Savage Desire

by Rosemary Rogers

  “Be still, or I shall give you to them now, chica. Are you tired of waiting? Shall I let them have you? Look at them, so eager to stroke your soft flesh…. Yes, you may have her later. She is most impatient for you.”

  Nothing could erase the shame she felt at being so exposed. She closed her eyes, forcing herself to remain still when all her instincts urged rebellion and flight.

  One of the men laughed. “Ay di mi! she is a hot one, this! She will be mine first, for I won the toss. And I shall use her well, the famous Madame du Plessis! She is not so noble now, eh? Yes, I used to see her ride by with Colonel Lopez, her skin so white and pure, but her eyes! Ay! I knew she was only a puta.”

  “And tonight,” Luna promised, “she will be yours. He will be coming after her, so prepare for him. You have your orders. Remember the prize that waits for you.”

  Reluctantly, the men retreated as he took her back inside and shut the door. When he released her, she stood trembling until he put his hand beneath her chin and lifted her face to his.

  “Are you afraid? But it will not be the first time you have been shared with so many. Yes, I know it all, as I told you. I have my methods of gaining information, and you would be most surprised by the things I know. Your father is an interesting subject as well, and your stepmother—She was once your husband’s mistress, but you know that.”

  Ginny closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of his leering face. He continued to taunt her, telling her things about her past that she had tried to forget, about Ivan, and even Andre Delery.

  “I would think you would be relieved to have your husband meet his fate at last, chica. He has been most cruel to you.”

  “Please…” she heard herself whimper in a desperate plea. “Please…no…I’ll stay with you if you let Steve go….”

  She stood panting, wracked with fear for herself and for Steve, her hair a wild tumble about her face and shoulders. A damp sheen misted her bare arms and legs, gleaming in the light of the lanterns as Luna moved to the table to pour more wine in a cup. Then he came back to stand before her. His breath was ripe with the smell of the red wine he’d been drinking.

  “Little puta,” he said softly, “do you want me?”

  “No…no!” It was a breathless moan, ripped from her throat despite her efforts. She wanted to scream at him, to strike out, but knew it would be futile. She had to remain calm; how else could she warn Steve?

  Revulsion rippled through her when he dragged his hand across her face, moving lower, fingers grazing her throat in silent intimidation.

  “But you will tell me that you want me, puta…loudly! If you want to save your husband, you will do what I tell you to do.”

  She knew with a dim part of her barely conscious mind that she was saying what he wanted her to say, parroting the words he had whispered to her, hating him but compelled to obey in the hopes that she could stall for enough time to warn Steve of his danger.

  Then Luna’s hand clamped down on her shoulder, pushing her down until her knees struck the hard floor. Her heart pounded furiously and there was a ringing in her ears like fire bells.

  Kneeling on the rough floor, her knees pressed against hard planks, she curled her fingers into her palms until the nails dug half-moons into her skin.

  “Perhaps,” he said, his voice penetrating the thick mist of her fear, “you need some wine to cool you off.”

  Ginny tried to twist away, but he forced her to drink some of the wine. It splashed over her white silk shift, over her ribs and belly, and onto her thighs. She swallowed some, choking on it before he took away the bottle. A coughing spasm wracked her. In a moment he came back to her and knelt in front of her, his hand bringing her chin up so that she had to face him.

  “Now, perhaps you will be more agreeable, chica.”

  Ginny swung a hand at him. He grasped her wrist, bending her arm backward, and laughed at her gasp of pain. She was pulled swiftly to her feet, falling forward into his arms.

  He held her hard against his chest, ignoring her struggle to free herself as he laughed softly. “Ah, it is time, I think, for it to begin….”

  It was then that Ginny heard the door slam open and heard Steve Morgan say, “Let go of my wife.”

  35

  It was all a horrible blur after that. Later, she would vaguely recall watching in numb, silent horror as Steve and Rafael fought, viciously, with a savagery that held her unwilling gaze.

  Rafael Luna had planned well. With the Rurales he had hired posted just outside the door, Steve Morgan had walked into a trap, and Luna smiled triumphantly.

