“It’s not what you said! You never say anything right! You’re insane, you know that, Zafiro Maria Quintana? Insane!”
Her feelings began to tremble, but she reminded herself that Sawyer’s pain was far worse than any injury he chose to deliver to her now. “And you are afraid. Afraid to face, deal with, and fight your grief. That makes you a coward. Your belly is all yellow, Sawyer.”
“Yellow-bellied.”
“Your whole body is yellow. Even your lily liver.”
Rage rattled inside him like rocks in a tin can. He flew off Coraje’s back and pulled Zafiro off the boulder, his fingers digging into the tender flesh at the backs of her arms. “Why are you doing this?” he flared.
“They’re dead,” she returned. “They were murdered.”
He felt her words slash inside him like so many swords. “I know they’re dead!”
“You will never see them again.”
As if he’d turned around and around too many times, he felt dizzy. Unbalanced by the sheer force of his tumultuous emotions.
He pushed Zafiro away.
She staggered backward, but managed to remain standing.
And Sawyer’s scream shook the Sierra Madre Mountains. The noise sounded as if hell itself had suddenly erupted from inside the earth and was destroying every good thing in the world with fire and evil.
Then it stopped.
Sawyer sank to his knees, bowing his head so low that his chin touched his chest. Tears poured down his face so quickly that his shirt was soon wet with them. “Gone,” he whispered thickly.
“Yes, gone, Sawyer.” Her own face shining with tears, Zafiro knelt in front of him and gathered as much of his huge body as her arms could hold.
“They…they died.” He lifted his head and hid his face in the warm nest of her hair. “I couldn’t save them.”
“It was a tragedy you could not prevent, Sawyer,” Zafiro cooed. “It was not your fault.”
Sawyer wrapped his arms around her slender waist and squeezed her so hard that he heard her sharp intake of breath.
And then he began to sob, his frame shuddering so violently that Zafiro’s body shook as well.
She held him. Whispered caring words to him. She wept with him, kissed his hair, his tear-salted face, and she willed him to know that if her heart could somehow repair his broken one, then she would freely tear it from her breast and give it to him.
Dusk shadowed the meadow when Sawyer’s tears finally ceased, when his body finally stopped shaking. Zafiro still in his embrace, he laid down in the grass, in the flowers, and he turned to her, into her softness, next to her chest, where he could hear her tender heart beating a soothing sound that further eased him.
He felt her take a deep breath and knew she was about to speak.
But he was unprepared for the words she told him. “Sawyer, I love you.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sawyer raised his face from her breast and looked into her eyes. The whisper-soft sheen of adoration he saw tinting those beautiful sapphire orbs echoed her declaration.
He didn’t know how to reply. To have gone from soul-wrenching grief to unmitigated surprise stole all reason from him.
But Zafiro saw no need for words. Surrounded by the fragrance of the flowers and the masculine scent that was Sawyer’s alone, she touched her lips to his.
Her gentle caress and the powerful caring Sawyer sensed flowing from her into him…
He couldn’t remember ever wanting anything or anyone as badly as he wanted Zafiro now.
A man in vital need of and too long deprived of the sweet succor she offered, he took her lips in a kiss that demanded everything she had to give. His fingers lacing through the wind-kissed silk of her hair, his right leg lying over her hip, he held her still and steady as he prepared to induce and accept her full surrender to him.
But what he sought, Zafiro had relinquished to him long ago. She gave what he craved with joyous abandon, smiling into his kiss and pressing her body into his so closely that to be any nearer to him would have been to be inside him.
Together and swiftly, they removed each other’s clothes. The grass and flowers were cool on their skin, and yet all they could sense was the fierce heat of their need for each other.
A low, feral sound rumbled from Sawyer’s chest when he felt Zafiro take his straining length into her hand and try to position it at the entrance to her body. Male instinct told him she needed no further preparation to accept him, but he would not join his body with hers until he was certain. He slid his fingers over her feminine mound and into the warmth of her womanhood.
