by Brenda Joyce
Her hands slipped and slid over his wet shoulders, clutching at them. She thrashed beneath him. She desperately wanted him to lay his big, hard body down on top of hers and complete the possession he had begun, but he did not. She desperately wanted to feel his maleness against her femininity, and she strained her hips toward his, but he refused to meet her.
He tore his mouth abruptly from hers. Close to weeping, Regina met his gaze, her nails digging into the skin of his arms. She felt swollen, close to bursting. She writhed helplessly. The sensation of the clinging wet silk, adhering to her every curve, added to her agony.
"Too fast," he panted. He moved his hands over her breasts, as if familiarizing himself with them. Regina bucked beneath his fingers. He thumbed her nipples, his panting harsher and louder now, and Regina whimpered uncontrollably. His hands slid down her belly, low and lower still. Regina tensed, surprised but filled with anticipation, with need.
Slade's glance met hers again. He was dripping sweal and out of breath, kneeling over her, and his gaze was so intense it almost frightened her. His hands had stopped their quest just inches from her. Regina realized, in shock, that she was undulating her pelvis beneath his palms. Yet even in realizing what she was doing she could not stop her body from its reflexive dance.
"Yeah," he said hoarsely, closing his eyes. A second later his hands were between her legs, molding her nightgown to the deep cleft he had discovered there. His thumbs opened and explored her as if the silk was just another layer of her skin. Regina was immediately wracked with waves of mind-shattering pleasure.
When the spasms died, she became aware of what he was doing. He had pulled her nightgown up to her waist. Now his bare palms and naked fingers slid over her. His breath touched her. New sensations flurried to life within her. His finger slid inside her, tentatively. His wild gaze jerked to hers as she clamped around him. Regina thought that she might die, very soon.
"So beautiful," Slade said hoarsely, lowering his head.
Regina cried out when his tongue swept over her. She tried to tell him to stop, then immediately forgot about her objections. If it was possible for a man to worship a woman, then that was what Slade was doing to her. She began to shake. His tongue circled her delicately, relentlessly. She sobbed and gave in to another round of endless, powerful pleasure.
Instantly he rose above her, pulling her into his arms. The sensations had not yet died when Regina felt his engorged phallus straining against her thigh. He had shed his drawers. He was raining desperate kisses all over her face and finally on her mouth.
"Oh, damn," he gasped, meeting her gaze. "I already lost it, but it's still gonna be short, but sweet."
Regina barely heard. She did not understand and did not care to. She knew only what she desperately wanted. She jerked her hips up to meet his palm, rubbing herself frantically against him.
'That's not what you want," he told her, and she felt him poised to enter her, hard and wet. Shudders swept through him as he kissed her again, hard and deep. Suddenly his hands were anchoring her hips to the floor. "I'm sorry."
A scant second later he was driving himself into her. He was large, impossibly large, but there was only a brief moment of pain and then she felt all of him, pulsing inside of her so tight and hot and deep. He froze, panting. He kissed her neck once. She could not stand it. She dug her nails into his shoulders, moving against him.
He laughed, exultant. He moved deeper. He withdrew. He slid into her the way a pistol slides into a well-oiled holster, smooth and quick. A blast of pleasure followed. While he pumped himself into her, deep, hard, and thick, she wept and cried out and contracted violently around him. This time the pleasure was so intense that she nearly blacked out. Then he shouted too, and moments later he lay heavily on top of her, clinging to her.
A minute might have ticked by, or an hour. He slid to the floor. "Damn," he said grimly, sitting up. "Did I hurt you?"
Regina had been in a mindless limbo created by the intense physical release she had experienced three times. Slowly she opened her eyes to see him staring intently at her. The feverish excitement was still there in his eyes. Yet his expression was dark and worried. She smiled. She wondered if the bursting love she felt in her heart was there in her gaze and there on her lips. "No," she whispered. She touched his mouth with her fingertip. "Oh, Slade," she whispered. "It was so wonderful, you are so wonderful."
He tensed.
"Slade," she said again, sitting up. His eyes were wide, watchful. Regina gripped his shoulders, staring at his handsome, dark face, at his beautiful mouth. She stroked her finger over it again. She murmured his name again. She no longer cared if he guessed how she felt.
He caught her hand. His eyes blazed. "This is gonna be a long night," he said.
Chapter 16
iJlade paused at the door to look back at her. He knew that she slept like a rock under normal circumstances, so after last night he thought she wouldn't stir for many hours yet. He himself had not slept for a second. Despite the exhaustion.
