Midnight Rider

by Diana Palmer

  She looked down, fascinated with the process of absorbing him. Her hands on his powerful arms contracted with the slow, sweet pleasure.

  “So beautiful. So reverent, this joining of male and female, this slow and exquisite loving.”

  She flinched with a shock of unexpected pleasure when he surged inside her. Her hips arched helplessly, but he caught her thighs and stilled them.

  “No,” he whispered softly. “It must be slow, amada,” he added, moving sensually against her. “It must be very, very...slow.” His eyes closed and he shuddered with the effort to contain his own impatience. His teeth ground together at the sensations he was beginning to feel. Her body was warm and welcoming, and he felt her contract involuntarily around him and gasped.

  She cried out hoarsely, her eyes meeting his in shocked wonder as the depth of his possession surpassed anything that had happened before.

  “Can you feel how potent I am?” he asked unsteadily, moving ever closer. “I have never...achieved...such closeness...!”

  She shivered, because the pleasure suddenly became overwhelming, frightening in its explosive impact. “I’m frightened!”

  He caught her wrists and forced them to the bed beside her ears. His face was almost menacing, dark and hard as he suddenly pushed down in long, hard, insistent strokes.

  “Dear...God!” She wept, her face contorting, her body straining as the fierce heat swelled and swelled and swelled.

  “Amada,” he choked. “¡Mi vida, mi alma, mi corazón...!”

  His tormented face blurred as she felt the first contractions ripping through her body. She stilled and convulsed, again and again and again. She couldn’t breathe at all. She couldn’t feel her heartbeat. She felt the impact of Eduardo’s powerful body in waves of exquisite pleasure that was deep enough to be perceived as pain.

  She heard her own voice cry out endlessly, as if from a great distance. She whispered something to him, something she barely heard herself, and then she was weeping harshly as the tension snapped and she fell and fell from a great height to land on blazing hot ground.

  Eduardo’s hoarse groans echoed in her ears as she felt him shudder uncontrollably for what seemed like ages. His hands were bruising her wrists, but even that was sweet. She felt him so deep in her body that she wondered if they hadn’t melted together and would become inseparable afterward. Her heart was so full that it overflowed. He had no way of knowing that she had understood the hot, ardent words he’d whispered in Spanish at the height of his pleasure, but she had. He had called her his life, his soul, his heart. He had whispered that she was his loved one. She was as overwhelmed by the confession as she was by the exquisite pleasure they gave to each other.

  They held each other in the hot aftermath, sweating and shivering, their hearts racing madly.

  Eduardo’s sleek, muscular back was damp under her seeking fingers. She felt him deep inside her, and she moved deliberately, because she loved the pleasurable sensations it gave her.

  He groaned softly and moved, as well. “Bernadette,” he said, shaken. He moved again, gasping. “Bernadette, even this close...is not close enough.”

  “Yes, I know.” She smiled and her arms tightened around him.

  He nuzzled her face with his. “Do you remember what you said to me, just at the last, what you whispered into my ear?”

  She did. Her face dived into his throat and pressed there hotly.

  “You said, ‘Make me pregnant.’” He shivered. “Dear God, I thought I would die after that, trying to get closer. I wanted to penetrate your very soul!”

  “Didn’t you?” she whispered ardently. “It felt as if you did.” Her arms tightened again and she shivered, too. “I want a baby so much,” she choked. “I’m not afraid, Eduardo. The doctor in New York said that it wouldn’t be dangerous at all. He said I had...I had nice, wide hips, and I shouldn’t have a hard time.” She kissed his throat hungrily, aware of his surprised stillness.

  “You really want a child, with me?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  He turned slowly onto his side, still locked with her, and looked into her soft eyes. His black hair was damp and fell roguishly onto his broad forehead. He touched her swollen mouth carefully. “The asthma...surely that would make it more difficult for you?”

  She traced his thick eyebrows and his high cheekbones. “Don’t you want a son with me?”