He found her slick. Wet. She arched into his hand in silent supplication.
There would be pain, he knew, but there was nothing else he could do to ready her for it.
She was already so eager that even the slight touch of his fingers had set her thighs and belly to trembling.
He knelt between her thighs and lifted her legs, glad when she wrapped them around his waist. Tunneling his hands beneath her firm bottom, he raised her hips off the ground and positioned her so that the crown of his manhood kissed the dewy passage to the sweetness inside her.
He hurt to have her. His loins felt like sunbaked stone. But he hesitated, unable to rid himself of the regret of giving her pain. “Zafiro.”
Maiden though she was, she read the expression in his eyes as if words were written within them. He knew something she did not.
But she wanted to know.
And there was only one way for her to learn.
She tightened her legs around his waist.
And whispered to him.
“I love you, Sawyer.”
He folded her words into his heart, and with one sure, swift stroke he took her from her maiden’s world and made her a woman in the most intimate of ways.
“Sawyer.” His name burned from her throat on a heated breath as she struggled to understand and conquer the sharp pain his penetration had caused.
After a moment she convinced herself that it was not her pain she felt, but his. He would pour it inside her, and she would gladly take it into herself and never let it hurt him again.
She smiled up at him, telling him with her eyes that she wanted the full circle of his lovemaking.
“Zafiro.” This time when he spoke her name, his voice thrummed with the sound of relief. Lowering his body gently down to hers, he slanted his mouth across hers and groaned when she slipped her arms around his neck and locked her feet together behind his back.
He began to move within her, slowly at first, but then with faster, steadier strokes when she moved restlessly beneath him.
She cried out his name, but his mouth swallowed her voice even as his body consumed hers.
Nothing or no one could have prepared her or helped her to fully understand the exquisite sensation of being so sensuously possessed by a man. Holding a part of Sawyer inside her, squeezing him as he plunged in and out of her, went far beyond mere physical pleasure.
Her emotions danced and flickered like a handful of sparkle upon a sunlit breath of breeze.
He murmured something to her, his lips moving upon hers. She couldn’t understand what he said, but the sound of his husky voice increased her excitement, deepened her need, and heightened her yearning for the full burst of pleasure to come.
And as she tried to match the rhythmic pumping of his hips, she realized that her actions delivered to Sawyer the same wonderful bliss that his offered to her. Amazed and delighted by her discovery, she concentrated on harmonizing with his motions, relying on her instincts and his guidance to tell her what to do.
“Oh, God,” Sawyer murmured. Her innocent, slightly tentative attempts to please him flooded his loins with glorious sensations he knew he could not contain. Wishing he possessed further strength to continue fostering her own rising pleasure, but knowing that his wish was not to be granted, he relented to the powerful force of his release just as he felt the first tiny flutters of hers.
Their shared ecstasy brought them together in full awareness, and they felt the world they knew fall apart. Clinging to each other, savoring and memorizing each tingle of bliss, each deep shot of pleasure, they floated in another world, one their passion had created especially for them.
And when at last they left that world of exquisite sensual joy, when the last sparkle of rapture faded away, Sawyer slipped to the ground. With a gentleness that belied his earlier and almost savage demands of her, he gathered Zafiro into his arms.
And he thought about how right it felt to have her there.
“You were right,” Zafiro murmured to Sawyer as she lay within the warm, comforting shelter of his brawny arms. “No one could have explained this to me. What it is like when a man and a woman join their bodies in such a way.” She pressed a graceful trail of tiny kisses up his chest, over his throat and chin, and finally to his mouth. “Thank you, Sawyer Donovan. Thank you for showing—”
“No." He touched a finger to her lips to silence her. “I’m the one who should thank you. You were made for loving, Zafiro. Made to be cherished and taken care of. If it were possible I would stay and be the man to love, cherish, and take care of you.”
