Hart, Mallory Dorn Read online

  "Dolores, don't be funny."

  "That's what I said this morning when you tried to throw me out of my bath, remember?" Francho came to his knees, his mouth grinning in warning. "Dolores, give me that purse. Give it here, you sneaky brat."

  "Hola, listen to him, the great lord. I told you this morning I'd get even. Maybe you're bigger than I am now, but I can still run faster. And now you'll know better than to vex me, estúpido."

  She whirled to run but she had misjudged the length of his arms and wasn't fast enough. With one lunge he grabbed the back of her skirt, yanking her to the ground with a heavy thump. Squealing, she rolled over, the arm holding the purse shielded underneath her, and kicked at him forcefully, catching him in the ribs with the toe of her shoe.

  The silly presumption that led her to think she could get away with his loot had diverted him, but now his irritation mounted. He wasn't interested in playing children's games with a purse full of silver and gold. He fell on top of her, knocking the wind out of her lungs in a grunt. Holding her down he yanked hard at the arm underneath her, but she gritted her teeth and opposed him, pressing her weight down on it. Wrestling wasn't new to them, they'd often disputed physically in the past, even over a copper maravedi, and when they were much younger she could sometimes win, by dint of biting.

  "Trampista!"

  "Puerco!"

  "Drop it or I'll tear your arm from its joint—"

  "Never!" Dolores panted in his ears. "I'm going to give it to Papa. You dungpicker—" She surprised him with a solid heave which almost rolled him off of her, but he recovered and pinned her down again. She clawed at his face like a cat and, when he blocked that, tried to bite his hand, but he remembered her old tricks. He finally managed to capture her wildly striking free arm and then held her head down by twining his other hand in her thick braid and pulling cruelly. Her headcloth had fallen off; her hair, wisping around her piquant face, gleamed deep copper in the spray of light from the lantern outside. She had let up struggling for a moment, and he could see that her eyes were squeezed closed in pain. He tried to nudge her over with his elbow, but she stiffened and wouldn't budge.

  He yanked meanly on the braid. "If you don't give up my purse I'll punch you in the mouth," he threatened, angry. "You'll see I mean what I say when you spit teeth."

  Dolores answered what he thought she would. "No. I won't, I won't, you garbage. Next time you leave me in peace when I bathe." Stubborn to the end. But, unexpectedly, her voice trailed off very small.

  It was because her voice was so oddly weak that he paused and peered down at her, wondering if he had really hurt her. It didn't sound like Dolores.

  She lay still, her breath coming shallowly because almost half his weight was on her. Frowning, he studied her face for some clue to her behavior, not trusting what seemed like capitulation. But what presented itself, suddenly, was an acute awareness of her newly matured body soft underneath him. He could feel a slim flare of hips where lately there were none at all, and her small breasts were pressing against his chest with a firm presence that caused an excited stirring in his loins. His gaze moved to the pale skin of her bare shoulder where the neckline of her bodice had slipped sideways, the warm flesh gleaming so silky smooth in the flickering of lantern light that he was astonished to feel an urge to taste it by pressing his lips there.

  Even in the musty straw a faint odor of field blossoms rose from her skin, and there was heat coming from her body. His heart thumped in his chest, and against his will his anger melted away under the onslaught of another emotion he had no name for, sweet and intense—

  He stared at the young girl he had forced into immobility as if he had never seen her before, and in truth he never had in just this way. Even though Dolores was a little girl of seven when Tía Esperanza had taken him in and he called her hermanita—little sister—like all the rest, he had never really thought of her as a foster sister; sisters, he imagined, were sweet and lovable. Dolores was just Dolores, an unpredictable, impudent female child, a member of her own clan. And now she had gone her own peculiar way again and grown up. With no warning.

  He did not consider himself a novice when it came to women. The year before a married woman five years his senior had amused herself by seducing him and for a while allowed his newly awakened and insatiable appetite free rein, teaching him just what to do when inexperience made him awkward and showing him where it pleased her for him to touch. Since then there were several young wenches in the neighborhood who enjoyed occasional dalliance and vied for his attention, which he was not adverse to give. But although he enjoyed sexual encounters and thought that lying with a pretty wench was even more exciting than stealing, he had never experienced so intensely the lure of the flesh under his fingers or felt such a commotion whirling in his stomach. And with Dolores, yesterday's runny-nosed brat!

