“I persuaded you,” she asserted. “I don’t know what it is I feel, but I lied to you in my attic. I lied to you in Mrs. Zollman’s boardinghouse. It’s you who makes me feel this way. It’s not just my body speaking to me. I want to be with you. I want to feel you against me.”
His mouth cut off the rest of her assurance. Somehow her hands left his ears and found their way to his shoulders. She massaged him with her fingertips and nails until his groan broke their kiss.
“You are—” his hands went to the long row of buttons that closed her nightgown “—a most apt pupil.”
She imitated him. Together they unbuttoned each other, their hands fighting for position, tangling, reaching. “Slow down, slow down,” he whispered, his fingers easing her nightgown down her shoulders.
She felt no need for the restraint he urged. Jerking at his shirt, she ripped one button off, and it landed on the floor with a pop. She heard it roll across the hardwood floor as she reached for his breeches.
The skin of his flat belly distracted her from her quest. Her hand smoothed across the warmth, the smooth ripple of muscle, the line of dark hair. Every bit of his stomach called forth an avaricious interest, and that interest led her to seek his chest. Exploring him with her fingers brought forth a desire to explore him with her mouth.
“God,” he whispered as she put her tongue on his nipple, and his frame hovered at rigid attention over her. He clasped the headboard with both his hands. His knees dug into the mattress on either side of her as his whole body waited for her attention. His eyes closed over the most blissful expression of agony she’d ever seen, and she loved it. She loved the mastery she was experiencing, she loved seeing this strong male animal at her mercy. She couldn’t restrain her smile of pure joy as she placed one hand on the bulge of his breeches.
But her smile faded. The power to torment faded. All that remained was the desire to explore and to reap the fruits of exploration. Her fingers weren’t gentle when she pressed and molded him, and he writhed above her. She felt her own touch as if it were his. Her urgency doubled and redoubled as she unbuttoned him. When she’d freed him, when she held him in her hands and saw his fire, she could restrain herself no longer.
“Now,” she urged. “Please. Now.”
He opened his eyes and looked down at her. “What’s my name?” he asked, his voice hoarse with his urgency.
She knew what he was doing, and it made her angry. She wanted him, she’d given him the truth, stripped herself of her defensive deception; still he wasn’t content. “You bastard,” she said.
“What’s my name?”
His arms began to shake. A drop of sweat trickled down his breastbone right before her eyes. Reaching out with one forefinger, she traced the droplet, and took it to her lips.
It was a challenge, and he responded. Slowly he lowered himself to her. His shoes hit the floor as he pulled the sheet down. Eagerly she kicked the confining material away. His hand found her ankle, and he slid her crumpled nightgown out from under her.
“I’m going to take you tonight,” he promised, “and you’re going to tell me what I want to know.”
“Don Damian,” she answered. In despair and delight, she informed him, “Your name is Don Damian, and I need you.” His triumphant grin was knocked askew when she added, “At least for tonight.”
“One night at a time, then.”
There was such delight at being joined—at last, being joined —that they illogically believed that they could comprehend each other’s thoughts, emotions. Together, they savored the pleasure —temporary, but fulfilling at that moment—of closeness.
Trying to find the words that would bind his too-sensible dove to him, he repeated, “Just give me one night at a time, and I’ll give you a lifetime of nights in heaven.”
Then he set the pace, running over her constraint, trampling her rebellion. He pushed her too hard, he knew. They were joined; her thoughts were his. He knew each thrust was too much. He knew the pace was too fast. He knew that every stroke of his hands threatened to tear her from herself.
She fought him for control. She fought him, and he could feel the breathless spark of pleasure that leaped through her veins.
When she raged, “You can’t do this to me,” he laughed. He couldn’t help it. His Catriona was open to emotion; her anger was honest and fed her passion. His laughter provoked a greater struggle, and he grasped the uprights on the headboard to use as an anchor. He used the soft feather mattress to control her fury. He liked having her toss beneath him; he knew where this would lead. The advance of pleasure in her body eased her self-control. Her eyes closed and opened; her legs clasped his hips tightly.