His last statement hurled her straight into the bitterness of reality. “When will you leave?”
The squeak in her voice made him hurt. But he could not ease her sorrow. He had to leave La Escondida and return to Synner. “Tomorrow.”
“You will take Coraje with you. He is faster than your mule, and no one but you can ride him anyway. We will keep the Appaloosa and the little chestnut mare.”
There it was again, he mused. That squeak in her voice. He hurt for her again. “Zafiro, I—”
“You are better now.” Loath to continue discussing his departure in the morning, she changed the subject. “About your parents. Your brother and your sister.”
“I’ll always miss them.” He looked into her eyes, then peered up at the full and glorious moon.
He found the moon lacking. Zafiro’s eyes held beauty that far surpassed the glowing orb of night.
Joining his gaze with hers again, he toyed with a tendril of her ebony hair. “My parents. Minnie. And Nathaniel. And I’ll always wish I could have been there to…to keep them safe.”
He plucked a single red wildflower and brushed it along the hollow between her breasts, then twirled the crimson petals over the intricate facets of her sapphire. “But I wasn’t there, and I can’t skip back over eight months to make it so. I thank you again, Zafiro. For taunting me into meeting sadness head-on. If not for you…”
He left his statement unfinished as he pondered what she meant to him.
If not for Zafiro he would still be wandering. He doubted seriously that he would have stayed with the nuns for long.
If not for Zafiro he would not have gained a sense of purpose. Rebuilding her home had not been easy, but the strenuous work and the knowledge that his skills were needed and appreciated had made him feel worthwhile again.
If not for Zafiro he would not have laughed. The daft woman had him smiling almost at every turn.
If not for Zafiro he would not have found his past. True, she hadn’t meant to be captured by the men who’d taken her, but her being in the wrong place at the right time and his subsequent fear for her safety had effectively returned his memory.
And last and perhaps most important of all, if not for Zafiro he would not be lying in this blossomy meadow, beneath the mountain moon and speaking of his acceptance of his family’s deaths. She’d pushed him into releasing his horror, his grief, and for that he would remember and thank her for the rest of his days.
“Sawyer?”
“Mmm?”
“About Luis…”
Apprehension almost turned him inside out.
Luis.
With all the many things that had happened today, he’d forgotten Zafiro’s fear of her cousin.
“Sawyer,” Zafiro murmured, “I just wanted to tell you that the feeling of danger I had—that sense of something bad about to happen—it is gone now.”
He frowned when she turned her face away from him. “Gone?”
She gave a slight nod and nervously ran her hand through the billows of grass and flowers. “I think… I think the feeling came from the men who caught me today. Now that they can no longer hurt me or anyone else at La Escondida, the feeling of danger has gone. I…I thought at first maybe they were Luis’s men, but I know now they were not. I am not afraid anymore.”
She was lying through those perfect white teeth of hers, and he knew it. The feeling she had of coming danger wasn’t gone. It followed her like an evil phantom that took his ease in her shadow.
She was lying so he wouldn’t feel guilty when he left in the morning. So he could return to his brothers and sister free of worry.
But her attempts to reassure him failed. Sawyer still wasn’t sure he believed in her sixth sense for danger, but his own beliefs didn’t matter.
It was the fact that Zafiro believed them that was important. After he left she would continue to be afraid. Would continue to gaze at the mountain ridges, wondering when Luis would find and steal her away.
Himself, Sawyer didn’t believe Luis would find La Escondida. The hideaway more than lived up to its name: “The Hidden.”
But she would worry, he knew.
There was also her problem of providing for her charges. He could bring down more game for her in the morning, but the meat wouldn’t last through the winter. Before the cold had ended she and her people would again be hungry.
But he couldn’t stay. He just couldn’t. He’d left four children in Synner, Texas. Children he loved every bit as much as he would have had they been the natural offspring of his parents.
