SIX

LARA SLEPT FOR a solid ten hours after her nursing shift.

Ricardo was sitting cross-legged on the ground beside her pallet when she opened her eyes.

Happiness shimmered through her as she smiled drowsily up at him. “You look considerably cleaner than you did the last time I saw you,” she whispered. “Your face was all sooty.”

“I took a bath.” He lifted a mocking brow. “A regular occurrence actually.”

“That’s what I need.” She yawned and sat up. “I was too tired to do anything but fall into bed when I left the infirmary.”

“I could see you were exhausted when I dropped in last night.” He reached out and brushed back a strand of hair from her forehead. “And I think I saw something else as well.”

“Did you?” She instinctively scooted back away from him. “I don’t know what you—”

“Don’t put up the barriers again.” He smiled at her, a smile so loving, she felt her wariness melt away. “It’s too late.”

“I … was glad you were alive.”

“So was I. In that moment I was more glad to be alive than I’ve ever been before.”

She shook her head. “Don’t do this. You’re pushing me. It’s all too quick. I don’t know what I’m feeling. I have to think.”

“I have to push you. I’m trying to consolidate my position before you change your mind.”

She looked away from him. “Why did you attack the Abbey? You said there weren’t many prisoners left there.”

“Enough. The next major offensive may push us over the top and the first thing Jurado would do is murder the prisoners. I wanted Jurado and that hellhole destroyed.” He ran his hand down her neck and a hot shiver followed his touch. “And I wanted to erase him from your life and memory as if he had never been born.”

“Killing someone can’t do that.”

“I know. But you’ll never have to worry about him touching you again. I couldn’t erase the memory of him from your past, but you’ll never have to face him in your future.” He didn’t give her a chance to answer as he took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Take your bath and then get something to eat. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” She couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. You said I was moving too fast. I’m just giving you space. I can afford to let you have a little respite from my presence now.” He met her gaze. “Of course, if you decide you don’t want the space, you know where I am.”

She didn’t know where he was, she realized. She had never been to his quarters. “I don’t really know anything about you or what you do here when you’re not with me.” She frowned. “And you didn’t even tell me you were going to raid the Abbey.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d be interested.” He turned her around and gave her bottom an affectionate pat that propelled her toward the door. “I’m happy as hell to find out you are.”

She realized then, to her disgust, that she was afraid to look at him. It was crazy to feel so painfully shy with a man with whom she had experienced the ultimate intimacy. “I’m interested.” She cast him an anxious glance over her shoulder as a thought occurred to her. “You’re telling me the truth? You’re just giving me time? You’re not going on another raid tonight?”

His expression softened. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise I’ll be back here tomorrow.”

Relief poured through her. “That’s good.” She smiled with an effort. “I’d just as soon you forget about battles and raids for the time being. I’m not much good at this nursing business and I don’t like the prospect of spending another hellish night at the infirmary.”

His voice was very gentle. “Juan says you did very well.”

“He was desperate. The good doctor would have drafted an orangutan to help out if the ape was capable of holding a pressure bandage.”

He laughed. “Perhaps. But you still filled his needs.” He paused and his laughter faded. “As you filled mine. In spite of your protests, you persist in giving to us. I only wish we could stop taking and give in return. I need to give to you, Lara.”

His stare was warmly intent and Lara felt that warmth enfolding her in a velvet cocoon. Her gaze clung to his face in helpless fascination. “I … have to take my bath.”

She whirled and walked quickly away from him, her pace quickening to almost a run even before she went through the entranceway.

The spring-fed pool was frigid, as usual, but Lara’s mind was in such a turmoil, she scarcely registered the temperature of the water.

She couldn’t love him.

But she had felt a devastating sense of loss when she had thought he might be dead and when she had seen him….

She closed her eyes, savoring the remembered moment of joy.

So she felt something for him. It didn’t have to be love. They had grown very close through their experience at the Abbey. It was sex and companionship, not love. Naturally, she felt sympathy for a man who was living on the edge of danger. Naturally, she wanted to help him in any way she could.

