The Wildest Heart

“I dare anything I damn well please, or ain’t you learned that yet?” He shook me slightly, and the blazing anger in his eyes made me flinch. “You don’t like what I’m sayin’ you can always open your mouth and scream, and the guards Shannon’s got posted outside will come running. Why don’t you do that? Or are you scared in case they tell Shannon they found his woman naked in her bedroom with a half-breed murderer?”

“Stop it!” I was sobbing now, tears of rage and humiliation almost blinding me. “I don’t want to hear anything else. I don’t ever want to see you again. I hate you, do you understand? I hate you, I despise you! Why don’t you go back to Elena and wallow in your filthy, incestuous lust for her?” I started to beat at him with my clenched fists until his hands slid down my arms, pinioning them.

His voice was dangerously soft. “Not yet. Not until I prove something to myself—and to you.”

This time I did open my mouth to scream, and the scream died into a whimper in my throat as his mouth covered mine savagely. Useless to struggle and try to break free. And just as useless, I discovered a moment later, to fight against the treacherous response of my own senses.

When Lucas lifted me in his arms I was too weak to do anything more than let my head fall limply back against his shoulder. When he put me on the bed I could hardly stand the few seconds of waiting until he came to me, now as naked as I was.

What followed was an act of violence; of raw, undiluted passion that needed no words, no preliminaries. This was need and its response. Desire and its culmination. And the only questions and answers given were with our bodies.

When it ended I suppose I was still in a kind of daze. I could not understand, at first, why instead of continuing to hold me close, as he used to do, Lucas disengaged my clinging arms and legs from around his body and moved away from me without a word. He did so gently, but dispassionately, and when he sat on the edge of the bed, calmly pulling on his moccasins I felt a dryness in my mouth that presaged fear.

“Lucas…” it came out as a whisper, softer than the pounding of my own heart.

He turned his head to look at me, and I could read no expression on his face. I had to moisten my lips with my tongue before I could speak again.

“Lucas, you’re not…” because he wouldn’t help me I had to force the words out. “You’re not going yet?” I hated to hear the abject pleading in my voice, and I thought I detected the slightest narrowing of his eyes.

He stood up and began to put on the breechclout he had worn. “Why not? There’s nothing to keep me here now, is there?” And then, as if he regretted the cruelty of his words he added, in the same toneless voice, “I thought that was what you wanted. Besides, Shannon might not like it if he came by to visit you in the morning and found me here. Might change his mind about wantin’ to marry you.”

I felt the blood ebb from my face, leaving me with a cold, empty feeling. “That should please you!” I said in a low, bitter voice. “I suppose you’ll make sure he finds out in any case, just as you did before!” I saw green flame leap in his eyes for a moment, and then he said in the same calm voice he had used before, “Guess that’s another of the evil deeds I’m supposed to have committed? Well, I’m sorry I ain’t got the time to stay here and defend myself, not that there would be any point in that, since you seem to have had your mind all made up before I was a damn fool enough to come here.”

“If none of it is true, then tell me so! If you can explain…”

He cut me off coldly. “Explain what? All those crazy accusations you been throwing at me this evening or what happened just now? No, I’m damned if I will. Ever since the first time we met, you’ve been judging me, judging everyone else. It’s time you did some figuring out for yourself, Ro. An’ while you’re doing that, better take a good look at yourself too. There ain’t a human being in this world who’s perfect, an’ at least I never asked that or expected it from you. But you set yourself above everybody, make your own conclusions… what gives you that right?”

I stared at him, one hand pressed against my throat to fight off the sick, cold feeling that had been rising in me with every word he had spoken. Was it true? Was that how he really saw me?

I shook my head as if to refute my own thoughts. “No… that’s not true, you’re not being fair…”

“Like you’ve been?” His voice was just as cold, just as merciless and I shrank from it. And still I couldn’t keep silent.

“All I wanted was some answers! That’s not being unreasonable, is it? Is it?” To my mortification, I felt tears start to slip down my face.

“Ro…” his voice sounded tired, “I gave you some answers once. But it didn’t do no good, did it? No matter what I tell you, you’d start doubting me again as soon as I’m gone. Seems to me the best thing for us both is for me to get the hell out of your life an’ stay out of it from now on. An’ that’s just what I aim to do.”

The tears had turned into silent, gulping sobs that seemed to be wrenched out of me. I set my teeth in my lower lip, biting down so hard that I tasted blood.

“But why did you come here tonight? Why?”

Lucas was already at the door, but he turned to give me a long look before he shrugged.

“That ain’t important now. Call it a crazy notion I had.”

What I had really wanted to say was “Don’t leave me!” but now it was too late. I had asked my question and he had chosen not to answer it. Perhaps he felt I didn’t deserve an answer.

I thought I heard him say in a low voice, “I’m sorry, Ro.”

And then the door closed behind him and on a part of my life, and I was lying back in bed with the sobs choking me, wishing I could die.

I was so wrapped up in my own misery that I did not wonder why Lucas had chosen to go through the house instead of using the trapdoor, until Marta came to me, her face creased with worry.

I could only look at her, incapable of speech, seeing her as a blur through tear-swollen eyes, and then, as if I had been a child needing comfort she put her arms around me, rocking me against her.

I heard her murmuring in Spanish: “Cry, cry, it is good for you… ah, pobrecita! I know how hard it is to be a woman, it hurts, no?” Her soothing voice hardened slightly as she said: “Men! They are without understanding, they are all selfish! I told him so. I said, ‘Why did you come here like a ladron, like an Apache who must hide in the night, if it was only to leave her again? She has been troubled enough, with the patron coming here to shout and threaten and try to frighten her, and Mr. Mark making her cry with the ideas he puts in her head.’ Si, I have never been one to mince words with him, and Lucas knows this.”

I twisted my head around to look up at her, wondering why I was not surprised at her words. Of course Marta and Jules must have suspected the truth right along! They too must have heard the rumors, and no doubt my manner since I had returned had confirmed everything.