  “It is customary for you to choose the weapons, I admit, but time has not permitted me to be so generous. You will pardon me for the breach of etiquette, Morgan, but I have taken the liberty of providing swords for our duel. I find pistols so…crude.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me. Just get on with it.”

  Steve sounded impatient, hard, his lean body and dark, piratical face reflecting nothing but hostile competence.

  A faint, mirthless smile touched Luna’s mouth, the dark shadows behind him illuminated by a leaping red-and-orange glow of lantern light that seemed hellish and terrifying to Ginny’s dazed mind as she huddled on the dirt floor and fought waves of burning nausea. In her befuddled state of mind, she thought for a moment that it was Ivan Sahrkanov who stood staring at Steve with such a cruel smile of grim satisfaction.

  But then the images swam away again and she shuddered as a new wave of nausea washed over her. She closed her eyes against it. When she opened them again, the two men each held a glittering saber, the lethal blades sparking faint glimmers of lamplight in tiny starbursts.

  It was obvious that Rafael Luna was a master swordsman and confident of his ability. He moved with the fluid grace of a dancer, the gleaming tongue of his saber darting in and out, the clash of steel against steel a ringing, brittle sound in the turbid air of feeble lamplight and shadows.

  But if Luna had thought he had the advantage over Steve Morgan by using the sword—after all, it was the acknowledged weapon preferred by gentlemen and aristocrats instead of hard-eyed American mercenaries—he discovered that he was very much mistaken. As proficient as Luna was, he quickly saw that he had grossly underestimated his opponent.

  Air gusted from flared nostrils as Luna parried the smooth, seemingly effortless kiss of Morgan’s blade against his own. What had begun as a swift, methodical and efficient execution became a fight for survival. Beads of sweat dotted Luna’s brow and upper lip, dampened his skin so that his thin shirt clung to his chest.

  They fought silently, moving across the floor of the room with savage intensity. At the door of the posada men crowded to watch, necks craning as they made bets on how long it would take the so excellent Spanish criollo to disarm and kill the blue-eyed norteamericano.

  “Dios! He fights well for a gringo,” one of the Rurales muttered, disappointment in his tone at the thought of losing his bet—and perhaps the lovely puta crouched on the floor. “But no matter, for there is only one of him and there are many of us, eh? We have our orders, after all, and there is the woman…”

  Sergeant Rameriz laughed softly. “We take no orders, even from Spain. The woman is ours, whether he wins or loses. We will have her and the silver he promised. Then we will take her to el capitán, and be rewarded for our generosity. Perhaps we will even visit with Cortina, eh?”

  Rubbing his crotch with one hand, the sergeant shifted the rifle he held beneath his arm forward, a casual gesture but significant. The others laughed.

  Ginny heard them and shuddered, terrified even in her fog of confusion.

  These were men who had ridden with Juan Cortina, the ginger-haired Mexican who had been the scourge of the Rio Grande and Texas until recently, the bandit who had killed white settlers and collected hefty ransoms until the Texas Rangers pursued him across the border. To be at the mercy of these men—! Pressing her fist against her mouth, she fought back a scream, teeth digging into her knuckl
es until she tasted blood.

  The two men moved in the glow of lamplight and shadow. The sound of pants for air, feet scraping across the rough floor and her own strangled breathing were so loud, everything such a blur of images imposed one atop another, that it took her a moment to comprehend what she was seeing. Steve suddenly lunged, his blade catching Rafael’s saber just beneath the hilt and flipping it from his hand in a smooth, almost indolent sweep to send it flying through the air. It clattered against the wall, then to the floor. Before Luna could move, the point of Steve’s saber was at his throat, a deadly pressure.

  “Call off your hired thugs, Luna.”

  Blanching, Rafael Luna’s lips were drawn back from his teeth in a grimace. He swallowed, and the saber tip cut a small gash into the skin of his throat.

  “Sergeant Rameriz…” he sucked in a breath between his teeth as the blade shifted slightly, and got out in a choked gasp, “you are dismissed!”