  His eyes closed. “Yes,” he said tautly. “More than anything in the world!”

  She smiled tenderly and reached forward to kiss his hard mouth. She moved experimentally and laughed at the pleasure it invoked. Her gaze met his. “Again,” she whispered. “Please.”

  His hands slid down to her hips and held them against his. He moved sinuously and caught his breath when he felt himself swell.

  “Oh...yes,” she gasped. “Yes!”

  He had planned to say something to her, but he couldn’t think what it was. His teeth clenched as the fever came upon him again and his hips thrust helplessly against hers.

  It was hot and wild and all too quickly over. The tenderness of the time before was eclipsed by the headlong passion they shared. She was as violent as he, biting and clawing this time, a hellcat under his thrusting body. The climax, when it came, lifted them both in a hot flood of satisfaction that left them gasping and spent.

  * * *

  THEY SLEPT FOR A LONG TIME, sprawled nude on the quilt, in each other’s arms. It was dark in the room when they awoke.

  Eduardo sat up, groaning as he stretched his sore muscles. “Señora Ramirez,” he murmured drily. “I think you’ve sprained my back.”

  “Are you complaining?” she murmured, rubbing her bare foot over his long leg, insinuating it high up on his thigh.

  He caught it and followed it up her body. He found her mouth and kissed her with drowsy passion. “Never,” he whispered. “I love the way you are with me in bed, Bernadette. I love the way it feels when we join.”

  “So do I.” She nuzzled her face into his throat. “I’m hungry,” she said, like a child.

  He chuckled. “I’m hungry, too. Did we eat anything?”

  “I couldn’t eat breakfast, because I was so sick,” she murmured wearily. “I’m starved.”

  “Shall we get dressed and go in search of food?”

  “Yes.”

  He lit the lamp and studied her with delight as she got out of bed and started dressing. “What an exquisite body you have,” he murmured as he retrieved his own clothes from the floor, where they were scattered around the bed. “I never dreamed how sensuous it would be.”

  “Neither did I,” she confided. She paused as she was fastening up her blouse. “Eduardo, am I quite normal?” she asked seriously.

  He buttoned his trousers before he caught her by the arms and looked down at her. “Why, because you give yourself so completely?”

  “That, and the things I say to you.”

  He smiled, then bent and kissed her softly. “Bernadette, you’re a dream. You’re all my hopes fulfilled. I wouldn’t change one thing about the way you are with me.” He traced her softly swollen mouth tenderly. “The only regret I have, if you could call it that, is my own lack of stamina. I want you far more times than I’m capable of having you.”

  “Yes, but I never seem to stop,” she murmured. “I mean, it happens only one time for you, but I go on and on.”

  “Women do,” he whispered wickedly. “And I love it that you go on and on, because I get as much pleasure from your many times as I get from my one.”

  “Really?”

  He laughed and wrapped her up close. “Really.” He sighed. “The first intelligent thing I’ve done in my life was to marry you.”

  Her heart jumped. “You truly aren’t sorry?”

  “No.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “You meant it, about a child?” he asked after a minute, drawing back to search her eyes.

  “I meant it.”

  “Then we’ll see what happens.”<
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  She smiled at him. “Yes.”

  * * *

  THEY WENT DOWNSTAIRS TOGETHER, only to find the parlor deserted. “They’ve gone to their rooms, I imagine,” Eduardo said with a rueful smile. “Probably they felt you needed rest more than conversation.”

  She looked up at him worriedly. “You don’t think they heard us?” she asked.

  He smiled. “Our rooms are on the other end of the house. No one heard us.”

  She wondered if she should confess that she understood what he’d said to her. She searched his dark eyes and decided to wait, just a little longer. She loved him with all her heart. It was paradise itself to know that he shared those feelings. At least, she thought he did. She remembered an old saying, that a man said such things to a woman when he wanted to ensure her cooperation. Perhaps if she were patient, for just a little longer, she might learn what she most wanted to know about his feelings for her.