Dear heaven, even to herself she sounded hypocritical and self-righteous, she thought self-deprecatingly. Why not admit he was a sexy, gorgeous man and she had a king-size yen? Since Ricardo obviously felt the same desire, wasn’t it sensible to appease both their needs? There would be no harm in giving him what he wanted from her in these last days together.

She strode out of the water, grabbed a towel from the stony bank, and began to dry herself. She would go find Manuel and have him take her to Ricardo’s quarters before she lost her nerve, she decided. She would explain everything very clearly to Ricardo so that there would be no misunderstanding and see what he had to say. She was being logical and there was no reason he shouldn’t agree. Reaching for her shirt, she paused as a fleeting memory of that radiant joy she had felt when she had seen him in the infirmary came back to her. Relief. The emotion underlying joy had been relief and nothing else.

Lord, she hoped she wasn’t lying to herself.

The massive uniformed guard who stood before Ricardo’s quarters straightened as Lara and Manuel approached. Lara stopped in the corridor, hesitating.

“Don’t worry,” Manuel whispered as he pushed her forward. “He won’t give you any trouble. All the soldiers know who you are.”

“Do they?” If they did, then they had a distinct advantage, Lara thought nervously. At the moment she wasn’t sure she knew who she was or what she was doing here. The “reasonable” decision she had made not thirty minutes before seemed brash and slightly mad now.

Manuel nodded gravely. “We all know you belong to Ricardo. The guard will let you pass.”

“I don’t belong—” She broke off and moved toward the entrance. “Are you coming?”

He didn’t answer and when she glanced back over her shoulder, she found the child had vanished down the corridor from which they had come.

The big guard smiled benignly and let her pass through the arched doorway without a challenge.

Ricardo’s quarters were starkly ascetic as she could tell from only the most fleeting glance as she entered.

Ricardo was half sitting, half lying, on the pallet across the room, leaning back against the stone wall behind him, a gray woolen blanket draped carelessly across his hips.

He was naked.

She stopped, staring breathlessly at him. His body looked hard, lean, and tough, but there was nothing hard about his expression. Her heart was drumming so loud, she was sure he could hear it across the distance separating them. She swallowed to ease the dryness of her throat. “Hello.”

He smiled, a warm, brilliant smile, and held out his hand. “Hello, querida.”

It was going to be fine. He was no stranger. This was the Ricardo she had known in the cell, the Ricardo who had soothed and comforted her and built a beautiful world to shut out all the pain and sordidness. She moved toward him. “You seem to have been expecting me.”

“Not expecting … only hoping you’d come.” His dark eyes twinkled up at her as she knelt before him. “I wouldn’t dare take you for granted. That last morning in the cell proved you’re too dangerous a woman to assume anything about.” He reached out and gently touched her lower lip with two fingers. “But I thought I’d be ready, just in case.”

Her lip throbbed beneath the pads of his fingers. She drew a shaky breath. “This is crazy. I don’t even know why I’m here.”

“I do.” He began to unbutton her green army shirt. “Let me show you.”

She cast a glance at the open doorway. “What if—”

“No one will come in. I told Pedro to allow no one but you past the door tonight.” He parted the edges of her shirt and lay his hands there for a long moment, looking at her breasts. “Perfect.” His hands grasped her shoulders and he slowly drew her toward him. “You’re tense. Relax. This is right, Lara. You’ll see how right it is.” His fingers dug into her knotted shoulder muscles as his warm tongue caressed one pointed nipple. “Lord, how I’ve wanted this.”

She gasped as his lips closed hungrily on the pink tip and he began a gentle suction. The sensation was indescribably erotic, his hands soothing and massaging away the tension while his mouth took and teased. The muscles of her stomach clenched and she instinctively arched toward him, offering more.

She cried out as he bit down with just enough force to send arousal tingling through every muscle and pore of her body.

“God, how I love to hear you when you—” His fingers were feverishly working at her belt, loosening her trousers. “Hurry, it’s been too long.”

