Dust Devil (40 page)

“
Well,
good,” Sarah declared, silently cursing the nervous little
quiver in her voice. “Because I’ve had a very long,
exhausting day, so I’m way too tired tonight to sit up and
discuss J.D.’s campaign with you.”

Renzo
shot her an insolent, knowing glance, his mouth twisting again with
that strange, mocking smile, unsettling her. One hand lighting a
cigarette, the other spinning the steering wheel easily, he abruptly
turned on to her winding drive. The gravel crunched loudly beneath
the tires of the Jaguar. The rising wind streamed through Sarah’s
long hair, loosed a shower of bright sparks from the tip of Renzo’s
cigarette and rustled the leaves of the tall old trees that lined the
drive. In front of her house, he pulled to a stop and killed the
engine.

“
When
are you going to stop avoiding me, running away from me, Sarah?”
he asked as he drank the last of his beer, tossed the long-necked
bottle onto the floor of the roadster.

“
I—I
don’t know what you’re talking about, Renzo.”

“
Of
course you do, Sarah. You’re like a skittish doe every time I
even come near you, attempt to get close to you. I’ve tried to
be patient. I really have. But now, I’m damned sick and tired
of waiting. You must know I’m not just going to stand idly by
while you make the worst mistake of your life by marrying Bubba
Holbrooke!”

“
I
don’t see what else you
can
do,
Renzo. If that’s what I choose to do, you can’t stop
me—and it’s none of your damned business who I marry,
anyway! So there. Now, just leave me alone! What in the hell did you
ever come back here for, anyway?” she cried.

“
You.”
The word was low, fierce, harsh with emotion; Renzo’s eyes were
dark with naked passion and glinting with determination as he spoke
it.

Sarah’s
breath caught in her throat at the sight. Then, shaking, panicked,
she fumbled at the handle, flung open the car door, not bothering to
close it as she ran toward the house. She could hear Renzo cursing
and calling her name, then the nerve-racking sound of his own door
swinging wide as he came after her. Her heart pounded with fear and
something else she did not want to acknowledge as she stumbled on to
the veranda. Her hand shook as she wrenched open the screen door so
hard that it was caught by the gusting wind and slammed against the
house, then smacked back against her shoulder. But she scarcely felt
the pain as she jammed her key into the front door’s lock,
twisted it and pushed frantically against the door itself. It gave
way so suddenly from the force of her weight that she staggered
across the threshold, nearly falling. Reaching out, she seized the
screen door, jerked it shut and fastened its latch, then backed
slowly away.

Her
green eyes were huge and wary in her pale face as she stared at Renzo
through the black mesh. Even blacker than the screen was the night
sky against which his tall, lean, hard-muscled figure was
silhouetted. Behind him, the lightning that had grown steadily wilder
slashed and shattered the distant horizon, alternately illuminating
his dark visage, then casting it into shadow. His long, shaggy black
hair streamed in the wind. The fine material of his stark white,
short-sleeved shirt rippled and flattened against his powerful,
bronzed body. The butterfly tattooed on his right forearm seemed to
flutter its wings, so she had a sudden image of him as a pagan
warrior—savage and untamed. His dark eyes glittered with raw
sensuality and desire as they raked her, making her shiver like the
leaves of the trees as the wind snaked through them, on its wings the
ramble of thunder and the electric scent of the coming storm. On the
deck above the veranda, her wind chimes clinked and clanged
discordantly, frenzied fairies dancing in the dark.

As
usual, no matter how many times Sarah had reminded him, Alex had
forgotten to shut off the stereo before leaving the house earlier,
and now from the speakers, the song “Lily Was Here,” from
Candy Dulfer’s
Saxuality
CD,
drifted, guitar lilting and saxophone wailing in sultry counterpoint
to each other—a duet that was somehow at once a duel and a
mating ritual. The guitar ran and teased lightly; the saxophone gave
chase, echoing and taunting back forcefully, then suddenly caught up,
taking over—until at last, in the end, the saxophone dominated
and the guitar submitted, twining with it sinuously. As Renzo’s
own playing had years ago, the sensuous, bluesy music seemed to crawl
insidiously inside Sarah’s very skin, stirring old memories,
the steady, primitive drumbeat echoing the hammering of her heart,
the flutter of the pulse at the hollow of her throat.