When the heaven he’d promised swallowed her, she screamed. She squeezed the back of her hand against her mouth, as if that would recall the sound of her joy, but he encouraged her with the pressure of his pelvis against hers and she screamed again. He crowded against her as she surged up, tightened around him, shuddered with bliss. It was such a guilty delight, to hear those cries and know that all of California would hear the echo of them soon. It was such a guilty delight, to know he’d bound her to him in ways she couldn’t understand. He wanted to make her cry out again. He wanted to create another chain to bind her, but her movements, the sweet torment etched on her features, the pleasure her body gave him, they all betrayed him. The control he’d loosened in her, failed in him.
Irresistibly, his body followed the demand of hers. He gave her everything and received everything in return.
His consciousness returned, coming first in little dribbles of satisfaction. His eyes closed, he savored the comfort of her body. She cushioned him, sheathed him, barely breathed beneath him. In slow degrees, alarm replaced the sweet fulfillment that left him dazed.
Dios, had his rough handling hurt her? He struggled to lift his heavy lids, to examine the damage and do what he must to rectify it.
He saw below him a most shamefully relaxed woman. Her cupped hands dangled, palm up, off the side of the narrow bed. One foot dangled off, too, and the other had slipped down so her knee rested beside his. Her features had smoothed to a Madonna-like serenity, and he heaved a sigh of relief. However urgent he had been, he hadn’ t hurt her.
Loosening the grip of his hands from the headboard, he inched down to relax on her. He rested his head on the pillow next to hers. His lips touched the bright circle of her hair; his breath puffed against her ear. “Catriona,” he crooned, “you say you never scream except during an emergency. Have I found the proper emergency to tap your vocal chords?”
She didn’t stir.
He whispered, “You may work out your anger with me any time you like.”
Her eyes flickered open, then closed. She sighed as if she would slip into sleep without regaining consciousness, without facing him or their actions.
“Catriona.” He still crooned, but a sliver of warning sharpened his voice. “You seduced me.”
Her hand, dangling off the edge of the bed, clumsily closed into a fist.
He watched it, understood its portent. They’d settled nothing. She still resisted becoming all the wife he demanded. He lifted up to his elbow, to wrest her from her pleasant coma and demand she behave as she ought.
The door rattled.
Damian froze. Katherine’s eyes sprang open, their alertness defying her feigned sleep.
Knuckles rapped firmly on the panels. Señora Roderiguez bellowed, “Are you quite all right, Doña Katherina?”
“Heavens,” Katherine whispered, trying to scramble out from underneath him.
“You’d better answer her.” He spoke in his normal voice and restrained her when she kicked at him.
“Don Damian!” Katherine’s whisper was fierce.
“She thinks you’ve been murdered. If you don’t say something, she’ll knock the door down.” He stroked his mustache with his thumb. “She could do it, too.”
“All right! You hush,” she ordered. Raising her voice, she called, “I’
m fine, Señora Roderiguez. I just had a bad dream.”
“If that was a bad dream,” he said, “the whole world would be begging for nightmares.”
The pounding increased; the door rocked on its hinges. “What did you say?” Señora Roderiguez shouted in her firm, controlled speech.
Katherine hollered, “I’m fine.”
The door leaped in a wild protest against her vehemence. Señora Roderiguez sniffed, so loudly they heard it through the wood. “Good. I’ll be going to bed now.” Her footsteps echoed on the hardwood floors.
“Now there goes a sensible woman.” Damian’s tension, his emphasis, made Katherine stare at him. “She knows I’m in here, but she wants to be in control. She wants to be in control so badly she’ll not accuse us of anything, for that would be to concede she’d lost control when I stepped through your window. So she sensibly ignores the truth.” Pleased with Katherine’s attention, her dawning comprehension, he snapped his fingers. “She’s in control. She’s sensible.”
She digested that, and when he seemed satisfied she understood, he came up to lean on his elbow. “It’s frightening to think that once upon a time, Señora Roderiguez was a woman like you, isn’t it?”