  * * *

  THEY SETTLED INTO A NEW AND consuming togetherness, which was heightened by Lupe’s announcement that she was returning to Granada within the week. The condessa was remaining for another few weeks. This news wasn’t completely welcomed by Bernadette at first. But when Lupe was gone, the old woman searched out her new granddaughter-in-law in the parlor.

  The condessa, leaning heavily on her silver-topped cane, sat down gingerly in a small wing chair across from Bernadette’s. Her narrow eyes focused on the intricate stitches the younger woman was putting into the bodice of a new dress she was making.

  “You have a flair for this,” the condessa said a little stiffly.

  Bernadette stared at her. “My grandmother used to visit us occasionally. She taught me to sew, and to crochet.”

  “I enjoy these occupations, as well,” came the reply. The condessa shifted in the chair, rustling the black taffeta skirt of her high-necked dress. “Did your mother do handiwork?”

  “My mother died at my birth,” Bernadette said simply. “I never knew her.”

  The old woman frowned. “You were an only child?”

  Bernadette shook her head. “I had an older sister. She died in childbirth. I have a brother, Albert. He and his wife and son live in Maine.”

  The condessa stared down at the tips of her shoes peeking out from under her long skirt. She seemed lost in thought. “Childbirth must hold some...terror for you, then.”

  “A little,” Bernadette confessed. She looked up from her stitching. “But a physician in New York told me that it would not be especially dangerous for me. I have wide hips, you see, and a strong constitution. Well, except for my lungs,” she added with a rueful smile.

  The condessa cleared her throat and wiped her lips with a delicately embroidered silk handkerchief clenched in one small hand. “My grandson seems quite capable of dealing with you when your lungs give you trouble.”

  “He asked Maria, our housekeeper, what to do,” she explained. “He was concerned that my father was rather indifferent to my condition.” She sighed. “My father has changed a great deal since my marriage to Eduardo. He blamed me for my mother’s death for a long time. But he seems very different these days. I think he may even care for me a little.”

  The condessa looked ruffled. “A child is not responsible for its own birth,” she said haughtily. She stared at Bernadette, and it was almost as if the old woman could see the lonely, insecure child she’d once been. The old face softened a little. “My son was my whole world. I raised him and educated him, and permitted him to come here, to inherit this home which my husband’s father had built.” Her face hardened. “He met that woman in San Antonio, at a fiesta, and dazzled her with his charm and his wealth and his inheritance. They married against my wishes, and for many years we did not even speak.” She drew in a slow breath, and the pain of the telling was in the lines in her face. She looked suddenly very old and fragile. “When the news came that he had died, I thought I would die, as well.” The old woman’s lower lip trembled, and tears, great hot tears, rolled down the delicate contours of her wrinkled face.

  Bernadette put down her needlework, got to her feet and sank to her knees at the old woman’s side, holding her while she cried.

  “I have...been tormented,” the condessa wept. “I loved my son so!”

  “Of course you did.”

  The condessa wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. “You cannot know the suffering his death caused me.”

  “I think I have some idea of it.” She smiled. “You should talk to God more often,” she murmured. “He listens. I talk to Him all the time. I expect He tires of my endless conversation.”

  The condessa actually smiled. She reached out and touched Bernadette’s cheek lightly. “My child, I never expected comfort from you. I have been very unkind.” She grimaced. “Eduardo became my life when he was sent home to me as a boy to be raised. I was jealous, and afraid for him when we learned he would marry a rich American woman. I could see history repeating itself and I thought I could not bear it.”

  “I’m not really rich,” Bernadette said. “My father is.”

  “I think you understand my fears.”

  “Yes, I do,” she replied. “But I could never hurt Eduardo. I love him too much.”

  “I saw this,” the condessa said slowly. “I saw it too late. Can you forgive me for the obstacles I placed in your path?”

  “If you can forgive me for pouring cream over you,” Bernadette replied, tongue-in-cheek.

