Desert Storm

by Nan Ryan

  Against her lips he said honestly, “You don’t know how lucky you are, my sweet, delectable baby.”

  “Am I?” she giggled.

  “You are.”

  “Why?” She was starting to calm.

  “Because nothing you do makes me angry for very long.” He lay back down beside her and pulled a long, silky strand of her hair across his throat. “Jesus, I never thought I’d see the day a woman would laugh when I made love to her.” He was grinning.

  Angie didn’t see his smile. Terrified she’d hurt his feelings, she jerked her hair from him and sat up, leaning over him to give his full mouth a kiss. “Darling, I didn’t … I …” She saw the devilment in his eyes and drew a grateful breath. “You know why I was laughing, don’t you?”

  He pulled her down to him. “Yes, I do. There are a few moments in life when the joy is so great, when you feel so vital, so alive, that it makes you need to laugh. Is that it?”

  “Hmm.” She took a lock of her hair and tickled his nose with it. “Something like that.” She kissed the nose she was tickling. “I love you, Pecos. And you love me. You love me!” She shook her head with wonder. “That knowledge fills me with such bursting happiness it’s either laugh or cry. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “Why sure, honey.” He nodded, knowingly. “I feel the same way. Do me a favor, sweet, always laugh instead of cry when you’re happy.”

  She snuggled down to him. “People might think me strange if I go around laughing at such times.”

  “Darlin’, you’re so damned cute when you laugh, I think it would affect most people just the way it did me. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you loosen up and really laugh. It was infectious, totally enchanting.”

  Angie replied musingly, “That’s the first occasion I’ve ever had to really laugh.” Her unhappy, lonely childhood and all that followed flashed swiftly before her, and in none of it could she recall a time of great happiness.

  Pecos’s lips went to her temple. Certain she was speaking of her miserable existence as a whore in Paso del Norte, Pecos felt his big heart twisting. “Sweetheart,” he whispered softly, “our life begins tonight. I promise, I’ll fill your life with laughter if you’ll allow me.”

  Angie leaned down and kissed his chest and hugged him happily. “Pecos,” she whispered against his warm flesh, “why don’t we eat some of that food you offered earlier?” She lifted her head and brought her lips to his ear and said teasingly, “Then later, I think I’d like to laugh again.”

  Chapter Thirty

  SOMETIME DURING the cold winter night, the snow stopped falling, but winds blew and the temperature plummeted. Inside the secret cave in the foothills of the Davis Mountains, the two passionate and playful lovers were warmed by love’s eternal flame. Angie and Pecos, too much in love to sleep, stretched like lazy cats, naked before the fire. They ate bread and meat and drank sips of bourbon. They wrestled and laughed. They kissed and touched. They talked and dozed.

  “I’ve an idea,” Angie announced sleepily around 4:00 a.m.

  “Umm.” Pecos’s eyes were closed. Flat on his back, he languorously raised his arms and folded his hands beneath his head. “Tell me.”

  Angie, on her stomach beside him, put a hand to his face, very gently lifting his left eyelid with one finger. “Let’s go out and play in the snow.”

  One gray eye was looking at her. “You’re joking.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said as she released his eyelid.

  Both eyes closed, he mumbled, “I don’t want to dress.”

  “I don’t, either.” She giggled and leaned down to kiss his mouth.

  Pecos’s eyes came slightly open. “Are you suggesting we go outside stark naked?”

  “I am.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  Angie scrambled to her knees. “Perhaps. Bye.”

  “Now, damn it, honey!” His arms came from under his head. A brown hand grabbed her wrist.

  “I’m going.” She twisted from his grip and rose to her feet. “You coming?”

  Pecos rolled to a sitting position. “Darlin’, you can’t …”

  Angie turned and headed for the cave’s mouth. Pecos rose, frowning. She brushed past the big roan horse sheltered just inside and laughed happily when she saw the swirling, huge crystal snowflakes tossed around by the driving winds. Into the wilderness she flew, screaming when the cold air hit her bare body. She lifted her happy face and gave a cry of exhilaration and wonder. Bright moonlight turned the snow-covered earth into a fairyland of shiny, shimmering beauty and magic. Angie, freezing immediately, spun around and gloried in her world of glittering white.