  Watching the sooty lashes flutter on the tender cheek he wondered if she even knew that she could no longer wrestle with him like a child, giving and receiving bruises for insults done; that suddenly she was capable of arousing his maleness.

  Dolores opened her eyes, not understanding why Francho had relaxed his grip on her hair, and feeling his body tremble. She found him gazing down at her with an odd expression, his brows slightly drawn in the habitual half-scowl he used when he was concentrating on a thought. She could have pulled her arm away from him now, but she didn't really want to strike at him anymore. A heated sensation washed through her, catching at her breath and making her tremble too under his stare. She found herself wishing he would smile at her in the roguish way he had, and that he would admire her with those clear and intense blue eyes. She felt his warm breath on her neck, and an involuntary and pleasurable tightening of the muscles in her belly answered. Her heart began to flutter like a bird in her chest, and she wondered if he would kiss her and what it would be like.

  She tried to calm herself and she drew a deep breath, but this pressed her yet closer to him. A tiny whimper escaped her at the strange, delicious bliss this contact caused. It was a whimper of fear, but not of him. She sensed a loss, the retreating refuge of innocent childhood, whose door would be closed forever if she allowed her pounding heart to lead her—for she recognized the startling, mysterious new attraction that had sprung up between her and her brotherlike companion and realized her welcome of it.

  Silently she stared into his eyes for a long moment, the luminous gray plumbing the deep blue, and she saw flickering about the edges of his gaze the same distrust of that adult road which was beckoning them to explore its wondrous reaches. But then his arm tightened about her and there was an intriguing, tender strength to the fingers gripping her shoulder. She was becoming overwhelmed by strange, provocative sensations stirring up her blood.

  Francho's eyes traced the pert cleft in her chin, the new fullness to her lower lip. He saw her soft, pink lips part with apprehension. Still not sure she understood that the wrestling was over, he tried to put a rein on his own uneven breathing. "I want to kiss you," he whispered. "Will you let me?"

  She blushed, lowered her lashes and responded, "Yes. But... but I don't know what to do with my nose." It was a situation that had puzzled her ever since she had begun to think about kissing. She glanced up hesitantly, afraid he might mock her.

  But Francho remembered his own awkwardness the first time he had kissed a girl, and his expression was solemn. "Don't worry. Don't be afraid. You don't have to do anything. I'll show you."

  He lowered his head and planted a kiss full on her mouth, so anxious to please her that it was a little rougher and harder than he intended and their teeth grated together. In a moment he pulled back, peering at her for a reaction. She lay still, eyes closed once more. Then she whimpered softly and tilted up her face to him. "Kiss me again, Francho—"

  So she did know she had grown up.

  Clumsily he untangled his hand from her braid and touched the sun-browned throat where the pulse was beating, beating. There was a clamor inside of him. He let
go of the arm he had been pinning above her, and immediately she wound it about his neck. He bent his head to her. This time his kiss was gentler and longer, and he felt her lips quiver under his. At first her mouth was deliciously innocent, passive, but soon she began to respond to him and then she was eagerly returning the pressure of his kiss. Immensely excited, feeling her breath sweet on his cheek, he made the third ardent kiss last as long as he could before they both needed air.

  The purse forgotten, her other arm came from beneath her back and went around his neck too. She smiled shyly up at him, her eyes shadowed, but her breathing was shallow and quick and her lips still sought more. Flame began to pour through him, and the hardness between his thighs swelled in response to the innocent desire gripping the pretty girl who moved him more than any other maid he had fondled.

  He shifted his weight off of her. His eager hand slid along her smooth shoulder and into the wide neck of her bodice, gently cupping over a small, pear-shaped breast. He suspected that this caress would startle her, and he was not mistaken.

  "No!" She tried to push herself up.

