”

  She struggled to understand what he was talking about. “What—”

  “Never mind. Just listen to your instincts, sweetheart.” Obeying, she clasped his arousal. “Do not worry. I will not pull at it.”

  He stifled a chuckle. “A little bit of pulling there feels good.” Tilting his hips, he slid his erection through the tunnel of her hand, then drew it down again.

  Understanding what he wanted her to do, she grasped him a tad more tightly, then imitated the motions he’d just shown her, watching her hand glide up and down his hardness. The sight fascinated her. This was the movement a man used when he bedded a woman, her intuition told her. Yes, this way. In. And out.

  A man stroked a woman inside, she realized. And in turn the woman stroked the man right back.

  She continued to fondle him, her pleasure growing when he grew even harder. Hotter.

  A bead of moisture appeared at the tip of his length. She stopped her caresses and stared at the shimmering droplet. “Sawyer?”

  He saw the reason for her confusion. “It means I’m ready. That you’ve done a very thorough job of making me want you.”

  “But what—” She broke off when he pushed his hand between her thighs and touched her intimately. When he withdrew from her she saw that his fingers glistened.

  “See?” he said. “Women do it, too.”

  “So I am as ready as you are.”

  “Come here, Zafiro.” Hands at her waist, he lifted her over his body so that she sat on his thighs with her legs spread slightly. Her position affording him perfect access to her femininity, he took full advantage and began to stroke her as she had him.

  In only moments Zafiro heard a moan escape her own lips. As her pleasure heightened, her hips began to rock back and forth, seemingly of their own volition.

  “That’s it, sweetheart, that’s it,” Sawyer urged her softly. He watched her face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was set in a grim line of concentration and determination. Every muscle in her body that he could see was contracted.

  But it was the low, throaty sounds that whispered from her that excited him the most. God, how he loved those involuntary sounds of desire.

  And he wanted his own to mingle with hers.

  Gently, he moved her back down to the bed again, and when she was lying on her back he knelt between her knees.

  “Sawyer,” Zafiro breathed when she saw him position his hard man part at the opening of her body.

  No further words would come to her. She felt the tip of him probe at her, push at her.

  Enter her.

  His hands grasping her hips, Sawyer prepared to penetrate her further, fully. Every fiber of his being throbbing with need, he drew his hips back, and—

  “Francisco?” Tia called from out in the hall.

  “Santa Maria, Sawyer, Tia is coming!” Zafiro squealed quietly. Frantically, she groped for the covers, her efforts hindered by the fact that she was handcuffed to Sawyer, who was groping for the blankets just as wildly.

  “Be still and pretend you’re asleep!” he hissed at her. With his right hand he jerked the blanket out from under her, then threw himself down beside her.

  He’d just yanked the blanket up beneath his and Zafiro’s chins when Tia opened the door and waddled into the room. “Zafiro?” she whispered. “You are still awake?”

  Zafiro remained as quiet and still as a corpse.

  “Francisco?”

  Sawyer made not a move. He didn’t even breathe. “Oh, how sweet the two of you look,” Tia murmured, smiling as she looked down at them. “Like two innocent angels, both of you.”

  Leaning over them, she kissed them on their foreheads, watched them for a few minutes longer, then left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

  Sawyer opened one eye, saw she was gone, and began to laugh. “Innocent angels!”

  “How can you laugh? Do you know how upset she would have been if she had seen what we were doing?” Sawyer gathered her into his arms and smiled into her hair. “But she didn’t see us.”

  “What if she had adjusted the blanket and seen that we are naked? Oh, Dios mío, Sawyer—”

  “But it didn’t happen, sweetheart.” Sawyer began kissing her cheek, her temple, her eyebrow.

  “We were almost caught with our hands all red,” Zafiro said, casting another glance at the door. “It was enough to put my teeth on the border.”

  Sawyer chuckled again. “Yes, we were almost caught red-handed, and it was enough to
set our teeth on edge. But it’s all right now, sweetheart.”

  “We cannot—”

  “Yes, we can. You can, anyway.”

  Before she could make sense of what he’d said, she felt his hand between her thighs, his fingers quickly finding her most sensitive spot.