  Then she saw him.

  Pecos, wearing only his black cowboy boots, was clomping through the snow toward her. His tall, lean body gleamed in the moonlight, starkly brown against the whiteness surrounding him. Angie gaped at him. Then she laughed, turned and ran. Pecos followed. Angie was no match for the long-legged man. In seconds he caught up to her and grabbed at her, but she slipped away. She lost her balance and fell into the wet snow and Pecos laughed at her clumsiness, but not for long. Angie tripped him and he came crashing down on top of her.

  Her bubbling laughter told him she was unhurt. “You big bully,” she shouted and pushed him away. He pulled her back into his arms and kissed her wet, cold lips. She kissed him back. They tumbled around in the cold, wet snow, kissing and laughing, two foolish young people, drunk on the sweet nectar of love.

  Pecos lifted his head and looked down at Angie. She was laughing, her wet lips parted and her eyes shining and filled with joyful tears. Her long golden hair was a sopping, tangled mass, her perfect little body chilled. Her laughing lips began to tremble and her small white teeth began to chatter.

  “Jesus, I love you,” he murmured and kissed her with a heat that almost melted the snow. Easily lifting her in his powerful arms, Pecos carried her back into the cave, placing her gently in front of the fire. Rising, he said solicitously, “I’ll wrap the blanket around you, honey.”

  Smiling, Angie put out a hand and grabbed his boot top. “No.” She let her fingers slide up his long, wet leg, and her eyes lifted to his. On her shiny face was a look of hunger. Pecos lowered himself to his knees beside her and took her in his arms.

  “You’re freezing,” he said into her wet hair.

  Angie laughed, pulled away and stretched out on her back. “Warm me,” she whispered seductively.

  The heart inside his chest began to hammer. Pecos’s heated eyes caressed her bare, glistening body. He reached for his boots, eager to get them off, fall upon her and make love to her once again.

  “Forget the boots,” she giggled and put out her arms to him. Confusion tearing at him for only an instant, he looked from her to the boots and back again.

  “That’s what I say,” he said, chuckled and stretched out beside her, the tall, tight boots still on his feet. “Kiss me.”

  He leaned over and kissed her deeply, thrusting his warm tongue between her parted lips. Her arms went around his neck and her hands into his thick, wet hair. Against his mouth she murmured, “I love you, Pecos McClain. If you love me, please take me now.”

  He moaned, shifted, and took her with a deep, hard drive of his body and leaned down to kiss her lips again. She sighed into his mouth and wrapped her satiny legs around his long, smooth back, pressing him closer and closer. Pecos groaned and tore his mouth from hers. He murmured thickly, “God you’re good, so good.”

  It was not until after the loving when they lay spent and happy that it struck them funny that Pecos had made love with his boots on. It seemed hilarious at that time—Angie teasing him unmercifully, he reminding her that it was she who couldn’t wait. She countered that only he would be wearing boots and nothing else. He retorted that he wasn’t fool enough to go out into a snowstorm without his boots. She asked if he thought feet were the only parts of the body that could freeze. He glibly assured her that he’d had no problem with that part that most
interested her.

  Angie laughed, rolled to him and kissed his hard stomach. “You’re so right, my love,” she admitted. “Besides, I think you’re rather attractive wearing only your boots.”

  He put a big hand to her head, cradling it fondly. “Maybe, but I’m damned uncomfortable. These boots are wet.”

  “Shall I help you take them off?” She looked lovingly at him.

  “Do you know how?”

  “Raise your foot, big boy.”

  Pecos chuckled happily and lifted a long leg. To his delight, Angie nimbly rose from the floor, threw her slender leg over his and stepped across his foot, clasping the tight wet boot in both hands. “You may push, love,” she said over her bare shoulder.

  His eyes on her shiny white bottom, he said truthfully, “Honey, I can’t, I might hurt you.”

  “If you don’t want to leave these wet boots on all night, please push, Pecos.”

  Reluctantly, Pecos raised his booted foot and gingerly placed it on her creamy buttocks. “Ready?”

