Tender Triumph

"Plotting a murder?" Ramon suggested dryly.

"Something like that," Katie muttered.

"Is the intended victim anyone I know?"

"Padre Gregorio," she admitted as she came to her feet.

Gazing down at her from his daunting height, Ramon shoved his hands into his pants pockets. The action stretched his white shirt over his muscular chest and wide shoulders, and Katie felt her pulse give a little leap in answer to the sheer, powerful masculinity he emanated. However, his next words snapped her attention back to the issue at hand.

"I saw him in the village a few minutes ago, Katie. He does not want to marry us."

Katie was perversely crushed that Padre Gregorio's contempt for her actually went that deep. Her beautiful face flushed with indignation. "Did he tell you why?"

Unexpectedly, Ramon smiled; one of those sud­den, devastating smiles that always took her breath away. "Padre Gregorio seems to think that you lack certain attributes that he feels are necessary to make me a good wife."

"Such as?" Katie demanded mutinously.

"Meekness, docility and a respect for authority."

Katie was torn between antagonism and guilt. "What did you say?"

"I told him that I wanted a wife, not a cocker spaniel."

"And?"

Ramon's black eyes glinted with laughter. "Padre Gregorio thinks I would be better off with a cocker spaniel."

"Oh, is that right!" Katie retorted heatedly. "Well if you ask me, that interfering old tyrant shows an unnatural concern for your welfare!"

"Actually, he is concerned about your welfare," Ramon said wryly. "He greatly fears that after we have been married a short time, I may be tempted to murder you."

Katie turned her back to him to hide her confu­sion and hurt. "Is what he thinks so important to you?"

Ramon's hands settled on her shoulders, gently but firmly drawing her back against him. "You know it is not. But any delay in our marriage is im­portant to me. If Padre Gregorio will not change his mind, I will have to find a priest in San Juan to marry us, and the banns will probably have to be read again. I want to marry you on Sunday, Katie, and Padre Gregorio is the only one who can make that possible. You know that. Everything else is in readiness. Work in the cottage will be finished tonight, your parents already have plane reserva­tions for Saturday, and I have reserved a suite for them at the Caribe Hilton."

Katie was vibrantly aware of his warm breath stir­ring her hair; of the intimate feeling of his hard, muscular body pressing against her back and legs as he continued: "Padre Gregorio has just left for Vie­ques Island. When he returns on Thursday I want you to talk to him and give him whatever reassur­ance he needs."

Katie's resistance began to crumble as he turned her into his arms and covered her mouth with his. "Will you do that for me?" he murmured huskily when he broke the contact.

Katie gazed at his strong, sensual mouth. She rais­ed her eyes and looked into those dark compelling eyes of his, and the rest of her defenses disinte­grated. He wanted her so badly, his thighs were already hardening against her. And she wanted him too—just as badly. "Yes," she whispered.

His arms tightened fiercely as he claimed her mouth in a hungry searching kiss. When her lips parted eagerly to admit his tongue, he groaned with pleasure, and the sound struck some primitive re­sponse in Katie. Unashamedly she met his passion with her own, wanting to give him the same pleasure he was giving her. She kissed him as erotically as he kissed her, her hands convulsively sliding over his back and shoulders, her body arching to his.

She gasped with dismay when he ended the kiss and raised his head. Still shuddering with after­shocks of desire, Katie opened her slumberous eyes.

In the deepening dusk, his gaze held hers. "I love you," he said.

Katie opened her mouth to speak and couldn't. Her stomach churned wildly, then clenched into an agonizing knot. She tried to say "I love you" but the words she had screamed again and again to David on that hideous night long ago, stuck in her throat now, paralyzing her vocal cords. With a low, anguished moan, she wrapped her arms around his neck and began kissing him with frenzied desperation, while every muscle in his body was tensing to reject her.

Pain ripped through Ramon like a hot jagged knife. She didn't love him. God damn her! She didn't love him.

"I—I can't say it," she wept brokenly, clinging tightly to him, her body molded to his. "I can't say the words you want to hear. I just can't."

Ramon stared at her, hating her and hating him­self for loving her. Reaching up, he started to pull her arms from around his neck, but Katie wildly shook her head, tightening her hold, pressing even closer to him. Tears rushed from her beautiful blue eyes, sparkling on her long lashes, wetting her smooth cheeks. "Don't stop loving me," she plead­ed fiercely, "just because I can't say the words yet. Please don't!"