She had meant to talk to him first, she remembered hazily. “I wanted to tell you … Ricardo, it’s not—” She broke off as his hand slid into her trousers, down her stomach to cup her womanhood. His long, hard fingers were smoothing, exploring, rubbing, while his mouth enveloped her right breast. Later. She would talk to him later. Right now she had to have him within her.

“Take off your clothes, love.” He lifted his head, his eyes glazed, feverish. “I need to see you. I need to—”

She was already shedding garments with lightning speed, as frantic as he was to join with him.

“I’m trying.” She laughed shakily as she felt him begin a rhythmic stroking. “You’re not—” Her spine arched upward as his fingers plunged deep. She closed her eyes and the last word came throatily. “Waiting.”

“I can’t wait. You’re too tight….” His chest was lifting and falling with the force of his breathing as he tossed the blanket aside and pulled her astraddle him. “To hell with the rest.”

He sheathed her on his manhood with one deep thrust.

Her head fell back, her hair streaming down her back, as she felt him big, hard, alive within her. She wanted to scream, to pant, to move.

But his hands on her hips held her still, sealing himself deeply within her. She was conscious of the coarser male hair brushing the softness of her inner thighs, the swelling of her breasts, the low, keening cry welling from her throat as wave after wave of heat flowed over her. She felt possessed, helpless, bound to him.

Her eyes opened and she gazed dazedly down at his face. “Ricardo.”

An expression of exquisite pleasure contorted his features. “It’s so good it hurts, doesn’t it?” he whispered. “We were meant to be together like this. Can’t you feel it?”

Then he started to move, thrusting upward, shifting her for his pleasure and her own. The pace was furious, the depth intense, the emotional response pure madness.

Lara could feel the tears running down her cheeks as the tension mounted to fever pitch and beyond.

Ricardo cupped her breasts in his hands as his hips bucked forcefully upward, stallion-wild, furnace-hot—his expression absorbed, intent, as he gave her more than she dreamed she could take.

“Now, Lara.” He closed his eyes, the thrusts growing harder, wilder with every breath. “Now!”

She cried out, every muscle convulsing as the fiery climax broke over her.

The release was so intense, she was only vaguely aware of Ricardo’s low groan as he clutched her to him with breath-stealing force. She lay against him, dazed, dizzy, every muscle limp.

“Mine …” Ricardo’s voice in her ear was so soft, it was almost inaudible. He gently stroked her hair back from her face as he murmured, “You belong to me now, querida.”

Panic soared through her. She had to say something. She couldn’t let him think—She tried to steady her breathing as she sat up again. “No, it’s not like that.” Her voice was trembling as she forced herself to look down at him. “I don’t love you, Ricardo.”

He became still. “You do love me.”

She shook her head. “I care about you. Perhaps I’m a little infatuated with you, but I don’t love you.”

The joy vanished from his expression and it became shuttered again. He lifted her off his lap and set her on the pallet beside him. When he spoke, his tone was as guarded as the expression on his face. “Then may I ask why you decided to favor me with the gift of your body? You’re not a woman who commits herself in this fashion merely for sex.”

She found she was suddenly shivering and drew the wool blanket up to her shoulders. “You were alone. You said you wanted something of your own.”

“Not a one-night stand.” He smiled mirthlessly. “That’s not what I was talking about.”

“I wanted to make you happy.” She nervously ran her fingers through her hair. “Oh, I don’t know. I just didn’t want you to be alone right now when you—” She stopped in mid sentence.

“When I might be killed?” He sat up and leaned against the stone wall, gazing at her without expression. “So you felt sorry for me and thought you’d throw me a bone.”

“No, it wasn’t like that.”

“How was it? Tell me.”

“I felt …” She stopped, moistening her lips with her tongue. “Why are you cross-examining me like this? Why can’t you accept what we’ve had without analyzing it to death.”

“Because I want a hell of a lot more than you’re offering me.” His tone was taut with leashed violence. “I don’t want your damn pity. I want you to love me.”

She gazed at him helplessly, her eyes glistening with tears.

