So great was his need and excitement, he didn’t dare take a breath, much less speak. Was she going to do it? The same thing he’d done to her?
But she didn’t know how.
It didn’t matter.
Whatever she did, however she caressed him…
It didn’t matter.
He felt her silken hair flow over his hips as she raised her head above his belly. The beginning of pleasure swirled through his loins, causing him to take a deep breath and hold it inside his chest.
God, she’d yet to even touch him and he was already so worked up that the encounter was almost over before it had begun!
“Zafiro,” he managed to tell her in a raspy whisper, “not much. Not…”
“Not much?” She spread barely there kisses over his belly, lingering at his navel and filling the small indentation with the tip of her tongue.
Sawyer squeezed a handful of her hair so hard that his thumb cramped. Mindless of the pain, he tried to sit up, frustrated and resigned at once when Zafiro pushed at his chest and made him lie down again.
“Wait,” he said when he felt her lips nip at the hair that shadowed his groin. “You don’t understand. I’m—Zafiro, I’m too—I want you too much to be able to stand—”
“You are not standing, Sawyer. You are flat on your back.” With her free hand, she took hold of his turgid length and touched her lips to its hard, hot tip.
“Oh, God,” Sawyer moaned. Already he felt himself throb; bliss rose steadily through him, making him painfully aware of the fact that if he did not stop her now, there would be no stopping at all.
He sat up again, but not quickly enough. As soon as his back left the blanket, he felt her take him between her lips, and her mouth was so soft, so warm, so completely wonderful that every thought of denial he’d entertained only seconds before vanished like shadows attacked by a burst of sunlight.
Completely unable to connect his rational thoughts with his body’s demands, he began to move his hips, moving in and out of her mouth with a gentle, steady rhythm. And as he did so, he felt her suckle him.
The pressure her action imparted sent him straight over the brink of control. He surrendered to the potent need for release, no power on earth strong enough to overcome the all-consuming pleasure that was only seconds away.
No power but one.
And that was the acrid and frightening smell of fire.
He smelled the burning scent at the same time as Zafiro, who immediately raised her head and turned toward the direction from which the alarming smell drifted.
Whatever had caught fire was near the cabin, she realized. “Sawyer—”
“Get dressed!”
As fast as they were able they donned their clothes, then raced through the woods toward the house. Out of breath when they arrived in the yard, they stopped suddenly and stared at the blaze that devoured the wooden wall of logs.
“Santa Maria!” Zafiro shouted, tears of horror filling her eyes. “The garden! Sawyer, the food—”
He held her steady when she tried to move toward the burning vegetable patch. “It’s too late, Zafiro,” he said, hearing the disbelief and shock in his own voice. “The fire is too wild, too hot. We can’t—”
“But Jengibre!” she screamed. “Jengibre—”
“Here is Jengibre, Zafiro!” Tia shouted from her spot by one of the rose beds. Her own eyes blurred with tears, she held up the ginger-colored hen, then turned to comfort Azucar, who stood beside her with her face in her hands.
“What happened, dammit?” His every step roaring with rage, Sawyer stalked toward the rose bed, dragging Zafiro along with him. “How—”
“We do not know!” Tia wailed. Completely undone by the tragedy, she buried her face in Jengibre’s soft feathers and sobbed. “We will have no food for the winter,” she wept piteously. “No vegetables to see us through the cold winter.”
“It happened so quickly, Sawyer,” Pedro announced. His chest heaving with exertion, he dropped an empty bucket and slowly approached the rose garden. “Lorenzo and I, we had just gone to bed when Tia and Azucar began to scream. As soon as I opened my eyes I saw the light of the blazes moving on the wall. I shook Lorenzo awake, and he and I did our best to douse the flames. But we had only the water in the kitchen, and as soon as we started for the stream to get more, the fire… It was like a live thing, Sawyer. Like a monster from hell, and it swallowed the wall you built within seconds. Lorenzo and I, we knew then that nothing we could do would help.”
“I beat the flames,” Lorenzo added, he, too, struggling to catch his breath. “I burned my hands.” A single tear dripping down his face, he held out his hands to show Sawyer the blisters that splattered his palms.