  The condessa’s old face lit up and made her years fall away. “It was an experience I shall never quite forget. And I must say, it was richly deserved. I am glad that I did not cost Eduardo the one bright flower in his life.” She shook her head. “He told me about Consuela, finally.” Her eyebrows lifted. “You know?”

  Bernadette nodded.

  “I had no idea. We knew that her mother had some peculiarities, but we had no idea that she was mad, completely mad. Then when Eduardo insisted on taking Consuela to Texas, out of our sight, we knew nothing of his problems with her.” She shook her head sadly. “I have so many regrets. One should never meddle in the affairs of others.”

  “Yes, but sometimes it’s very hard not to, when one cares about them.”

  The condessa smiled. “Yes. It is.” The smile widened as she added, “¿Porqué no se dices a mi nieto que puedes hablar español?”

  “Porqué ahora no es el tiempo para eso.”

  The condessa laughed. “And why is this not the time to tell him that you speak his language quite well?”

  “Because I learn so much secretly that he wouldn’t want me to know,” Bernadette said simply. “I’ll tell him. Soon.”

  The condessa searched the sparkling green eyes and thought how nice it would be to have a great-grandchild with such pretty eyes.

  * * *

  EDUARDO NOTICED THE IMPROVED relationship between the two women in his life with secret amusement. Fences apparently had been mended very quickly, because now in the evenings the condessa sat beside Bernadette while they worked on their various sewing and crocheting projects and they never seemed to run out of subjects to discuss. There was something else between them, too, though, he noticed, because they seemed more and more like coconspirators.

  He took Bernadette riding with him one morning when the dew was still on the grass near the house.

  She liked to wear old jeans when she rode with him, something that he expected to outrage his very proper grandmother. He was surprised when the condessa chuckled and said that her new granddaughter was a sensible girl not to wear heavy, bulky skirts on horseback.

  “You’ve changed her,” Eduardo remarked when they were well away from the house.

  “Perhaps she’s changed me a little, too. I like her,” she added. “She’s contrary, of course, and painfully opinionated, but you always know exactly where you stand with her. I shall miss her terribly when she leaves.”

  “As shall I.” He glanced at her amusedly. “I notice that your lamentations don’t include Lupe.”
>
  Her eyes flashed at him. “I don’t miss Lupe,” she said curtly. “That flirting, overperfumed, interfering hussy!”

  He threw back his head and roared. “She felt much the same about you, I think.”

  “She isn’t married to you. I am!”

  He glanced at her with indulgent affection. “So you are, Señora Ramirez. Very married.”

  She knew that he was referring to their exquisite nights together, and she blushed in spite of herself.

  “Ay, que placer me das. No podia vivir sin ti.” What pleasure you give me. I couldn’t live without you.

  “Nor I, without you,” she said without thinking. “Oh, look, Eduardo!”

  He was so shocked by her reply to a language he didn’t think she spoke that he was diverted immediately. He followed her pointing finger to a small herd of white-tailed deer bounding across their path.

  “Beautiful, are they not?” he asked, but his mind was spinning. Did she speak Spanish? And if she did, how much of his private thoughts had he inadvertently given away to her?

  “I love it here,” she murmured. “And if you notice, my lungs give me less trouble than they ever have before.”

  “I’ve noticed.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “¿Bernadette, es posible que tu me entiendes cuando hablo en español?” Is it possible that you understand me when I speak Spanish?

  She glanced at him and put on her most bland expression. “I’m sorry. What did you say?” she asked.

  He repeated it, more slowly.

  She frowned. “Dear me, you’ll have to say it in English. I’m sorry,” she said with apparent sincerity. “What did it mean?”

  “Nothing,” he replied, and seemed to relax. “Nothing at all. Shall we go?”

  She urged her mount to keep pace with his and let out a relieved sigh. That was too close a call for comfort!

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CLAUDIA, WHO WORKED IN THE kitchen, arrived late to fix breakfast, and apologized profusely to Bernadette because she had her two children with her.