Ride The Wild Wind (Time Travel Historical Romance) (8 page)

Her fingers found
the tuck in the towel but his hand covered hers before she could remove it. “
Elena
,”
he warned.

“Do not be
impossible, Antonio. There is plenty of time.”

His grip eased up
and the towel pooled at his feet. He turned to face her, sucking in a breath as
her fingers curled around the length of him. It had been too long and he was
helpless to stop her.

He braced one
elbow atop the bureau as she stroked him, sometimes slow, sometimes fast. The
fingers of her other hand curled into his testicles, kneading them expertly as
he spiraled toward a heaven that felt more like hell. He wanted this, yet he
didn’t. He wished it were the red haired woman pleasuring him…the siren of his
dreams.

“No!” He grasped
Elena’s wrists, halting her.

She blinked as if startled,
her lips momentarily pursing into a thin line as her eyes widened in awareness.
She knew.

“You bastard!”

The open palmed
blow to his cheek stung. Her coal black eyes shot daggers into his. Delicate
nostrils flared in anger. Her voluptuous breasts rose and fell with each heavy
breath. Dark, voluminous curls had come unpinned and now draped over one
delicate shoulder.

Without uttering
another word, she turned and stormed away. A single hairpin clattered across
the oak floor as she made her way to the dressing table. He watched as she
snatched up the red gown.

 Closing his
eyes, he drew in a deep, calming breath, preparing for the onslaught of her
rage which was sure to follow.

“Who is she, this
other woman who has your affection tonight?”

He dragged a hand
down his face and swallowed hard as guilt tore at his conscience. He watched
her in the mirror’s reflection. “What do you mean, Elena?”

She thrust her
arms into the gown’s sleeves, then wheeled to face him, eyes flashing. “Is it
that red-haired woman down the hallway who occupies your thoughts?”

He started to
speak, then stopped. It was a trap. “She isn’t much more than a child, Elena. I
certainly have no designs on her.”

“The woman you
brought here is no child!” she screeched. “She is a woman. I do not like that
you indulge your private fantasies about others when we are together.” Her eyes
narrowed on him. “You think she is beautiful—more so than I?”

He did not answer,
but suspected his silence answered for him.

Dark eyes blazed.
“You want to sleep with her?”

He hesitated.
Yes.
No.
Hell, he didn’t know.

Yes.

But he gave a safe
answer. “No, I don’t want to sleep with her.”

“You lying
bastard!” She picked up a slipper and threw it at him. “If you do not want me
as your lover, then go! Go to the red-headed little bitch and fuck her all you
like!”

He’d never seen
Elena so jealous or enraged. Then it dawned on him. This wasn’t about his
attraction to the other woman. It was about the brutality Elena suffered from
comancheros
when she was fifteen; the fact he’d taken a Navajo wife afterward instead
of her. Her jealousy of other women always made perfect sense. She now
perceived the younger, beautiful woman as a threat.

He moved closer,
but she whirled, placing her back to him, pouting. “Now, now, Elena,” he
soothed. “Do not be angry.” He gripped her trembling shoulders from behind and
squeezed gently. “You know how I’ve always felt about you.”

She turned in his
arms and clung to him, sobbed against his chest like a child. As he stroked her
hair, he thought of how alike they had once been, how in some ways they still
were. Maybe he hadn’t done the right thing by not marrying her long ago, but he
had done what he thought best for her at the time. He’d found her infant son a
loving family among the Navajo.

And he bought her
this house—the finest in Albuquerque.

Lifting her, he
carried her to the bed and laid her down. She gazed up at him, her red-rimmed
eyes still shimmering with tears as he climbed in beside her. He brushed his
knuckles across her cheek.

“Do not touch me!”
She turned her face away and pouted like a child.

“Elena. Don’t
behave like this.”

“Go to your damned
meeting with Diablo.” She still would not look at him. “Better yet, go to that
woman you dragged into my house. Sleep with her. See if I care.” Her lower lip
trembled and her eyes filled with fresh tears.

“You are still
lovely, El, like that girl I once knew at my grandfather’s ranch.”

“I do not want
pity from you, Antonio,” she whispered brokenly. “I do not think I can bear
it.”

He caressed her
cheek with his fingertips. “I would not say something I did not mean. You
are
lovely—the most beautiful woman in the Territory. Am I correct?” But Elena
would not be consoled.

“Our lives would
have been different had the
comancheros
not come to the valley that
summer, Antonio.”

How well he knew.
It was the summer that changed everything between them. “Shhh. Don’t speak of
it. Keep that dark memory in the past where it belongs.”

