“Of course not. She still goes with me.”
Terror iced through Lara as Jurado jerked her toward the door. She would not cry, she told herself fiercely. This entire scenario was aimed at Ricardo and she knew Jurado wanted her to weep and plead to make it more difficult for him.
“Do you want me to beg?” Ricardo asked hoarsely. “Very well, I’ll do it. She has nothing to do with our war. Don’t hurt her, Jurado.”
“No please?” Jurado taunted as he glanced at Ricardo over his shoulder.
“Please,” Ricardo grated, through clenched teeth.
“It’s not enough. I believe I’ll let you have time alone to consider how much you appreciate the woman’s company.”
“What are you going to do to her?”
“I’ll let you guess.” Jurado’s eyes gleamed with malicious enjoyment. “You know me. What do you think I’ll do to her?”
“Jurado, damn you. Don’t do—”
The slamming of the door of the cell cut off Ricardo’s protest, and Jurado propelled Lara down the corridor toward the door of the cell block.
——————
The last rays of the setting sun were streaming into the cell when Jurado returned Lara over three hours later.
Ricardo’s gaze flew to Lara’s face, but Jurado gave her no time to speak as he pushed her across the cell toward Ricardo. “Did you miss her, Lázaro?”
Ricardo’s gaze never left Lara’s face. “What did they do to you?”
“Now, does she look ill-treated?” Jurado pushed Lara to her knees on the stone floor before Ricardo. “We thought we’d made her quite attractive.” He touched a silky strand of Lara’s fair hair. “She’s showered and perfumed, and we even brushed her hair until it shone. She couldn’t have had a more personal beauty treatment at the most exclusive salon in the United States. And all for you, Lázaro.”
“Is that what they did to you?” Ricardo’s gaze searched her expression. “Tell me, Lara.”
She nodded. “It was enough.” A shudder went through her. “Their hands on me. I hated it.”
Jurado leisurely began to undo the buttons at the bodice of Lara’s gauze gown. “She’s most unappreciative. She doesn’t realize how lenient I’ve been to her, does she, Lázaro?” He pushed back the folds of material to reveal the upper slopes of Lara’s breasts. “But you realize how much worse it could have been.” He said softly, “Doesn’t she have pretty breasts? Don’t you want to touch them?”
“No.”
“I think you do.” Jurado smiled. “If you don’t touch them, I will. Do you want to see me fondle her?”
“I’m going to kill you one day, Jurado.”
“How fierce you are.” His smile faded. “Touch her, Lázaro.”
Ricardo stood unmoving, looking down at Lara.
Jurado’s voice cracked whiplike in the room. “Touch her. Fondle her.”
Ricardo dropped to his knees in front of Lara. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Lord, I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.” Her eyes were bright with tears. “It’s all right.”
His gaze held her own as his hands slowly slipped into the opening of her gown and gently cupped her breasts.
She closed her eyes and drew a shaky breath as his warm, callused palms caressed her. She had expected to feel defiled, but there was nothing crude or obscene about Ricardo’s touch, only the most exquisite tenderness.
“I see you like her,” Jurado said with satisfaction. “I knew you would.”
“Shut up, Jurado.” Ricardo’s voice was thick. “You’re getting what you want.”
“Not entirely. She looks like a sensual angel kneeling there with her hair flowing about her. How could any man resist taking her to bed? I really believe I’ve outdone myself.”
“Get out of here and let her alone. Haven’t you put her through enough?”
“You’ll have your privacy soon enough. Doesn’t she smell sweet?”
“Yes,” Ricardo said hoarsely.
“Her breasts are really quite lovely. How does it feel to have your hands on her?”
Ricardo didn’t answer.
“You don’t have to answer. I can see for myself. These five months are telling on you, Lázaro.” Lara heard the sound of footsteps as Jurado crossed the cell. “I’m leaving you now. Do enjoy yourselves.” He paused at the door. “And you will enjoy her tonight, Lázaro. Matters aren’t proceeding quickly enough to suit me. I’ll give you until midnight. If you don’t perform with suitable virility and enthusiasm, I’ll take her to the guards’ quarters.”