She pushed at him. “Go to bed.”
“I am in bed.”
“Just get out and go to bed.”
She was thinking, he could see it. Dismay, frustration, and renewed anger fought for supremacy in her soul; she trembled with it. Slipping to his feet, he tossed the sheet over her and dressed to leave. He was satisfied. The memories of just how good it had been, just how brief it had been, hovered close. He knew she’d not sleep with any tranquillity tonight.
Nor would he. He wished he could sneak out and have a cigar.
“That’s them, I tell you. You’re letting them get away.” Like a little boy in need of a privy, Lawrence Cyril Chamberlain shifted from one foot to the other and watched as the group of vaqueros rode away. “Look, there’s that silly hat of Don Damian’s and my cousin’s cape.”
Emerson Smith hardly lifted his head from inspecting his pistol to glance at the passing horsemen. “It’s a decoy, Larry.”
Lawrence had already decided he didn’t like Smith, didn’t like his uncouth manner or his casual dismissal of Lawrence’s importance. “I told you not to call me ‘Larry.’ My name is Lawrence Cyril Chamberlain. You may call me ‘Mr. Chamberlain,’ or, if you must be familiar, Lawrence. Now, how do you know it’s a decoy?”
Smith looked up at Lawrence, and Lawrence shuddered. Those deep-set brown eyes surrounded by bony sockets reminded Lawrence of a cadaver. Smith’s fixed gaze observed the reaction and he bared his decayed teeth. “It’s a decoy. De la Sola is such a noble gent, he’d never force his sniveling vaqueros to go into those mountains against their will. I’ll be lucky if the men I hired keep their position until I return, as frightened as they are by dead papists.”
“Will they stay?”
“I think so. I made ’em afraid of the live American.” Smith rose to his feet, towering over Lawrence like some primitive monolith. “Larry.”
Lawrence stepped back, adjusting his hat lower over his bare head: “I hope your self-confidence will be borne out.”
“Every superstitious native in California repeats this tale of the gold and how the padres cursed it. The way I see it, you gotta believe in the curse for it to take effect. You gotta believe your arms’ll get chopped off and your guts will spill in the dirt and you’ll drop a thousand feet to your death. You gotta believe those priests got any power at all.”
“You don’t?” Lawrence quivered, reacting to the vivid description.
“Nah. What kind of jellyfish would believe all that?”
“It’s a stupid story. Even the part about the gold.”
Smith remained unimpressed. “Maybe so, maybe not. I know for sure that quite a few people believe it. They even believe it’s been found. The way I see it, all I have to do is follow them that believe it’s been found.”
“You don’t know that my cousin and that man who calls himself her husband have found a treasure.” Lawrence worked hard to whip up his scorn. “You don’t know anything for sure.”
“I know a lot of things you don’t know. I know the truth of that slick deal you made in the cantina.”
“What about it?” Lawrence asked defensively.
Smith chuckled. “That de Casillas knows how to part a fool from his money, don’t he?”
Lawrence rubbed his sunburned nose. “That’s not true. I still don’t know that he took my money in bad faith.”
“I don’t know that, either.” Smith sounded reflective. “De Casillas is trouble. I wish I could have another nice, long talk with him.”
“You’re in league with him? He’s the mysterious man behind this silly quest?” Lawrence’s voice rose on an incredulous note. “Someone hired you to help find the gold. That’s what you said.”
“Yes, when my boss paid me good money to follow de la Sola, I knew I was onto something.” Smith grinned, admitting and denying nothing. “Taking money for watching your cousin Kathy was no strain on these eyeballs.”
“Won’t your boss be angry that you’re following them without reporting in?”
“To hell with that. I’m doing the work. I’ll keep all the beautiful cursed gold of the padres.”
“You’re going to cheat your boss?”
Smith put his face down even with Lawrence’s and tapped Lawrence’s chest with a greasy finger. “I’ll keep the gold.”
