Paradise & More (Torres Family Saga) (28 page)

      
Ruth gasped, “No! He will be killed!”

      
“I have sent word to him that I would see to Valdes.” A smile of cold satisfaction spread across Isaac Torres' face as he once more sat down beside his wife. “Now, it would seem the wily Argonese will aid me in fulfilling that pledge.” He reached for his writing instrument and began to work furiously as Ruth watched with a troubled expression on her face.

Chapter Fourteen

Ysabel, Española, Summer I494

      
Magdalena stared at the large raised platform that served as a bed in their new quarters. The mattress was plump, filled with soft cotton, and of a size to accommodate two people easily. Her gaze swept to her husband. After his brutal kiss at the governor's palace, he had given her but a few moments in which to gather her scattered belongings.

      
She had quickly thrust the sealed document from Benjamin beneath a cloak and thrown it into her chest. Later she would conceal it more carefully.
Mayhap I should destroy it.
Yet some instinct—a faint flicker of hope—led her to keep it for the present even if she did not share it with this blind, arrogant stranger she had wed.

      
All around her Taino servants carried in her furnishings and placed them at Aaron's direction in the small quarters Bartolome had originally appropriated as his own. The wooden house had several windows and was surrounded by palm trees and luxuriant frangipani, giving it an aura of isolation even though it was at the edge of Ysabel. A lone candle flickered against the onrush of sunset. Insects hummed and a songbird in the distant jungle gave out with a low sweet trill.

      
“That will be fine for now, Analu, my thanks,” Aaron said in the Taino tongue, dismissing the servants. Smiling at the bridal couple, they quickly departed. He turned to her. “Do you find the accommodations to your liking? 'Tis not the Alhambra, nor the Alcazar.”

      
“The house is suitable enough. 'Tis the company that lacks,” she replied tartly, walking over to the small table, where a modest feast of cold roasted duck,
cassava
bread and lush fruits awaited them. She took a slice of sweet melon, but it tasted like ashes in her mouth.

      
“No appetite?” Aaron asked, coming up behind her so closely she could feel his breath on her neck as he spoke. He inhaled her fragrance and felt the tension between them in a way he had felt with no other woman, not even Aliyah.

      
Magdalena flinched as he ran his fingers lightly up her arm. “You have brought me here and kept your word to the admiral. We need go no further,” she pleaded, knowing it was in vain.

      
“Ah, but I think we do. If I am to have a wife by fiat she will be a wife in fact,” he said softly, turning her to face him. “Do not lie to us both by saying you do not desire me, Magdalena.”

      
Her thick russet lashes fluttered low, shielding her dark green eyes. “No, Aaron, I will not say that I do not desire you, only that I do not wish it to be this way.”

      
“You, not I, made up the game, my lady. Now, you must play,” he said as he raised her hair away from her slender white neck and kissed her throat softly. His mouth moved with wet warm insistence up to her earlobe. He licked, bit, and then deserted it to brush softly over her eyelids and then move to her lips. All he did to hold her during the exploration was to tangle his hands in the curls tumbling down her back.

      
Slowly, against her will, Magdalena's hands crept up his arms to his shoulders. She leaned into him as he rimmed her lips with his tongue. She moaned, or mayhap he did; she could not tell as the kiss deepened to a hungry hard pressure that was both bruising and exquisite. His arms now enfolded her as tightly as hers did him. Both lost all sense of time and place, swaying like two closely planted palms stirred by a gentle ocean breeze. Finally, he broke off the kiss and scooped her into his arms with a breathless oath. She clung to him as he stalked to the bed and stood her once more on very unsteady legs.

      
“Take off the gown. I might tear it in my haste, and I will not be able to afford to replace it for some time,” he said hoarsely as he began to unfasten his doublet with swift, rough movements.

