Carson strode toward her with purpose.
“Where exactly do you expect me to go in this getup?” He held the ballooning white britches to either side while he spoke, and her giggles turned to hysterics.
“And these sandals. Do you know I haven’t worn anything but boots since I learned how to stand on my own two feet?”
Gaining a measure of composure, she surveyed his costume. “María chose well.” In the white shirt and pants, he would blend into the feria crowd, especially with the woolen poncho. The stiff-brimmed straw sombrero covered his head and most of his face. “Your disguise would be ruined if you wore Texas boots.”
He grinned then, scanning her own costume. His hands followed his eyes down her shoulders, fingering the tie on the white blouse, then across her breasts, taking special notice of the corset stays beneath, and onto her waist, where they stopped. He grasped her there, his hands splayed across her stomach. She watched the humor die on his face.
“Would it have been so terrible?” she whispered.
His eyes found hers. “I don’t want it to happen that way for you.”
“But it would have been our baby.”
He nodded. “I hadn’t realized how strongly I would feel about that until last night, when you said it wasn’t true.”
“You were disappointed?”
“Hmm.”
“So was I.”
His lips had barely touched hers, when the back door burst open and the cook shouted after them. “Away with you before I call the master. We don’t allow carrying on around here.”
Carson grabbed her hand. “The adventures you get us involved in, angel!” He pulled her around the corner, up a street, and down another hill.
“First things first,” he whispered. Stopping behind a wall that had no outside windows or doors, he pulled her into his arms and covered her lips with his own, kissing her until they were both gasping for breath.
“Every day without you has been hell,” he murmured into her lips, “but yesterday was worst of all, being so close and hardly getting to touch you.”
She held him, not wanting to ever let him go, responding in kind to his deep, delving kisses, to his passionate embrace, to his roving hands.
Finally, he drew back. “I’m not near finished, but considering the time and place…”
“I know. I have a lovely day planned for us.”
He followed her down the winding streets, unconvinced this scheme of hers, pleasant though it appeared to be, could end in less than disaster. “What will they do when they discover us gone?”
“They won’t.”
He tugged on her arm, waiting for an explanation.
“María will tell Tía that I am ill…that she has given me manzanilla tea and I will sleep until evening.”
“What if your aunt decides to check on you?”
“You know Tía Guadalupe. How much time do you think she will spend tending to an ill relative? Besides, María will keep the door locked.”
“What about me?”
“If they question your absence, Santos will offer some excuse.”
“He knows?”
“No, but…” A grin somewhere between contrition and pride bowed her lips.
“He knows you.” Carson sighed, wondering again what price they would pay for the simple pleasure of being together.
The premonition passed quickly though, as she led him on a tour of the quaint, romantic city. Their first stop was the market, where farmers had come to town with all manner of fruits and vegetables, nuts and meats, even clothing and jewelry.
Carson bought her a lacy black shawl to drape about her shoulders. “Completes your gypsy costume,” he said.
She dragged him to a stall where they sold shoes made of strips of leather woven basket-style. “They will cover your white feet better than those sandals María picked out.”
He tried a pair. “They fit better, too, but I still feel naked without my boots.”
He spied a stall that sold earrings and insisted on buying her a pair made of silver wires so intricately entwined they resembled lace. When he started to pay for them, something else caught his eye.
“Try it on,” he suggested, slipping a gold band on her third finger, left hand. It didn’t fit, but with the vendor’s help, they found one that did.
“I don’t need this,” she insisted when they walked away from the market. But he noticed how she held her hand out to admire the new ring.
“When I kiss you in public today, I want people to think we are without manners, not that you are a loose woman.”
Aurelia laughed gaily. “I don’t care what people think. We won’t see anyone we know all day long.”
“It doesn’t matter whether they know your name or not. I don’t want them looking at you and thinking that.”
The next place he kissed her was in the Alley of the Kiss, where they stood on opposite sides of the narrow street, leaned together, and kissed.
“The lovers who lived in these houses were kept apart by their cruel families,” she told him. “According to the story, their only contact was when they leaned across the alley from those balconies up there and kissed.”
He pulled her back to his side of the street, held her tight a moment, then released her.
“Your family is dead set on you marrying Enrique.” They ambled up one street and down the next.
“Mamá isn’t so bad about it.”
He agreed.
“Nor Santos anymore.”
He chuckled. “I never expected him to come between me and true love, but he sure as hell tried to for a while there.”
“I straightened him out.”
He pulled her to a bench in the narrow little square she called Plaza de la Paz.
“How did you do that?” he asked. “What did you tell him?”
She ran a gentle hand over his cheek, cupping his jaw. How she loved this man. “I told him I don’t want to live in Guanajuato.”
At his frown, she related Santos’s visit the evening before. “He was concerned that you might relent and try to live in Guanajuato to please me. So I told him the same thing I told you at the ball: I don’t want to live here.”
Carson shook his head, marveling at the interference of this friend, at the accuracy with which he had judged the situation. “Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“How sure?”