Zafiro, Tia, Azucar, Maclovio, Lorenzo, and Pedro needed him, yes.
But Ira, Tucker, Jesse, and Jenna were his family. And he owed it to his slain parents to take care of them.
His mind spun with possible solutions to his dilemma, and in only a moment an answer came to him.
Money.
With money Zafiro could purchase everything she needed to provide for herself and her elderly dependents. If she remained wary of leaving the hideaway, she could ask the good sisters to do her shopping for her.
Yes, money was the solution.
And Sawyer knew exactly how to acquire the money she needed.
Night Master was going to ride again.
Her stomach full after having eaten Tia’s delicious meal of fresh venison, Zafiro fought to keep her eyes open. She sat at the table with Tia and Sawyer, the others having gone to bed hours earlier.
The aftereffects of her day made her limbs feel leaden. The abduction. Her battle with her captors. The shock of learning who Sawyer was. The overwhelming compassion and need to help that she’d felt when he’d refused to give in to his grief. Their lovemaking.
And the all-consuming sorrow she felt over his impending departure.
She wanted to stay awake all night with him. Talking. Holding him. Hearing and branding into her heart the last things he would ever tell her.
But try as she did, she could no longer fight her exhaustion. Her mind as weary as her body, she began to nod off to sleep right in her chair.
“Pobrecita,” Tia said, watching Zafiro. “Poor little thing. She is very tired, Francisco.”
Having been wondering when Zafiro would finally give in to her fatigue, Sawyer smiled and rose from his own chair to lift her into his arms.
“I do not want to go to bed, Sawyer,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “I am not sleepy one bit.”
“Yes, Zafiro, I can see that you’re wide awake,” Sawyer answered when she promptly fell back to sleep.
“I will help you put her to bed, Francisco,” Tia said.
He followed the plump woman up the stairs and into Zafiro’s room, where Tia lit a candle and pulled down the bed covers.
“I will undress her,” Tia stated. “You go to bed, Francisco. And lea
ve your Night Master costume at the end of your bed. It is dirty. I will wash it so you can play in it again.”
He made no move to leave. Rather, he watched as Tia began to unbutton Zafiro’s blouse.
The memory of their sensuous evening in the meadow came to him in a vivid flash. He felt himself becoming aroused.
“Francisco, do as I say.”
Tia’s sharp command irritated and amused him at once. Reminding himself that he had no time to dally with Zafiro anyway, he headed out the door. “Night, Mama,” he called over his shoulder.
In his own room he loaded his Colts and waited until he heard no sounds save the whine of the night wind as it rushed past the windows and the occasional clucking of Jengibre, who sat comfortably in the middle of his pillow, presumably laying an egg. He left the room then and quietly checked the other bedrooms.
Everyone, including Tia, was fast asleep.
Downstairs, a glance at the clock on the shelf above the hearth told him it was almost midnight.
He had little time, for the herald of dawn presented a mighty enemy to a highwayman.
For the third time that day, he rode Coraje out of La Escondida. He headed north, where Maclovio had said the wealthy Spaniards lived, and he followed a twisting path that soon led him away from the foothills of the Sierras.
An hour later he came upon a hacienda. It rose from the ground and stretched toward heaven, a sprawling fortress made of all things old and beautiful. Washed in the silver glow of night, the ancient home fairly reeked of wealth.
A brisk breeze picked up Sawyer’s ebony satin cloak, and the sound of the lustrous, rippling fabric stimulated skills that Sawyer hadn’t used in eight long months. With the experience that had made him a legend in two countries, he laid down his plans in his mind.
Quickly but quietly, he urged Coraje toward the majestic estate. When the horse arrived into a shadowed area beneath a cluster of swaying trees, he withdrew from the hidden pocket on the inside of his cloak a black velvet mask. He hadn’t thought to use the mask earlier, when he’d rescued Zafiro from the bastards who’d taken her.
But he would need it tonight.
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