by Nan Ryan
Then his lips were back on hers, hot and commanding, as he impatiently tugged at the waistband of her lacy, Paris-designed underwear.
Sabella was pressed back against the carriage seat, her hands stroking his shoulders, his bared chest, nails raking through the crisp dense hair. His mouth moved masterfully on hers. She’d never know quite how he did it, but he managed to effortlessly peel her wispy lingerie off. She felt the frothy underwear slip down over her stomach and hips. Felt Burt’s hand wrap around the lacy fabric and tug until it slipped down and snagged beneath her buttocks.
As if obeying some silent command from him, Sabella raised up just enough to free the caught underwear and was immediately rewarded with the fiery touch of Burt’s hands cupping the rounded cheeks of her bottom. He slid the freed underpants down her golden-skinned thighs.
His flaming lips left hers and Burt lifted his dark head when the lacy underwear reached her knees. His gray eyes were hot, molten lead as they gazed into hers and she could see that his patience was gone. He recklessly tore the wispy underwear away. She heard it rip and was overjoyed to be totally free of the encumbrance.
She gasped in excited pleasure when Burt flipped her dress and petticoats up around her waist, leaving her bare to his burning eyes, his magic touch. Her heart pounding, her breath shallow, Sabella made a funny little sound of shock and pleasure when Burt slid down off the leather seat to the floor of the carriage.
Instinctively, she modestly pressed her bare legs tightly together, but found it difficult to hold them that way because the muscles in her thighs were jumping involuntarily.
Burt’s hand wrapped around the back of her shapely calf. He sat down on the floor, bent his dark head, and kissed her dimpled knees.
Sabella squirmed and sighed as Burt, brushing kisses to the tingling flesh of her clenched thighs, gently skillfully urged them apart. Vulnerable, completely exposed, Sabella felt no embarrassment or shame. Only white-hot passion. Looking straight into her eyes, Burt eased her bent knee up, ducked under and repositioned her legs so that he was between.
He again lowered his dark head and kissed her trembling thighs, now open to him. His dark face moved higher and higher and Sabella felt the white-hot of his lips on her skin.
Her breath grew rapid and shallow. She felt as if her entire body was rigidly taut, so tense it was almost painful. At the same time it was as though her body was entirely without bones, so limber and pliable that this bold fiery lover could surely move and mold her with the greatest of ease.
The silky hair of Burt’s dark head tickled Sabella’s bare stomach and she shuddered deeply. Her dark eyes glazed, she timidly swept the bunched skirts a little higher and glanced down. She found the shockingly pleasing sight of Burt between her legs, kissing her, to be so erotically pleasurable she couldn’t look away.
She anxiously pulled the dress and petticoats higher, pushing them back out of the way with her elbows so she could better see what he was doing to her.
Then, of their own volition, her stockinged legs fell further apart and her bared bottom slid nearer to the edge of the leather carriage seat. Nearer to the hot, hungry mouth and tickling tongue spreading lovely heat up along the insides of her thighs. That marvelous mouth moved higher. The white heat blazed hotter. The flames licked closer.
Sabella felt strangely as if she were poised before a dangerous abyss, about to fall in and be lost. Unsure what form of heaven or hell awaited her in the dark, mysterious depths below, she felt herself helplessly going over the edge.
And then at last, his face was buried in her. He was kissing her where she had never been kissed before. Where she most wanted and needed to be kissed. The fire his lips ignited swiftly spread, radiating outward from the place where it began.
But oddly, blessedly, the flames did not scorch her. They lapped at her throbbing flesh, oh, so soothingly, like the ripples in a cooling stream. Gently splashing her. Consolingly washing over her.
Sabella arched to meet the hot, handsome face, the delicious dazzling mouth. Her neck would no longer support her head. It fell back. Her lids were heavy, would not stay open. Her eyes slipped closed. She breathed slowly through her mouth, gliding happily on wave after wave of slow incredible pleasure, hoping against hope that this languid, fiery pool which was lapping at her would never go dry. Without its cooling balm, she would surely burn up.
Sabella finally opened her eyes, looked curiously down, and met the smoky hot gaze of Burt’s boldly staring, mesmerizing gray eyes. Their gazes locked. Her dark eyes pleased. His silver eyes promised.