Lara’s eyes opened as the door slammed behind Jurado. Ricardo’s olive complexion was paler than she had ever seen it and lines of strain carved either side of his mouth.
“Are you really all right?” he asked thickly.
She nodded jerkily. “It wasn’t pleasant, but perhaps Jurado’s right and I should feel lucky.” She looked down at his hands still covering her breasts. A tingling shock went through her as she saw the contrast of tan hardness against her softer fairness. The hot color rose to her cheeks as she felt her nipples harden against his palms in mindless response.
His gaze followed her own and he stared for an instant as if mesmerized before he drew a deep, harsh breath and slowly withdrew his hands from beneath her gown.
Her breasts felt chilled without his warmth. She said hurriedly, “Thank you for trying to keep them from taking me. It couldn’t have been easy for you to plead with that bastard.”
“Pride doesn’t mean much when—” He broke off and began to button her gown. “I’d have done a hell of a lot more to keep them from putting you through that.”
His fingers were trembling and her concerned gaze lifted to his face. “I’m really fine. You don’t need to worry.”
“Worry?” His voice was shaking as his hand reached out to cup her cheek. “Do you know what I felt waiting here helplessly while I imagined what they were doing to you?”
She glanced anxiously at the microphone on the wall. “Be careful. Jurado should be back in his office at any moment.”
“We still have a minute or two. Don’t you see? It’s too late, damn his soul.” He laughed harshly. “He has us.”
She nodded. “I know he has us.”
“And a big part of me is happy as hell I get to take what I want.” His tone was tormented. “What kind of man does that make me?”
“Human.” She tried to keep her voice even. “It’s all right, Ricardo. I knew this might happen when I came here.”
“Did you?” His expression was agonized as he leaned forward and whispered into her hair, “We have to stall him until after tomorrow morning. Sex is nothing to Jurado and it’s hard for him to believe it can mean anything to someone else. He should give me a few days to become attached to you after …” He smoothed her hair back from her face. “But he’ll prey on anything softer, so we have to be very careful. You understand?”
“I understand.” But Ricardo didn’t understand, she thought with a shiver of apprehension, and how would he react when he did? She sat back on her heels and looked up at him. “Well, we don’t seem to have many options, do we?”
He slowly shook his head. “Jurado’s not bluffing. He gave me those three hours of hell to make sure I knew I wouldn’t have another chance.”
Her stare dropped to the middle button of his shirt. “Then I guess we’ll have to do what he wants.”
Ricardo muttered a curse under his breath.
The color flew to her cheeks. “If you can. Being ordered to make love to a woman must be a complete turnoff.”
“Oh, I can.” Ricardo laughed shortly. “Believe me, I can. I’m so hot, I could have taken you in front of Jurado, and the bastard knew it.”
And she had known it too. Even with her eyes closed she had felt his hunger and need as he had fondled her breasts.
His need and her own.
“Then it will be easy for you to—”
“But it won’t be easy for you
.” Ricardo interrupted harshly. “Dammit, you’re a virgin. Suppose I hurt you?”
She smiled tremulously. “I don’t think you’d hurt me as much as Jurado’s guards.”
“A great choice,” Ricardo muttered. “Lord, this shouldn’t be happening to you. Why can’t I do something?”
She could sense his torment as she had his need and she felt an overpowering desire to rid him of it. “Stop torturing yourself,” she said lightly. “You’re not destroying my life. Virginity is nothing in this day and age. I’ve just been too busy to rid myself of it.”
“It’s not ‘nothing’ to the man who—” Ricardo broke off and drew a deep breath. “I’ll try to make it easy for you.”
Her gaze lifted to his face. “Now?”
He shook his head. “There’s no hurry. We have until midnight and I refuse to perform on demand. We’ll find a way not to lose to Jurado.” A sudden smile lit his face. “You must make me a promise. I want you to forget about the microphone and Jurado and where we are.”