Instantly, Sawyer put his arm around Lorenzo’s bony shoulders. Trying in some way to comfort the old, distraught man, he patted Lorenzo’s upper arm, then turned to stare at the flames that ate at La Escondida’s supply of fresh food.
How had the fire started? he wondered. Only a short while ago, when he and Zafiro had left the yard and entered the woods, all had been well.
Bewilderment weighed on his mind like a boulder, until one tiny suspicion crept past it.
“Maclovio,” he gritted out from between clenched teeth.
As if on cue, Maclovio stumbled into the front yard from behind the house, a bottle in one hand, a charred stick in the other, and the sword from the Holy Crusades swinging by his left thigh, its hilt stuck inside his belt. “Oh, there is Jengibre!” Stumbling over plants, mounds in the grass, and his own two feet, he crossed the yard and stopped in front of Tia. “Where did you find the little hen, Tia? I looked all over for her in the garden, but it was too dark to see. I finally made a torch, but even with the light I could not find her.”
“A torch,” Sawyer snapped, grabbing the burned stick from Maclovio’s grasp. “Haven’t you noticed what you did with your damn torch, Maclovio? Or are you as blind as you are drunk?”
“Blind?” Swaying precariously, Maclovio turned around and saw the wall of flames that consumed the garden. “Well,” he said, “it is a good thing that Tia got Jengibre out of there, isn’t it?” Smiling, he lifted the bottle and tilted it toward his mouth.
But he never tasted another drop of the homemade whiskey.
With one fast, smooth move, Sawyer knocked the bottle from his hand. “You’ve had enough, dammit!”
Maclovio narrowed his eyes and felt his nostrils flare. “You will pay for spilling my drink, Sawyer Donovan. I am going to smash your face!”
Quickly, Sawyer moved himself and Zafiro out of Maclovio’s reach and watched the drunken man swing at thin air. He wanted nothing more than to knock Maclovio senseless and thus give the man an opportunity to sleep off his intoxication, but couldn’t start a fight for fear of Zafiro getting hurt.
Damn the handcuffs to hell and back, he seethed silently. “Get out of here, Maclovio,” he demanded, so angry that he felt the heat of his hot words burn his mouth. “Go back to your bluff behind the house and don’t come back until you—”
“You do not tell me what to do, Sawyer Donovan.” Maclovio stepped forward and drew back his arm again.
“No!” Without hesitation, Zafiro placed herself between Sawyer and Maclovio, her action so quick that no one could have stopped her.
With barely a fraction of a second to spare, Sawyer reached around her and caught Maclovio’s punch in the palm of his hand.
Maclovio laughed and pulled back his other fist.
“Maclovio, you do not fight fairly!” Casting herself at his arm, Zafiro effectively stopped him from throwing another punch. “Sawyer cannot fight you! He is bound to me!”
When she held up their cuffed hands Maclovio stopped, rubbed his chin, then glared at Sawyer. “I will free you from the handcuffs, Sawyer Donovan, and then I will smash your face!”
With a quickness that belied his drunken state, Maclovio drew the sword from his belt and held it high over his head. “Hold out your arms, and
I will cut through the chain!”
“God, no!” Instantly, Sawyer threw himself at Zafiro, knocking her to ground and well away from Maclovio and his sword.
She cringed when the tremendous sword sliced into the dirt mere inches from her face, then gasped when Maclovio raised the sword again.
“Keep your hands on the ground!” Maclovio demanded. “If you will just be still I will—”
“Get up,” Sawyer commanded Zafiro. “Now!”
She bolted off the ground, following Sawyer when he dashed toward the house. “He is still coming after us, Sawyer!”
Looking over his shoulder, Sawyer watched Maclovio trail behind them, fending off Pedro and Lorenzo and swishing the sword through the air as if slaying a herd of fire-breathing dragons. Weaving and tripping, he tottered toward the house, then dropped the sword and fell down beside it.
The man was as drunk as Sawyer had ever seen him, so bad off that his eyes fairly rolled around in his head like two black marbles in an empty bucket.
