Texas Woman

by Joan Johnston

  “She is wrong.”

  “What else could it be?” Sloan challenged.

  He met her gaze in the starlit shadows and said, “I love you. I have loved you from the first moment I saw you.”

  “When I was your brother’s woman? You loved me then?” she demanded.

  “Even then.” The heat rose in his face, and he was grateful for the darkness. “I hated my brother for what he did to you.” He brushed his knuckles against her cheek. “We will put the past behind us and start-”

  “Even if I agreed to such a thing, there’s no guarantee I could ever come to love you. Are you willing to take that kind of chance with your future, Cruz?”

  “I can envision no future that does not include you,” he said, his jaw taut. He stepped closer, until their bodies were facing one another, bare inches apart.

  Sloan could feel the heat of him, smell the tobacco and tangy male scent that she had come to associate with him.

  “Everything will come in time, Cebellina. We have a lifetime to learn to live together.”

  “I only promised you six months,” Sloan contradicted.

  “I need you in my life.”

  “I can’t promise you anything. I may not be able to give you what you want.”

  “I will take my chances.” He gathered her into his embrace, bringing them together from breast to thigh. His hands stroked down her back until they reached her buttocks, and he gently coaxed her against him.

  She sucked in a breath of air when she felt his arousal hard and hot against her.

  “Relax, querida.”

  “I can’t!”

  One of his hands kept their hips pressed together while the other tangled in her hair, drawing her head back. He closed her eyes with soft kisses, grazed her cheekbone with his mouth, teased the edges of her lips with his teeth, and finally bit down gently on her lower lip, tugging on it until Sloan opened her mouth to him.

  “This is madness,” she whispered.

  “Then we are both mad.”

  He took her mouth with passion, his tongue claiming her, ravaging, demanding. Sloan’s hands balled into fists as she fought the urge to return in full measure what Cruz gave to her.

  A sharp gasp from the nearby darkness broke them abruptly apart.

  Sloan’s eyes slowly focused on the confused, wide-eyed gaze of Tomasita Hidalgo. Sloan turned equally stricken eyes on Cruz, who swore vociferously under his breath as he stared back at Tomasita.

  Nobody spoke for a moment, and Sloan looked back to Cruz to see how he planned to explain their behavior to the impressionable young woman.

  “I intended to speak with you, Tomasita, to tell you that Sloan and I…”

  “You do not owe me an explanation,” Tomasita said, her voice brittle. “I have eyes. I can see for myself what has happened here.”

  “There is nothing wrong with what you saw, Tomasita. Sloan and I are married. We have been married for four years,” he said.

  That statement prompted a gasp of horror from Tomasita. “But my father… your father… they promised… We are betrothed!”

  “How can you know of that?” Cruz exclaimed. “If Mamá has said anything to you-”

  “Doña Lucia said nothing. I overheard Mother María speaking of it at the convent.”

  “All this time you thought…” Cruz thrust a hand through his hair. “I had hoped you need never know,” he said.

  He ground his teeth at the tragic expression on Tomasita’s face. “I did not mean… it is nothing to do with you,” he said, groping for words to lessen the hurt he could see in her pain-filled eyes.

  “You are a lovely young woman,” he said. “But my father made the promise to your father without my knowledge. By the time I found out about it, I had long since committed myself to Sloan.”

  “Then you never intended to marry me?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you not just leave me in the convent?”

  “I promised my father I would see that you were well wed.”

  “That is not necessary,” she said, her spine stiffened by pride. “I do not choose to marry at all.”

  “That choice is not yours to make,” Cruz said. “You are under my protection. I will decide what is best for you.”

  Tomasita looked from Sloan to Cruz and then backed away. “I think I will go to my room now.”

  Sloan watched in dismay as the young girl made what, under the circumstances, was a surprisingly graceful exit. “She would have made you a much better wife than I,” Sloan murmured sadly.

  “I do not love her.”