His face softened and he smiled lopsidedly. “I said I needed to give to you, but evidently you’re not ready to take what I have to give.” He grimaced. “Well, I’d be a fool not to take what you’re offering me at the moment. I gather you’re willing to occupy my bed from now until the time I send you back to Barbados?”

She nodded silently.

“Then I accept the gift.” His lips twisted. “Who am I to reject charity when it comes in such an appetizing package.”

She had hurt him, she realized with aching regret. She had never meant to hurt Ricardo. His life had been tragic enough without her adding to his pain. She suddenly wanted to go back into his arms and hold him and tell him—

Tell him what? She had already yielded too much of herself and was surrendering more every moment she spent with him.

“Don’t look so frightened.” Ricardo’s gaze narrowed on her face. “You’ve made me a promise. You can’t back out now.”

She smiled with an effort. “I’m not backing out. Why should I be frightened?”

His expression intent, he studied her. “Perhaps because you’ve suddenly realized you’re getting in too deep?”

She looked away from him, her clasp tightening on the blanket. “I don’t love you, Ricardo.”

“Don’t you? I think you do and just won’t admit it. Loving me would disrupt the neat, cozy life you’ve planned for yourself, and it frightens you. You think that I’ll—”

“I don’t love you, Ricardo.” She interrupted, desperation threading her voice. “Why won’t you believe me?”

“I can’t believe you. It would hurt too much,” he said simply.

Lara could feel the moisture stinging her eyes. “Dammit, you’re not being fair. I never asked for any of this.”

“I know.” He reached out and pulled her into his arms, pushing her cheek into the hollow of his shoulder. “Poor baby.” He rocked her back and forth, his arms tightening into a strong haven around her. “That’s what you get when you wander away from your safe backyard into the cold world.”

The world didn’t feel cold with his arms around her and his heart thundering beneath her ear. Neither coldness nor loneliness existed here in Ricardo’s embrace. She should back away from him, she thought dreamily. She felt more joined to him now than she had when she had held him within her body.

His lips feathered her temple. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you warm. I’ll never let you be hurt again.”

“You can’t keep a promise like that. Everyone’s responsible for his own well-being,” she whispered. “I carry my own burdens.”

“Not when there’s love. Then responsibility is a privilege, not a burden.”

Love, again. Uneasiness stirred within her. “I don’t want to talk about—”

“Shh, it’s all right.” He was rocking her again. “We won’t talk about it. You’ll just know it’s there waiting for you when you’re ready. Okay?”

It wasn’t okay, she thought. He hadn’t accepted that she wouldn’t love him. He might never accept it. What if she hurt him more than she had already?

“You’re worrying again.” He lifted her chin on the crook of his finger to look down into her eyes. “It’s okay, I tell you. I’m tough. I can take anything that happens to me.”

He was tough, but he was also gentle and exquisitely sensitive to her every thought and emotion. Her throat tightened achingly as she looked up at him. “Sure?”

“Sure.” His warm lips tenderly moved back and forth on her own. “But the question is, can you take anything that happens to you?”

She stiffened warily. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing threatening. I just intend to take full advantage of you tonight.” His hand left her chin and moved down and twitched away the blanket she had tucked around her breasts. “I didn’t want to continue your sexual education with that bastard Jurado listening in and licking his chops.” His head lowered and his lips brushed her upper breasts. “There are all sorts of interesting positions that require a little verbal instruction along the way.”

Relief rushed through her as she realized he had been speaking of physical not emotional endurance. Lust was fleeting; lust was safe. She smiled and said lightly, “I’ve always been a good student.”

“Wonderful.” He jerked the blanket aside as he lowered her to the pallet and then turned her over on her stomach, his hard palms gently squeezing and caressing her bottom. “And it’s not that I don’t trust your word.” His lips caressed the flesh between her shoulder blades as he moved over her, lazily rubbing against her, letting her feel the textures of him, the soft springy hair thatching his chest, the hard cording of muscular thighs, the harder, hotter, length of his arousal. “But suppose we run a few in-depth tests?”

