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. He hoped his macho tíos were right when they said that gringas were even hornier than most men. Even the pretty, young ones. His uncles were always telling him that a real man screwed every pretty girl he could. Once, anyway. This girl had black curls and big boobs and the whitest, softest skin he’d ever seen on any girl, even a guera.

He had to ditch Caleb—and fast.

With seeming casualness, Roque began unbuttoning his loose white shirt. When Caleb was within earshot, Roque said, “Didn’t I tell you not to follow me unless I invited you along?”

“Can I…”

“Daddy said I wasn’t supposed to go near you! So—no!”

The sparkle went out of Caleb’s face and he looked down. “It’s a free country,” he said sullenly, kicking rocks. “Since when do you care what Daddy says?”

“Since this!”

Roque peeled his bloodstained cotton shirt off, and Caleb winced at the blood-crusted wounds crisscrossing Roque’s already scarred brown back.

His little brother loved him…so much. In his own way, every bit as much as Mamacita did.

Caleb—the favorite son. The perfect son. The white white son.

“Why don’t you ever just tell him you’re sorry, Roque, so he’ll stop?” Caleb demanded in a soft, worried voice.

“’Cause I’m not. ’Cause I hate him for always thinking I want to hurt you.”

Caleb gasped. “You’re dumb. If—”

“Don’t say that!”

“So dumb, your dumb zipper’s half open! If you hadn’t mouthed off, I could’ve explained and your back wouldn’t look like hamburger meat.”

Roque fumbled with his fly until he got the zipper up.

His father had grown angrier at each stroke. Caleb was the one who had run forward and risked the chain himself by grabbing their father’s hand. Not the cowboys. Not even Pablo, the ranch manager…Pablo, his friend. They’d just stood there, their boots planted in the thick dirt, their black heads hung low, some of them snickering nervously.

“I told you to get lost. I came here to be by myself so I can think.”

“I won’t say anything. Think away.” Caleb circled him, his green eyes almost popping out of his freckled face as he edged closer to get a better look at his brother’s bloody back.

Roque wadded his shirt into a ball and pitched it angrily into the pond. Nothing was working out. He glanced toward the trees. No sign of the brazen girl, who had stolen his clothes yesterday.

Caleb squatted down and rocked back on his heels. “He beat you even worse than last time….”

“I said scram.”

“You didn’t have to smart off.”

“Git—Daddy’s pet.”

Caleb, who was fourteen, rubbed his glistening eyes in shame. Then he shook his head proudly making his blond bangs fly.

Suddenly hoofbeats rumbled. Both boys swiveled when the strange, sorrel horse shot out of the forest, interrupting their standoff. The mare stopped when she heard them, her chest heaving. Her ears were pointed straight at them.

“That’s the Keller girl’s horse,” Caleb said.

La princesa. Roque had seen her once or twice. She was very white, plain, and ever so haughty.

“Not anymore. Be quiet and watch this.” Roque whistled to the mare.

Her friend must’ve ridden over. He’d steal her horse to pay her back for stealing his clothes.

The mare tore a mouthful of grass out of the ground. Watching him, she began to munch warily.

In long graceful strides, Roque moved through the grass toward her.

“What are you going to do?”

“Get lost, kid. You’ll only get in my way.” He paused. “If Daddy catches you with me, he’ll beat me. Is that what you want?”

Caleb went so white every freckle stood out. His thin shoulders sagged. Roque was stunned when his own dark heart twisted with remorse.

“Get,” he said.

“Who wants to catch a dumb old horse anyway,” Caleb said.

Roque really felt chagrined when Caleb turned his back on him and started walking home.

“Caleb…”

Roque forced himself to let it go. “I’m a real jerk, kid,” he muttered to himself. “Just like Daddy! The sooner you get that, the better for all three of us. When I go home this time, I’ll stay there. I’ll forget I ever had a gringo brother. I will! If it’s the last thing I ever do, I will!”

Catching her horse soon distracted him from his guilt trip. It wasn’t long before Roque had the reins and was stroking the mare’s dark nose with the flat of his hand. She was leaning her head into his every touch, nuzzling his open palm.

“Friends?” he whispered when he mounted her.