  Sloan turned, and her heart rose to her throat at the fierce look of possession she found in Cruz’s deep blue eyes. “I’m not like Tomasita, Cruz. I could never let you make my choices for me. I make my own decisions. I always will.”

  “Perhaps, Cebellina. We will see.”

  Sloan’s eyes narrowed. “There is no perhaps about it, Cruz.”

  “We will see how you feel in the spring, shall we?” he said. “Maybe you will change your mind.”

  Sloan frowned. He could wait all he wanted. She wasn’t going to change her mind.

  Until the incident in the courtyard, Tomasita had not intended to meet Luke Summers. But when Saturday came, she still had not stopped feeling angry with Don Cruz.

  It had been embarrassing, of course, to find her supposed fiancé in another woman’s arms. But it had been humiliating to discover that she had been kept ignorant of the truth about their betrothal, like a spoiled child who might cry if she cannot have her candy.

  Meeting Luke Summers alone seemed a dangerous enough adventure to prove she was a grown woman and not the green girl that Don Cruz had apparently considered her.

  After supper, Tomasita told everyone she was going to her room to bed. Instead, she sneaked out beyond the walls that surrounded the hacienda and made her way to the river in the failing light. Her heart was beating crazily in her breast, and her breath was coming in short spurts because she ran practically the whole way. When she finally got where she was going, she realized what an unbelievably childish thing she had done.

  The only sounds she heard were the water burbling lazily over stones and the wind rustling through the cypress trees along the banks. Otherwise it was deathly quiet.

  She had worn a dark wool skirt and a white camisa, but had covered her head and shoulders with a dark crepe de chine shawl with fringe so long it reached her ankles. She stood shivering in the darkness, waiting for a man to arrive whom she had met only twice and who had taken liberties with her both times.

  The total idiocy of her actions dawned on her at about the same time she heard the hooves of a horse plodding directly toward her.

  “Holy Mary,” she whispered. “Protect this foolish woman!” She turned and ran as fast as she could back toward the hacienda, not caring who it was on the horse, praying to the Father above that it wasn’t someone bent on harming her.

  She was still running when she felt a muscled arm snake around her waist and haul her from the ground. She tried to scream, but a callused hand covered her mouth, shutting off the sound.

  She struggled like a wildcat, scratching, frenzied, frantic… until she heard the male voice in her ear crooning sweet, soft love words.

  It was Luke Summers. He had come as he had promised.

  Tomasita slumped in his arms, her head falling back against his muscled chest, her breathing becoming less tortured as her brain acknowledged that the danger was past.

  She felt his moist breath on her ear as he said, “All through bucking, little mustang girl? I’m going to take my hand off your mouth now. Easy, girl. Everything’s all right now. Easy.”

  Tomasita found herself gentled much as he might have gentled a wild mustang, with soft strokes and gentle words. She didn’t fight him when he lifted her farther into his lap.

  She was not so naïve that she did not recognize his heightened state of excitement. It was both thrilling and a little awe-inspiring to know h
e found her desirable as a woman.

  His arms looped around her, holding her snugly against him. She could feel her breast pressing against his chest. It felt wonderful… natural…

  “Let’s go over here a ways and see if we can find a comfortable spot,” Luke said. “I’m glad you came, Tomasita. I’m real glad you came.”

  Tomasita didn’t say anything. She was too busy feeling things. Warmth. Excitement. Tension. Need.

  He stepped down from the saddle in a lithe movement and lifted her down with him. He settled her in the grass along the banks of the river and sat down next to her. “I need you, mustang girl. I’ve been needin’ you for days.”

  She felt his hands at her waist. They began to roam across her ribs and then upward toward her breasts. She quickly covered his hands with her own. “This is not right,” she protested.

  While she was talking, his hands kept moving under hers. His fingertips skimmed her nipples, bringing them erect and sending shivers of sensation racing to her core. “You must stop. That feels…”

  She moaned as he gently pressed her down into the grass. “What are you doing?”

  “Loving you. Come on and touch me, mustang girl. I need to feel your hands on me.”

