Bed of Roses (17 page)

He decided then that her candor was one of the things he liked best about her. That, and her eyes, her smile, her breasts, her legs…

Her unique and absolutely captivating combination of innocence and passion.

Except for her obnoxious insistence that he work with her men, there wasn’t much he
didn’t
like about Zafiro.

“Are you getting in?” he asked when she pulled off her boots and peeled off her stockings.

“No.” Hiking her skirt up to her thighs, she stretched her legs toward the water, wiggling her toes and ankles when the cool stream lapped over her feet and splashed over her calves. “I only want to put my feet in.”

Sawyer formed no reply. Indeed, speaking seemed an impossible thing, and it wasn’t only Zafiro’s legs that stole his voice.

The woman wore not a stitch of undergarments!

Her knees were slightly raised above the sand, her legs opened just a bit.

But far enough open to afford Sawyer a tantalizing, heart-stopping, pulse-pounding view of her darkly shadowed pearly-pink femininity.

Moisture drenched his face, but it wasn’t stream water.

It was sweat. The sheen of a desire so wild that if Sawyer had been standing, he’d have fallen into the water and drowned.

He moaned, a deep involuntary sound that rumbled from his chest like a roll of thunder from a distance.

“Sawyer?” Zafiro looked at him, alarmed when she saw an expression of pure agony on his handsome face. “What’s the matter? I heard you groan. Are you in pain?”

Of the worst kind, he answered silently.

“Sawyer? What is wrong?” she asked again. “Is something biting you?”

The second she asked the question, fear and panic almost strangled her. She’d seen water snakes in the stream on more than one occasion.

There was no time to go for Tia’s help. She had to save Sawyer herself.

She jumped to her feet and, wasting not a second to take off her clothes, she threw herself straight into the water, alternately swimming and walking on her knees to get to Sawyer. When she reached him she grabbed his shoulders and pulled herself next to him.

The feel of her soft breasts as they flattened against his chest sent Sawyer straight over the edge of restraint. Wrapping his arms around her tiny waist, he hauled her even closer and lowered his head toward her face, his lips toward hers—

“Do not fight me, Sawyer!” Zafiro cried, knowing in her soul that he was trying to save himself by hanging on to her. Desperately, she pushed at his chest, praying that he would cooperate with his own rescue. “I know what is wrong, but if you will just relax and let me pull you in—”

“Pull me in?” He smiled into her wide, blue-fire eyes. “Zafiro—”

“I am trying to save you!”
Dios mío,
the snakebite was making him crazy, she realized. He couldn’t even understand what she was trying to do for him!

Again she tried to squirm free of his hold on her, to no avail. Flailing her arms, she then began to try to beat him away from her so she could pull him out of the water.

He fended off her puny attempts to subdue him as easily as if she were a child. Catching both her wrists in one hand, he used his other arm to hold her against him, close, close enough to force her to feel what her beauty, her blatant, yet innocent sexuality had done to him.

She gasped in honor when she felt the hard, round length of the water snake against her belly. And the stiff creature had situated itself right between poor Sawyer’s thighs! Even now the scaly beast was injecting more and more of its poison into one of Sawyer’s legs!

She had to pull the reptile off before more of its venom flowed into Sawyer’s limb. With only a fleeting thought to her own safety, she pulled her hand from Sawyer’s grasp and plunged it into the water. Taking hold of the horrible serpent, she pulled with every shred of strength she possessed.

“Dear God!” Immense pain shooting through his loins and filling his lower belly with fire, Sawyer let go of Zafiro and fell back into the water. His eyes squeezed shut, his shallow breaths hissing between his clenched teeth, he covered his groin with his hands, prayed for death, then staggered to his feet and doubled over at the waist.

“Sawyer!” Zafiro waded toward him, taking his head in her arms when she reached him.

“I’m dying,” he moaned.

“Oh, Sawyer, I tried to get it off you! I pulled as hard as I could, but… Oh,
Dios mío,
the snake has killed you!”

Somehow, the word
snake
slithered past Sawyer’s pain and registered in his mind. He managed to rise from his doubled-over position, and when he was standing he looked down at Zafiro.