  Her nerves still a bit rattled, she wanted to resist him. But her pleasure began almost instantly, and all thoughts fled her mind. Arching her hips into his hand, she surrendered to his sensual skills and released a loud moan.

  Sawyer smothered the sound with a kiss and continued caressing her. Her body stiffened for a moment, then began to tremble. “That’s it, sweetheart,” he murmured, his lips still pressed to hers. “That’s it.”

  The bliss he fostered within her body was even more powerful now than it had been in the barn. Starting at the core of her womanhood, waves and waves of sensations coursed through her, the feelings so intense that she felt her eyes fill with tears.

  Only after many long moments did the fierce ecstasy begin to wane. Only after long moments could she think clearly, dwell on anything but the absolute joy Sawyer had given her.

  “You all right?” he asked when she opened her eyes and looked at him. “You look like you’ve been crying.”

  “I did. I mean, I have. But I did not do it with purpose. The tears, they came all by themselves.”

  “I know I didn’t hurt you.”

  She heard a tinge of worry in his voice, and his concern felt warmer than sunshine. “No, you did not hurt me. I think the tears were happy ones. This is the very first time I have ever cried happy tears.” She snuggled next to his chest. “You have made me happy, Sawyer. Not only tonight, but on many other nights and days too. I…I hope that I have made you happy too. That you have liked to be here with me as much as I have liked you being here.”

  He thought for a moment. If he hadn’t found his way to La Escondida, where would he be right now?

  Wandering, that’s where, just as he’d been before stopping at the convent.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed being here with you, Zafiro.”

  Contentment ribboned through her. “Sawyer?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your mood, it is a good one right now?”

  He ran his hand over the gentle curve of her hip. “Yes.”

  “All right.” Zafiro sat up. “Do you remember anything about guns?” she blurted. “Any reason why my father’s pistol made you feel such pain? I have been wanting to ask you, but was waiting for you to have a good mood.”

  Her reminder about the gun quickly darkened his disposition. “I don’t want to talk—”

  “But you must, don’t you see? You must! It is the only way that you—”

  “How the hell can I talk about something I don’t remember?”

  She leaned down to him, her breasts flattening against his chest, her hands cupping his cheeks. “Please,” she whispered. “Please tell me whatever little thing you remembered.”

  He couldn’t miss the genuine interest and concern in her startling sapphire eyes. But how could he explain something he couldn’t understand himself? “Zafiro, I don’t remember enough to tell you. If I did, I could—”

  “But you remember pieces and bits.”

  Her backward expression tempered his emotions. “Yes, I remember bits and pieces.”

  “Tell them to me, Sawyer. I do not ask this because my nose is big, but only because I want to try to help you as you have helped us.”

  Her ridiculous referral to her nose further softened his mood. “You aren’t being nosy.”

  She nodded.

  He nodded back.

  “Well?” she asked.

  Sawyer urged her back to his shoulder, and when he felt her warm breath wisp across his chest, he closed his eyes and began to speak in an even, hushed tone of voice. “You know about the house.”

  He waited for the heinous feeling to come to him, the feeling he always had when thinking of the house. But he felt another feeling instead, that of Zafiro’s arm as she slipped it around his waist. The sweetness of her action helped him continue.

  “I see a house with white curtains,” he said. “In the yard, flowers are growing and children are playing. A man is on the porch, and he’s soon joined by a beautiful older lady whose voice sounds like music. She kisses the man on his cheek, then calls to the children.”

  “The children,” Zafiro said, “they are little ones?”

  “Some are. A few are older.”

  “Could the lady be their mother?”

  Sawyer pondered her question for a long time. “You know, now that you ask, I don’t think so. She’s a very pretty woman, but she seems too old to have such young children of her own.”

  “Maybe she is watching them for her neighbors.”

  “Yes, maybe she is.”

  Is? he repeated silently.

  Was. Not is. Was.

  He stopped for a moment then, struggling to quell the familiar horror that finally returned to him. “I see the house in another way too,” he continued, his voice cracking. “Inside the house, a man, a woman, and two children are lying on the floor in their own blood.”

  “They…they are the same man and same woman you see on the porch?”

  “Yes.”

  Zafiro tightened her hold around his waist and tried desperately to understand his fragments of memory. “And the gun, Sawyer?” she asked softly. “When you held my father’s gun what did you remember? What did you think?”