  "Let me, Dolores, don't be a baby. It feels good, doesn't it?"

  "No, let me up." Dolores pushed at him in vain, trying to dislodge his persistent hand from her breast, although the incredible sensations that radiated through her body made her toes curl. Panicking because she sensed this was her last chance to retreat before her helpless need allowed the wondrous tide to engulf her, she struggled.

  Although he was trying to be gentle and not frighten her, Francho couldn't help a light grin. Her resistance was much more like the Dolores that he knew, yet it intensified his excited feeling of sexual domination. "You'll have to learn from someone not to brawl with men. This is what happens, eh?" he told her hoarsely, holding her down. He saw a shadow of grief in her wide eyes, and the grin faded into a softer, understanding smile. "Everyone grows up, little sister. Better with me than with a strange man who cares nothing for you."

  "You are not yet a man," she protested weakly.

  Withdrawing his hand from the soft mound of flesh that had fed fuel to his fire, he sat up quickly, drew his legs under him and pulled her up to him as if she were a feather, gathering her in his arms before she knew what was happening, hugging her hard, wanting her to feel the male strength of his embrace.

  Dolores felt it and more, her heart hammering in her throat, her bones seeming to melt in her body. She abandoned herself to the need to know, to unfold, to give, and so she offered her mouth to his kiss. She reveled in the young hardness of his slim body and that the arms about her were not crushing her ribs in play but holding her possessively as if she were something precious. She was so intoxicated her head swam. "This is the love of which the tales tell, of which the ballads sing," she thought deliriously. "I have a sweetheart!"

  Feeling her surrender and relax in his arms, Francho applied a trembling hand to open the strings of her blouse and pushed wide the shirred edges to see her fresh beauty, for she wore no shift under her homespun garment.

  For a second Dolores wanted to shrink to be so naked under his gaze but she did not, for she could see his hot blue stare was filled with admiration tinged, even, with awe. Suddenly she thought she should be proud of how her body had changed.

  "Am I too skinny?" she asked timidly.

  "No. You... you're very pretty," he stammered, stunned with the truth of it. The married woman had offered huge, round breasts that had often threatened to suffocate him with their amplitude, and his little laundresses were plump too. But Dolores's young breasts looked like small pears, round at the base and then narrowing so that the rosy area and pink nipple thrust forward at a tilt. He wanted to fondle, play with them, to put his lips on them, but he knew he had no time.

  With his foot he thrust away the purse she had brought from underneath her. He pressed her back on the straw, fumbling at the same time with the string that laced together his hosen. He kissed her mouth again with hot urgency and then ran his hand in a coaxing caress over her bare shoulders and breasts, and little shudders took her. She looked at him so trustingly, her young body was so helplessly excited under his hands, that his heart squeezed together with love for her. He was her first lover. And her only one too, he silently vowed, sudden possessiveness sweeping him so strongly that she gasped under the hard pressure of his awkward hug.

  His hand disappeared under her pushed up skirt, brushed along the firm, silky thighs, and found where she was warm and wet. She jerked as if a hot coal had touched her and moaned, fearful again.

  "Only lie still, Dolores," he soothed her, whispering against her cheek. "Just lie still, sweet. No, let me, let me...

  Then, in a moment, "Do you like it?"

  "Oh yes, yes, oh..."

  She begged, "Will you hurt me? Please don't hurt me."

  "I'll try not to, I swear. I will never want to hurt you." He meant it. He thought wildly that he loved her. His hand kept moving under her skirt, and now he bent his head to kiss the hard little tip of her breast and the earth seemed to whirl away from under him. He lost all control. He rolled on top of her, parting her legs with his knees, forcing himself into the dampness, ignoring her soft cries, and then the louder, sharp yelp when he pushed through her maidenhead, riding her overwhelmed body, and finally feeling himself shatter in a burst of mingled pain and pleasure such as he had never felt before. In a few seconds it was over.