"Katie!" he said harshly. Her soft lips trembled at the cold rejection in his voice, and he gripped her shoulders. He intended to free himself from her arms, to push her firmly away.

Katie knew it. "Please don't," she whispered, and her voice broke.

So did Ramon's restraint. With a groan, he drew her into his passionate embrace and smothered her lips with his. She melted against him, the fire in her response igniting the flames deep within him. "Katie," he whispered achingly, tightening his arms as she kissed him with a blazing ardor beyond any­thing she had ever shown him before. "Katie... Katie... Katie."

She loved him, he knew it! He could feel it. She might not be able to say the words, but her body was telling him she loved him. No woman alive could give her body to a man the way Katie was giving him hers, unless she had already given her heart.

He moved her down into the grass, and even while he did, Katie's lips clung to his, her hands feverishly caressing him. She was setting him on fire, and Ra­mon unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off, willing to let himself be burned to ashes, so long as Katie went up in flames with him.

His hands dispensed with her blouse and bra, then luxuriated in the feel of her naked breasts swelling eagerly against his palms. Bending over her, he cap­tured her mouth, the driving rhythmic plunging of his tongue boldly telling her what he wanted to do to her. And Katie welcomed the possessive invasion.

His body felt like a furnace as he pulled her up to lie on top of him, his eyes devouring the sight of her pale breasts crushed against the dark hair on his chest. "I'm starving for you," he whispered thickly. "I want you so much that I ache for you." He curved his hand around her nape, pulling her mouth down to his, and said thickly. "Make me ache more, Katie."

She did. She kissed him with all her heart and body, wringing a low, animal groan of pleasure from him as she moved sinuously against his rigid arousal. Ramon clutched her tighter to him, wanting to absorb her body into his, letting her drive him in­to agonies of desire before he finally rolled onto his side, tak

ing her with him.

Katie's lashes flickered open. Ramon was brea­thing fast, his face hard and dark with passion. She lifted her lips to his, and he started to bend toward her, then checked himself. "Before this is over," he sighed hoarsely, "you are going to drive me out of my mind."

Katie expected him to finish what they had begun. Instead he laid back and stretched out beside her, cradling her head in the curve of his arm and shoul­der, keeping her close against his side while he stared up at the night sky. Katie laid there, bewildered. She couldn't imagine why Ramon had suddenly stop­ped, unless he somehow thought it was what she wanted. But it wasn't what she wanted at all! How could he think that when her whole body was yearn­ing for his, when she wanted more than anything to give him pleasure? She rolled onto her side, fully in­tending to take matters into her own hands. "If I do drive you out of your mind, it's your own fault," Katie said, and before he could reply she began leisurely and seductively tracing the outline of his ear with her tongue.

His free hand crossed over to lightly grip her waist, caressing it. His hand gripped her tighter and he shuddered with pleasure when she put her tongue into the hollow crevice and sensuously explored it. "Katie, stop it," he warned in a throaty growl. "Or I am going to do that to you."

Undaunted, Katie continued her arousing exploration. "You already did," she breathed into his ear, "And I like it."

"I like it too, that is why I want you to stop."

Katie gathered all her courage together and leaned up on an elbow. For a moment she stared thought­fully at the shining silver chain and medal lying in the dark mat of hair on his chest, then she lifted her wide, questioning eyes to his. "Ramon," she said, tracing her fingertips down the chain, oblivious to the stirring effect this was having on him. "Has it occurred to you that we don't have to stop?"

Ramon captured her wayward hand, holding it to prevent its further tantalizing descent. "It has oc­curred to me—" he murmured dryly, "—about two hundred times in the last ten minutes."

"Then why are we? Stopping, I mean?"

He turned his head and looked at the tiny stars twinkling shyly in the inky blue sky. "Because the men will soon be returning from their evening meal." It was the truth, of course, but it wasn't the reason he was holding back. If he could be absolute­ly certain Katie loved him, he would simply take her somewhere else where, they could have privacy now. If he had been certain she loved him, he would have been making love to her every day since they arrived to Puerto Rico. If Katie loved him, then the physical union of their bodies would strengthen and deepen that love.