  Instantly, he pictured the gun in his hand. “I… It felt cold. Looked…looked horrible in my hand. Staring down at it made me think of the four dead people in the house again.” He paused again, a mixture of panic and dread burning through him. “And then I remembered the crack of gunfire in a silent night. The explosion of guns. I—”

  When he stopped speaking so abruptly, Zafiro raised her head from his shoulder and saw horrified disbelief in his eyes. “Sawyer, what is the matter?” she asked loudly. “What are you remembering now?”

  “Dear God,” he rasped. “Dear God.”

  “What?” Truly frightened for him now, Zafiro bolted upright into a sitting position, curled her hands around the muscles in his shoulders, and squeezed hard. “Sawyer, you must tell me! You must speak of this, do you understand? You cannot continue to bury these things inside you or you will never be free of them!”

  He yanked her hands off his shoulders, sat up, and stood, uncaring that his swift actions almost jerked Zafiro’s arm out of its socket.

  “Sawyer!” She crawled out of the bed and stood beside him. “What—”

  He spun on his heel to face her, grabbed her upper arms, and shook her. “The people! The four dead people in the house! Don’t you understand? The gunfire! The blood! Can’t you see?”

  “They were shot?” she answered. Gently, she pulled his hands off her arms to stop him from shaking her head off her shoulders. “They were shot and killed?”

  She watched him lift his gaze from her face, over the top of her head. He stared intently, as if he could see the story of his past in pictures upon the log wall behind her. “Sawyer?”

  His shoulders slumped; he exhaled every bit of breath from his lungs and sat back down on the bed.

  Zafiro sat down beside him.

  “I understand now,” he whispered raggedly. “I know what happened.”

  His voice was filled with such indescribable pain that Zafiro knew nothing on earth could ease his torment. Prayers to heaven on his behalf swirled through her mind like hundreds of petals blowing in the wind.

  “I killed them, Zafiro.” Sawyer bowed his head, and bringing her hand along with his, he held his face in his hands. “Whoever that man, woman, and two children were, I shot them down and killed them in that house.”

  Though his pain was silent, Zafiro swore she could hear its chilling scream as it roared through him. She said nothing. Her heart and mind brimmed with horror and shock, but she said nothing.

  She merely
urged him back down to the bed. And when he turned toward her and buried his face in her hair, his huge body shuddering with his grief, she wept.

  Time held no meaning for her as she continued to embrace and caress him. Indeed, when he fell asleep upon the cushion of her hair, all she knew for sure was that dawn had pinkened the sky.

  Four people, two of them children. Her heart twisted at the thought.

  He’d killed them. Shot them down and killed them in the house with the white curtains and the flowers in the yard.

  Her grandfather and the gang had never taken a life. Had rarely even drawn their guns.

  But Sawyer…

  Having no more tears to cry, Zafiro wept inside.

  The man she loved was a murderer.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Zafiro thanked all the angels and saints in heaven that Sawyer was bound to her with the handcuffs. If he hadn’t been, she knew he would have left her and La Escondida hours ago when he’d awakened in her arms.

  As it was he was forced to take her along wherever he went. She accompanied him to the barn and to the corral, where he saw to the animals. She went with him to the garden, where he checked to see if the plants and Jengibre were faring well. She tagged along behind him when he returned to the cabin and grabbed a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, and a bunch of freshly picked carrots.

  Now she sat in a secluded glade near the stream with him, a pretty spot she’d visited only on occasion because it was so far from the house. “Do you come to this place often, Sawyer?” she asked, knowing full well he wouldn’t answer her.

  He hadn’t spoken a word all day. Not to her or to anyone else. He’d drawn into himself, shutting everyone and everything out of his thoughts and emotions.

  The sole thing upon which he could concentrate was the realization that he had murdered four people.

  And Zafiro knew in the heart of her soul that even if God Himself commanded Sawyer to talk about the murders, Sawyer would not comply.

  She blinked back tears, as she’d been doing all day. Although she could only imagine the torment that boiled inside him, his pain had become her own. But she felt so helpless. So useless. Sawyer had done so much for her, and now—when he was in need himself—she did not know what to do for him.