Sun God (7 page)

The very words he had wanted to hear. He knew he had her. Magdelena Torrez had come to the Orilla destitute. Uneducated, with no family, she’d been left widowed and homeless by a penniless drunken
peón.

Baron smiled down at the worried woman. “Anything, sweet Magdelena?”

“Anything,” she said, not caring what he might ask of her, so long as her baby Rosa had a home and food.

“I’ll take care of this for you,” Baron told her. “I’ll put it back where you got it and no one will ever be the wiser. It will be our secret.”

“
Gracias
,
gracias
,” she said, terrified
the patrón
would never believe that she had no idea how his dead wife’s diamond necklace had turned up in her sewing box. “You are so kind,
Señor
Baron.”

That very afternoon, as the house fell into the slumberous quiet of siesta, a very uneasy Magdelena Torrez silently climbed the stairs and stood just outside Baron’s door.

Without knocking, Magdelena opened the door, stepped quickly inside, and closed it behind her. Heart in her throat, she leaned back against it. Across the spacious room, lolling indolently on his bed, lay Baron Sullivan.

His chest and feet were bare. He wore only a pair of dark trousers that rode low on his naked belly. Arms folded beneath his head, he turned slowly and smiled at her.

“Come here, Magdelena.”

She shook her head back and forth and remained where she was.

He chuckled and rolled off the bed. He crossed to her, holding out his hand. When she took it, he pulled her slowly to him. His arms went around her and Baron knew he’d found heaven. The feel of her big, soft breasts, her belly, and her strong thighs pressing against his body was incredibly exciting.

Immediately the thought struck him that she would feel even better when he got her undressed. He raised his hands and pushed her blouse down off her shoulders.

“Please,” she said miserably, “this is wrong,
Señor
Baron. You are just a boy. Sixteen years old, a
niño
still. A baby.”

“Make me a man, Magdelena,” he said huskily. When she still continued to struggle, he added, “I want to be your man. And for the sake of your little Rosa, you will be my woman.”

In moments she was naked in his bed. She had been there, every afternoon, for the next dozen years. At first she had been a reluctant lover. But soon the shame of their affair was overshadowed by a stronger emotion. Love.

Magdelena had fallen in love with him and in so doing had been more than eager to please him. He liked that. He liked Magdelena. She was pretty, passionate, and available. His own live-in love slave, ready to satisfy his every hunger.

They had shared some very good years, so it was a hard thing to do when the time came to end it. He’d allowed the affair to continue long past her exciting him. Finally he had had no choice.

The end came one September afternoon in ’53. Sated, he lay in the heat, his eyes sliding over Magdelena, bare, and perspiring beside him. She had changed since that first afternoon. Once she had been voluptuous, now she was overweight. Her olive face had been unlined and pretty, now wrinkles were visible even in the dim light. Her black glossy hair had threads of silver running through it.

Baron yawned, stretched, and said, “Go, Magdelena. And don’t come back.”

Her head shot up. She looked at him with hurt, questioning eyes. “Not come back? But why,
querido
?”

“Why?” he mocked, reaching out and cupping a heavy, sagging breast in his hand. “Look at yourself.” He ran a forefinger accusingly over her large, dark nipple. “You are fat.”

“I will lose weight,” she said hopefully. “I fix myself up for you,
querido.
You will see, I will—”

“It won’t work. You’re too old for me. How old are you, Mag? Forty-five? Fifty?”

“You know I just turn forty last month!”

“All the same, that’s too old. Good God, woman, I’m just twenty-eight.” Again he yawned. “Go, darlin’, I’m tired, I want a nap.”

Magdelena silently rose and dressed, her heart obviously breaking. He was grateful she was the kind of woman who would wait until she was in her room alone to weep. Good old Mag. She had more class than most women.

Now, lying alone in his room on this steamy July afternoon, he fondly recalled the good times they had shared. He would probably have missed Magdelena, if he hadn’t found someone to take her place the same week he had sent her away.

The door opened, drawing Baron from his pleasant reveries. A smiling young woman stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She stood at the room’s center, provocatively shedding her clothes while Baron watched.

She came to the bed naked, leaned over, brushed a kiss to his belly, then stretched out beside him. While her hand swept enticingly down his chest, his heated gaze slid over her small, firm breasts, her flat stomach, her strong thighs.

