by Janet Dailey
Stiffly, she dropped her clothes to the ground, neither relaxing in his arms nor trying to twist free. He carried her into the pool and not until he was waist-deep in the water did he withdraw the strong arm from beneath her thighs, letting her feet glide down to the bottom of the pool.
Sheila felt a childish urge to splash the cold water at his arrogant patrician features, but she resisted the temptation, knowing it would only provoke him into retaliation. And she knew too well his brand of retaliation.
Sheila was shorter than Ráfaga by several inches, and the cool water lapped at the upward curve of her breasts. The arm at her back was removed, his hand surfacing to offer the bar of soap to her. She looked at it for tense seconds before taking it, carefully avoiding any contact with his hand.
Ráfaga turned in the water, facing away from her. Startled, Sheila didn’t understand his unexpected rejection of her, his failure to attempt to seduce her in this idyllic, sylvan setting. Not for one minute did she believe he wanted only to bathe and nothing more.
“Wash my back,” he commanded smoothly.
Her head jerked, her eyes throwing daggers at the vulnerable space between his shoulder blades. A scathing denial of his order was on the tip of her tongue. Sheila sank her teeth into her lower lip to forcibly silence a retort. That was what Ráfaga expected, and she knew he would take delight in forcing her to obey.
Stifling her resentment, she began to methodically soap his back, spreading the lather over the sinewy muscles of his shoulders and ribs. The lather gave a silken feeling to his hard flesh. It became increasingly difficult to remain detached while she washed him.
Her sensitive fingers felt the slight flexing of his biceps as her hands moved over his left arm. Sheila knew the strength of those arms and hands, strength in punishment and in making love. The latter she could not forget, not with the red welts on his shoulders to remind her.
Sheila moved to his right arm to avoid the sight of the worst wound she had inflicted. The scratches looked angry and sore. She couldn’t help wondering if the soap wasn’t making them sting. She tried to convince herself that she hoped it did, but her mind was too busy trying to control the rising awareness of her senses to be totally vindictive.
Turning at an angle in the water, Ráfaga faced her, presenting the naked expanse of his chest for her ministrations. The aloof mask over his features made her feel like a slave girl washing her master.
His male beauty wiped every other thought from her mind. Her gaze kept wanting to slide below the water level at his waist. Sheila trembled with the effort to keep her attention focused on the curling hairs of his chest.
Then Ráfaga was taking the bar of soap from her hands. “It is my turn.” His voice was velvet-soft, huskily caressing.
She was without willpower as his hands touched the bare flesh of her shoulders. The soapy lather being spread over her soft skin was an erotic stimulant to the senses that were already aroused by his masculinity.
When his hands cupped her breasts, Sheila felt her nipples hardening in his palms. The massaging action of his strong fingers ignited a fire in her loins, a flaming desire to know the fullness of his possession.
One hand slid to the small of her back beneath the water line while the other continued its sensuous caress of her breast. The buoyancy of the water made Sheila feel as if she floated against him. His hand slid farther down to spread over the softly full cheeks of her bottom. As she was arched toward him, Sheila felt the male hardness of his need.
A fluttering of resistance asserted itself and she pressed her hands against his chest. His mouth opened over her lips, tasting their sweetness to the fullest. There was a roaring in her ears at the demanding mastery of his kiss. Yet, somehow, Sheila managed to cling to her fragile resistance.
While her lips parted under the command of his probing tongue, she kept the rest of her body stiff to his touch. She could feel the beat of his heart beneath her hands and the ripple of his muscles that could so easily overpower her, but they didn’t.
“Do not close your legs to me, Sheila,” he whispered thickly against her lips.
He sounded so emotionless, so detached from everything but his own passion that Sheila had to object to what he demanded of her.
“No.” Her protest was muffled by the incessant possession of his male lips.
“Open them,” Ráfaga ordered.