“I swear to God,” Sawyer vowed, “as soon as I get these damn cuffs off, I’m going to find his still and tear it apart piece by piece! And then I’m going to tear him apart!”
“Sawyer!” Pedro shouted. Moving as quickly as his tired, worn-out legs would let him, he hurried toward the cabin steps, stopping in front of Sawyer and Zafiro. “I know that you want to see Lorenzo perform his skills at picking a lock, but he will have to show them to you another time. Right now we must get these handcuffs off so you can do something with Maclovio.”
Sawyer and Zafiro watched in astonishment as Pedro lifted the string of keys he wore around his neck, selected one, and inserted it into the lock on the handcuffs.
In the next moment the handcuffs clattered to the porch step.
“The key,” Sawyer murmured, staring down at the cuffs. “Pedro had it all the time, Zafiro.”
She, too, looked down at the cuffs. “Pedro, why—”
“You can take care of Maclovio now, Sawyer,” Pedro said, turning to watch as the groaning Maclovio heaved himself off the ground. “If I had known the trouble he would cause, I would have freed you and Zafiro two days ago. But of course, you did not ask me for the key, so I knew it was Lorenzo’s skill at lock picking that you really wanted to see.”
Sawyer had not a second to reply to Pedro’s explanation. Maclovio wielded the sword once more, this time seemingly of a mind to throw it at one of the cabin windows.
It took only one strong, swift punch of Sawyer’s fist to put the man out of his drunken misery. On one heel, Maclovio spun in the grass and toppled face first to the ground, his body as still as death.
But he wasn’t dead, Sawyer knew. He would wake up in the morning and more than likely steal away for more of his whiskey to alleviate the pounding headache he would have.
Sawyer glanced at the house, thinking of the juniper-scattered bluff behind it. He then looked at the burning garden. The fierce flames had died down a bit, but the vegetable patch still burned.
Resolve oozed from his every pore. Dark or no dark, he was going to find Maclovio’s still tonight. And by morning, he swore, the whiskey contraption would be nothing but a smashed heap of rubble.
“Go to bed,” he ordered. “All of you. Maclovio won't do any more harm tonight.”
“Sawyer,” Zafiro called when he started around the house, “where are you—”
“To do something that needed to be done a long time ago,” he answered. With that he disappeared behind the house.
Knowing he was going to find and destroy Maclovio’s still, Zafiro longed to accompany him. Nothing she could think of at that moment would have given her more satisfaction than breaking apart the contraption that had caused so much grief at La Escondida.
But her people needed her. Tia and Azucar still wept beside the rose garden, Lorenzo’s blistered hands needed attention, and Pedro was far too pale for her liking. The old man was clearly exhausted from his fight with the fire.
Struggling to tame her own sorrow, worry, and anger, she ushered her four elderly charges into the house, leaving Maclovio to sleep in the yard. Once inside she quickly tended to Lorenzo’s hands, then made a pot of tea.
Overcome with sadness as she was, Tia could do naught but watch as Zafiro took charge. “We will be hungry this winter, chiquita,” she said when Zafiro handed her a cup of hot tea. “Without the garden—”
“We have never had very many vegetables,” Zafiro reminded the sniffling woman. “The rabbits have eaten them year after year. The fire destroying the garden is no different—”
“It is different,” Tia argued. “The rabbits always left a bit. The fire has eaten it all.”
Zafiro hugged Tia, then moved to comfort Azucar, who sat in her chair with a look of unmitigated stupefaction on her wrinkled face. “Tia, you forget the berry patch I told you about,” she said, forcing herself to present a bright, encouraging smile while still hugging Azucar. “The berries, they are many and they are ripe for picking. And do not forget the good sisters. They—”
“The holy sisters must be in the same situation as we are,” Pedro declared. Holding the keys he wore about his neck, he hobbled around the room, stopping here and there to shake his head before continuing his pacing. “They have brought us nothing in weeks. And Mariposa has brought no meat. There is not even enough for our animals. I have watched Sawyer bring in fresh grass for them, but he cannot continue to do that after the winter snows. The only thing I have seen in the barn is a bag of shriveled corn for the chickens.”