Her dark flashing eyes asked only this. That his dazzling mouth would give her more, more, and still more. Deeper, deeper, even deeper. His gleaming eyes answered reassuringly. They vowed to give her more, more, and still more. Deeper, deeper, ever deeper.
His thick, dark lashes fluttering, then lowering over his silver gaze, Burt gave her more. He buried his face more deeply in her. He wrapped long fingers around the slim ankle of her left leg and urged her bent knee up, positioned her slippered foot on the carriage seat’s edge.
Sabella’s incredible pleasure instantly intensified.
A nervous hand went to his dark head, tangled in his luxuriant hair, and pressed his face yet closer still. She smiled foolishly, sighed softly, and sat there in a haze of happiness, slowly rhythmically rocking her pelvis forward.
All at once the soothing, lapping pool changed into a licking liquid fire whirling around and around the swollen, throbbing point of sensation which she was frantically pressing against his mouth. Jolts of pleasure she couldn’t control surged over and through her. Joy of a kind she had never experienced hurled her rapidly toward total liberation.
When finally it fully began, her deep, wrenching climax was so powerful it was both wonderful and frightening. Sabella cried out in a mixture of ecstasy and fear. Gripping Burt’s dark head with one hand, his opened shirt collar with the other, she felt herself erupting in a volcanic seizure of blinding, shuddering rapture.
“Burt! Burt!” she screamed as her passion-glazed eyes opened and closed and her body jerked spasmodically.
So intense was the great explosion of heat and ecstasy claiming her, Sabella could hear as well as feel it. A deafening loud explosion literally rocked the carriage beneath her, the echoing sound reverberating in her ears.
It was with the last of the little aftershocks of elation still buffeting her that Sabella began to faintly realize there really had been—simultaneously with her own—an actual great explosion somewhere close.
Staying with her through both rocking explosions, his mouth warmly enclosing her throbbing flesh, Burt waited until he was sure Sabella had attained total release. He kissed her, licked her, he loved her until the final instant when her scream drowned out all else and she frantically pushed his face from her, unable to stand another second of contact.
Burt immediately lifted his dark head, slid up onto the leather seat, and reached for the reins, saying, “Jesus Christ! The Dreamy Draw dam!”
Forty
THE LOUD, EARSPLITTING EXPLOSION abruptly shattered the afternoon stillness, the powerful boom rattling the leaded windows of the old solidly built hacienda.
“God Almighty! The Dreamy Draw dam!” Cappy Ricks swore, slammed his mug down on the kitchen table, and shot to his feet.
“Dios!” murmured Carmelita Rivera fearfully. “What is it? What has happened?” She, too, leaped up from the table.
The two of them were sharing a mid-afternoon cup of coffee and an amicable conversation.
“Broken rock dam up at Dreamy Draw,” Cappy told her, looking frantically about for his misplaced hat. “It’s for sure broke now.”
“Broke? How could the dam break?”
“Somebody’s blown it up!”
“No!” Carmelita exclaimed, plucked his old Stetson off an empty chair and anxiously followed him to the back door. “Who would do such a terrible thing?”
“God only knows!” Cappy grabbed the h
at from her, slammed it on his head. “Some rotten, troublemaking, no good bastard … begging your pardon, Carmelita.”
“What does this mean, Cappy?” Carmelita followed the worried foreman outside. Impulsively she placed a hand on Cappy’s arm. “If the dam is gone, then this is very bad, no?”
“Downright devastating!” he admitted, absently patting the plump fingers clutching at his arm, and hurried away.
Carmelita stood in the sun, a hand raised to shade her worried face, and watched the robust Cappy Ricks run toward the stables with the swiftness of a much younger man.
“Get me the dynamite!” Gena said.
Those were her orders.
Well, this ought to satisfy the bitch, Cisco thought as the thunderous explosion echoed across the valley. A pair of powerful field glasses raised to his narrowed, squinting eyes, the scar-faced Mexican watched the fun from a well-concealed vantage point a half mile above the dam.