She looked at him in bewilderment. “How can I do that?”
“Concentrate. You forgot them all for a while earlier today when we were playing games.” His smile faded and his intent gaze met her own. “I won’t have you remember this as a horror.” His voice lowered. “Do this for me, por favor.”
She couldn’t look away from him. He was suddenly different from the quiet, self-disciplined man she had known since she had walked into this cell. It was as if he had unhooded a light he had kept carefully veiled. This was the man who dominated hundreds of thousands of followers with the sheer charisma of his personality. She felt enveloped, surrounded by the force field of his will. “What do you want me to do?”
“Imagine.”
The last light filtering through the bars cast a rose-gold glow over the cell, softening the barren starkness wherever it touched and leaving the rest of the cell in shadows. Ricardo’s features were lit in the same ambivalent manner, his high cheekbones darkly hollowed, but the beautifully shaped lips and sparkling black eyes appeared softer, more tender. Lord, he was beautiful. “Imagine what?”
“That I’m your lover.” He reached out and gently brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. “And that there’s no war, no revolution. It’s a world where the only problems are fierce fathers who protect their beautiful daughters from the young men who wish to snatch them away from them.” He leaned forward and his lips brushed the tip of her nose. “Go sit on the cot, querida.”
She rose to her feet and moved dreamily toward the cot. The golden haze didn’t reach to this shadowy corner of the cell and she knew she must be only a pale blur to Ricardo. She knelt on the cot, her gaze flying back to where he was kneeling in the pool of light. “And did you snatch me away from my fierce father?”
He nodded. “From the moment I saw you, I knew I had to have you. Your father owns the rancho next to my own and every day I’d see you riding your palomino mare, your fair hair shining in the sunlight. For the last week I’ve watched you ride out from your father’s casa with its red-tiled roof and high stucco walls and waited to catch a glimpse of you as you galloped by the lake that borders my property.” His voice lowered. “I knew I should court you properly, but this afternoon you reined in your horse by the lake and looked at me, and I forgot everything. I think you forgot everything too.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’d never felt like that before.”
“How did you feel, querida?”
She was silent.
“Tell me. Pretend. Imagine …”
She was suddenly afraid to let herself fall deeper into this make-believe that was becoming more real than the cell around her. Yet her answer came haltingly, tentatively, drawn from her by the sheer power of his personality. “As if you were a part of me that I’d never been aware existed before.”
“Then it was right that I bribed your servant to smuggle me into your bedroom tonight.”
“Is that where we are?”
“You must be as love-struck as I am.” Ricardo’s tone was gently chiding. “Don’t you recognize the ornamental bars your father placed on the windows to keep out suitors? The leaf-green and ivory Aubusson carpet I’m sitting on?”
She could almost see them, she realized dreamily. “But why are you sitting on the floor?”
“Where else would a suitor sit but at the feet of his lady?” His voice deepened. “Besides, I dare not touch you yet.”
“Why not?”
“I must make sure that you want me as much as I want you.” He began to unbutton his shirt. “You don’t know the ways of passion yet and I must be careful not to hurt you.”
“Yet you sneak into my father’s house to take my virtue?”
“As Romeo did with Juliet. Your father thinks I’m too wild for his gentle daughter.”
“Are you?”
He stripped off his shirt, and his powerful shoulders gleamed golden in the twilight. “Yes.”
She inhaled sharply as she looked at him. Ricardo’s glossy black hair flowed about his shoulders, and his muscles were taut, sinewy with power. He looked wild and untamed, totally different from the controlled man she had come to know. “Then why should I let you seduce me?”
He stood up, his fingers unfastening his trousers. “Because you’re not the gentle girl your father thinks you are, that you think you are.”
“I should know myself.”