A dazzling white smile crept across Roque’s lean, tanned face. He made a clicking noise. “Where’s your sexy mistress, girl?”

If only she would be as easy to seduce as her horse.

Ritz was running down the caliche road when she heard the violent thunder of hooves thudding behind her.

She turned. Roque Blackstone was galloping Buttercup straight for her, stirring up thick clouds of white dust. His hair streamed like wet black ink back from his dark face. His wet shirt was plastered against his lean body. His eyes flamed a savage, incandescent green.

With a yell, she tried to run faster. Just when she thought he’d surely trample her or grab her up by the hair and scalp her, the furious pounding stopped. Then Ritz was enveloped in dust so thick, she had to put her hands up over her tear-filled eyes as she began to cough.

Buttercup snorted and stomped the earth.

When she could breathe again, Ritz sprinted for the gate.

“Whoa, girl! Whoa!” yelped a harsh, male voice. “You can’t outrun me or my horse.”

She stopped. “My horse!”

“Yours?” He laughed, the soft, velvety sound jeering her. “Who the hell are you?” His green eyes raked her skinny body.

He was looking at her, his eyes burning, challenging her the way all those other boys challenged Jet.

Oh, if only I were as gutsy as Jet—

Roque Moya had a peculiar effect on her. Last night she’d felt all grown up and on fire. Suddenly she felt strange, almost gutsy. Almost pretty.

“Ritz Keller! That’s who!” she snapped, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“You really think you’re somebody, don’t you? A real princesa?”

Up close his eyes were so fierce, she felt consumed by their unholy fire. “I’m not scared of you, Roque Blackstone!”

Liar.

“So, you know who I am?”

She almost stopped breathing when he smiled. Jet would have smiled back and said something clever.

“You’re a Blackstone—the worst of a bad bunch. You flunked…”

His face twisted. “If you don’t like us, what the hell are you doing on Blackstone land, Meeez Know-it-all Keller? Where’s your pretty friend?”

“Jet?”

“Are you like her? Did you come to watch a meens swim naked and steal heez clothes?”

“Man?” she corrected, tilting her nose in the air.

He flushed.

Sassily she put her hands on her hips. “You’re no man.”

“Like you’re some expert—”

“You’re just a stupid, mean boy nobody likes. Not even your father!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Last year he sent you home…to Mexico ’cause… ’cause…”

Roque swore violently under his breath, first in Spanish and then in English. “’Cause a bad girl told my father she liked me…too much—Four Eyes.”

“Well, I don’t like you.” Ritz stuck out her tongue.

He laughed. “Most girls do. That gets boring after a while.”

“You are too conceited to believe.”

Another quick burst of his male laughter made her heart skitter.

“I’m not boy-crazy…not like Jet.”

“Jet.” He purred. “So, that’s her name. She is pretty, your boy-crazy friend. Older. She follows me.”

The red sky burned green.

“She’s only a year and a half older!”

“More than that,” he said, peeling clothes from her skinny frame with his indecently bright, emerald eyes. “You’re a baby. She’s a woman. Last night she…”

“Are you going to give me my horse or not?”

He shook his head. “She’s mine now.”

He pranced back and forth. “And you’re on Blackstone land.”

A red sun slanted a kaleidoscope of rays behind him, giving him the devil’s own halo while keeping that pretty face of his in the dark. She had to squint to make out his well-shaped, glossy, black head and that hair that was so long it whipped against his hard, dark jawline and tangled with the ends of the scarlet bandanna he wore at his neck.

With the sun at his back, he was mostly a black figure. Still, she got an eyeful of sleek, brown torso under that wet shirt that seemed made of nothing but ripply muscle. Indeed, even up close, every part of him seemed made of muscle, too—his squared-off shoulders…his arms…his lean waist and…his legs. He looked better by sunlight than by firelight.

Black jeans clung to those powerful legs. Jet said boys who wore jeans that tight were too nasty for nice girls to talk to. And here she was—Ritz Keller, fourteen years old, talking to just such a boy.

She’d watched him dance, seen his thingy. Catching a scared, little breath, she remembered he wasn’t nearly as big as Cameron. And he wasn’t as mean, either, no matter what people said about him.

