Ann Major - Marry A Man Who Will Dance

He grabbed her, crushing her arms as he pulled her into a tight embrace. “Don’t lie to me—ever again.”

Her breathing was rapid and uneven.

“You still think you’re the princesa and I’m the Mexican lowlife.”

She couldn’t look up at him, not even when his hand lifted her chin and she felt him stripping her with his eyes.

“You used me as a stud—Well, querida, this Mexican stallion comes with a stud fee. And that fee is marriage…to me.”

“But you don’t want this baby. You just want the ranch.”

He drew a long contemptuous breath. “Do you ever think about that little grave with all the buttercups on top of it?”

She whitened.

“You’re not killing another baby of mine.”

His voice was so sharp and hate-filled; his words cut her like blows.

She gasped. “You’re crazy.”

“Yes, I am,” he murmured, drawing in a harsh breath as he pulled her closer. “Kiss me and we’ll seal this crazy deal.”

“What?”

“We’re going to be married. Man and wife. And all that that means.”

“I—I just want to be myself. Me. For once. Not somebody’s wife. Never yours!”

“You should have thought about that before you used me to get pregnant.”

She mistrusted the look in his eyes and the hardness in his voice. But before she could twist free, he crushed her body into his. Even as she fought him, his lips covered hers.

There was domination as well as the desire to punish in his devouring kiss. Always before he’d been so gentle, so infinitely tender.

And yet, even as his mouth ravaged hers, underneath this assault, surely this brutal stranger was Roque. Roque whose bronzed body was made of molten flesh. Roque, who was so fantastic and tender in bed. Roque, who always made love to her for hours. Roque, who turned her into a wanton. Roque, who made her forget why their love could never be whenever he so much as touched her.

The last time they’d made love, he’d kissed every inch of her skin from the hollow beneath her throat to the tips of her toes.

On a shudder she nestled closer to him, opening her lips to his endlessly, inviting his tongue. When she arched, his body tensed. He groaned. In the next breath, he ripped his mouth from hers.

Always, always he made her want and ache and need. She sighed, starved for more, so much more, and yet hating herself because she felt that way.

“Marriage is the only way I know how to stop you,” he said hoarsely, warningly, as if he despised both her and despised himself.

“You can’t be serious…about this. About…us.”

His fathomless eyes bored into hers. “Are you going downstairs to tell them our happy news?”

When she hesitated, his gravelly tone grew ever more bitter with sarcasm. “Or do you want me to do it?”

Nobody could peel their eyes off the white marble staircase. But like any audience when the stars go offstage, Josh’s mourners were getting restless.

“—simply awful…her up there…all this time…with him—”

“—today of all days—”

“I really need to pick Chispa up at the groomer’s before he closes. If I leave her there too long she always potties on the front seat.”

“We can’t just go…not without telling her goodbye. How would that look?”

“As if she cares about that?”

The idle chatter caused a mad rushing in one person’s ears.

Then a door clicked open upstairs, and two tall, black-clad bodies appeared on the white marble landing beneath the glittering Murano chandelier and stood there for a long moment, waiting.

The voices and laughter died abruptly and a brittle hush settled over the house. Everybody, especially the observer, was impatient for the final curtain of Ritz’s little farce.

Something was dreadfully wrong.

Blackstone’s dark hand gripped Ritz’s as he dragged her forward to the railing. Her yellow hair had come loose and spilled like butter over her shoulders. Her stricken eyes glowed like dying purple stars in a porcelain doll’s face. She was so white. He was so dark.

She was the perfect tragic queen.

Beautiful. Spellbinding.

Even if she was heartbroken, Roque made her come alive. She seemed ablaze.

Had the horny bastard screwed her up there in the bedroom? Did he think the Triple K was already his?

Blackstone. The name alone made the observer’s flesh crawl. But a practiced smile masked the wild hatred as well as the other dark emotions that flare so easily in the damaged soul.

Without further preamble, Blackstone said, “We’re getting married.”

When a look of terror flashed across Ritz’s face and she tried to free herself, Blackstone yanked her closer.

His triumphant eyes roamed, meeting the observer’s ever so briefly, causing as always that involuntary little shudder of fear before the rage took over.

Had he seen what was there?

No. Ritz wasn’t the only one who could pretend.

The smile, the perfect facade was in place.

Nobody suspected. Not Ritz. Not Moya.

Nobody would—until the killings started again.

Then it would be too late.

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

—William Butler Yeats

South Texas

Border ranch lands

1990

“Do you want to see a naked boy?” Jet whispered, her giggles sly and excited, her breath hot and tickly against Ritz’s ear.

Ritz shivered when she remembered the boy, not a boy really, a man, dancing by his campfire on the beach last night. He’d sensed her there in the darkness. He’d moved away from the fire, held out his hand. Her blood had beat like a savage’s. She’d wanted to dance, too. But she’d run. Not that she was about to admit last night to Jet.

“First the sheriff’s puma! Now a naked boy!” Ritz said offhandedly. “Mother’s always saying you’re a born troublemaker.”

“Oh, she is, is she? But, I’m fun, and you’re boring. It didn’t take much to talk you into sneaking off to see the puma!”

“There’ll be hell to pay when I get home, though!”

The two girls were riding bareback. Ritz’s skinny, sunburned legs dangling lazily in front of Jet’s more shapely denim-clad limbs as Buttercup clopped along.

Ritz forced herself to think about cats instead of the boy last night, so she wasn’t really listening. Pumas, to be exact. Very large pumas that followed the rivers up from Mexico just to eat little girls in Texas. Especially now, ’cause the Mexicans down in the Yucatán were burning off their crops.

Or at least that’s what she thought Sheriff Johnson had said.

And ever since they’d left the courthouse in Carita, Ritz’s eyes had been fixed on the fence lines on either side of the ranch road the Kellers were forced to share with the Blackstones. Particularly, she watched the Blackstone’s ten-foot-high electric game fence. The grass over there was so much higher—high enough for a big cat to crouch in.

As usual, she’d forgotten her hat, a mistake Jet, who was careful of her pale skin and more fragile beauty, never made. If Mother would be mad they’d sneaked off—she’d really be in a rage that Ritz was sunburned.

It was a six-mile ride into town. So, it was a six-mile ride back. Which meant—they’d been in the sun way too long. And since they were nearly home, facing Mother was a growing worry. Not that Mother would punish, but she’d tell Daddy.

So every so often, Ritz forgot about cats for a second or two and licked her blistered lips, but that only made them sting worse.

“I said I know where there’s a cute naked boy!”

This time Jet’s lascivious challenge penetrated.