Renzo
stretched out a strong, slender hand. Grabbing the screen door’s
steel handle, he tugged on it sharply, making the hook jiggle
ominously in the eyehole.

“
Unlock
it, Sarah,” he demanded softly, arrogantly. “Let me in.”

She
took another step backward, mutely shaking her head and crossing her
arms over her breasts, as though to defend herself against him.

“
If
you don’t open this door, Sarah, I will,” he insisted,
the words both a threat and a promise, unmistakable steel underlying
the silk of his voice.

Still,
she didn’t speak, didn’t act, made no move to close the
solid front door, to turn its dead bolt, which would, perhaps, have
kept him out. Instead, she only watched and waited, knowing with
certainty that he had meant what he’d told her. Even so, she
gasped and flinched, startled, when, with a grated oath, a muscle
throbbing in his set jaw, he abruptly yanked so hard on the screen
door that the hook ripped the eyehole from the wooden frame. The door
creaked menacingly on its hinges as he flung it wide, then stepped
inside. And still, Sarah said nothing, did nothing, rooted where she
stood, only her eyes pleading with him—for mercy... for
something more.

In
two long, predatory strides, Renzo inexorably closed the gap between
them, stood there staring down at her for an interminable instant as
atavistic and highly charged as the night sky alive with the
lightning that continued to explode in the distance, splintering the
heavens. Then, with a low growl that echoed the seething, rolling
thunder, he snarled his fists in her hair, compelling her face up to
his, his mouth swooping to imprison hers—hard and hungry,
taking her breath. And as he kissed her ravenously, devouring her,
Sarah knew dimly, in some dark comer of her mind, that despite
herself, some terrible, treacherous part of her had wanted this,
wanted him, that she had been only half alive until this moment.

Of
their own volition, her arms coiled around his neck, fingers
tightening upon him. Her lips softened beneath his, yielded pliantly
to the swift, deep, relentless invasion of his tongue. And she did
not care that there was no gentleness in him, only a desire so
savage, a need so primal that it drove him to roughness and urgency,
sweeping her along ruthlessly in its brutal wake. It was as though he
had dreamed of nothing but her for the past decade and more, had been
starved for her and now could not get enough of her as his mouth took
hers feverishly again and again. His teeth grazed her lower lip, so
she tasted blood, coppery and bittersweet, upon her tongue, and she
gasped and moaned against him, shuddering violently, irrepressibly,
in his embrace. Both fright and excitement rushed through her
dizzyingly as she felt the strength of him, the powerful muscles that
bunched and quivered in his arms and back as he bent her over, his
lips at her throat, her breasts, hot and demanding, torturing and
arousing her wildly. She felt weak and vulnerable in comparison—and
as dazed as though she were drunk or drugged. Her head spun. Her
thoughts floated in her mind, disordered, senseless, scattered by his
mouth, his tongue, his teeth, his hands.

They
moved on her expertly, as though they had every right to do so,
remembered every soft, sensitive place they had ever explored and
wakened and possessed. Every insistent kiss, every searing lick,
every branding bite, every clever caress sent shocking thrills
through her, as though the lightning that blazed beyond the screen
door erupted within her, too, scorching her body and melting her very
bones. Her knees weak and trembling, she clutched him, clung to him,
gave herself up to him as, tearing
impatiently
at her clothes, ripping and dragging them from her, Renzo pressed her
down on the Persian rug that covered the hardwood floor where they
stood. She lay naked beneath him then, giddy, breathless, aching—and
abruptly, painfully aware that she was no longer seventeen, and that
she had borne a child. At the thought, Sarah turned her head away,
made a shy, halfhearted attempt to cover herself. But this, Renzo
would not permit, capturing her wrists and pinioning them above her
head to hold her still for him.