  Before she could say anything, he had taken her hands and put them against his bare chest. When or how he had rid himself of his linsey-woolsey shirt, she had no idea. His skin felt hard and smooth under her fingertips.

  He moved her hands where he wanted them-across his flat nipples, down the center of his chest to the crisp hair that grew in a line down to his navel, and down even farther, across the front of his trousers, where he was hard and heavy.

  “Ah, mustang girl, you make me feel so good. Let me touch you. Let me make you feel as good as I do.”

  Tomasita’s breath was coming in short spurts. Her whole body seemed alive with feeling. “Luke, Luke, I feel too much. I cannot breathe. I cannot-”

  His hands gently palmed her breasts through the soft camisa and the sensation was so exquisite that she simply held her breath, hoping to prolong it. Then his mouth touched her through the cloth, wet and hot.

  “Ahhh.” Tomasita grabbed handfuls of Luke’s hair as though to pull his mouth away, but instead she arched her back and held him there, her teeth gritted in an agony of pleasure. She moaned deep in her throat.

  Luke nuzzled her bare skin above the cloth, then trailed wet kisses along her throat to her ear, and finally found her mouth.

  At first he just teased her, touching her and backing off. “You ever been kissed before, mustang girl?” he asked, his voice tender.

  Tomasita shook her head.

  He laughed, a low, husky sound. “You wanta be kissed some more?”

  Tomasita smiled. “Sí, vaquero. I want to be kissed.”

  His lips barely touched hers, skimming one side of her mouth and then the other. He teased and taunted, his tongue dipping out occasionally to taste, to wet her lips, to probe, and then to retreat.

  At the same time, his hands roamed her body. He palmed a breast and the nipple budded beneath his fingertips. His hands danced across the heart of her desire, too quickly gone for her to offer a protest. He chased a shiver down to the small of her back with his fingertips.

  Working in tandem, his mouth and his hands played with her like a wolf with a lamb. There was never any question he would have his quarry.

  Tomasita met Luke’s lambent green eyes through a haze of pleasure. Every nerve was sensitized. Her whole body felt weak. There was no chance to flee-her legs would not have supported her.

  But she had no desire to flee. Right or wrong, good or bad, nothing seemed to matter. Only the man and the moment.

  “That’s it, mustang girl. Open your mouth for me now. Open up and let me come in.”

  The feel of his tongue in her mouth was not so foreign as she might have imagined. He thrust and withdrew, thrust and withdrew, and she found herself wanting to keep him there. So the next time he thrust she caught his tongue and sucked on it to hold him there and heard him groan.

  Her hips arched into his hardness. She tried to slip her fingertips beneath the cloth at his waist, to reach his buttocks, but the buckskin pants he wore fit too well.

  He slipped her skirt and underdrawers off, and soon she felt the grass beneath her back, cold and slightly wet with dew. Just as quickly, he undid the ties on his own pants and shinnied out of them.

  She was immediately aware of the feel of his warm hardness against her, probing, prodding.

  His hand teased its way down across her naked belly into the curls below, until he reached the petals he sought. His knee nudged its way between her legs, separating her thighs, opening her, making her vulnerable.

  She whimpered, frightened.

  “Easy, now. It’s okay to buck a little now. Don’t want to tame you, mustang girl. Just want us to take an easy ride together. You and me, girl. Just a crazy, wild, man and woman ride.”

  She could feel his fingers touching-soft, careful, wonderful. His mouth teased hers. His fingers taunted her nether lips. Then his hands were on her hips, tilting them, and he was probing, pushing.

  She met his eyes, his gaze heavy-lidded as he slowly pressed inside her, filling her full of him.

  She cried out with the pain as he took her innocence, bucking wildly, wanting free. His lips caught the sound, soothed it, made the pain his own, until he had slipped deep inside her, possessing her, making them one.

  “It’s all right now. The worst is over. Only pleasure now. Just the two of us. Together for the ride.”