“You’ve been outside.” Lara opened sleepy eyes as Ricardo slipped beneath the blanket onto her pallet and drew her into his arms. He was a dark shape above her, his sable hair gilded by the firelight. He was still dressed, she noticed as she cuddled closer. “I thought you were in the war room with Paco.”

“How do you know I went outside?” Ricardo bent down and kissed her temple before raising himself to look down at her, bracing himself with his elbows on either side of her body.

“You smell of wind and leaves.” Lara breathed in the scent of him. “Wonderful. Much nicer than the dank mustiness of the caverns.”

He went still. “Being here in the caverns bothers you?”

“Sometimes. I love the sun.” She suddenly stiffened. “Why did you go outside? Another raid?”

“No raid. I went to the village of San Esteban. It’s about five miles from here.” His dark eyes suddenly glinted with mischief. “To see a woman.”

“Is that supposed to make me jealous?” A smile tugged at Lara’s lips. “You’ve been keeping me too busy in that line of endeavor to convince me you have to go scavenging the villages for more. Even you don’t have that much sexual stamina.”

“You obviously haven’t been keeping up with my press clippings. I’m reputed to be a superman.”

“And are you?”

“No. Just a man.” He burrowed his lips in the hollow of her throat. “Except with you. You make me feel like a giant.”

Her chest tightened with emotion and she swallowed before she could speak. “Do I?” Her hand reached up to stroke his hair. “That’s nice.”

He lifted his head. “Aren’t you going to ask who I went to see?”

“Why, when you’re obviously going to tell me anyway?”

“Rosa Sardona.” He threw the blanket aside and sat up. “The wife of the mayor of San Esteban. A lovely lady with exquisite taste.”

“I’m happy for her.”

Ricardo sighed. “You’re an unnatural woman. If not jealousy, haven’t you, at least, a spark of curiosity?”

Lara sat up and draped the blanket around her bare shoulders. She had never seen Ricardo like this. He appeared years younger, full of mischief and boyish eagerness. She smiled indulgently. “Very well, I’m curious. Why did you go to see the lovely Señora Sardona with the exquisite taste?”

“Because I wanted to give you this.” He reached behind him and picked up a paper sack beside the pallet. “It wasn’t safe for me to go to a shop, but the Sardonas are my people and I didn’t think you’d mind—” He thrust the sack at her. “Open it.”

She gazed at him in bewilderment and then slowly opened the sack and peered into the bag.

Yellow velvet. Bright as sunlight, soft as night.

She reached into the bag and pulled out an enchanting lemon-yellow robe. She stared in wonder at the garment.

“Stand up.”

She got to her feet, and the blanket dropped to a gray pool on the stones. “Lovely,” he murmured as he brushed a kiss on the upper slope of her left breast. “Softer than the velvet.”

“Why did you go to all this trouble?”

He took the robe and held it while she slipped her arms into the extravagantly wide sleeves. “Because I knew how your hair would shine against the yellow. Sunlight on sunlight.” He tied the cord around her waist, lifted her long fair hair free of the collar and tidied it. “There. Now you look like a princess.”

“Why, Ricardo?” she asked again.

His smiled faded. “Because I wanted to give you something. God knows, you deserve it. I keep you in a dark cave, away from the sunlight. The food is terrible; there’s nothing bright or interesting in your life. I know a secondhand robe isn’t much, but I hoped—”

“It’s perfectly lovely.” She blinked to keep back the tears. “And no one in his right mind can say you’re not interesting.” She touched the soft velvet of the bodice of the robe. “I love it.”

“Truly?” His manner was strangely awkward. “It’s the first present I’ve given anyone for over ten years. My mother liked presents and I thought you might too.”

“I do.” She whirled in a circle and the full skirt of the velvet robe swirled about her. “I feel very grand. At home I sleep in one of Brett’s old T-shirts. I’m afraid I’m not the elegant type that your Señora Sardona must be.”

“You’re just right.” He caught her in his arms and gave her a quick kiss before releasing her. “I brought you something else.” He reached down into the paper bag and pulled out a bottle of red wine and two glasses. “For our celebration.”

“Celebration?”