“Like what you see, squirt?” he whispered.

“You’re a nasty boy.”

“I just like girls. And girls like your friend, Jet, like me back.”

If you only knew.

Buttercup snorted and blew, moving skittishly to one side, thereby changing the angle of the sun, so that Ritz could finally see the conceited brute’s face, or at least three-quarters of it.

Up close he looked bad and wild like the rock stars on Jet’s posters that hung all over her bedroom walls. But he was way more handsome. His blatantly masculine face seemed hacked from hot, sun-baked stone. A sheen of perspiration set him aglow and made him seem like a god come to life. He had a high brow, an aquiline nose, and a wide, sexy mouth. Thick, spiky black lashes shaded green eyes so bright and feral, they literally knocked the breath out of her.

For a long moment, she couldn’t move or breathe a word.

He went equally still.

Nervously she pushed her glasses up. For a long second their gazes remained fixed.

“You’re bad,” she said.

“Stupid, too?” he mocked, using those eyes of his to twist her around his little finger.

Ritz stiffened.

“What are you doing here?” he repeated.

She didn’t dare look at him again. “I-I’m here…to get…to get…t-that horse, my horse, Buttercup!”

“My Buttercup now.” His voice deepened and roughened, bringing those little shivers again.

“You have to give her back!”

“Make me, squirt.”

Her hands balled into fists. When she lunged, Buttercup trotted off.

“W-who is she, Roque?” another boy cried out from the tall grasses as he ran toward her.

Ritz whirled so fast, the blond kid nearly fell.

“You!” Roque said. “Caleb, I told you to git.”

Caleb held up his hands. His smile was so engaging, Ritz smiled back, which only made his older brother’s scowl darken.

It wasn’t hard to see why Caleb was more popular than Roque. He was just a boy not much older than she. He had blond hair, green eyes, and sandy eyebrows and lashes. His freckled nose was almost as red and blistered as hers.

He was nice cute; not nasty cute like Roque. Not intimidating cute, either.

“Don’t forget,” Roque jeered. “He’s a hated Blackstone, too.”

“I’m Ritz Keller, that’s who, and if you and your brother will give me my horse…”

“You’re trespassing!” the younger boy whispered to Ritz, grinning at his brother to win his approval.

“Well, Caleb, somebody left your gate open and Buttercup ran inside. I had to come after her. Your big brother here is riding a horse with a Triple K brand. In other words, he’s a horse thief.”

“If she’s yours, why’d she run from you?” Roque demanded.

“Do you know anything? Anything at all about horses?” she demanded, tilting her head as imperiously as a queen.

“I caught yours, didn’t I?”

“Just give her back.”

“If I do that—then you’ll ride away. I want to know more about your pretty friend.”

“Well, she doesn’t like bullies or horse rustlers…or stupid…”

“You have a saying up here in Gringolandia, Señorita Smartie Pants. Finders. Keepers.”

“She said you’re ugly naked!”

“Híjole!” He pulled back a little on the reins and leaned down.

“So, you came to see for yourself!”

“You’re disgusting!”

“Then why the blush?”

She looked down, but she felt his eyes on her face and got hotter.

“Go home, little girl, before you get into real trouble. Tell your friend she can swim in our pond…anytime.” His lilting purr sent a hot shiver through her. “Tell her, I’ll be waiting for her tomorrow.”

“I’m not going without Buttercup.”

“All right.” Holding the reins, Roque sprang lithely off Buttercup, landing so close beside her, she jumped back. Then he slapped Buttercup on the rump and sent her trotting off.

“We’re going to let Buttercup decide,” he said, “who she wants, you…or me.”

“No—”

“Because you know she’ll choose me,” he jeered.

“You’re very sure of yourself,” she said.

“Sí. It’s one of my failings.”

She felt her jaw go slack. Her heart raced. She thrust out her chin anyway. “A Keller’s way is better than a Blackstone’s any day.”

He grinned. “You’re going to be hell on wheels when you grow up,” he murmured. “A while ago you asked me if I knew anything about horses. What if I told you I had a way with horses, same as I do with little girls? Big girls, too?”

