LITMIR.BIZ

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couldn’t seem to stop.

      Like last night, he had the same chiseled face of a prince out of one of her favorite storybooks. Just the sight of his wind-whipped black hair, along with his awe-inspiring muscular chest, his broad shoulders, and his lean, brown, rangy body sent funny little darts zinging through her stomach. And she hadn’t even looked…not really down there. At least not on purpose.

      But she had because, truth to tell, she was as fascinated by him as Jet was. Maybe more so.

      He shook it after he finished, and then it got hung up in his jeans and he couldn’t zip his fly. She forgot all modesty and observed his deft brown fingers that yanked up and down at the zipper. Suddenly he stopped fiddling with his zipper and stared straight at her.

      Hot color scorched her cheeks. Not that she closed her eyes or even blinked. But her glasses fogged. She took them off and wiped them with the grubby tail of her shirt. Then she shoved them onto her nose.

      He was big, way bigger than her brother, Steve, but not nearly as big as Cameron. Which was such a relief she hugged herself. Still, he was wild and bad, and it showed somehow on his face. It was like he was a prince under a witch’s spell, or maybe he was a pirate who had walked out of a legend into real life. Or maybe somehow she’d plopped herself inside a storybook and was about to be a princess or a maiden and have a big adventure.

      He was a Blackstone. The bad Blackstone brother, who did bad things to girls. He was old—eighteen or so.

      He’d even flunked a year.

      Holding her breath, Ritz slithered backward, away from him, keeping to her awkward crouch until the trees completely hid her and she could run for home. Then she ran, just like she’d run last night. Even as she felt some weird pull not to.

      No sooner had Roque finished unsnarling the blue-white threads from his zipper than a horse snickered in the distance, somewhere off to the south. The sound brought a strange peace to him, especially this evening.

      He loved horses. A lot more than he loved people. They connected him somehow to a larger, truer, and very ancient world.

      His dark fury returned. Why couldn’t people just leave him the hell alone? Caleb? His father? Most of all, his father!

      Something stirred in the thick foliage of the oak mott. A branch bent gently. Shadows danced.

      Dios, he’d forgotten about her. Was she hiding in the mogotes (thick patches) and cejas (thickets) like before? Like last night?

      Yesterday she’d stolen his clothes and laughed when he’d run. Then she’d snuck up on him when he’d lit a fire on the beach and danced. Sucking in a fierce breath, Roque jerked his dick inside his pants and zipped his fly.

      Had she seen him? Shyness made him flush.

      If she had seen him, he hoped it hadn’t turned her off. He wanted to kiss her, to see how far she’d go. Maybe she’d have some pot or booze. She was the kind who would. He wanted to forget about his father. He had to forget.

      The air was cool and breezy after the long, hot afternoon. The glassy pond with the ducks and willows and the taller oaks along the southern bank was a place Roque often came to sit and watch the grass blow and the clouds sail in the utter silence and stillness. Not that it was all that pretty really with the water so low and so much muddy shoreline exposed. But it had a wild, lovely aspect that had grown on him.

      Sometimes he sunbathed on a rock. Sometimes he walked in the woods or swam in the raw. Sometimes he just felt homesick for his mother and his sisters who spoiled him, for all his boisterous Moya aunts and uncles and cousins, for Mexico, its art, its music, its people, its passion. Not that he really belonged down there, either.

      He had a gringo father, who’d divorced his mother and broken her heart. Mamacita never let him forget it, either. Neither did his uncles. Still…nobody up here knew how to cook like his mother. Nobody made him tamales Yucatán or did anything special for him. Nobody except Caleb.

      Sometimes Roque just daydreamed. About horses sometimes. About girls mostly. About white girls when he was up here.

      Not tonight.

      Not when his father had just beat the shit out of him at the corral.

      For nothing.

      Not for nothing. ’Cause he was a Mexican. ’Cause he was scared he’d hurt his precious Caleb.

      As if he’d ever hurt Caleb.

      The only reason Roque had started coming to Texas a few years back was that when Caleb had found out he had an older brother, he’d begged to meet him. Their father couldn’t deny Caleb anything.

      Roque had felt so angry and out of place on that first visit, he hadn’t known what to do with himself. One afternoon when Pablo and his men had been working cattle, Roque had gotten so bored, he’d set off a string of firecrackers and thrown them into the pen. When the livestock stampeded, he’d dived into the pen with them. What a thrill that had been—whooping and yelling and running with those bulls while their hooves pounded the earth. He hadn’t cared whether he’d lived or died. Then Caleb’s thin, fearful cry had rent the air.

      Through a blur of horn and red flank, he’d watched Caleb’s bright head bob and then disappear. Roque had grabbed onto the biggest bull’s horns and hung while the beast pushed through the others. Miraculously Roque had reached Caleb before he was trampled. All Caleb suffered was a broken wrist and a bad case of hero worship, but to this day, their father still believed Roque had deliberately stampeded the bulls because he was so jealous of Caleb that he wanted to kill him.

      All of a sudden Roque wanted to be as bad as his father always told everybody he was. He wanted to screw and drink and get wasted with a pretty, wild girl—to forget, to go dead on the inside, to lose the hate, or at least some of its edge…just for a little while. He was too Mexican to ever fit in up here.

      Where the hell was she?

      Suddenly the hair on the back of Roque Moya’s neck stood on end. Good, he wasn’t wrong about her. He stared at the woods and felt her eyes on his fly. He was about to call her bluff and go after her when he heard flying footsteps and shouts right behind him.

      “Roque—”

      His father? Roque felt a surge of panic and despised himself. His daddy’s eyes had gone colder than a rattler’s right before he’d lifted that chain a while ago. Roque leaned down, his hand closing around a rock. If his father so much as raised a hand to him ever again…

      Whirling, staring over his shoulder, he caught a whiff of cow dung and fresh grass. Then he saw that familiar, beloved, bright head bobbing against the pink sky.

      Caleb. His slim, lithe form dashed through the waist-high grasses toward him. Caleb, who followed him everywhere.

      Fury mingled with jealousy. Then his heart swelled with love. Damn, you Caleb! Damn you for being so smart and sweet…and brave…and perfect. For being the easy kind of kid fathers were proud of. He made straight A’s. He liked books. He could read better than most college kids, which was galling to Roque, who practiced reading secretly every night.

      Roque was good at math like his Moya uncles, who were engineers, but math bored him. He preferred liberal arts. Not that he did well in them. Whenever he tried to read, words got all mixed up on the page. Spelling was even harder, but at night before they went to bed, Caleb often tried to teach him. If alone, Roque would struggle over the words for hours.

      When Caleb saw him look his way, his warm white grin spread from ear to ear the way it always did. Involuntarily Roque smiled back. Caleb, not the money his rich daddy bribed Mamacita with, was the only reason Roque ever came to Texas.

      Roque dropped the rock and stared from his little brother to the green line of oaks where he knew she was waiting for him. Since last night he’d hoped she was a real puta in heat. Not that he’d ever had a puta. Still, he told himself he hoped she wanted a bellyful as much as she’d wanted an eyeful.

      Gringas.

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