But she did not look up at him. Instead, she gazed downward, toward his groin, where a flesh-colored, stafflike thing was poking out from between his hands.

It was the most peculiar-looking “snake” she’d ever encountered. “Sawyer… I… What… That is not a snake… That is your…
Santa
Maria!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he thundered. She didn’t answer. She only stared.

And right before her very eyes the thick, flesh-colored “snake” shriveled in Sawyer’s hands.

“Sawyer, it is shrinking!”

“Well, what do you expect?” Sawyer roared. “You damn near pulled it off!”

Although she comprehended precisely what she’d done, she remained bewildered. “I…I did not know, Sawyer! Your man part—I have not seen it look like that, big and hard and tall. I have only seen it when it was the way it is now, soft and limp and short—”

“Never mind!” he yelled, not caring at all for her less-than-flattering description of his masculinity. He sank back down into the water so she could only see his head and upper chest. “Why the hell did you try to yank it—”

“I told you! I thought it was a snake! I…I thought a water snake had gotten hold of your thigh and was biting—”

“A snake?”

She saw that he was looking at her as if she were the stupidest human being walking the earth. “You think that my three loaded oxen do not have enough bricks, don’t you?”

A full minute passed before he figured out what she was trying to say. “I think you’re dumb as an ox and that you’re three bricks short of a load.”

She bit her bottom lip. “You… You really do, don’t you?”

“What? No! I was only untangling the two expressions you—”

“You are mad at me.”

“Mad? What gave you that idea? You only tried to turn me into a woman! Why would that make me mad?”

“I am sorry.”

“All right.”

She could tell that he was still annoyed. “What else do you want me to do? Promise that if I
had
pulled it off, I would have gotten you a new one?”

Her ridiculous offer incensed him. That she could take so lightly…that she could stand there and make wisecracks about the fact that she’d almost gelded him…

Well, it was just too much for a man to bear. Turning from her, he dove into the water and swam downstream.

“I said I was sorry,” Zafiro murmured. She watched him until he disappeared around the winding curve in the creek, then waded out of the water and picked up her boots and stockings.

As she walked into the woods she thought about Sawyer’s man part again. Why had it grown so thick and big the way it had?

A sudden thought made her stop.

And then she began to run, hastening toward the house as quickly as her feet could carry her.

Only one person she knew of could and would answer the question concerning the strange change of Sawyer’s man part.

Azucar.

“Z
afiro!” Azucar exclaimed, looking up
from her hand mirror, in which she’d been admiring her reflection. “You scared me, coming into the house and slamming the door like that. What is the matter?”

Panting from her race through the woods and into the house, Zafiro gazed around the great room. “Where are Tia, Maclovio, Lorenzo—”

“Tia is ironing Sawyer’s shirts in her room. The men finished making the bundles of kindling, and I helped them. Now Maclovio is passed out in the hall upstairs. He is too heavy to move, so we just left him there. Lorenzo is asleep in his bed, and Pedro is going through the house marking all the doors with lamb’s blood.”

“What?”

Azucar laid her mirror down on the table and smiled. “He says the Angel of Death will soon pass over the house, and the lamb’s blood will keep her from killing all of us. But it is not really lamb’s blood that he uses. It is only water that Tia colored with red berry juice. Pedro was happy when she gave it to him, and he is now very busy marking the doors. Pedro, he is only a crazy old man, Zafiro, and we must take good care of him. Tell me, do you like my hair up like this? I think my lovers will like it very much.”

Zafiro saw that Azucar had twisted her brittle white hair into a knot on the top of her head and kept the arrangement in place by means of two tin forks. The handles of the utensils stuck out of her head like two shiny horns. “Your hair is very nice like that, Azucar.”

“Yes, my lovers are going to be like rutting bulls when they see how very pretty I am.” Azucar reached up and patted her hair. “Now, tell me what is the matter with you.”

Zafiro dropped her boots and stockings by the door and peeked out of the window to make sure Sawyer hadn’t followed her from the stream. When she didn’t see him she turned back to Azucar. “I need to talk to you.”

“Come,” Azucar said. “Sit by me, and we will talk.”

“It is about men. I want to talk about men.”

“They are my favorite things to talk about.”

