Bride of Fortune (35 page)

      
“Do I? Make you nervous, Mercedes?” he murmured low, leaning nearer to her, crowding her backward on the narrow bench. He could smell the lavender fragrance in her hair, the sweet essence that was Mercedes.

      
She leaned away, holding the small tweezers up like a miniature weapon. He could sense her trembling. The small pulse fluttered at the base of her slender golden throat. The sun was warm on them and he could see the dampness dewing her skin...imagine it trickling between her breasts below the modest neckline of her
camisa
. He reached up with his good arm and lightly touched his fingertips to her collarbone, tracing a pattern on the silky skin, then moving higher to brush that pulse in her throat. He took his fingertips from her skin and touched them to his lips, tasting her.

      
“Salty-sweet, very enticing.”

      
“You describe me as if I were fry bread,” she replied, breathless now, very still.

      
He smiled at her wit, still as acerbic as ever, but she did not return the smile. They sat there in the warm morning sun, gazing into each other's eyes until Lupe came out of the kitchen, her apron filled with parched corn, which she scattered, calling the chickens who flocked noisily from their roost behind the blacksmith's shed.

      
The spell had been broken then, but now Nicholas remembered her response, the still hesitant, half-hidden longing in her eyes. If it had been half-hidden, it had also been half-revealed. Today he would press her to drop all her defenses, to give him what he truly wanted of her—not only her passion but her love.

      
Gritting his teeth, he pulled on a robe and belted it, then began to walk slowly across the room. It was midmorning. Rosario was at her lessons with Father Salvador, Mercedes was in the fields with Juan and Angelina was in her kitchen. He took his time, pausing to rest at the bottom of the stairs, then again on the bench in the courtyard. By the time he reached the bathing room, he was perspiring and weak, but it felt good to be up and about again.

      
He was used to forcing himself to function while injured. Often in his past life, his survival had depended on that well-honed toughness. In the dirty business of war, often the wounded who could not ride with the troop were left behind to die.

      
This was a glorious day to live, he thought as he sank beneath the warm soothing water and laid his head back on the edge of the tub, letting his aching muscles and the stiff tightly drawn slashes in his shoulder soak until he could rotate the joint freely. If Mercedes would only remove the damnable itchy stitches, he would have complete use of it. Baltazar brought him his razor, offering to shave off his bristling bandit's beard; but he wanted time to soak in peace and privacy, so he dismissed the servant with thanks. He worked up a stiff lather in his hair and dunked his head to rinse, noting the length.

      
“I could use a trim, but it can wait,” he said to himself, lying back to imagine Mercedes’ small hands, seizing fistfuls of his hair, pulling him to her for a fierce, passionate kiss. The image made him instantly rock hard.

      
Mercedes rode in and dismounted at the courtyard gate where Lazaro stood, ready to take her mare for a rubdown.

      
“Good morning,
patrona.
I did not expect you back for several hours.”

      
“My mare's limping. I think she may have picked up a stone in her shoe. Would you have Hilario see to her when he comes in?”

      
”I will take her to the stables right now,
patrona.
Then I must hurry back to the bathing room. Don Lucero might need me.”

      
“He's bathing?” she fairly squeaked. “How did he get downstairs and all the way across the courtyard—did you and Baltazar assist him?”

      
The old servant shrugged. “I do not know,
patrona
. He ordered a bath. While I was filling the tub he walked into the room. Baltazar brought him some things but then the
 
sent him away.”

      
“I'll see to him,” she said with a nod of dismissal, then stomped across the courtyard. Of all the impossible, insane, stupid, dangerous things he could have done, this was the worst yet. What if the wounds reopened or he fell getting in or out of the tub? Sweet Virgin, he could pass out and drown in the bathwater! She began to run, frightened at what she might find.

      
As Mercedes neared the heavy wooden door, she slowed, half-afraid that she might again see that slut Innocencia in the tub with him. Shaking her head to dismiss her jealousy, she opened the door. He was alone, sitting in the tub. His hair curled in dripping ringlets, plastered against his nape, hanging over his forehead. He looked as beautiful as a Greek god, Neptune rising out of the Aegean in all his pagan splendor.

      
Those haunting eyes studied her hungrily. “Come inside. Bar the door.” His voice vibrated in the stillness.

      
She stepped across the threshold, then turned, fumbling with the heavy latch until it fell into place with a loud thunk. The water made a soft rippling sound, once more drawing her eyes to him as he sat up, his arms braced on the sides of the tub. Small rivulets glistened as they ran down his chest and over his shoulders. The angry red wounds on his left shoulder and right arm were faded to a light pink now.

      
“You've soaked those stitches. They could become infected.”

      
“Then remove them,” he said, daring her. “I've pulled most of them out by hand. The water loosened them up. It feels good.”

      
To illustrate his point, he skimmed his arm across the surface of the water, palms cupped as if he were swimming. The muscles on his shoulders and arms rippled sinuously. She knew they would feel iron-hard beneath the sleek wetness of his skin. The thought made her mouth go suddenly dry.

      
The teasing dare left his eyes now as he extended one hand to her. “Please, Mercedes, come to me, love.”

      
She could say nothing, only do as he asked. A deep feral heat began to build inside her, radiating from her belly to her breasts, right down to her fingertips. Most of all it centered at the juncture of her thighs, in the hot dampness of that feminine place only he had touched...unless he was not Lucero.