  He kissed her tears away. Then, slowly, gently, he began to move. The sensations were overwhelming. She felt suspended. Her hips arched up to him, her hands grabbed hold of him, determined to stay with him.

  Luke groaned with pleasure.

  Tomasita groaned, too.

  She felt a rushing pleasure, a fleeting sensation that threatened to leave her in the dust if she did not reach out for it. She found his mouth with hers, grasped his shoulders with both hands, and let the feelings roll over her. Overwhelming. Unbelievable. Undeniable.

  When she was herself again, she felt the weight of his body shift off hers, felt him pull her snug against his warmth. Between gasps of air, he chuckled to himself. She chuckled too.

  She felt wonderful. She had found her life mate, her heart’s desire. She had found the man who would be her husband. She would gladly stay in Texas now.

  “When will you speak to Don Cruz?” she said, her voice soft, shy.

  “Speak to him? About what?”

  “About our marriage.”

  She felt him stiffen beside her. She met his solemn gaze with eyes that had seen too little of the world.

  “Sorry, mustang girl. I’m a bronc that can’t be lassoed. Guess I should have realized you wouldn’t know that.”

  “I do not understand.”

  He huffed out a breath of air. “I’m not the marrying kind, Tomasita. I’m a Texas Ranger. That makes me a traveling man. I’m on my way to San Antonio right now. Don’t know when I’ll get back.”

  Something curled up tight inside her. She had made a terrible mistake, made assumptions she should not have made. No other man would have her now.

  She felt her throat constricting, felt her chest tightening until she was afraid she might suffocate. She rose awkwardly and searched desperately for her clothing, dressing herself as quickly as possible.

  Nearby, Luke clothed himself slowly, methodically.

  When she was dressed, Tomasita turned to face the man who had taken her virginity. “I… I did not know… I should not have presumed…” She swallowed over the lump in her throat.

  Luke felt bad. He felt awful, in fact. He had only intended to steal a few kisses. Or maybe just caress her soft skin a little. Somehow things had gotten out of hand.

  He had always been able to stop himself in the past. But he had wanted Tomasita like he had never wanted another woman. Needed her like water in the desert. And he had
known he might never have another chance to possess her.

  So he hadn’t stopped.

  Luke reached out to touch Tomasita, but she jerked away. “Will you be all right?” he asked.

  “I will be fine. Do not concern yourself.”

  Tomasita turned and walked away from him back toward the hacienda. She heard him swear under his breath, heard him kick his mount, heard the muffled hoofbeats as the horse galloped away.

  Suddenly, the night sounds were deafening. Crickets and frogs. The water. The wind. The scream that rose in her throat and could not find escape.

  Chapter 13

  CRUZ TURNED TO FILL HIS SENSES WITH THE woman lying across from him in the huge Spanish bed they shared as man and wife. The linens smelled of the lavender soap she used, and the musky odor of sex.

  She looked like a woman who had been well loved. Her sable hair billowed around her face on the pillow, her lush sable lashes fanned her cheeks, which were scattered with a light dusting of freckles. Her mouth was parted and her lips were full and swollen from the passionate kisses they had shared during the night past.

  Her fiery responses had enflamed him. Over the past two months they had spent together, the loving had only gotten more intense, more fulfilling. He knew he would never get his fill of her.

  But though he had possessed Sloan’s body, she had kept her heart and soul apart. He was hardly in a position to cast blame, however, since he also had been selfish with parts of himself.

  His clandestine work for the British had forced him to exclude Sloan on more occasions than he wanted to consider. It had taken a lot of time to gather the information Sir Giles wanted, and he could hardly tell his wife the real reason he had not wanted her to come along with him on his journeys.

  He had also been unable to share with her his fury that Alejandro Sanchez had escaped justice. Cruz had chafed at the fact that until the Republic no longer had any need for his services-that is, until the annexation of Texas had been approved by the American Congress-he could not take any action against his brother’s murderer.

  He had bitten his tongue and bided his time through November and December. Three encouraging political events occurred during this period that led him to believe annexation might finally be at hand.