Immediately aroused, he pushed her legs apart and moved between them. And enjoyed again, just as he had on that first afternoon, a pleasing tightness as he slid into her.

She excited him greatly. His release was quick in coming. After he’d climaxed, he collapsed atop her, the only sound in the stillness that of his labored breathing.

When his breath was no longer short, he heard the sound of horses’ hooves striking hard-packed earth.

Curious, he slid from his lover and walked to the room’s back window. He saw a pair of riders galloping toward the northeast. One was atop a coal-black mare, the other astride a gray stallion. One was a girl with long blond hair, the other a boy with hair of midnight black.

His eyes narrowed with disgust, Baron Sullivan stood naked at the window, watching until Amy and Luiz disappeared over the slope of the horizon. He came back to the bed and stood at its foot; his arms crossed over his chest.

“My baby sister’s gone for a ride with Quintano.” He frowned. “Again.”

The woman in the bed pushed herself up on an elbow. “Darling, they are full of energy. Of course they do not wish to spend the lovely summer afternoons asleep,” she said.

“Yes, well, I can well imagine how they do spend them.”

“Baron, no! Such a thing to say.”

“Don’t you ‘Baron, no’ me.” He uncrossed his arms and circled the bed. “I know damned well that dark-skinned Aztec is getting between my sister’s lily-white legs.”

The girl in bed shook her dark head and patted the mattress. Baron dropped down beside her. She leaned over and playfully bit his shoulder. “Is it so different from you getting between mine?”

“Very different,” he said. “I ought to kill the bastard.”

“Mmmmm.” She kissed his throat. Her face moved lower and she brushed kisses to his bare chest. “My mother would want to kill you if she knew about us.”

Baron stroked her hair. “No, she wouldn’t. Your mother likes me.” He urged her down on the bed. “Magdelena has always liked me.” He kissed her. “And I like you.”

“I
love
you,” she said. “I love you, Baron.”

“Ah, that’s sweet, little Rosa.” She touched him with warm hands and he sighed. “Yes. Oh, yes, Rosa, Rosa. My own little Rosa.”

A
S BARON SULLIVAN WATCHED
disapprovingly from his bedroom window that hot July afternoon, the youthful riders galloped across the sun-baked land, headlong into the shimmering waves of heat rising from the desert floor. Laughing and calling to each other, they were filled with the sweet anticipation of an afternoon spent splashing in the cold waters of their hidden Puesta del Sol River lagoon.

Still, as anxious as the pair was to reach their private shaded paradise, they simultaneously pulled up on their mounts the minute they had topped and ridden over the rising sandstone ridge that separated them from Orilla.

Showing off a bit, Luiz gave his iron gray a spoken command and the mighty stallion reared up on his hind legs, his nostrils flaring, his unshod hooves pawing at the air. Luiz released the long reins, slipped backward out of the saddle, and, clinging to the gray’s long flowing tail, slid down over the beast’s hindquarters until he was seated squarely on the ground. Then he turned the tail loose, scrambled between the gray’s hind legs, and moved up under his belly. Shooting to his feet, he stood, arms crossed, beneath the rearing, whinnying stallion.

Still in the saddle, Amy sat motionless atop her black mare. She watched with a mixture of horror and admiration. She was so relieved when Luiz stepped unhurriedly away only a split second before the powerful stallion’s hooves came back down to earth, she chastised him even as she applauded the impressive feat.

“Tonatiuh, I wish you wouldn’t do things like that. It scares me,” Amy said, her blue eyes troubled.

Grinning, he walked up to her, plucked her out of the saddle, and slowly lowered her to the ground directly before him. With his tall lanky body, he urged her back against the motionless mare. He looked down into Amy’s worried, upturned face and said, “Old Malpais would never hurt me.” He lowered his dark head and brushed a teasing kiss to her lips. “Would
you
?”

Inhaling deeply, her senses were assailed with the scent of his sun-heated skin, his clean raven hair. “Never,” she murmured, then leaned her head back against the smoothness of the saddle and raised her hands to grip his trim waist. “I’d never hurt you, Tonatiuh.”

He smiled. “Nor I you.”