“Fine, fine.” Lawrence pulled out a handkerchief once white and starched, now grimy and wrinkled, and waved it in the air. “I don’t care about this fabled treasure, as long as I can have Katherine when you’re done.”
“Oh, yes, Larry.” Smith polished his pistol with long, slow strokes. “You can have Katherine when I’m done.”
“Will they leave a trail?” Katherine asked as she watched the vaqueros ride off.
“A trail even your cousin can follow,” Damian assured her. “That should deceive whoever is waiting for us to lead them to the treasure.” Watching the female servant dressed in one of Katherine’s dresses and the Indian wearing his own hat and coat, he worried silently. Surely it would.
From inside the hacienda, the sound of voices rose. Nacia and Julio were fighting again, and this morning the Roderiguezes joined in. The battle continued without abatement until Damian and Katherine prepared to leave. Then their hosts stepped out.
On the veranda, Nacia stood with her chin jutting out, two bright spots of red in her cheeks. Her erect carriage rivaled her mother’s, and her tiny figure quivered with an indomitable air that had been previously hidden.
Julio squinted against the morning sun, his face an odd mixture of excitement and mortification. He spoke quietly, as if loud noises were an agony for him.
From Señor and Señora Roderiguez Katherine expected a stiff reprimand; instead she got a bewildered dismissal. What their daughter had said to them, she didn’t know, but they stood in magnificent disarray, looking as if somewhere, somehow, their correct world had gone awry.
Katherine thought, as she left the de Casillas home, that she’d love to blend into the walls and hear the controversy the rest of the day would bring.
But perhaps de Casillas thought the same thing about them.
The land of grass gave way as they rode north and rode higher. Gradually the mountains grew rockier, rougher, and the occasional oak gave way to woods of pine and scrub. Neither Damian nor Katherine fought against the silence between them. They rode through the overhanging trees, along a narrow trail that climbed up, until their hunger grew strong. They could put it off no longer; they would have to eat. Talk would be the inevitable result, and after last night, talk wasn’t something either one of them sought.
“We’ll stop here.” Damian indicated the little clearing with his whip.
In the sunlight that filtered through the cover of pine trees, the carpet of fallen needles appeared to be
gold. The scent of spice filled Katherine’s nostrils as she lifted her head to gaze up through the branches towards the cloudless sky. “Lovely.”
He dismounted and unhooked the dinner basket. “The de Casillas cook packed a heavy meal. I hope she was happier this morning than the rest of that family.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because otherwise, we’ll be poisoned.”
She wasn’t even moved to laugh. “Too true.”
Damian relieved Confite of the saddlebags and loosened the flank cinch. Slapping Confite on the rump, Damian told him, “Go on. Graze to your heart’s content.”
Sliding down from the saddle before he could help her, Katherine led her mare to the grass. “Make sure you tie him,” Damian ordered.
“Of course,” she said coldly, looping her rein around a branch.
Strips of cold meat, cheese, tortillas, and fruit appeared from the basket, and a bottle of new red wine made from California grapes. The meal was quiet and polite, and for Katherine, uncomfortable. She wanted to say something to Damian; the words burned on her tongue. She didn’t want to disturb their fragile truce, but she wouldn’t rest until she’d told him. “Don Damian.”
“Si, mi mujer?”
“Last night you compared me to Señora Roderiguez.”
“Not in so many words,” he protested. He sipped the wine from a wooden cup.
“That is what you meant. Perhaps I am so slow to insult that I need to be flayed with my deficiencies, but I understood that.”
He hesitated, uncomfortable with her bluntness. “That is what I meant.”
“Very well. I’ve taken your criticism under advisement. Now I’d like you to do the same.”
“A wife doesn’t criticize her husband.”
“A man who doesn’t wish to be criticized shouldn’t marry,” she answered, and with a flourish added, “My father used to say that.” The quirk in his cheek told her he agreed, and she relaxed enough to state her case boldly. “You feel that I’m becoming a Señora Roderiguez. Very well, I’m afraid you’re becoming an Uncle Rutherford.”
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