Without hesitating, she leaned closer and kissed him soundly on the lips. He quickly pulled her hands from his face and dislodged their lips. “Not here, angel.”
“You asked me; I wanted to show you.”
He tugged her to her feet, glancing about the plaza.
“That’s the opera house.” She pointed across the street to the grand building. “Do you want to go inside?”
“No, I want to show you something.” With that, he guided her to the fountain in the center of the plaza, where he seated her on its narrow edge.
After speaking with a musician nearby, he took the guitar the man offered, slipped the strap over his neck and, with a foot propped on the fountain rim, proceeded to serenade her.
Her eyes danced.
“Oh, I came from up in Texas
With my guitar on my knee,
To serenade Aurelia
And to win her love for me.”
She clapped her hands, holding them to her lips. “You’re courting me.”
“Why not?” he laughed. “You’ve been so busy chasing me, you didn’t notice when I caught you.”
“When I saw her in that jailhouse,
Where she came to set me free.”
I knew she was an angel
Who would steal my heart from me.”
Her eyes lit up. She pursed her lips between her teeth, listening to him sing and strum the guitar.
“You also asked me to serenade you, remember?”
She nodded, recalling how she had burst into the patio in Catorce. “I could have died when I saw Santos standing there.”<
br />
He laughed. “Actually, I figured I might be the one to expire…by his hands.”
He stuffed a bill between the strings of the instrument and handed it back to the man he had borrowed it from. “What next, guide?”
Moving to a park bench, she pulled out the crumpled map and studied it. He sat beside her, amused. The sun felt warm, the flowers smelled sweet. Around them the crowd milled, laughing, talking, enjoying the holiday.
“We could eat that lunch you swiped from the kitchen,” he suggested.
“Not here. We need to go there.” She showed him the map, pointing to their destination.
He whistled low between his teeth. “Glad you’re the guide and not me.” After glancing up and down the street, he clapped his hands to his knees and stood up, pulling her to her feet. “Let’s get on with it, then. My feet are ready to find their boots.”
“We can’t walk,” she told him. “We have to hire a carriage.”
“You think a driver can decipher that map?”
“Not a carriage and a driver.” She held up the sack of food. “We don’t want a driver on our picnic.”
His eyebrows lifted; his grin teased. His brown gaze caressed her face, lingering on her lips, dipping further. “A picnic? Right clever of you, ma’am.”
A couple of blocks away they found a livery, where he hired a hack and followed her directions out of town.
“Reckon this picnic will get me out of the charriada?”
“Do you want out?”
“Truth known, I’m looking forward to beating the spurs off those damned cocky charros.”
She laughed.
“Especially that Don Whatshisname Fraga.”
“Carson, you didn’t think I was serious, did you? About beating him? About the horses?”
“Weren’t you?”
“Well, it was an idea,” she admitted. “But it has nothing to do with…I mean, if you should lose, it wouldn’t…What I mean is…”
Reaching over, he rested a hand on her knee, squeezing her thigh. “Shhh, angel. I know it has nothing to do with us. It’s competition, fun. But it never hurts to dream a little.”
“In that case,” she admitted, “we need to return before siesta is over.”
He winked. “I’m not all that anxious to hurry through this picnic you went to so much trouble to arrange…” He glanced away, surveying the country on either side. “…especially since we’re fixin’ to leave the city behind.”
She told him where to turn off the main road, following a double-rutted trail into the foothills. They rode in silence for a while, each relishing the anticipation that spread like wildfire between them, traveling through their thighs where they touched, their shoulders.
She recalled how Santos had accused her of moping around all week. Right now, she bubbled with life and dreams.
“I worried about the authorities recognizing you in Catorce,” she said.
“No need. The haircut and shave did the trick. Of course, I didn’t traipse into headquarters to test ’em out.”
“I heard you tell Santos you think we have real trouble at the mine.”
He nodded.
“With Nuncio Quiroz?”
They both tensed at the name. He shifted the reins to one hand and put his free arm around her, drawing her near. “More people are involved than Quiroz.”
“Who?”
“Wish to hell I knew. I couldn’t find anything wrong with the books or in the mine, either. But that fight…well, someone tipped Quiroz off that I would go to the mine before I left town.”
“How do you know?”
“He was waiting for me.”
“Who could it have been?”
He shrugged. “Figure whoever it was meant business, though. And they aren’t finished. I must have come close to something, close enough to scare them.”
“I’m frightened for you.”
“I’ll be okay. Fightin’ bad men is my job. It’s you I’m worried about. Quiroz taunted me about you, openly, like he wants us to worry about what he’ll do or say.”
Aurelia snuggled against him, then recognized the trees in the distance. “There’s the place,” she said. “See those trees by that stream?”
He pulled the mare off the road. “I’ve been thinking about something,” he told her. “Didn’t you say your aunt and uncle are coming to Catorce for the wedding?”
She nodded.