      
Mercedes stopped suddenly a scant two feet from the tub, her eyes filled with anguish and confusion. Dear God, she desired this man, she burned to touch him, to feel his wet slick flesh, to smell the spicy masculine scent of tobacco and leather that blended so subtly with his own unique essence. She had never felt this way when they were first wed, never imagined the hunger that consumed her now.
Why now? Why him...now, after all these years?

      
“Don't be afraid,” he said simply, breaking into her thoughts. “I need your help.”

      
“I don't doubt it,” she finally managed. “You're probably too weak to stand without someone to steady you.”

      
“I managed last week well enough, under far more adverse conditions,” he reminded her.

      
Her face really flamed now as she recalled the way they had coupled on the ground like wild animals mating, blood-smeared and desperate. She had struggled to block it from her mind; but she could not, for the soul-robbing pleasure she had found in that brief and brutal coupling still amazed her—as if there were another woman inhabiting her body, a wanton, reckless stranger.

      
Rather than stand like a dithering fool in front of him, she sat on the edge of the heavy tub and inspected his injured shoulder. He was right about the stitches. Most of them had been soaked loose and pulled out, the flesh knitted smoothly without inflammation.

      
“I still see a few threads that should come out,” she said, probing at the healing wounds.

      
He reached onto the bench on the other side of the tub and produced a small penknife. “I took it from your medicine bag.”

      
She accepted the tool and began cutting the last of the stitches and pulling them out. A few had grown tightly into the healed flesh and she had to tug to free them. “You mend incredibly fast,” she said, biting her lip in concentration.

      
“I've survived a lot worse, just as I told you. Nothing keeps me down.” As he said the words he thought of his submerged body, rigidly hard for the past half hour.

      
Her eyes flew from his shoulder to the water, then instantly back. She knew he had caught the lapse. Quickly standing up and brushing off her skirt with an agitated stroke of her hand, she said, “There, you're all done.”

      
“Oh, no, I haven't even begun yet, Mercedes.” His voice was like warm molasses, thick and smoky dark with promise.

      
She struggled with her embarrassment until he added earnestly, “I won't be rough this time. I promise it will last longer...much longer.”

      
His sexy smile could melt solid bone.

      
He took hold of her hand, pulling her to the edge of the tub, then turned the palm up and placed it against his lips. She could feel the rasp of his beard, the soft firm pressure of his mouth, a swift subtle flick of his tongue—ah, that wicked clever tongue. Would he pull her into the water clothes and all? Mercedes knew she would not resist him if he did. His voice, silky and low, with an earnestness that was quite opposite from his usual taunting drawl, broke into her heated thoughts.

      
“My razor's on the bench but Baltazar forgot my mirror. Have you ever shaved a man, Mercedes?” He knew she had not. Luce would never have possessed the patience for such an intimacy with her.

      
“I could slit your throat,” she warned. There was an odd lightness in her breathy tone as the frisson of a thrill raced up and down her spine.

      
“I'll take my chances.” He handed a square of homemade soap to her. “First you have to work up a thick lather and spread it over my whiskers,” he instructed, taking her hands in his and rubbing them over the soap.

      
It felt incredibly sensuous, the slickness of the soap, the warmth of his roughened callused hands. When the lather was billowing out from between her fingers, he released her hands and tilted his head back, jutting out his jaw.

      
“Work it in good.”

      
She complied, eager to touch him this way, openly, boldly, initiating the contact she craved. The soap glided over his lower face. His whiskers felt dense and prickly. She could feel the muscles of his jaw and throat move under her fingers.

      
The instant Nicholas felt the caress of her hands on his skin, he tensed, struggling to hold himself in check, wanting her to have time to learn the texture of his body as he had learned hers. When her eyelids fluttered down for a moment as she stroked his beard, he smiled to himself. The barriers were really coming down. He had feared after the last explosive coming together that he might have frightened her in spite of, perhaps even because, she had experienced her first culmination.

      
When her eyes opened and she looked down at him, suddenly aware of how she must have reveled in touching him, she grabbed a towel and wiped the suds from her hands.

      
He handed her the razor, saying, “Take your time, love. We have all the time in the world.”

      
Mercedes held the shiny blade up in her trembling hand. “Perhaps this isn't such a wise idea,” she said. “I might slip—anyway I like the whiskers.” What had made her blurt that out?

      
He smiled. “If your hands were steady enough to sew up my shoulder, you can shave me.”

      
“That was different.”

      
“Oh? How?”

      
“You were injured. I'm used to caring for injured people but this...it's...”

      
“Personal? Intimate?” His voice was husky but it was not teasing.

      
Mercedes swallowed and met his eyes. “Yes, it is intimate,” she admitted with less embarrassment than she would have imagined possible. She raised the razor once more and found her hand had not steadied. “What if I bring you a mirror?” she suggested. “There was one in that cabinet by the door.”

      
“All right,” he said calmly, watching the heavy skirt of her riding habit swish as she walked. This outfit was newer, of fine green linen. “I'll have to take more care with your habit than I did with the one last week.”

      
Mercedes almost dropped the mirror. “Yes, you certainly will, else I'll be forced to ride around like a farmer's wife with my skirts hitched up, showing off my bare legs.”

      
“Very lovely bare legs they are, too.” He reached for her hand holding the mirror and adjusted it so he could see his face. “Hold it just like that. It might be easier if you knelt.” He guided her to a kneeling position beside the tub. They were at eye level. Her hands still trembled slightly as she gripped the mirror, but his were steady as he ran the gleaming blade across his jaw.