The arm half-encircling her back tightened in command. She obeyed willingly and was lifted up to receive the thrust of his hips. Her faint moan of unwilling satisfaction was blocked by his exploring tongue. The water lapped at her skin, but it was unable to quench the fires of their passion now blazing with one flame. Her fingers curled into the black thickness of his hair as orgasmic shudders quaked her body. It was like drowning, then surfacing with a rush to new, dizzying heights.
Mindless, unconscious of time or place, Sheila let him carry her away to the unknown reaches of desire. She ceased to think of Ráfaga as her ruthless captor. Never had she dreamed she could be so totally abandoned in the giving of herself, nor so selfishly eager to receive all that was given back.
When the flames had burned themselves out, it was several minutes before Sheila could fight through the blackness. Opening her passion-drugged eyes, she saw Ráfaga lazily watching her. In her mind, she acknowledged that he owned her body and soul and realized, fatalistically, that no one else would ever hold such power over her flesh and spirit.
She moved her head in silent protest against the fates and discovered with a start that she was lying on the grassy bank. She couldn’t remember Ráfaga carrying her to shore. It frightened her the way his touch could make her forget everything.
He was lying on his side next to her, his hand resting intimately on her stomach. Sheila noticed the smouldering look of satisfaction in his dark eyes. It reminded her of a jungle cat that had just feasted on its prey and was now replete.
“I hate you,” she spat out weakly, knowing it wasn’t quite true.
There was a flash of white as Ráfaga smiled and rolled to his feet. “I wish all my enemies hated the way you do, especially if they looked like you,” he mocked, raking her naked length briefly with his gaze before walking over to dress.
It galled her that he found her words amusing, but it was worse knowing she had given him ample cause to taunt her. Tight-lipped, she dressed hurriedly. Desperately, Sheila wanted to vow she would never betray herself again, but she doubted it was a promise she could keep.
Laredo’s voice called Ráfaga’s name as hurried footsteps approached the pool. Both turned their heads simultaneously as he emerged from the shade of the trees.
Laredo’s blue-eyed gaze flickered momentarily to Sheila. Tiny rivulets of water ran down her temples and neck from the wetness of her darkly golden hair. He carried two rifles. One he tossed to Ráfaga with a clipped explanation in Spanish.
With lightning-quick reflexes, Ráfaga caught the rifle and shifted it to one hand, grabbing Sheila by the arm with the other and shoving her forward. She nearly stumbled to her knees, but Ráfaga pulled her up sharply to hurry her along the path.
“Quit pushing!” Sheila protested and tried to wrench her arm away from his hard grip. Her shoes were back by the pond. It was impossible to gingerly pick her way over the uneven ground with his hand shoving her along. “I can’t run barefoot!”
Neither Laredo nor Ráfaga paid any heed to her protests. A mounted rider waited in front of the adobe house, holding the reins to two saddled horses.
“Juan!” Ráfaga gave Sheila a final push toward the house and the armed guard waiting there. He added a stern order in Spanish. It was obviously a command for the guard to stay with Sheila.
For a frightened second, the name Juan conjured up the image of Brad’s murderer, with his foul-smelling breath, yellowed teeth, and leering eyes. When she was able to check her forward movement from the last push, Sheila gasped with relief at the sight of the quiet, vaguely respectful Mexican who had taken his place. It
was the man from the corral.
Lifting her clinging, wet hair away from the corner of her eye, she looked over her shoulder to the trio of riders spurring their horses toward the canyon entrance. She stared after them, bewildered and curious.
“What is going on?” Absently, she murmured the thought aloud.
“Do not worry, señora,” he comforted in heavily accented English.
“What happened?” She looked to the riders, slowing as they neared the pass. “Where are they going?”
“Soldados—soldiers,” he corrected himself. “Close to here.”
“Looking for me?” Sheila breathed in, her first ray of hope shining.
“Quien sabe?” The guard shook his head. “We wait.”
“Yes, we wait,” she sighed anxiously. Hesitating, Sheila glanced to him. “Your name is Juan?”
“Sí, señora.” He nodded respectfully.