      
For a moment, she stood frozen in indecision, watching him bare his splendid bronzed body with the cunning pattern of dark gold hair on his chest. Muscle and sinew flexed on his lean, hard frame as he pulled off his boots and began to unlace his hose. Then the treacherous heat that had been building inside her, turning her will to wax, sent a leaping flame searing through her. With a deep, unsteady breath she fumbled at the intricate fastenings of her gown and began to slide it from her shoulders.

      
Aaron finished removing his clothes and then stood watching her. The gold tissue crumpled in a glistening heap on the wooden floor as Magdalena stepped free of it, now clad only in a soft, sheer linen under-tunic. She kicked her tiny soft slippers free and then, sensing the heat of his eyes on her, she paused and looked up at him.

      
Again, that look of wounded vulnerability that always haunted his dreams filled her face. Her eyes were the color of moss in the depths of the jungle.

      
Silently he reached for the folds of the under-tunic and pulled it over her head as she lifted her arms like an obedient child to assist him. Her pale flesh left him breathless. “So, you already adapt to the heat of Española and wear no undergarments. Soon you will be naked as one of the Tainos. Watch you do not turn brown.”

      
“Would that please you?” The question seemed to ask itself before she could quash it.
I will not be jealous of his Indian love!

      
“Little in my life pleases me these last few years,” he said evasively as he reached for her. He smothered an oath of sheer animal pleasure as his hands followed the curves of her breasts down to span her tiny waist, then lower to whisper around the gentle swell of her slim hips and rounded buttocks. “You are perfect, damn you,” he said angrily, pulling her into his arms.

      
Magdalena went willingly, sensing some small victory in his betrayal of desire. He, too, was a prisoner of this strange and powerful force that kept drawing them together across religious barriers and storm-tossed oceans. This was fated to be, she thought with resignation as she opened her mouth for his kiss. His tongue plunged in with hot, slick strokes that perfectly emulated what would come later. Knowing now what to expect, Magdalena gave herself over to the mindless drug of passion.

      
They sank onto the edge of the bed, then fell backward onto the soft, wide mattress covered with rich, cool silks. Aaron rolled on top of her and continued the kiss, while his hands roamed about her breasts with maddening deftness, cupping, caressing, then softly tweaking her pebbled nipples until she arched, searching for those little pinches of pleasure. When he raised himself over her and began to suckle and tongue each breast in turn, the scalding heat of his mouth caused her to cry aloud shamelessly.

      
Aaron watched her toss her head from side to side with her eyes tightly closed, her mouth open, panting, wanting. She arched against him, her mound rubbing against the aching hardness of his staff. He could feel her nails scouring his back, could sense the desperation that drove her, just as it drove him. He rolled over, pulling her with him to drape her soft, small body on top of his. They were buried in a cloud of russet fire as her hair curtained them. He held her hips in his hands and whispered hoarsely, “Raise yourself up, Magdalena.”

      
She obeyed and his mouth again blistered her small, perfectly rounded breasts as they hung suspended like ripe, sweet melons for him to taste. As he moved to and fro from one to the other, she let out small whimpering moans. Then he reached up and spanned her waist with long slim fingers, lifting her up and back to seat her on his upthrust staff. Her thighs parted instinctively, hungrily, and she sank slowly downward into a burning bliss.

      
His ragged cry blended with hers as he filled her, probing her incredibly tight, moist sheath. She felt as virginally small as she had over a year ago in Seville, as if she had had no man but him. The fleeting thought infused him with a surge of intense pleasure. He guided her gently at first, plumbing the hot slippery depths of her body with a gradually increasing tempo.

      
Alive with indescribable hunger, Magdalena followed his lead, riding harder and faster, wanting to scream out her pleasure and her need. Then he rolled on top of her, never breaking the swift, even rhythm of their ecstatic joining. His mouth came down over hers in a fierce sealing kiss. She could feel his hands framing her head as she opened for his invading tongue, twining it with her own. His fingertips massaged her scalp as he tangled his hands in her hair.