  There was a heavy silence before the sergeant said, “I do not think so, General Luna. It is unfortunate that you have lost your battle and your honor, but we were made certain promises. We do not like being disappointed.” He levered the rifle up slightly, the barrel pointing at Steve as Ginny watched with glazed comprehension. “We will take our money and the woman, and leave you alive if you allow it, but if not…”

  The unfinished sentence was eloquent in intention.

  Crouched by the bed, Ginny slowly slid upward, her spine pressed against the wall. The loose mass of her hair tumbled over her shoulders and back, then caught on an object stuck into the wall. Terrified, with a madly beating heart and fear coursing through her in a flood, she did not comprehend what had snagged her hair. Then she realized—it was her own little dagger, the one Rafael had taken from her in Mexico City.

  The Rurales attention was focused on Steve and Rafael; no one noticed as she pulled the dagger from the wall. It was a comforting weight in her hand, a promise that she would not have to endure what the Rurales had in mind for her. There were things worse than death. Didn’t she know that well enough?

  She felt so sick. Mixed with the fear that beat through her was the strange, thundering heat that was unabated, the fever that left her in torment. It was all such a blur of sensation and sound, washing over her and then receding. The only thing real was the dagger in her hand and the perception of danger.

  Then it all grew loud at once, with men shouting and gunfire racketing in the room, deafening explosions, spurts of orange flame and the smell of sulphur a terrifying blur. A man lurched forward, his uniform identifying him as the enemy, and grabbed her, hand digging painfully into her flesh as he spun her around and in front of him.

  “Halt!” he shouted. “Or you will hit the woman!”

  He held her against him, one hand clamped down on her breast, his fingers squeezing cruelly so that a wave of nausea shot through her, cutting through the haze with swift clarity. Ginny had brought up one hand instinctively to grab at his arm, fingers plucking at his sleeve in a futile effort to remove it. He only squeezed tighter, until she cried out. He laughed.

  She remembered him then, the hot-eyed man named Rameriz who had watched her earlier, one of the Rurales….

  Rameriz was saying in a reasonable tone, “See? You will only kill her if you do not put down your weapons.”

  Vaguely, through her red mist of pain and outrage, she saw a man who looked familiar standing in the doorway, but her mind would not identify him. She lifted her other arm to push at her tormentor, but there was something in her hand.

  As Rameriz started to move forward, Ginny shoved hard at him with one hand, and heard his grunt of shocked pain. She pushed him again and again, the heat inside her building with each blow as he released her and fell away, collapsing into the shadows that spread around her, shadows tinged red and black and yellow-orange, encroaching on her field of vision.

  Half sobbing, wet and sticky with something on her hands and arms, Ginny waited until she could see again, then looked up, pushing her hair from her eyes.

  Panting, with blood streaming into his eyes from a cut on his forehead, Steve came to kneel down beside her, his voice soft.

  “Ginny, it’s over.”

  He sounded so faraway, the words drifting to her through the heavy layers of fever that raged through her body.

  When she said nothing, Steve reached down for her and pulled her to her feet, reaching at the same time for a blanket to pull around her, his hands swiftly efficient.

  “Christ, Ginny, are you all right?”

  He sounded so angry…Why was he angry? The moment of lucidity began to fade. She clung to it desperately, her muscles shuddering beneath Steve’s touch as he slung her over his shoulder and strode from the small room. With her head bobbing, she caught a glimpse of Rafael Luna’s body sprawled bonelessly on the hard floor in a spreading pool of blood. Then the dark shadows came to claim her, washing over her in clouds of black streaked with crimson.

  There was a vague impression of men in uniform, and she thought she recognized one man who wasn’t in uniform. Steve went to the man and talked to him in a hard, low tone before she was thrown atop a horse. Steve mounted behind her, and there was a jarring, jolting motion as they rode out of the village and into the night beyond the cluster of buildings.

  When she glanced back, the wool blanket tilted into her eyes, she thought she saw flames licking at the sky, but it was probably just the fever working, turning the world to crimson and heat, to a fire that was consuming her.

