Oh, God. She’d seen him before. He was the cowboy she’d met last night. And he had been…doing things to her. While she slept. And in her dreams.
With trembling fingers she buttoned her shirt. Her nipples were wet from his kisses. Her mouth throbbed. She nearly groaned with the intensity of her arousal. She stared at the stranger’s lips and slowly raised her eyes to his.
“Señorita,” he said, his voice husky and low.
Cat scooted away. “I warn you. I can fight. If you try anything—”
He shook his head. “Oh, no, señorita. I will not do anything you do not wish me to do.”
His long hair drifted across his face, softening the angles of his cheekbones and jaw. Cat’s heart was beating hard enough to be heard in California. She had been lying there, doing nothing, believing it was all another dream. But he was real. And she’d wanted him to keep on doing what he was doing, both in the dream and in reality. She still did.
“Where is my horse?” she demanded, her voice cracking.
He stood up. Her eyes were level with his hips. There was no mistaking his impressive erection.
“Don’t worry, querida. He is here.”
Cat glanced around. If the stallion were more than a few feet away, she wouldn’t be able to see his black coat in the darkness.
“Who are you?” Cat demanded. “What are you doing here?”
He tilted his head. She saw that he wore the same shirt as he had last night, but it was unbuttoned almost to his waist. Sleek black hair dusted his chest. His pecs were beautifully developed, his stomach ridged with muscle.
“My name,” he said, “is Andrés. And you are Catalina.”
The sound of her name on his tongue left her shaken. God, he was beautiful. All she had to do was hold out her arms, and he would take her. Just like that. A stranger she wanted with every fiber of her being.
Not a stranger, her heart insisted. You know him. You know him….
“You aren’t afraid,” he said. “You will never be afraid of me.”
“I…” She swallowed. “I’m going to find my horse and leave.”
“It would be far wiser for you to remain here until sunrise.”
He was right, damn him. She couldn’t risk letting Trueno hurt himself as Kelpie had, presuming she could get the stallion to come to her in the first place.
Andrés dropped back into a crouch, his arms draped over his knees. “You will suffer no harm from me, señorita,” he said. “Or is it señora?”
Cat couldn’t quite believe that he was asking her such questions after what he’d been doing. “That’s none of your business,” she snapped.
His smile was devastating. “You are no virgin, Catalina. Your response was…most satisfactory.”
Satisfactory. Cat suppressed a moan. “You…you don’t know anything about me.”
“I know that you deny your own passions, mi gatita.”
“I don’t deny anyth—” Cat stopped, stung with outrage. “Gatita”—kitten—was what her grandmother had called her when she was a child. Andrés whoever-he-was had no right to use that nickname. No right.
“I don’t generally welcome the advances of total strangers,” she said.
“And if I were not a stranger?”
His question compelled her to relive the dream in all its astonishing detail. Why did it seem almost like a memory? Why was part of her so convinced that she had lain in Andrés’s arms in another life?
Cat dug her fingers into the bark of the tree trunk. This was ridiculous. The dream didn’t mean a thing, except that her fantasy life had become a little too vivid. Vivid enough to make her lose her hard-won control. Here she was, holding a normal conversation with a stranger who was clearly crazy and possibly dangerous.
Except he hadn’t hurt her. He’d backed off when she told him to. For all her legal expertise, she couldn’t define the man who crouched before her.
The best thing you can do now is be completely objective. Treat him as a hostile witness.
“Why did you follow me?” she asked.
“Follow you, señorita? But I did not.”
“Are you saying you’ve been here all along?”
“No.”
“How did you get here?”
“On my own feet.”
Hostile, indeed. “Where do you live?”
“I call no place home.”
No horse, no home, apparently no vehicle or significant belongings. But if he were truly an indigent, he’d probably be in much worse shape than he was. No one could claim he was anything but hardy, healthy, and unmistakably virile.
He could still be certifiably insane.
And what’s so sane about the way you felt when he touched you, Catalina O’Roarke?
She folded her arms tightly across her chest. She’d slept through most of the afternoon and a good portion of the night, and yet her legs were growing heavy and her thoughts were sluggish. She was very much afraid that she’d begin to ramble if she tried to keep the conversation going much longer.
“You are tired,” Andrés said. “Sleep, gatita. No harm will come to you.”
Laughter bubbled out of her throat before she could stop it. “I think I’ll stay awake, thank you very much.”
Andrés stretched out where he was and made himself comfortable, resting on his elbow. “You were not always so frightened,” he said.
Cat straightened. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You are from la ciudad, are you not?”
“I’m from Los Angeles. What of it?”
“I have heard that your great cities have no soul, that those who live in them have forgotten the look of the sky and the feel of the earth.”
“That’s crazy.” Careful. “Haven’t you been to a city before?”
“Sí. Long ago, in another place.” His gaze turned inward, remembering. “I had no love for them, even then. It is why I came to this continent.”
“You’re not from Mexico?”
His eyes cleared. “Did your own people not come from Méjico?”
“My grandmother was born there. She journeyed alone to the United States when she was sixteen.”
“Was it she who named you?”
“Catalina was her name.”
“Ah.” He plucked a blade of dry, fringed grass from a clump near his shoulder. “Do you know its meaning?” He twirled the grass between his fingers. “Pure. Innocent. When did you lose your innocence, mi gatita? What is the name of the man who hurt you?”
“No one hurt me.”
“Your eyes betray you, querida. Was he your esposo?”
“The subject is private.”
He got to his feet with that same feral grace and approached her, hands loose at his sides. “He was not the man for you. He mistreated you. He gave you no pleasure.”
Cat blinked, startled to realize that she was on the brink of tears. “He didn’t…It had nothing to do with—”
“You would blame yourself?” He stopped with the tips of his boots touching hers, such gentleness in his expression that she could hardly bear it.
“No. I should never have…I thought I knew what I wanted.”
“And still you do not know.” He lifted his hand, his fingers lightly touching her cheek. “I could teach you.”
Her mind told her to jerk away, but her body held her captive to his caresses. “I came here…to be alone.”
“So alone.” He leaned into her, lips parted. His body pressed her thighs and hip and breast. His mouth closed over hers, tongue seeking.
Cat plunged into a maelstrom of desire. She returned the kiss, panting with excitement. She had no defense when he seized both of her wrists and pulled them up above her head, trapping them against the cottonwood’s trunk. He held her easily with one hand while his other stroked her face, trailed over her breasts and paused to unfasten the button of her jeans.