“I am hungry,” Lorenzo said, the thought of having no food causing his stomach to growl. “Zafiro, what are we going to do?”
A sigh collected within her breast, but she dared not release it for fear of further upsetting her charges. Still trying to smile, she dipped out a bowl of Tia’s stew and handed it to Lorenzo. Her heart tripped when the old man devoured it as if it were the last food on earth.
“Zafiro, what are we going to do?” Azucar asked. “No food… And there is also Luis.”
“Luis,” Zafiro whispered. As if she could ever forget him. He remained in her mind like an ugly stain she couldn’t scrub away.
She battled her fear, then after a long moment, she saw her people staring at her, looking into her eyes and hoping to find a bit of reassurance there.
Somehow she pushed down her apprehension. Her chin tilted upward in a gesture of confidence, she walked to the window and peered through the glass.
Eggs, she thought as she looked at the chicken coop in the yard. Eggs, fish, a smattering of dried berries, what little the sisters might provide, and whatever game Mariposa decided to share—that would be the extent of the winter food.
Asking Sawyer for further aid was useless. Strong, capable, and efficient as he was, he could not plant and cultivate another garden this late in the season. The first frost was only about a month away.
Nor could he hunt for fresh meat. The memories that haunted him would not allow him to handle a gun.
Sawyer had done and was still doing everything he was able to do for her and her charges.
Money was the answer, she knew. With hard, cold cash, she could buy everything La Escondida and its people needed to survive the harsh winter of the Sierra Madres. She wouldn’t even have to take the risk of being seen in any towns or villages. Sawyer or the nuns could see to the task of shopping.
But there was no money. Gone were the days when her men could easily steal the money needed to survive and have enough left to share with the poor.
Finally, she released the sigh she’d kept captive within her breast. The warmth of her breath as it escaped her lips made a foggy circle upon the windowpane.
It was true what was said about life.
It was not roses to sleep on.
Chapter Fifteen
Dawn was well on its way to becoming full morning when Sawyer finally returned from the dusty hills behind the house and walked into the yard. He looked filthy and felt dirtier, for
he’d spent most of the night looking for Maclovio’s still, then a good hour destroying the damn thing after he’d found it hidden in a drafty cave.
Even while breaking the still apart, he had to admire Maclovio’s genius in making it. Simply designed, yet obviously quite serviceable, the whiskey-making contraption was skillfully fashioned with odds and ends Maclovio had found lying around La Escondida: a sturdy wooden barrel, a big copper pot and hollow coil and pipe, a glass jug, a cap and plug, and rags. Scatterings of animal feed and a few dried-up berries and roots told Sawyer that Maclovio had used whatever edible thing he could find to make his lethal brew.
But Sawyer hadn’t seen any more of such odds and ends anywhere on La Escondida, and because he’d completely demolished the items Maclovio had found and used years ago, he doubted seriously that the man could make another still.
The man in question was no longer lying in the yard, where he’d passed out the night before, Sawyer noticed. Maclovio had probably awakened with a pounding headache and gone to the stream for a dip in the refreshing water.
Hunger gnawing at him after his busy night, Sawyer entered the cabin, but found no one in the great room. Strange. Tia was always doing something here in the kitchen.
“Zafiro!” he called.
In the next moment he heard someone descending the staircase. “Zafiro, where’s Tia—”
“Sawyer!” Azucar greeted him as she wobbled off the last step and started toward him. “It is a perfect time for you to have returned. Tia and Zafiro have gone to gather berries. Mariposa went with them, but then she returned and is now cleaning herself upstairs in your room. Maclovio has left to bathe, Pedro is in the woods praying, and Lorenzo fell asleep in the barn when he went to visit the animals. We are all alone, my handsome buck. Free to indulge in all the many pleasures of the flesh.”
In no mood for her advances, Sawyer began to step away from her, but suddenly remembered his decision to be kinder to all the elderly inhabitants of La Escondida. Smiling down at the crimson-draped hag, he took her frail shoulders into his hands and bent to place a tender kiss on her wrinkled cheek. Her gasp of pure joy told him he’d made her truly happy.
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