“There is another man named Juan, isn’t there?” she questioned warily.
“Sí—Juan Ortega.” His dark eyes widened expressively. “He is loco—bad.”
There were a few other, more forceful adjectives Sheila would have used, but she kept her silence. Instead, she concentrated all her thought in a prayer that the soldiers would soon come riding through the canyon entrance.
They must have found the car and Brad’s body, she decided. Perhaps her parents had notified the authorities to look for her when she hadn’t returned with Brad as she had told them she would.
Over an hour later, three riders appeared at the canyon entrance, the horses trotting sedately down the slope to the floor. Sheila’s hopes sank into the dust.
She abandoned her post of vigil and walked into the house. She remained in her room when Ráfaga and Laredo entered the house minutes later. There was no longer anything of hers in the room. Ráfaga had supervised the moving of her few meager belongings to his room that morning.
A handful of men entered the adobe house after Ráfaga’s return. Lying on the small cot, Sheila stared at the ceiling, listening to the Spanish voices in the main room. Each time Ráfaga spoke, she immediately recognized the low timbre of his voice. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to shut out how vividly aware she was of everything about him. But it was hopeless.
When the evening meal was ready, prepared by Juan’s wife, Ráfaga called Sheila from her room. The men remained, refusing the offer of food but accepting coffee from Consuelo. Sheila could only pick at her food, too painfully conscious of the men looking on. She felt the piercing looks directed at her by Ráfaga, but she returned none of them, keeping her head lowered while she pushed the food around on her plate.
She would have retreated to her room again, but Ráfaga ordered her to stay. Her pride almost made her refuse, but Sheila realized that he wouldn’t tolerate any defiance in front of his men. Keeping silent, she helped Consuelo clean off the dishes and remained seated at Ráfaga’s side.
The discussion was obviously about something of importance, considering the serious expressions on the faces of everyone there. But Sheila couldn’t understand a word of it. Ráfaga made notes on yellow paper, but they were also in Spanish.
Two pots of coffee had been drunk and the moon was high in the night sky before the meeting was concluded and the men left. Laredo was the last, tarrying for a few minutes to speak to Ráfaga alone, then nodding a good night to Sheila. While Ráfaga went over his notes, making additional notations on the side, Sheila removed the coffee mugs from the table.
Then she tried to steal silently from the room, wanting to be in bed and hopefully asleep when he came. But she was stopped before she had taken three steps toward her destination.
“Where are you going?” Ráfaga looked up.
“To bed. Where else?” Sheila answered defensively.
“Wait,” he ordered. “I will be only a few minutes.”
“I’m tired and I’d like to get some sleep.” She wasn’t going to give in without an argument. “I don’t see any reason to wait for you.”
“I should not wish to disturb your sleep later.”
Her temper flared as she read between the lines of his reply. “My God,” Sheila gasped, “isn’t once a day enough for you? Do I have to endure it again?”
Using a rear leg as a pivot point, he swiveled the chair at an angle. An arm was hooked negligently over the back as his hooded gaze met the flashing resentment of her jewel-bright eyes.
“Come here.” Sheila’s first impulse was to ignore the command and walk from the room. Ráfaga interpreted the cause of her momentary indecision and repeated his words. “Come here.”
Her fingers curled into her palms, nails digging into the sensitive skin. Sheila walked to his chair, rigid defiance in every taut nerve even as she complied with his order. His hand gripped an arm stiffly held at her side and drew her closer to his chair.
“You endure my touch, do you?” he said with low mockery.
“Yes!” Sheila hissed in return, but a pulse was already hammering in her throat at his disturbing nearness.
“And you think that to make love once a day is enough, do you?” Ráfaga continued to taunt her, his dark eyes glittering and enigmatic, the aloofness of control in his saturnine features.
“It’s too much!”
“You think you would not enjoy it, hmmm?”
“I know I wouldn’t!” Already her senses were making a lie out of her denial.