He stopped smiling and gazed at her with an unwavering, dark-eyed intensity that both thrilled and frightened her. His hand leisurely moved up to her shirt front. Long, tanned fingers slowly gathered up a handful of the white cotton yoke and he gently urged her up on her toes as he stepped in closer.

His mouth hovering barely an inch above hers, the heavy gold chain glittering around his brown throat, he said, “May I?”

Wanting him to kiss her just as badly as he wanted to, Amy nervously put out the tip of her tongue, licked her dry lips, and said, “Yes, oh yes.”

She sighed with pleasure when his warm, smooth lips gently settled on hers. When his fingers tightened on her blouse and his tongue swept tantalizingly along the seam of her lips, Amy sighed more deeply. Her eyes closed and her lips parted for him. His tongue quickly penetrated and did amazing things to the sensitive insides of her mouth.

Amy’s pulse raced. Her heart pounded. The long, open-mouthed kiss continued and became as blazing hot as the July heat. His fingers continued to clutch her blouse, pulling the fabric tight over her breasts. His knee slipped between hers and his steel-hard thigh pressed intimately against her in a way she knew must be wrong, because it felt so right.

Kissing him hungrily, a crazy thought flashed through Amy’s mind. Tonatiuh truly was a Sun God. Her Sun God. A Sun God that burned her with his brilliance, set her afire with his incandescent heat. A dangerous solar deity that caused the blood to boil in her veins and a fierce fever to seize her heat-weakened body.

The passionate young pair were quickly learning about kissing. Their lingering, lustful embraces now bore little resemblance to the timid, experimental caress they had shared that first day at the river. In just six weeks their kisses had graduated in intensity until there were times when, sweet as the kisses were, they were not enough. Times when Amy was left shaken and yearning, Luiz tortured and suffering.

At last Luiz lifted his dark head. His chest rose and fell rapidly. His throat gleamed with perspiration beneath his open-collared shirt. His black eyes were heavy-lidded with desire.

Amy, just as unnerved, locked her hands behind his waist and swallowed with effort, feeling dangerously weak.

Luiz laid his forehead against Amy’s and said, “I think we’d better ride on to the water.” His fingers finally released their grip on her shirt front.

“I hope I can make it,” she answered breathlessly, her eyes shut.

He raised his head, smiled, and kissed her closed eyelids. “I’ll get you there, sweetheart,” he said. He gently drew her arms from around him and held her upright by her belt while he bent and scooped up the mare’s trailing reins.

Then he picked Amy up and carried her to his waiting stallion. He lifted her astride and climbed up behind her. Quickly he tied the mare’s reins to his saddle’s rigging ring and they got underway, the riderless mare docilely following the big stallion over the barren tablelands.

“Feeling better now?” Luiz said against Amy’s tousled hair.

Enclosed in his arms, Amy curled her fingers around the saddlehorn and leaned her head against his left shoulder. Sighing, she said, “Much better, thank you. When I’m with you I always feel good. And safe, so safe.” Smiling, she glanced up at him.

“Safe?” he repeated. “Ah,
querido
, I am not sure about that. You are so beautiful, so tempting. My father says, ‘
La mujer es como el vidrio
,
siempre está en peligro.
’ ‘A woman is like glass, always in danger.’”

Amy laughed. “Even if that were true, I would only break if you dropped me abruptly. Or threw me away. You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

He laughed. Then sobered and said, “Amy, if the time comes when one of us is to be tossed away and forgotten, it will be me.”

Amy’s hands automatically came back to clutch at the hard-trousered thighs cradling her own. “No! Don’t talk like that. I could never give you up. Could never forget you.”

He smiled, pleased, wanting to believe her. While she turned and rained reassuring kisses over his cheek, he laughed and imagined, not for the first time, how wonderful it would be when they were married, living here-together on the wild, beautiful land they loved, the land that would belong to them.

He was surely the luckiest person ever born. The two most precious things life had to offer would one day be his.

Amy.

And Orilla.

When the sweethearts reached the tall stand of willows guarding their river redoubt, they laughed and raced to see who could get undressed first and into the cold, clear water.

Rolled up behind the cantle on Amy’s black mare were the cut-off knee-length buckskins and the heavy denim shirt that she had used for swimming those first few weeks she was home.