big ears disappeared.
Oh, my God! Where was he? Her eyes glued to the spot where those ears had been, she pushed her glasses up. Then she stealthily tiptoed backward, moving robotically, one careful little half step at a time because she knew she wasn’t supposed to run. Not from a cat—they liked to chase things.
To a big cat, she’d be no more than a mouse was to Molly, Mother’s gray Persian that was forever catching birds…just to play with them and kill them. A big cat would bite her neck, crunch her bones, toss her around like a rag doll, paralyze her and then drag her off to some tree or hole—
Last year she’d seen a dead little filly over near the beach house that a cat had gotten. There’d been nothing left but bones and strips of hide and a few strands of black mane and tail blowing in the wind.
She conjured this image so vividly, she forgot not to run. With a panicky yell, Ritz twisted and sprinted full out toward the sunny pasture and pond.
Her sneakers flew across fallen branches, logs and rocks, splashing sloppily through the mud and water. When her foot got stuck between two rocks in the slippery ooze, a rattler hissed from the bank. At the sight of those brown coils, she yanked at her ankle with the frenzy of a coyote chewing its leg off to get out of a trap.
Then she was free, sobbing but running wildly. Thorns scratched her legs. Cutoffs weren’t right for such dense brush. Cowboys wore leather leggings and jackets and gauntlet-type gloves.
Her right toe hit a rock wrong, and she pitched forward, hitting the ground so hard, it knocked the breath out of her. Her bleeding palms burned from skidding across gravel and sticker burrs, but she was too stunned and too terrified by what she saw beyond the trees to even whimper.
There he was!
Not naked!
Worse!
Bold as brass, Roque Blackstone stared straight at her, unzipped his fly and shook his big thingy out.
Just like last night, she covered her eyes with her fingers and crouched as still as a mouse and prayed, hoping he hadn’t heard her, hoping he hadn’t really seen her.
Finally her terrible curiosity got the best of her and she peeked through her slitted fingers.
“Oh, my God!”
His skin was as brown as mahogany. He had it pointed at her now and was deliberately spraying a rock not five feet in front of her with a stream of yellow pee.
Adrenaline. Sweat. Sheer terror.
Slowly, when nothing happened, her dreadful curiosity took the ascendancy of her common sense.
She squinted and tried not to see that part of his anatomy. Only somehow that was all she saw. It was big and long and purple-pink. It stuck straight out. At her!
Don’t look at it!
She 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.
