Free Divine Madness by Melanie Jackson

Anyway, he has a bad habit of licking the salt off my margaritas.”
    Miguel smiled again, and this time she felt it was genuine and personal, a smile just for her. It made the muscles of her abdomen clench and she had to look away. She had not counted on this intense physical attraction.
    A quick glance out the deep sill of the window revealed something unusual. An impressive palisade of black clouds was building on the horizon. They would finally have rain. And lightning. Had Saint Germain left Mexico and allowed Mother Nature to resume her natural course? Or did this mean just the opposite?
    “It will be here soon,” Miguel said softly, looking in the same direction. “I’ve always loved the rain. It’s such a miraclein these dry lands. Sometimes I go out in the storm and let it bathe me.”
    Naked. He went naked. As did she, though it wasn’t water she bathed in, but fire. Her breath caught on the image of the two of them naked, stuttered, and then stopped altogether.
    “Let me buy you a drink—with extra salt if you like. The firewater is safe here too, though I wouldn’t touch the wine,” he said. He moved a little closer and the hair on Ninon’s arms raised slightly as though pulled erect by static. “Then we can go on to dinner.”
    “A margarita please,” she agreed, looking away from him, away from the storm. She stared at her gold-gilt toes peeping out of her sandals and tried to regain her lost breath.
    A moment later a drink appeared in his hand. Either more time had slipped by than she was aware of, or he had somehow managed to both anticipate and communicate his wishes to the bartender before she voiced her order.
    “Here you go,” he said. Sensing her hesitation, he had dialed back the raw desire. It was uncanny how he read her. This was a master manipulator.
    “Thanks. And extra salt too.”
    She took the glass reluctantly—she should have been watching to be sure that nothing besides lime and tequila had gone into it. Ninon sipped cautiously. Some tequila was corrosive enough to cause second-degree burns on the lips and throat, but that wasn’t what she feared.
    Her worries were foundless, the drink was smooth, and her keen tongue and nose said that there was nothing dangerous in her glass except his intention to relax her enough to bed her. Miguel sipped his own drink and then curled his tongue over the rim. Again came the flash of an image, his tongue traveling up her body, after the salt of her sweat. Hers or his? She didn’t know. Ninon stared, reluctantly intrigued.
    Then, something else. She had seen only the quickest of glimpses when he licked the salt from his glass, but she was certain that he had black racing stripes on either side of his tongue. Natural coloration in tongues was not unheard of. Some breeds of dogs had blue and black tongues, but this looked deliberate, symmetrical—like the fine scars on his cheeks. But who the hell tattooed his tongue? It had to hurt like hell.
    At least it isn’t forked.
    She transferred her gaze back to the window. It seemed the safer place to look.
    “Shall we step outside?” he asked. “There is a gazebo where we could sit and watch the storm.”
    The idea of being outside where there was lots of room to run appealed to her. Ninon also enjoyed the contact high she got from nearby lightning. Of course, if it came too close she would have to leave him. Under her fake tan were the gold lines, evidence of her previous encounters with St. Elmo’s fire, and they would begin to glow if the lightning came near.
    “That sounds perfect,” she said, lying, but not too much.
    They walked side by side on the paved path lined with whispering palm trees that were also a white man’s import. The gazebo was raised, slightly Moorish in its architecture, and had a view of a church, Iglesia de San Jose, which was little more than a pair of perpendicular white towers topped with bright red cupolas. It was not a thing of architectural beauty, but she