The corners of his thin, mustachioed mouth lifted into a satisfied grin. Cisco had waited there alone, tense, counting the seconds, until the mighty blast was scheduled to go off. The discharge of dynamite had occurred precisely at three o’ clock.
Just as planned.
Cisco watched the broken rock dam disintegrate before his very eyes. It had taken months of hard, back-breaking labor by dozens of Indian slaves years ago to construct the sturdy rock dam.
Alone, he had destroyed it in a matter of seconds.
Well, not completely alone. He’d had Santo do the dirty work—place the sticks of dynamite, etc. But he, Cisco, was the one who’d masterminded the caper and detonated the dynamite.
He chuckled gleefully as the powerful blast sent huge boulders raining down over a wide radius of ground and a thick cloud of dirt rose high into the air. He laughed out loud when a great surge of rushing water roared through the gaping crater left by the destructive explosion. Carrying tree limbs and rocks and a myriad of debris along with the swirling tide, Coronado Creek immediately returned to its original path, roaring rapidly down toward the Pacific.
Not so much as a dipper full of its rushing water would ever again flow onto the vast acreage of Lindo Vista.
Boooooooommmmm!
The force of the blast was so strong, the sound of the explosion so deafeningly loud, Gena jumped, startled, even though she was expecting it. Had been waiting on pins and needles to hear it all afternoon.
Three o’clock.
Right on time.
Heart in her throat, she leaped up from the peach sofa and her hands went to her cheeks. She trembled, feeling suddenly short of breath and faint. She hadn’t actually considered the magnitude of destruction which would be caused by such an explosion. Afraid to go out and look, momentarily sorry for her rash decision to have the Dreamy Draw dam blown up, Gena worriedly shook her head and asked herself miserably, “What have I done? My God, what have I done?”
Shaking, she buried her face in her hands. She waited for the tears of shame and regret to come.
Her eyes remained totally dry.
The moment passed.
The weakness and the worry vanished. She lifted her head, threw back her shoulders. She knew exactly what she had done! And she was damn sure glad she had done it!
Gena began to smile. Then to laugh. Then to dance. She danced giddily about her bedroom, laughing merrily. She felt wonderful. Wonderful! Happier than she’d felt in weeks, months. And why not? Why should she be sorry for what had happened when she was not the one to blame.
The fault was not hers, it was Burt Burnett’s.
The bastard was getting exactly what he deserved and she was soooo glad she was able to give it to him!
Things could have, should have been very different. She had given Burt a second chance, but he hadn’t taken it. She had been certain that once she told him the terrible truth about his conniving Spanish wife—when he fully realized that Sabella Rios had married him only to get her hands on Lindo Vista—he would immediately seek a quick divorce and come back to Gena on his knees.
But he hadn’t done it.
Well, okay! Fine. Now it was too late! He wouldn’t be getting any more chances. For far too long she had been patient, understanding, forgiving, but no more. It was high time she thought of herself for a change.
Gena continued to dance dizzily around the room, stripping as she danced.
She was expecting Cisco within the hour.
She had promised him that if the explosion proved successful—when Coronado Creek no longer flowed onto Burnett land—she would show him her heartfelt gratitude. And he would thoroughly enjoy every second of her thanks.
Gena swayed across the room toward the bed.
“Boom. Boom. Boom,” she said in a sing-song voice, swinging her derriere from one side to the other in tempo with the booms. “Boom. Boom. Boom,” she repeated as she raised her dress high and did a few spirited kicks. “Boom. Boom. Boom,” she continued as she reached the bed, spun about, and sat down.
Her dress raised, she kicked a leg into the air, took off a blue satin garter, swung it around on her thumb for a while, then pulled it back like a slingshot and let it fly, laughing as it sailed across the room.
She peeled the sheer stocking down her leg and dropped it carelessly to the carpet.
“Boom. Boom. Boom,” she said again, falling over onto her back, flinging her arms up above her head. “Did you hear it, Burt?” she asked the silent room. “Did you hear the boom that will turn your precious Lindo Vista into a worthless wasteland?”
Forty-One
“THE BASTARDS HAVE BLOWN up the dam,” Cappy shouted loudly, running to meet the black brougham as it rolled to stop on a hill directly above the demolished dam. “Damn that Cisco and Santo! I’ll—”
“You’ll do nothing,” Burt said with sad resignation, climbing down out of the carriage. Squinting at the destroyed rock barricade, he said flatly, “It’s their dam, their draw, and their dynamite.”