He was quickly stripping. “Then why aren’t you shocked that I’m undressing in front of you?” He turned to face her, his nude body bathed in the influx of light that cast an aura of diffused gold around him. “Do you find me pleasing, Lara?”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat to rid it of its tightness. Her breasts swelled beneath the gauze of her gown as she remembered the feel of Ricardo’s callused palms as he had caressed her.
“Do you want to know how I find you?” He stood unmoving in the pool of light. “But I think you do know. Just as you knew this afternoon when I pulled you down off your horse in the tall grass and rubbed against you like an animal in need. I can still hear those soft, keening sounds you made deep in your throat.”
“I don’t remember doing that.”
“Then I’ll have to remind you.” He moved forward to stand before her. “You kept saying, ‘Ricardo, querido. I love you.’ You arched up against me and our hands were all over each other. I wanted to take you then and there.”
She felt the muscles of her stomach clench helplessly and a liquid burning between her thighs. “Why didn’t you?”
His fingertips touched her cheek and she felt as if that gentle touch was burning her. “Because you’re my lady and not my whore. You must have satin sheets and a chamber scented with lilac and lavender. I would have taken you to my own rancho, but you were frightened of what your father would do. So I came to you.” His hand moved down to cup her throat. “As I’ll always come to you.”
She gazed up at him, mesmerized. Dear heaven, she could actually smell the lilac and lavender, she thought helplessly. And this was her lover who had risked everything so that she might have a night to remember. She whispered, “Why?”
“Because we were meant to be together.” His hand slipped into the opening of her gown and it trembled as it had before. “You belong to me.” His thumbnail brushed against her nipple, and a streak of fire surged through her. “And I belong to you.”
He withdrew his hand and reached down to kiss her softly, sweetly, lingeringly. “Let’s get rid of the gown, Lara. Lovers shouldn’t have barriers between them, should they?”
“No.” She knelt in a dreamy haze as he pulled the gown over her head and dropped it on the floor. The light was fading and the shadows were merging and becoming darkness as Ricardo pushed her gently back on the cot and moved over her, parting her thighs, cupping her womanhood with one warm hand as he bent and kissed her again.
His tongue invaded her mouth as his hand began to rub, explore in its own sensual invasion.
S
he moaned deep in her throat as she had in the tall grass when he had first touched her.
He lifted his head and smiled down at her. “Yes, that’s my wild love.” His fingers plunged deep and she arched up toward him with a cry. His breathing harshened. “Want me, Lara.”
She did want him. She was on fire. Her teeth sank into her lower lip to smother the cries that kept welling from her throat as he stroked, rotated. It was as if a dam had burst and everything inside her was flowing toward him in a hot tide. “Ricardo, it’s—” She stopped, panting as he moved over her. “Yes. Yes.”
“Now?” He whispered, “I may hurt you, querida. Your father is right. I’m too wild for you.”
“No, you’re not.” Her hands clutched his shoulders, afraid he’d leave her. “I need you, Ricardo.”
“Do you?” He slowly lowered his head until his lips were hovering only a breath above her own. “Then take me, Lara.”
He plunged deep and her cry was muffled by his lips. He stopped, his manhood within her, his lips pressed to her own, letting her get used to him.
The sensation was indescribable. Fullness, heat, hunger.
He raised his head and looked down at her. His chest lifted and fell with the harshness of his breathing, and his features were contorted with pleasure. “If I’m hurting you, you’ll have to tell me to stop. I can’t do it on my own.”
She shook her head. She couldn’t force the words past her lips.
He drew a deep breath that she felt within her own body. Then he was moving, plunging, thrusting with the wildness he had warned her might be loosed.
She welcomed the storm, her head thrashing back and forth on the sheet as his hands slid beneath her buttocks, lifting her into each thrust.
She knew she was moaning, whimpering, but she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t do anything but respond to the fiery rhythm he had set. She felt taken, absorbed, possessed, and yet she still wanted to give more.
“Now, querida,” he whispered against her mouth. “Let it happen.”
She closed her eyes as the rhythm escalated. Tall, fragrant grass, satin sheets, lilac and lavender, her lover coming to her in the darkness.