“
You’re
even more beautiful than I remembered,” he muttered hoarsely
against her mouth before he kissed her fiercely again, his tongue
twining with hers, tasting, taunting.

Sarah
wanted to protest, to insist she wouldn’t be his again so
easily as this. But she couldn’t seem to form the words in her
head, much less speak them aloud as his teeth scraped her throat
lightly, then sank erotically into her shoulder, causing an
unbearable jolt of electricity to shoot through her clear down to her
toes. He found her burgeoning breasts, pressing them high for his
covetous, carnal lips, his teeth and tongue wreaking further havoc
upon her senses. Her nipples flushed, became engorged. A low whimper
of wanting and need escaped from her parted mouth, moist and bruised
and swollen from his kisses. Beneath him, she writhed and bucked
helplessly, her head thrashing, and at last, Renzo rolled to one side
to unbutton his shirt.

Roughly,
he hauled it off and cast it aside, revealing his broad chest finely
matted with dark hair. Sarah inhaled sharply at the sight, recalling
the feel of him lying atop her
so
many years ago, that chest pressed against her own. Her skin sizzled
at the memory and from the way he continued to kiss and caress her.
She was a mass of sensation, every nerve raw, taut, expectant. She
burned at the very core of her being. Rearing back, his eyes
smoldering like twin embers, he watched her as his hand fell
deliberately to his belt buckle, terrifying and tantalizing her. It
had been so long, so very long since she had lain with him that day
at the quarry. But such was her longing in that instant to touch his
sleek, bare, bronzed skin once more, to feel it pressed against hers,
to know him again as intimately as she could that moments later, when
he, too, was naked and poised over her, his sex hard and throbbing,
she willingly opened herself to him.

Groaning
her name, Renzo drove into her so suddenly and forcefully that Sarah
gasped, then cried out softly, a sound he swallowed with his mouth as
he felt her sweet, slick heat close around him, envelop him, taking
him deep. His breath rasped, catching on a serrated edge. She was as
tight as though she were still a virgin. His eyes flew open in
surprise to meet hers, then narrowed abruptly, gleaming drowsily with
passion and triumph. A smile of satisfaction curved his lips. In that
moment, Sarah knew his thoughts as well as her own—that she had
kept herself for him alone. Sudden, hot anger and anguish for all the
lost, empty years she had waited for him welled up in her, and for an
instant, she wished vehemently that during Renzo’s absence, she
had given in to Bubba and taken him to her bed, had taken a dozen
men—a hundred!—instead of none. Then, closing his eyes,
his breath a long, ragged sigh of deepest desire and blind need,
Renzo began to move inside her. And Sarah ceased to think of the
past.

She
ceased to think at all.

They
drowned together as the gathering storm beyond where they lay broke
without warning, brutally splitting the night sky asunder and
catching them up in the fury of its sudden onslaught, mercilessly
lashing them both to a frenzy. The rain pelted down as Renzo thrust
into her urgently, savagely, again and again. And Sarah reveled in
it, gloried in it, arching her body to meet his own, straining
against him frantically, clawing his sweat-sheened back, spurring him
on. He rode her roughly and high, so the climax that seized her came
swiftly and violently, ripping through her like a thunderbolt and
shattering her senses. She went rigid beneath him, her back bowed,
her head thrown back, her fingers interwoven tightly with his, so
their nails dug into each other’s flesh. Her high keening lent
the air as the seemingly infinite tremors rocked her, wave after wave
so powerful that Renzo felt them, too, felt Sarah’s muscles
clenching tightly around him, maddening him. His body quickened
exigently against hers as his own release came just as suddenly and
violently, an explosion born of more than a decade of wanting her, of
dreaming of her, of remembering her lying like this beneath him,
begging him, sobbing his name. The orgasm tore wildly through his
body, making him shudder long and hard against her, and his cry
mingled with hers, a low sound dark and harsh with emotion—although
not fulfillment or satiation.