Grimly he reached down for his duffel bag and slipped through the door. It hadn't taken him long to pack the few things he had brought home with him, and it had taken him even less time to make the decision now propelling him. He crossed the courtyard quickly. He wanted to leave without anyone seeing him. He preferred to leave like a coward.
And as he bypassed the house he tried not to think. It was exceedingly difficult. In the front courtyard he set the duffel bag down. There was one thing he had to do before he left.
With long strides, he began marching away from the house, not toward the stables, but north, toward the family cemetery.
As he walked, images from last night rushed through his mind. He and Regina, equally insatiable. He did not want to remember. Not now, not ever. He began to sweat.
The cemetery was just over the hill, ten minutes on foot from the house. The family patriarch, Alejandro Delanza, was buried there-the man who had started it all when he had received the original land grant from the Mexican governor. Beside him was his first and only wife, Slade's grandmother, Delores. They had had a son before Rick who had died in infancy, and Jaime's grave was the oldest in the lot. Rick had one other brother buried there as well, the victim of a tragic stagecoach accident while in the prime of his life. Sebastian's wife had returned back east to her family and had subsequently remarried. Slade's grandparents had just the three boys, no girls, and Rick had kept up the family tradition. And as Alejandro's oldest son had preceded him into the grave, so too had James preceded Rick.
A whitewashed split-rail fence had been put up in recent years, cordoning off the area. As Slade approached, his eyes went instantly to his brother's grave. He entered through the g
ate, his steps slowing.
More images tumbled through his mind. Regina had been in every position he could think of, and there had been so many that the images were blurred and fragmented. He was thankful for that one small favor. His stomach roiled, not for the first time.
A marriage in name only. What a joke.
He stopped in front of his brother's grave. Someone had put fresh flowers there the day before, white and orange roses cut from the bushes growing in the courtyard. Josephine, he thought. It was becoming difficult to breathe.
The headstone was white marble, and it was obscenely clean and new in comparison to the rest of the timeworn, wind-eroded stones in the cemetery. He stared at the inscription. JAMES WARD DELANZA, A NOBLE, LOVING SON. 1873-1899.
The words were blurring-or was it his vision? God, the inscription said nothing, yet it said everything. James had died so unfairly in the prime of young manhood. James had been noble, so goddamned noble, and he had been loving, not just a loving son, but a loving brother, a loving man.
While he, Slade, was a bastard and a traitor.
"James," he suddenly cried aloud. "I never intended to consummate the marriage, I never did!"
But regret was useless. He had a secret. The secret was that he had spent the past ten years living the most honorable and noble life that he could-to prove to anyone who cared to see that his father's assessment of him was wrong. To prove to himself that Rick was wrong. Yet now his life up until this moment was irrelevant. Last night had exposed the real truth. Last night he had exposed himself. He was a fraud. He was not honorable, he had never been honorable, the past was a pretense. James was the one in the Delanza family with all the honor.
He, Slade, was a selfish bastard, as Rick had pointed out so often. She saw him as a noble hero. It was not even laughable. How naive she was.
God, how could he have made love to her like that? How could he have forgotten, even for a second, that this woman had been James's fiancйe, that he had loved her?
"I'm sorry," he cried. "James, I'm so sorry!" But even as he called out to his brother he was a traitor. For his head filled with its own challenging refrain. But I love her too.
He was aghast. It was not true. If he loved James, it could not be true. Last night he had used the woman, nothing more.
But it had not felt cheap. He had not felt cheated. Only now did he feel cheated.
He gripped the headstone, forcing James to the forefront of his mind. He had come here to ask for forgiveness. He had come here to beg forgiveness. He had not come here to delve inside his heart, to betray James once again.
"James," he cried, his face upturned. "I'm sorry!" He closed his eyes, listening to the morning's first birdsong. There was no answer from the grave. But had he really expected one? And how could there be one?
For his apology was not one hundred percent sincere, the stubborn rebel in him kept thinking that he had a right, too. That she was now his wife, that James was dead-dead, dammit, and that he needed her just a little too.
But he was stronger than he had ever thought. He forced himself to stand tall. He would fight the part of him that continued to betray James, and he would win. He had to win. He could not live with himself if he didn't.
"I promise," he managed harshly, hoping James could hear, "I promise… never again. It was a mistake. It won't happen ever again. She doesn't mean anything to me. I swear it."