  “Ready!” she declared firmly.

  Pecos pushed, as gently as possible. After a great deal of giggling and tugging, his boots were off and Angie was again in his arms. “Now it’s your turn, sweet baby,” Pecos breathed softly. “We’re going to dry your hair before you catch a cold.”

  “I’ve no brush,” she said lazily and snuggled closer to him.

  “I’ll brush it with my fingers. Sit up.”

  “No, I’m too tired.”

  He took her elbow and maneuvered her into a sitting po sition. He crawled around behind her and pulled her back between his bent knees. With incredible patience and gentleness, he sat separating her long, tangled hair while she draped her elbows atop his knees and sighed, the fire making her pleasantly drowsy. Pecos loved touching the golden, silky strands of hair. He fanned them out on his flat palm and watched the fire highlight their shiny beauty as they slowly dried.

  When at last her long hair was completely dry and lay in soft waves around her shoulders, Pecos gently pulled her back, resting her head in the curve of his neck and shoulder. His arms slid around her narrow waist and he murmured dreamily, “I’ll bet it’s almost dawn.”

  Angie put her hands on his and turned her face to his throat. “Are you sleepy?”

  “Uh-huh. You?”

  “A little.” She sighed.

  “We should go home, darlin’.”

  “Yes,” she breathed against his flesh, “but I don’t want to go.”

  “Why?”

  She kissed his strong jaw. “Because this will all be over.”

  “What will all be over?”

  “This … this paradise. This glorious loving. This primitive state we’re in.” She lifted a small hand and swept it in an encompassing gesture.

  He kissed her golden hair. “It won’t be over,” he assured her, then corrected, “well, perhaps some of it will be over. We can’t sit in the drawing room at Del Sol without our clothes, but the loving will continue, you can count on it.”

  Angie felt her heart race. “You mean … when we get home, that we’ll … Pecos, we can’t …”

  “We sure can.” He was commanding. “I love you, my dear golden beauty, and I don’t care if the entire world knows it.”

  She shifted a little in his arms so she could look into his eyes. “You mean that, Pecos? Back at Del Sol we’ll make love just like …”

  “My God, of course.”

  “Pecos, your aunt.”

  “What does that mean, ‘Pecos, your aunt’?”

  “You know very well what it means. She would know. We can’t …”

  “Darlin’, I’ve no intention of flaunting our intimacy in Aunt Em’s delicate little face, but I don’t plan to hide anything, either. I love you. I want you. I shall want you at Del Sol as well as out here in the wilds, and I’ll damn well take you to bed. If someone should disapprove, I’m sorry, but it’ll not keep me from you. No one can do that but you.”

  Angie sighed and again relaxed against him. “It would be awfully hard to stay away from you once we get back.”

  Pecos laughed. “Impossible. Admit it. You’re so mad about me you can’t live without me.”

  Angie smiled, turned completely around and threw her arms about his neck. “Yes, my arrogant, handsome, funny darling. I am insanely in love with you. You must find your way into my bed when we return, but promise that you’ll be quiet about it.”

  Pecos kissed her parted lips. “I’m the soul of discretion. It’ll be lots of fun sneaking around, don’t you agree?”

  “I think that anything I do with you would be lots of fun,” she said and meant it.

  “I love you, sweetheart,” he murmured and again pressed his lips to hers.

  THE COLD, HAPPY PAIR arrived safely back at Del Sol by midmorning. Reno Sanchez was there to greet them. The perceptive Latin knew two things as soon as he saw them. The mighty horse, Diablo, was dead and the couple riding tandem on the big roan were in love. He said nothing, but he knew. Up at the hacienda, Miss Emily and Delores were relieved to see the young people back safely, and both looking remarkably fit and rested.

  To the disappointment of all three women, Pecos didn’t stay at the house long. Saying only that there were some things he needed to take care of, he was back into his hat and coat and headed for the door, Reno with him.

  Angie felt her insides twisting. She knew Pecos. He was going back out to bury his beloved Diablo. He pulled her to him and kissed her. Angie flushed and knew she’d have lots of explaining to do after he’d gone.