“Our one-week anniversary.” He handed her a glass, poured wine into it and then his own. “May there be a thousand and one more.” He smiled. “I sound like a wishful Scheherazade, don’t I?”

She unconsciously tensed. “That’s a long time. I believe the Arabian Nights tales called for a thousand and one nights, not weeks.”

“So I’m greedy.” He set the bottle of wine on the floor. “Now, sit down and drink your wine.” He pulled her down, cradling her in his arms before the low crackling fire. “And if you’re very good, I’ll play Scheherazade and tell you a story.”

She relaxed back against him. “What kind of story?”

“Whatever you like. You’ve given me my week; I’d be miserly not to give you whatever you choose.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps not a story. What about a poem?”

“One of yours?”

He shook his head. “Mine all seem to be too dark these days. I’ve always liked Robert Louis Stevenson. His verse has a certain rough vigor and truth.” He quoted softly,

She was silent for a long moment before she finally said quietly, “I’ve never heard that before. It’s beautiful.”

“It’s more. It’s you.” Before she could speak, he smiled with an effort and said, “You’re not drinking your wine. Rosa told me it was a very good year.” His lips twisted. “Not that I’d know. I haven’t tasted good wine in so long, I can’t appreciate the difference. I remember at the rancho my mother used to serve—” He stopped and then lifted his glass to his lips. “Let’s drink to better wines and better times next year.”

“Maybe next year will be different. You said one more campaign might be all it takes to win your war.” She sipped the wine. It was as good as Ricardo said, full-bodied, with a delicate bite. “Perhaps this time next year the war will be over and you can go home to your rancho.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been a soldier all my adult life. It’s all I know. How do I just put down my weapons and start life over?”

“You speak as if you like being a soldier.”

“I hate it.” He looked down into the ruby depths of his glass. “But it’s what I am and I don’t know what else I am these days.”

“Did you like living on the rancho?”

“Yes, I would never have been the rancher my father was, but I liked the work and the outdoors.” He paused. “And the peace. I liked the stillness and the peace.”

“Then why couldn’t you go back?”

“I’ve seen too much. When I was a boy, I used to make up poems about sunsets and seas and mountains. Now I can only see the people.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I see pollution in the seas, mountains carved and gouged by miners, sunsets clouded by smog. I can only see the problems, not the beauty. I can’t live just for myself any longer.” He kissed her ear. “Lord, I wish I could go back to that other time.”

“Well, they won’t let you. Dr. Salazar says they’ll want you to be president.”

“Perhaps.”

“There’s no perhaps about it.” She took another sip of wine. “You know how your people feel about you. You’re a legend.”

“I’m tired of being a legend.” Ricardo’s hand tightened on his glass. “Maybe I’ll run away to your small town and forget Saint Pierre exists.”

“You can’t do that.” She was careful not to look at him. “Paco once told me you are Saint Pierre.”

“Great.” His laugh held a hint of desperation. “Now I’m not only a legend, I’m the whole bloody country.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. His mood was strange tonight, alternating between boyish exuberance and despair. He had always been totally mature, possessing an unshakable strength and resolve. Now he was showing her a more human, vulnerable Ricardo Lázaro, and she experienced a sudden rush of tenderness. She mustn’t feel like this. Every day they were growing closer, every night more passionate. Where could it end? She deliberately kept her tone light. “Paco said it; I didn’t. Personally, I think it sounds a tad uncomfortable being a hero. I wouldn’t have it on a bet.”

“I know.” His lips twisted bitterly. “You only want your little town and your dog and your lake.”

“Yes, it’s what I want.” But if she wanted all that so much, why did the familiar vision seem far away and unsubstantial now? The only reality existed in these caverns with Paco, Manuel, Dr. Salazar, and Ricardo … always, Ricardo.

“Have you finished your wine?”

“Yes.”

He took her glass and put it with his own on one of the flat stones encircling the fire. “Time for bed.”

“The celebration is over?”

He stood up and drew her to her feet. “Oh, no.” He started to untie the belt of her robe. “The celebration is just beginning, querida.”