“Their bodies… Their bodies change, Azucar. I do not think a woman’s does. I have never seen my own body change.”

Azucar smiled again. “Come here with me.”

Zafiro sat down at the table beside the old woman. “A man’s part… His private part…”

“That is the best part of a man. And you must believe what I say, Zafiro, because I have seen thousands of man parts.” Azucar leaned back in her chair, recalling her many lovers of the past. “Man parts,” she murmured. “Some thick, some skinny. Some long, some short. Some appear red, others are very dark. But
all
are wonderful.”

“And they change? The man part, it changes?”

Azucar laughed. “It would be very sad if it did not.”

Zafiro felt more confused by the moment. “But why does it change, Azucar? How is it possible for a man part to be soft and little and then hard and big? What does that mean?”

For a moment Azucar merely looked at Zafiro. “Why do you ask me these questions? You have seen a man part change like this?”

Zafiro formed her explanation carefully. It certainly wouldn’t do for Azucar to know that she’d handled Sawyer’s man part. Such knowledge might very well make the old woman jealous.

And upsetting the dear, sweet Azucar was the last thing in the world Zafiro wanted to do. “I saw Sawyer’s man part change, Azucar,” she said. “He was bathing in the stream, and I accidentally caught him there. He did not see me, but before I could leave, his man part went from little and soft to big and hard. I saw it change with my own eyes, and I did not understand.”

“Poor Sawyer,” Azucar cooed, smiling once more. “He is so ready to bed me. When you saw him in the stream he was probably thinking about me, about my body, and the arousing things I can do to him. I will not change my mind though. Only when he has the gold will I give him his night of ecstasy.”

Zafiro allowed Azucar to fantasize for a few minutes. “But you did not answer my question, Azucar. Why did Sawyer’s man part grow the way it did?”

“That is what happens when a man wants a woman,
chiquita
.”

“But why?”

A smile still lingering on her lips, Azucar rose from her chair and crossed to Tia’s cooking pot, which hung over the gentle flames in the hearth. With a spoon she removed a single cooked noodle from the pot.

She then hobbled to the pantry, where Tia kept foods that she’d dried and put up for the times when fresh food was scarce. There she found a large jar of dried noodles and picked one from the container.

Next she slipped a small key from the gaping bodice of her gown.

Zafiro frowned when Azucar placed the cooked noodle, the dried noodle, and the key on the table. “Why do you give me these things?”

Azucar sat back down in her chair. “There is a small hole at the top of the key.”

“Yes.”

“You have a soft noodle and a hard noodle.”

“Yes.”

“Push each into the hole in the key, and then tell me which noodle was the easiest to push through.”

Zafiro stared at the two noodles and the hole in the key.

She smiled. “I do not have to try. The hard noodle will be easier to push through the hole because it will not bend or sag.”

“That is why a man’s body changes. So he can easily push his staff into the soft, warm tunnel between a woman’s legs. If his man part did not harden—”

“It would be like trying to push this flimsy cooked noodle into the little hole in the key!” Zafiro picked up the cooked noodle, smiling with it drooped over her thumb and forefinger.

Sawyer’s bodily change meant that he’d been ready to make love to her, she realized. He’d been ready to push his staff into her soft, warm tunnel the way Azucar had described.

It meant that Sawyer wanted her.

“Do you know when Sawyer will have any gold, Zafiro?” Azucar queried. “I have been waiting so long to pleasure that handsome buck. Maybe if I give him a free night he will do everything he can to get gold for another night. I know that once he has had me he will want me again and again and again. It is always that way with the men who experience my favors.”

Zafiro could only imagine how Sawyer would react to Azucar’s idea. The men irritated him enough. He certainly didn’t need to deal with Azucar’s antics as well. “No, Azucar. He is never going to have any gold, so it would be a waste of your time to give him a free night.”

At that, Azucar laughed. “Lovemaking is never a waste of time, Zafiro. When have you ever heard me say that I did not enjoy being with the men I entertained?”

Ordinarily, Zafiro would have listened avidly to whatever titillating story Azucar was about to relate, but her discovery concerning Sawyer, his man part, and his wanting her occupied her every thought.