  “Can’t I go?” she whispered, looking up into his eyes.

  Pecos touched her cheek with a gloved hand. “You know where I’m going, honey?” She nodded. “You stay here. Reno and I will see to it. Get some rest and I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

  Angie stood watching him go, rushing to the back door to hold it open so that she could see him cross the big backyard and disappear. She closed the door, turned and faced Miss Emily. To her surprise, the kind little woman was smiling.

  “I … I guess you’re …” Angie drew a deep breath. “It must be somewhat of a shock to see Pec—your nephew kissing me.”

  “A pleasant one, dear.” Miss Emily nodded.

  “I love him, Aunt Emily,” Angie stated emphatically. “I have for a long time.”

  “I’d say by the way Pecos looks at you, your love is returned, dear.”

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Angie breathed.

  “It is. Now, you get on to your room and get into a hot bath. You must be exhausted, though you look as fresh as spring.” Her blue eyes twinkled mischievously.

  Angie blushed, recalling the long, lovely night. “I’m a bit tired. I believe I will clean up. We’ll talk later.” She impulsively hugged the shorter woman and happily hurried away to her bedroom.

  Pecos returned shortly after one. He drew off his Stetson and swept Angie into his long arms, nuzzling her affectionately. “So when do we eat around here?” he quizzed good-naturedly.

  They ate as though they’d never be allowed another meal. In the big, cheery library afterward, Delores poured their coffee, bringing down the brandy decanter for Pecos. Pecos sat on the floor in front of the roaring fireplace, a cigar between his white teeth. Angie had shyly pulled away when he beckoned her to join him and was seated on the long settee watching him while he drank his coffee and brandy and lazily smoked the cigar. She listened, enchanted, to his deep, drawling voice and felt tiny chills of excitement rushing up her spine. Never had she seen Pecos looking so devilishly handsome, so young and boyish. He sat speaking of their long night of adventure in the cave, discreetly leaving out their shared intimacy. His beautiful gray eyes held a warm gleam when they came to rest on her, and it was all Angie could do to keep from running across the room to fling herself at his feet and throw her happy arms around him.

  It was then that Angie thought to herself that everything Pecos did, he looked good doing it. Walking, riding, danc
ing—Pecos looked good doing those things. Coughing, scratching, yawning, sleeping, Pecos looked good. Laughing, swearing, shouting, whispering, he looked good. Eyes open, eyes closed, dressed or naked, Pecos McClain looked good.

  Pecos snuffed out his cigar, rose lazily, and draining his snifter of brandy said evenly, “Ladies, I hope you’ll excuse me. I think my night in the wilds has caught up with me. I’m going to run on out to my room and take a nap.” He sauntered to the coat tree and took down his jacket and Stetson. “I’ll see you two lovely ladies at dinnertime.” He looked directly at Angie and laughed at the look of surprise he saw on her questioning face. He was still laughing when he walked out of the room, his jacket slung over his shoulder and the Stetson on his handsome head.

  Angie felt deserted, though she knew she was being foolish. She’d see him again at dinner. Surely she could wait that long. Miss Emily picked up her crocheting from the basket and began working, chattering amicably. Angie tried very hard to listen and appear interested. After half an hour she was almost relieved to hear the chirping, sweet little woman say, “My dear, if you don’t mind, I’m a bit weary myself.” She smiled at Angie and placed her crocheting back in its place. “I worried about you two last night even though Reno told me there was no danger. I think I’ll just go along upstairs and lie down.”

  Angie reached out and squeezed Emily’s small hand. “You go on along. I may do the very same thing.” Miss Emily rose, smoothed her wool skirt and left the room. Angie wished she had the nerve to tiptoe down to Pecos’s room. Yawning tiredly, she moved listlessly down the long, dim corridor to her bedroom.

  She opened the door and gasped. Hurrying inside and slamming the heavy door behind her, Angie leaned back against it and gaped, happy giggles bursting from her. Across the spacious room, atop her bed, amid swarms of yellow silk and organza, Pecos lay stretched out smiling devilishly. Gloriously naked, his long body looked darker than ever against the feminine, frothy yellow sheets and canopy.