It was getting dark. In the queer half-light, with his intense aristocratic features, he was absolutely stunning—tall, muscular, graceful even. Not awkward like the other boys she knew. She remembered him dancing and how she’d longed to dance, too.

“You can’t beat me… ’cause I’m a Keller.”

“Little Killer Keller,” he purred. “I can beat you any day.”

“Wanna bet?”

A warm gust of air stirred Ritz’s golden curls and ruffled Buttercup’s tail. Sighing in exasperation, Ritz scowled at her mare.

“So, we’ll let Buttercup decide who she wants?” Roque repeated.

She put her hands on her hips. “I don’t have to play your silly game. This stubborn, mulish, black-tailed idiot is mine.”

“Careful how you talk to her, or she won’t choose you.”

Ritz tossed her head and would’ve spun away, but he grabbed her arm.

“Ouch. You’re hurting me.”

“Okay. Okay.” Instantly the long brown fingers loosened. His dark face was grim. “So, you don’t have to play my game or prove anything. Maybe I just want to teach you something.”

“You left marks.” She rubbed her elbow.

The long shadows made his face darker, crueler. But when he fixed his bold green eyes on her, his expression softened. “Okay. I’m sorry. I don’t ever like hurting anybody, especially not somebody smaller or…a girl. I have two big sisters.”

“Down in Mexico?”

Instead of answering, he blurted, “I’m not a bully! Not like my father!”

His hot gaze and the pain in his voice stripped her soul and demanded intimacies she didn’t understand and wasn’t ready to share. His wild eyes slid from her face to the red place above her elbow. “I could show you marks!” He began unfastening his shirt, but when she shrank from him, misreading his intent, he sucked in a hard breath.

“Híjole!” His brilliant eyes devoured her flat chest and then her skinny, sunburned legs as he cursed low in Spanish.

She blanched at his rough language.

“Tú hablas….” he whispered when he realized he was scaring her even more.

She nodded and then stared at his scarred boots and at her own pigeon-toed feet. “Por supuesto.”

“Lo siento,” he muttered in apology.

Spanish was the working language on the Triple K. She was a Keller. Everybody spoke Spanish. Everybody except Jet. But Jet was a natural at music and was learning it fast. She had a gift for imitating sounds, same as she had a gift for boys. Ritz wished she had Jet’s gifts. But other than being a Keller, she was plain and ordinary—as Roque had just so cruelly pointed out.

He gave her skinny body another of those insolent sideways glances that sent her heart rushing in stilted, painful beats.

“Quit looking at me,” he whispered in a raw tone, “with those big blue eyes that eat me alive. And…and I didn’t meant to scare you…or hurt your feelings.”

“You just can’t help yourself.”

“What are you—thirteen…to my eighteen?”

“Fourteen!”

“You’re too damn young to be hanging around me.”

“So, give me my horse and I’ll…”

“You’re skinny and not even pretty.”

Tears pricked. “You said that already!”

“And you’ve got spots.”

“Freckles!” Ritz shouted. “What’s wrong with freckles?”

“Same thing that’s wrong with your last name and all that metal in your mouth. I don’t like them.”

Just when she was feeling weird and sad and hurt, his low tone gentled. “You’ve got pretty hair, though. Mexicans have a thing for yellow hair. At least I do even though I don’t see colors like other people. Yours is really something. Who knows…in another year or two…maybe you’ll be even prettier than your friend. You’ve got something…she doesn’t. I’m not sure what it is exactly.” His voice had gone smooth.

She felt a strange, powerful pull to move toward him. “I don’t care what you think! Just give me my horse!” But she put her hand over her lips to hide the beginnings of a smile.

“Your horse?” he began in a teasing vein that made her blush again. “We’ll see whose horse she is. We’ll both call her. We’ll see who she chooses. I’ll even let you go first, guera,” he offered magnanimously, eyeing her yellow hair.

Guera was slang in Mexico for blonde.

When she shook her head, causing her hair to bounce on her shoulders, he laughed. “Scaredy-cat. Go on. Call her. If she comes. She’s yours.”

“It’s a trick!” Ritz muttered, catching a breath and then cupping her hands to the sides of her mouth and calling out, “Buttercup!”

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