      
They strove on, lost in a fiery haze of need, sweating until their bodies glided against each other, her silken skin abraded by his curly, crisp hair. Magdalena reveled in the welter of sensations denied her for so long, now so beautifully restored.

      
My husband!
Did she cry the words aloud as the final convulsive surge of release seized her? Aaron had his mouth buried against her throat as he stroked against her in his own swelling, blinding explosion, adding to her release, prolonging it until they both collapsed, breathless, spent and satiated.

      
Magdalena welcomed the weight of his body on hers and held him tightly, unwilling to let the moment of such perfect unity end, even though she knew it must. Gradually, as his breathing returned to normal, she could feel him withdraw and roll away. She knew it was not only a physical loss. His words underlined her cruel intuition.

      
“Now it is done. You are my wife. Neither your father, our sovereign, nor the Church can undo what we have consummated.” He spoke low and rapidly, as if it were a long rehearsed speech that he must deliver, a way of purging his blood of the fever she had ignited. He stared unseeing at the crude mahogany beams and thatched vines of the ceiling, unwilling to look into her pain-filled eyes.
I will not be victim to her witchery!
The thought hammered through his brain, yet he felt cowardly as she turned from him in silence and curled into a small protective ball, like an injured kitten.

      
Guilt and anger warred in him as he reached down and yanked the sheer bedclothes over them. Then, inexplicably, he felt compelled to move his body protectively around hers and pull her back against his chest, burying his face in the soft sweet cloud of her hair.

      
They lay very still for several moments, each afraid to breathe. Sleep finally claimed them.

      
Aaron awakened as the first rays of dawn filtered hazy gold through the dense foliage at the window. Disengaging himself from the soft warmth of Magdalena's body, he studied her as she slept. So delicate and vulnerable-looking, he thought bitterly. Guilt gnawed at him as he recalled the fierce hunger of their marriage consummation. He had gentled his touch for her, wooing his enemy, responding to her artful air of innocence.

      
She was Bernardo Valdés' daughter and the woman who had insinuated herself into his father's affections. When the admiral had forced him to wed her, Aaron had promised her retribution for pursuing him to Española. Instead he had fallen under her spell once more. The years stretched ahead bleakly as his mind conjured up the hellish nightmare of a marriage in which he could not resist taking his wife, yet must suffer pangs of wrenching self-loathing each time he did so.

      
Disentangling his hand from the dark mahogany strands of her hair, Aaron rolled quietly from the bed. She was a Valdés and he had sworn to destroy her house as hers had destroyed his. “A marriage made in hell,” he muttered softly as he opened his small leather chest and extracted a breachclout and leather sandals. He must get away from here and think this tangle through to some solution. Going to Guacanagari's village to explain about his marriage would put distance between him and his wife, something he sorely needed.

      
Magdalena stirred, feeling the absence of Aaron's protective warmth. She heard him rise from the bed, muttering some oath beneath his breath. Slowly she rolled over and surreptitiously watched him walk across the room. His lean, muscular body was splendid. He moved with sinuous grace, oblivious of his nakedness.

      
Although the darkly bronzed color of his skin had at first shocked her, Magdalena now found it far more appealing than the pallor so carefully cultivated by European gentlemen, who thought the sun's touch poisonous. For a dreamy moment she simply feasted on the sight of his chiseled profile, the curl of his long shaggy golden hair as he leaned over his trunk to extract some clothing. The satiety of the previous night's lovemaking had left her feeling oddly at peace. Then, as he began to don the scandalous Taino breechclout, the mood shattered.

      
“Where are you going?” she blurted out before thinking, her voice accusatory.

      
He turned and looked at her tousled loveliness. She sat amid the bed clothes with her hair tumbling about her breasts like dark fire, her eyes looking wounded. “Where does it appear I go? My friend and the admiral's best ally on Española, Guacanagari, must be informed of Cristobal's return. We are well rid of Diego Colon as acting governor!”

      
“And you must explain to your friend and his sister that you have wed a woman from across the ocean,” she said, half-hopeful, half-resentful.