He must have read her thoughts for his mouth curved wickedly. “So… you feel it, too. I had wondered.…”
She turned away from him, trying desperately to control the quaking that had started in her limbs. “Get away from me, Ramon.”
He simply caught her arm, turned her around to face him. “I do not think so.” He dragged her hard against him, took her mouth in a savage kiss. Carly broke free, drew back a hand and swung it wildly toward his cheek.
He caught her wrist before the blow connected. “Once I allowed that to happen. Perhaps I wished to feel the pain. That time is past.” He kissed her again, roughly, brutally, his mouth slanting hotly over hers, his tongue thrusting deeply between her teeth.
She meant to fight him. She knew what would happen if she didn’t. Inside her head, her mind screamed a warning:Don’t do this! Think of the pain! After he’s gone, it will be unbearable!Her palms pressed flat against the muscles across his chest, pushing him away even as her lips clung to his, begging him to continue.
A small sound seeped from her throat, a sound of pain and surrender. She wanted Ramon, she loved him as she never would another. Her fingers curled into the front of his whitelawn shirt. Her lips softened beneath his bruising kiss and her tongue slid gently into his mouth.
Carly heard him groan. His long brown fingers pulled the ribbon at the front off her chemise and her breasts spilled forward into his waiting hands. He massaged the heavy roundness, molded them, plucked hard at her nipples, making them throb and distend. He pulled the string on her pantalets and shoved them down over her hips, then his fingers were caressing her, kneading the curve of her waist, moving lower, smoothing over her buttocks then sliding between their bodies, lacing through the burnished hair at the apex of her thighs, and stroking the folds of her sex.
He eased her back a step, until she felt the rough bark of a tree against her shoulders. Her head fell back, exposing her throat to the onslaught of his kisses. His lips moved hotly across her shoulders. He lowered the straps on her chemise to bare her breasts and began to suckle there, drawing her deeply into his mouth.
“Ramon…” she whispered, his name a cry of agony, a well of sorrow, and a fissure of erupting heat. He lavished hot kisses on her other bare breast, took it deeply into his mouth, then bit the crest until it throbbed with pleasure. Carly arched against him, her body on fire and shaking all over, the core of her burning with slick, damp heat. Then he was unbuttoning his breeches, freeing his long hard length. Lifting her up, he wrapped her legs around his waist, his slim dark fingers gliding over her pale flesh, sliding deep inside her.
“You know you want this, Cara. Put your arms around my neck.” Mindlessly she obeyed. He was spreading her wide for him, positioning his rock-hard length between the plump wet folds at her core. He teased her deliciously, then his hold grew more firm and he plunged deeply, burying himself to the hilt.
Carly bit her lip to keep from crying out as his hands gripped her bottom, lifting her and filling her, impaling her again and again. Wildly, he drove himself inside her, thrusting deeply, pounding, pounding until she couldn’t think for the fiery heat coursing through her and the clatter of her heart against her ribs.
“Te quiero,”he whispered.I want you.
“Yes…” she whispered. “I want you so much.” So much she was certain she would die of it. And in a way she did. For the tightness coiling low in her belly exploded into light and stars that were not of this world. Carly whimpered at the pleasure raging through her, at the hot, bright sweetness that ran through her veins like melted honey.
“Ramon!” she cried out softly.
“Si, Cara…I am here… buried deep inside you.”
He held her a moment, suspended in pleasure, then plunged fiercely, once, twice, faster, harder, deeper. Her body ignited, erupting once more into fiery delight, spinning out of control. Ramon’s body stiffened as he reached his own release and his hot seed spilled into her core. Unconsciously her arms went tighter around his neck and she rested her head between his neck and shoulders. Tears burned her eyes and started to slide down her cheeks.
“Ramon,” she whispered. “I love you so much.”
His body went still. For a moment, he did not breathe. He was shaking as he eased himself away from her, letting her legs slide gently to the ground. He looked at the tears on her cheeks, then glanced off over her head. For seconds he just stood there. Then he started to unbutton his shirt.
Carly watched him strip it away, bend to pull off his boots and breeches. She made no move to leave, just watched him undress, caught up in the movement of muscle beneath his darkskin and wanting to reach out and touch him. Naked he drew her toward him, began to remove the balance of her clothes.
Carly said nothing as he pulled the pins from her hair, letting the heavy dark copper coil fall free, sifting his long fingers through it. Bending down, he lifted her up and she slid her arms around his neck. Kissing her softly, he waded into the water and lowered himself into the pool, taking her with him below the surface of the pond. In a shower of cool, misty spray, they came back up, entwined in each other’s arms, his black hair glistening like jet in the afternoon sunlight.
He took her again, there on the bank of the pool, and afterward smoothed strands of wet auburn hair from her cheeks, trailing cold fat droplets over her heated skin.
“I heard about the raid,” she said softly after a time. “I was worried about you and the others. My uncle searches for you even now.”
“He will find nothing. Unless you decide to tell him who I am.”
“You know I won’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because I care about you and the others… no matter what you believe.”
Ramon said nothing for the longest time, just watched her in that dark, pensive way of his, a look that reached clear to her soul. Finally he came up on an elbow. “The hour grows late. It is time for me to leave.”
Her throat went tight. She knew he would go, and yet she had hoped… prayed…
“You wanted me. I thought… hoped that perhaps it was more.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Always I have wanted you, Cara. Always. Even your betrayal has not cooled the fire I feel inside me.”