She stared at the
ceiling. “Many times I wish you had not found me or knew what had become of
me—a whore.”

“You don’t mean
that.” He wiped away a tear from the outer corner of her eye with his thumb.

“Mama could not
even look at me when I returned. She cried every day. She would not care for me
when she learned I was pregnant. She tossed me out of the house. I had no one
to turn to except you. But you did not abandon me. You took my child to your
mother’s tribe where you knew he would be safe. They gave him a home.” She
looked at him, blinked back tears. “Why did you care, Antonio? I am not your
blood.”

He wasn’t certain,
except that she had been his best friend for most of his young life. He spent
eight months tracking her, finally freeing her from the filthy crib where she
had been enslaved.

“That first day
when they sold me in El Paso—nine
men used me, Antonio.”

Tears welled up in
his eyes, and he fought down the lump in his throat that threatened to choke
him. She had been young and innocent then. “Do not speak of it anymore.” But
the look in her eyes was hollow, as if she weren’t there with him at all, but
reliving that terrifying time in her mind.

“I wanted to die
after the first
comanchero
took me, but it became easier as time went
on. I would close my eyes and think of you and let them do whatever they wanted.
By the time we reached El Paso, I
had lost count of how many times they’d taken me.”

Her arms went
around his neck and she clung to him. He stroked her back gently, held her as
she cried softly. “Oh, Antonio, I do not mean to ramble on about the past. It
is only my fear speaking again. I am afraid to lose you. I have no one who
cares for me. What if the soldiers capture you? How will I survive?”

“They won’t catch
me. I have eluded them thus far.”

She kissed his
face feverishly. “Please say you will return tonight after your business with
Diablo is complete. Come back to me. Let me love you properly before you
depart.”

“I can’t promise.”

* *
* * *

Elena fought back
tears as the pain of his leaving squeezed at her heart. She sat on the edge of
the bed and watched him dress. He could lie all he wanted about the woman he
delivered into her care, but she knew something had transpired between them.
She felt it, sensed it in his coolness toward her. Was this the last time she
would see him?

No more words
passed between them. He did not smile or look back as he set his hat on his
head and opened the door. It was always the same goodbye.

Only after he
slipped from her room did she allow herself the luxury of crying over a man
whose heart she would never possess.

She had made a
mistake at fifteen by becoming involved with Franklin Cole and his get rich
quick schemes. Of course Antonio knew nothing about Cole or how she had
actually run away with the man to escape her impoverished home life. Instead
Antonio believed she had been abducted by bandits, sold into prostutution and
that her child, Diego, was the result of a rape. The baby had been Cole’s
issue, the result of her young, foolish heart’s affair.

Cole had been
passing through the California
valley that summer, peddling wares to all the
ranchos
. She had been
mesmerized by his magic tricks and his dashing good looks. How stupid she’d
been, thinking he would whisk her away from her life as the daughter of a
washer woman for the wealthy De los Santos
family.

When Cole left to
seek his fortune in the Nevada
silver mines, leaving her pregnant and penniless in El
Paso, she used the skills he taught her to become a
high-priced whore to survive. Men—even poor ones—she soon learned, paid more
for exotic tricks and adventurous scenarios, more than the pittance earned by
lowly crib girls.

At the window she
watched the bustle of carriages and horses on the street below as shadows grew
long. Even before she ran away with Cole, she’d known Antonio would never marry
her. She was a
mestizo,
the daughter of Mexican peasants. Despite his
Navajo mother, the De Los Santos were wealthy and of pure Spanish blood. Due to
differences of social class, his family would never have approved of her.

Not wanting to
think about the past, she drew the curtain closed and crossed the room as long
shadows flickered and danced in the buttery glow of dying lamplight. Even so,
her thoughts strayed back in time and she thought of her son, Diego, who would
be fourteen now. She wondered who he resembled—her, or Franklin? She quickly
dashed the thought away. She did not want to know, not wanting to see the face
of that evil bastard in her son’s innocent eyes. Still, she supposed any mother
would always wonder about the child she had given away.

She curled up on
the bed and waited long into the night for a man who would never return.
Sometime in the early hours before dawn, she awakened. The room was pitch black
and the lamp had burned out. The noisy bustle on the street below had also
ceased. The faint sounds of laughter, both male and female, echoed down the
corridor.

Suddenly, the bed
seemed larger and emptier than ever before. Antonio was not coming back
tonight. Perhaps never. Elena pulled a pillow to her face to muffle her sobs.

CHAPTER FIVE

New
Mexico Territory

September 1863

Where in the
hell was the little bitch’s body?