“I want you to stay here and ride up with them. Let Santos and me go back and settle the ruckus.”
She stiffened on the seat beside him. “I will do no such thing.”
He laughed. “They say a man generally gets what he wishes for.” He shook his head. “Somewhere back in time, I must have wished for a headstrong woman.”
“Carson, you can’t mean that.”
“What? That you’re headstrong or that you belong to me?”
“That you want me to stay here.”
“No, angel, I don’t mean that at all.” He had drawn rein beneath a stand of poplar trees. “But it’s for your own good.”
Carson helped her off the wagon seat, then removed his sombrero and pulled the poncho over his head. He handed them both to her. “Spread the poncho under that tree while I water the mare.” He cocked an eyebrow. “That is why you made me wear this heavy thing on such a hot day, isn’t it? So we would have a…ah…a tablecloth?”
While he led the mare to the river, she did as he suggested. Actually, she hadn’t thought of the poncho in that light, but it was certainly a good idea. After she spread it on the ground, she reached beneath her skirts, removing her petticoat and bloomers, then adroitly unlaced her corset, hiding the lot of them beneath one corner of the poncho.
He returned to find her leaning against the trunk of the tree, her knees pulled up with her skirt tugged down over them. Mostly.
He settled himself lazily, facing her and grinning. One hand slipped beneath her skirt, cupping her bare calf in a hot palm. He rubbed idly back and forth, still grinning.
“I think I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. When you set out to seduce a man, you don’t stop halfway.”
Her heart pounded against her ribs. She held out her arms, and he came into them.
“Now, kiss me like you did in our cave behind the waterfall,” she whispered.
“I’ll do my damnedest, angel.”
Serenaded by nature—the wind rustling through silvery leaves above them, the stream gurgling by at their feet, birds and crickets singing in off-key but not discordant harmony—he kissed her.
The soft mounds of her breasts nuzzled into his chest; her back already felt warm to his hand, even through her thin blouse. Fumbling from haste he had trouble controlling, Carson untied her blouse and drew it over her shoulders, exposing her breasts, while she wriggled her arms free.
Then she tugged and pulled at his shirt, helping him discard it as well. When they came together again, he held her close and still, savoring this lovely free spirit who was unlike any human he had ever known or even imagined.
Would he ever learn not to underestimate her schemes? He supposed not, not being given to such things himself. Likely she would always be one step ahead of him in that department. It didn’t really matter. He liked surprises as much as the next man. Aurelia’s best of all.
The thought of surprises, however, called to mind the terror he had lived with the past ten days.
“Are you sure about this?” His husky voice betrayed the passion rising inside him.
She bumped her head on his chin in an effort to look in his eyes. “Why would you ask such a thing?”
“Since we discussed the consequences…” He tried to sound matter-of-fact but knew he didn’t succeed. His hand shifted from her bare back to her belly, which was still covered by the coarse black skirt.
“You said you were disappointed,” she whispered.
“I was, but…I don’t want it to happen like this.”
She nipped tender kisses onto hi
s face. “We know the consequences.” She hugged him tighter, nuzzling her breasts into his furry chest. “And we know the wonder of it all. What is so wrong with that?”
“Nothing, as long as we are prepared to…”
She ran her hand along his back, his side, slipping her fingers beneath the waistband of his loose white trousers, eliciting a shudder.
“That didn’t hurt,” he hurried to assure her, calling to mind the last time they made love. She was right, of course. Now that they knew the wonder, now that they were here in each other’s arms, how could they stop?
Even if they wanted to. But that didn’t mean he had to jeopardize her future, take all her choices away.
His hand slipped beneath her skirt, bunching it around her waist, where the fabric from both garments formed a roll between them. He wouldn’t remove her clothing, he told himself, running his hands along the outside of her thigh, then traveling inside, feeling her legs open to his quest. He wouldn’t remove her clothing, not here in the wilds where they could be discovered.
And he would make sure she did not conceive his child. His heart tolled like a heavy church bell, reverberating against his ribs. When he slipped his fingers inside her, a tremor passed through her body, radiating to his. She threw back her head and his lips slid from hers, leaving a trail of wetness across her chest to her breast.
Again a tremor passed through her body to his. Her hips lifted suggestively against the sensual cadence of his hand.
Her fingers splayed around his head, grasping chunks of his hair. “Love me, Carson. Please love me.”
Without completely removing them, he tugged and pulled his breeches over his knees, all the while staring into her begging eyes. God help him, he did love her so much.
He entered her as slowly as he could manage under the circumstances, letting her liquid heat fire his already intense desire. He watched her lips part and quiver; that Comanche bow had just released another arrow, and her aim was perfect. His heart trembled with love for her. When she moved her hips against him, he felt the velvet of her core close around him, inviting him, welcoming him.
Suddenly, all he wanted was to plant his seeds here inside her, where his child could grow surrounded by her love, nourished by her romantic, fun-loving nature, protected by her fierce independence. He wanted it. God, how he wanted it.
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 25