Slade waited. James did not materialize. There was no response, no answer, no forgiveness. There was not even a sign that James might be present, and that he might be forgiving. And it was stupid to be expecting him to appear, because James was dead. Stone-cold dead. Ghosts were for children, not men. Slade realized that there were tears on his cheeks.
He covered his face with his hands. Somehow he would get past this. James was dead, irrevocably dead, and there was not going to be any forgiveness from that quarter. Maybe, if he were lucky, one day he could forgive himself.
He quickly turned his back on the cold gleaming headstone. It was time to leave. Not just the graveyard, but Miramar, and her. He had proved how weak he was, there was no way in hell he could stay here with her now. If he had fallen once, he would do so again. There might even come a horrible time when he did not regret being with her. He didn't dare stay.
He walked more slowly back to the house and crested the hill. The sprawling adobe hacienda came into view. He faltered. Standing there by the gate and his duffel bag was his father.
Slade recovered. He assumed an inscrutable expression. He did not need this, not now. He hoped his eyes were not red. He continued on until he had reached the courtyard entrance.
"Where in hell are you going?" Rick demanded.
"What the hell is this?" He jabbed a finger at the bag.
"I'm leaving."
"Because of her?"
Slade was enraged-because it was the truth. "My reasons are none of your damn business."
"Why the hell not? I'm your father, aren't I?"
For a moment he did not speak. "You lost the right to call yourself my father a long time ago."
Rick gritted, "Maybe you lost the right to call yourself my son, runnin' out on me the way you did!"
Slade was reminded of the night he had run away a decade ago. For a brief instant he had an inkling that his father had felt betrayed by that night, but then he knew it was his imagination-or a reversion to a child's wishful thinking. "Blame me, go ahead. You never do any wrong, do you?"
"I didn't say that." Rick jabbed his finger at the bag again. '’You runnin' out on me?"
"Yeah."
"You runnin' out on me again?"
That night, ten years ago, Rick had let him go without any protest. But he had not been the heir then, just the pain-in-the-ass second son. His stomach clenched up, aching. A kind of dread-filled anticipation crept over him, unwelcome. It almost seemed as if Rick was upset. "If you want to look at it that way."
"How the hell else am I supposed to look at it?"
Slade shrugged as if nonchalant.
"You're not taking her with you!"
Slade tried to laugh. "Believe me, old man, she's all yours." It shouldn't hurt-he knew Rick, knew his old man couldn't care less about him-but it did. It hurt more than it had ever hurt before, undoubtedly because he'd let too many feelings out already this morning and his heart was still bleeding. "You've got it all now," he said harshly. "That should make you happy. You've got Miramar and you've got your heiress. I'm through with her and I'm through with you."
"You're a son of a bitch, you know that?" Rick said.
"I think you've said that once or twice before. And I know enough to take you literally. You know what? Leave my mother out of it."
"Like hell I will," Rick shouted. "She left me without thinking twice. You are just like her."
Slade was equally furious. He wanted to expl
ode, he wanted to inflict pain. Like a wounded animal, he lashed out. "We both had you in common, didn't we? You drove her away, didn't you? She didn't leave you, you drove her away!"
Rick went white.
Slade moved in for the kill. "But you don't have that power over me. Not anymore, not now. Once you drove me away. Now I'm leaving only because I want to."
Rick recovered. His dark-blue eyes, so like Slade's, held the same rage, and the same anguish. "Good! Leave! You think I'm gonna fuss over it? You think I want you to stay? You think I need you?" He laughed harshly. "Like hell!"
Slade picked up his bag.
"You would only bring this place down over our heads with your damn-fool ideas," Rick shouted as Slade walked away.
Slade didn't answer.
Rick screamed, "Besides, I got her now, damn you! I don't need you, boy, and I never will!"
Slade flinched, but kept walking. He couldn't remain impassive, not inside, where it counted. His heart was hurting as if someone was twisting a knife in there, hard. Yet his strides were steady.
When he was at the entrance, Rick said, his voice suddenly too high, "When are you comin' back?"
Slade didn't answer. The answer was that he was never coming back, another cruel twist of the blade. Leaving Miramar forever was just as hard as everything else.
"You always come back," Rick called out as if he understood what Slade's silence meant.
Slade didn't respond. And because it was the last time, he wanted to look back. But he didn't. And even though his mind was made up, even though he was moving away from the house with lengthening strides, inside he was waiting, waiting for a protest, a last protest, any protest-only it didn't come.