Frank Cole had
poked about the dry creek bed with a stick for two hours looking for his
niece’s remains, finding none. But there had to be a body. Bones. Some sign to
indicate she’d been left here three months before.

Jack Dudley swore
he had dumped her in this exact spot. Swore up and down like a lyin’ dog that
Hope was already dead when he left her for the buzzards. What had he said? Oh,
yeah—he’d snapped her neck. Lyin’ bastard. Probably sold her to
comancheros
instead of killing of her like he was supposed to.

Regret filled Cole
that he hadn’t screwed the little gal one last time before he handed her over
to Dudley. His dick grew hard thinking about her pretty
red hair—as soft as her mama’s—and her little girlie tits. He liked to look at
‘em when she took her bath at night and didn’t know he was watchin’. He’d sneak
into her room in the middle of the night and get her before she could work up a
good fight.

That would have
been fun, catching her unaware again and listening to her cry as she begged him
to stop. He’d done everything he could think of to make her tell him where her
mama hid them gold bars. Still she wouldn’t budge.

He reached down
and fondled himself through the thick fabric of his canvas pants, remembering
it had been a long time since he had a romp with a female. He needed to get
some relief soon or he was gonna bust.

He glanced over at
Jack Dudley’s body. Deep red blossomed on the shirt where he’d thrust a knife
into the scrawny man’s chest. He wondered if Dudley
screwed his niece before he sold her. Of course he had. The thought made him
want to kill the bastard all over again.

He leaned over,
pulled the blade from Dudley’s chest and wiped the blood
on the man’s trouser leg before sliding it back into its leather sheath.
“That’ll teach you to lie to me you weasel.”

He surveyed his
surroundings, feeling as if a noose was suddenly tightening around his neck. He
had to find the girl’s remains. If she were dead, he needed to burn or bury
what was left. And if she were still alive, he had to silence her once and for
all. Given a chance, she’d tell the authorities what all he’d done to her
Ma—what he’d done to
her
all them times. For all he knew, she might already
have. But first he needed a stiff drink so he could think straight.

He pulled the
amber flask from inside his coat pocket, uncorked it and took a long swig.
Within moments fire shot straight to his pecker. Hot damn, that was some good
shit.

He tucked the
flask back into his coat pocket and unbuttoned his pants to take a piss,
decidin’ he’d best tack up a few posters in and around the territory. Yep,
that’s exactly what he’d do. Offer a reward for his sweet little niece’s
return. He laughed. Hell, if he made the reward tempting enough every Tom,
Dick, and Harry would be falling out of the woodwork, dragging pretty young,
red haired girls to his door.

The thought made
his cock twitch.

He leaned against
a tree and pissed a long, deep yellow stream that was hard to get started but
seemed to go on forever once it began. He even aimed and watered old Jack
Dudley. “Piss on you asshole.” But after relieving himself, his erection didn’t
disappear.

He needed a woman.
Even a young’un would do about now. Albuquerque
was only a day’s ride ahead. And Elena Costanza sure had some purty girls
workin’ in her gentleman’s parlor. The madam wasn’t too hard on the eyes
either. Funny, but she hadn’t recognized him the last time he dropped in for a
whiskey. She had growed up right purty, much different than he remembered when
she’d run off with him to El Paso
fifteen years ago.

Now, she had big
woman tits and a sassy little behind that filled out her dresses right nice. He
rather liked the way she sashayed them in those flowin’ gowns of hers. He’d bet
she was expensive now, the way she carried herself and all—acting as if her
pussy was the grandest in all the territory.

Yep, he guessed
she really thought she was a smooth one, a runnin’ out on the business like
that and running up debts in his absence. The thievin’ bitch. She’d get hers
all right, if it was the last thing he did.

He closed his eyes
and stroked himself, thought about her all spread before him again. He knew
she’d still be damned good. Maybe even better. But his dick softened in his
hand. He cussed it, and then put himself away and buttoned his pants. God
damned unreliable thing. He glanced over at the dead man. Flies swarmed the
open, oozing wound. Dudley’s eyelids twitched.

Cole nearly shit
his breeches.

He drew his pistol
and went in for a closer look. Leaning over the man, he peered down into glazed
lifeless eyes. Must’ve been his imagination with this heat and all. His mind
was playin’ tricks on him again.

He slid the gun
into his holster and swung up into the saddle. “Well, it was nice knowin’ you,
Jack, ol’ boy.” He chuckled as he tipped his hat to the dead man. “See you in
hell, you son-of-a-bitch.”

He dug his spurs
into the mount’s flanks and headed northwest toward Albuquerque.