With a biting twist of her wrist, he brought her against the chair, her legs brushing against a muscular thigh. Sheila steeled herself to ignore the searing contact. The grip on her wrist forced her to bend slightly to lessen the pain.
The breath was stolen from her lungs when his gaze shifted from her face to her breasts, straining against the confining material of her blouse and the knot that held the front closed. His free hand lifted to the plunging vee.
Wildfire raced through her veins as his lean fingers slid inside her blouse to cup the underside of a breast, pushing the material aside to expose its creamy roundness. When his mouth touched the rosy nipple, Sheila gasped in protest and delight. Closing her eyes tightly, she tried to ignore the way he licked her nipple into pebble-hardness.
It was exquisite torture to resist his arousing sucking of her breast. Sheila succeeded in not giving in to the waves of desire stirring her senses until his hand moved down her stomach to slide intimately between her thighs.
There was a jelly-like quiver in her knees and she knew she was lost. Like a drowning person succumbing to an undertow, Sheila let herself be drawn onto his lap. Ráfaga undressed her with deliberate slowness before he carried her to the bedroom with her hands locked around his neck and her lips a willing captive of his possessing mouth.
It was a seduction cycle that repeated itself over the next two weeks with changes of opening and settings and dialogues. Sheila kept trying to control her senses, sometimes holding her betraying desires at bay for a while, but always—inevitably, it seemed—Ráfaga obtained the response he was seeking.
Each rehearsal of the scene improved the climatic end, leaving Sheila little to cling to but her pride. Everything else Ráfaga had taken bit by bit.
Her life before she was brought to the canyon seemed so long ago that it might never have existed. Often Sheila would awaken in the cool of the mountain night and find herself snuggled against Ráfaga, taking advantage of the warmth of his body heat.
In those sleep-laden moments, it seemed so natural to lie beside him. It was as if she had never slept alone.
Sheila stirred restlessly on the cot, disliking the thoughts that were disturbing her half-sleep. A hand touched her arm and she twisted away from it, her pride needing to assert itself.
“No.” She halfheartedly protested Ráfaga’s light touch and the demand she thought it made.
“I do not have the time to change that to ‘yes’ this morning.” His low, faintly accented voice was riddled with lazy amusement, confident of his ability to change her answer if he chose to. “Come. You m
ust wake up and dress.”
Frowning, Sheila opened her eyes. The flame from a lamp cast a circle of light over the center of the room, but through the curtained window, she could see the sky was still black with night. Confused, she looked at Ráfaga, fully clothed, sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on his boots.
Making certain the blanket still covered her nakedness, Sheila propped herself up with her elbows. “It isn’t morning yet.”
His dark gaze flickered to her briefly. “It soon will be.” He tugged on the other boot. “Consuelo is fixing breakfast.”
Sheila listened and heard the confirming sounds of someone else in the house. “But why so early?” she persisted.
Ráfaga got up from the bed and glanced at her. “I am leaving at first light.”
“Leaving?” His statement took Sheila by surprise. She pushed herself into a sitting position on the bed, dragging the blanket with her, clutching it to her breastbone. “You didn’t say anything about leaving last night. Where are you going? Why?”
His mouth twisted with cynical amusement. “‘Where are you going? What are you going to do? When are you coming back?’” Ráfaga mocked her barrage of questions. “You sound like a wife cross-examining her husband. I did not realize you were so concerned about where I went and what I did.”
Sheila immediately regretted her impulsive questions. “I don’t give a damn what you do!” she snapped and swung her feet over the side of the bed.
“That sounds more like my lioness.” He laughed softly in his throat. “Scratching and spitting whenever she is not purring in my arms.”
Sheila tugged the blanket from the end of the bed and wrapped it around her before she rose to walk stiffly to the dresser. The blanket dipped low in the back, nearly to her waist, her sun-streaked hair curling loosely at the top of her shoulder blades. As she reached for her blouse and slacks, she heard Ráfaga walk up behind her.
“Why do you persist in covering yourself with that blanket?” he mused. “Do you think I do not already know every inch of you?”