Sabella remained in the carriage, her horrified gaze focused on the demolished rock dam. Disbelieving what she was seeing with her own eyes, she overheard the conversation between Burt and Cappy. She heard Burt tell his ranch foreman in a flat, emotionless tone that they couldn’t blame Cisco and Santo for blowing up the dam.
She heard Cappy say, “Jesus, son, surely you don’t think Senator de Temple is responsible. Why the senator is as fine a man as I’ve ever known. He’d never do such an insane thing.”
“No, of course not,” was Burt’s low, dispassionate reply. “This was solely Gena’s show.” A cheerless smile touched his full lips and he added softly, “Guess she figured since apprising me of the truth about my wife didn’t finish me off, she’d have another whack at me.”
“God in Heaven, you actually believe—”
“Sure I do,” Burt said with a bitter, self-deprecating grin. “I’m one lucky son of a gun, huh, Cappy? I don’t have just one, but two clever, castrating women bent on ruining me.” He turned back toward the carriage.
“Well, wait a minute,” Cappy said, frowning. “Where you going?”
“To hell it looks like,” said Burt with a shrug and a shake of his dark head.
He returned to the brougham. When he climbed up onto the seat beside her, Sabella saw, for one unguarded moment, the defeat in his hooded gray eyes. She was aware of the tension in his tall, lean body. She felt terrible for him; wished there was something she could do, some way she could help.
Impulsively she slid closer, laid a hand on his muscular forearm. “Burt, I just want you to know that—”
“Will you shut up,” he said coldly, pinning her with icy silver eyes. “Can you do that? Can you just leave me the hell alone?”
“Yes,” she said, her anger flaring instantly, “I sure as hell can!”
Sabella left Burt alone.
Once they arrived back at Lindo Vista, she retired to their upstairs suite and didn’t see him again for the remainder of the day. At shortly after eleven she went to bed. A
lone. After tossing and turning for half an hour, she fell tiredly to sleep.
At sometime past two in the morning, she was awakened by a hot persistent mouth pressing soft, stirring kisses to her parted lips and a pair of warm, caressing hands touching her in all the instantly responsive places.
Then kissing her there.
When Burt’s fiery lips returned to her mouth, his tongue searched for and found a fervent answer, a wild response that shook him to the bottom of his bare brown heels.
He quickly moved between Sabella’s long slender legs and sank into her soft, hot flesh. Rolling his hips, thrusting his pelvis, he felt her take him deep inside and trap him there. Her arms came around his neck, her silken-skinned legs around his back.
His hands sought the rounded cheeks of her buttocks; he lifted her to him, drove desperately into her as she clung to him and twisted and bucked against him.
After only a few brief, wildly physical moments, the magical feeling began. Their mutual orgasm came with a sudden powerful eruption of ecstasy that left them perspiring, limp, and panting for breath.
But when it had passed, Burt quickly rolled away, callously turning his back on Sabella. Tears stinging her eyes, she lay awake for a long time in the darkness, wondering how the beautiful naked body of the man stretched out beside her could radiate such intense heat when the heart inside his splendid chest was as cold as ice.
A pall settled over Lindo Vista.
Everyone was worried. And with good reason. In this dry, sunny land nothing could live without water. Not man. Not animal. Not vegetation.
Nothing.
No appreciable amount of rain had fallen in Southern California since the last of the late afternoon thundershowers back in August. Without the dam at Dreamy Draw, Coronado creek no longer flowed onto Lindo Vista to constantly replenish the shallow irrigation ditches. The network of ditches would go dry quickly without the roaring creek.
A good rain would help temporarily, but would not solve the long-term problem. Unless a new water source could be found to supply the ranch, the mighty empire that was Lindo Vista would be no more. The cattle and horses would have to be sold early and at a heavy loss. The fruit and almond orchards would wither and die. Grapes would fall from the brittle vines, scorched and shriveled by the sun. The high dry desert would start to reclaim the verdant valley, turning it into a parched, barren wasteland.