  It seemed forever until they stopped. A night sky so purple it was almost black held thousands—millions—of tiny pinpricks of light that glittered overhead. She was pulled from the horse and went sprawling on the ground. Unable to do more than stare upward, she felt the world wheel around her in a slow revolution that left her reeling. Her fingers clutched at something solid, but only found the blanket beneath her, and bunched it in folds.

  “Ginny!” she heard, and knew it was Steve. He was always so angry with her. She wanted to say something, but no words would come and nothing made sense. It was the heat that made her so confused, the pulsing need that made her ache so badly.

  Unmoving, she lay atop the blanket, shivering in the cold night air, her hands clutching fistfuls of wool. She was afraid to move, afraid she’d fall off the edge of the world where she was balanced so precariously.

  From above, his voice lashed her again, sounding so strained, so sharp.

  “Be still, Ginny! You’ve got blood all over you. Where are you hurt? Damn Luna, death was too easy for him.”

  Another wave of heat engulfed her, and the wool was a harsh scrape against her back, making her cringe. He was saying something important, something she should comprehend…if only she could think straight! But the fever and chills overwhelmed everything else.

  Her head tilted back, and more stars swam in front of her eyes. The night air was cool and silky, washing over her endlessly but not easing the heat that engulfed her. There was something important she should say, should do, but what was it…?

  There was such a pounding in her head, a steady roaring sound that seemed to come and go, drowning out his words so that she heard only a few at a time.

  “…lie still, Ginny…I don’t see a wound and you don’t seem to be hurt…did he hurt you? Jesus, so much blood on you…what’s the matter…?”

  “Oh God, Steve…please…help me! I feel so sick!”

  “¡Chingate! Ginny! That bastard! Did he give you something to make you sick?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, but stood up and pulled her with him, swearing softly. His hands were gentle, and she strained toward him, grasping at coherence.

  “It’s so hot…Why are you putting that on me? Stop it!” Crossly, she shrugged aside the blanket he draped over her shoulders. He held her still, his grip firm as he wedged her between his thighs.

  “Be still, Ginny. I’ve got to get you to a doctor. It won’t help if you fight me. God, you’re burning
up with fever! How long have you been like this?”

  But she was beyond answering him, beyond even fighting as the struggle to make sense of everything dissolved into a suffocating cloak, as if someone had pulled down a black curtain that made everything abruptly disappear.

  The next thing she knew, she was in a bed in someone’s house, a real bed, with springs and an iron frame. Steve was slumped in a chair beside her. Beard stubble darkened his jaw, and he dozed, his chin digging into his chest.

  Somehow, it was comforting. Ginny closed her eyes again and slipped back into a sleep that was much easier. If Steve was there, it would be all right.

  It took days for the fever to subside, and she was incoherent and nauseous by turns, drifting between reality and vague, frightening dreams. Steve tended her with a gentleness she had never expected from him. He said nothing of how he had found her, nothing about Rafael Luna, and in her moments of lucidity, Ginny could not bring herself to mention him, either. When they talked, it was of mundane things, of the children or the weather, or of the little village in a green valley surrounded by hills where he had taken her to recuperate.

  Ginny grew stronger every day, physically if not in spirit. As her body healed, she became more withdrawn. She wanted to hide from the world, from Steve, even from her own memories, and retreated behind a carefully erected barrier where she felt nothing. She wanted only to sleep, to dream of nothing. How could she bear it? She felt adrift, wounded, emotionless. Nothing penetrated the shell she built around herself like a high wall.

  Early one morning Steve woke her from a deep, dreamless sleep to tell her they were leaving the village. Perhaps it was the way he said it, or the sudden dread of leaving the quiet village nestled in the palm of a ring of mountains where she felt so safe. But she rebelled.

  “I want to stay here.” She lunged from the bed to face him with arms akimbo, chin lifted in uncertain defiance. “I have no intention of being dragged around the entire country without even knowing why, or where I’m going.”