  Dolores knew he had rolled off of her because she could breathe again, in panting gasps. The incredible new part of her that he had discovered lay hurting but exultant. She wondered if her mortal soul would ever come to earth again, if her heart would finally stop bouncing about as if to jump out of her chest. Somewhere down below she felt burning, some pain, but it was not nearly so bad as she had imagined when she eavesdropped on the kitchen wenches giggling together one day and heard them recount with relish and pride the fear, the shock, the pain their first swains had caused them. Francho had hurt her but she cared little about it, she was so dazed and joyful over having pleased him, over the new feelings in her own body that he had released.

  A sharp pang of jealousy invaded momentarily when she considered that he had not learned to love a female so confidently without practice, but she quickly quashed it. So much the better for her, at least she had not suffered for his lack of knowledge like the girls she'd heard talking, and what did the others matter now when he looked at her so reverently? She felt her heart swell with pride that the handsome and clever Francho was her sweetheart, but she longed to hear him say the lovely thing that had blossomed in their young world.

  She raised herself up on one arm so she could better see his face as he lay there quietly. "Francho? Do you... do you love me?" she asked in a small, husky voice, feeling humble before the might of that magic word, her heart in her throat to see how tenderly he looked at her.

  Floating on a cloud of thistledown, sated, Francho was tempted to tease her, but one glance at the shy expectancy on her face and he thought better of it. He turned on his side to face her, a bent arm raising his head to the height of hers. "Yes, hermanita, I care about you. More than anyone in the world."

  "Is that the same as love?"

  "I think so," he answered honestly, touching his fingers to her flowerlike face. But the thought raced through his mind that, except for the verses of the few love songs he had learned to sing, what did he know about true love yet?

  Her eyes were drawn to his mouth, which she noticed for the first time had a square underlip, and when he smiled, as he was doing now, tiny, flat circles, not quite dimples, appeared at its corners, fascinating her, physical reminders of his scapegrace charm.

  "Do-lo-res!"

  Gasping, they started, then scrambled to their feet, shocked and intimidated by the voice of Tía Esperanza somewhere outside bawling for her niece. Quickly they arranged their garments, finishing by energetically brushing the straw off each other. Dolores wanted to avoid Tía. She was anxious now to gain the small chamber
she shared with her aunt and see if the wetness she felt on her thighs was blood, like the girls had murmured about. She blotted at the damp with her heavy skirt. Still clumsy with happiness, she tried to smooth her disheveled hair and then giggled at Francho's dubious look. "I'll say a drunken customer tried to manhandle me. Tía's been warning me to stay away from the stables lest some brute catch me and drag me off."

  "And so do I warn you of that," cautioned Francho, newly anxious about the other males who would soon notice that she was blooming. "Except if you are with me," he added, breaking into a grin. His caring thrilled her.

  Francho picked up the nearly forgotten purse, plunged his hand into it to feel around among the coins, found what he wanted, and put it in Dolores's hand.

  Confused, she drew back. "What is that? Diantre! Do you think I am a whore?"

  "No, mi dulce, hold your temper. This is a keepsake between you and me. See, look..." Together, in the ray of light, they examined the small, square metal piece, tarnished black, with a square hole in the middle and strange figures and squiggles around the edges like a design. "I've never seen a coin like it. It must come from a land at the edge of the earth."

  "I will put it on a ribbon and hang it around my neck," Dolores murmured, her eyes dancing. "Only you will know it's there. It will be a secret talisman." His swaggering, white grin washed over her.

  "Tomorrow I'll buy you a pretty sash for your waist—a crimson silk one now I am so wealthy. Would you like that?"

  She nodded vigorously, once more the old, acquisitive Dolores.

  "Dolores! Dolores! Donde estuvistes, picara...?" Tía Esperanza sounded angry.

  "I'll go before she finds us here," Dolores said. "Francho, we must act as we always do when anyone is near. Otherwise they'll suspect that we... we love each other and they'll tease us. I will... meet you here tomorrow eve, if you'd like?" Her legs suddenly seemed to wobble, and she didn't wait for an answer but stretched up to quickly brush his lips with her own, then turned and fled down the aisle, past the few softly snorting horses, clutching the square coin in her warm palm.