by Kylie Brant
Lifting a shoulder, she wondered at the tinge of bitterness in his words. “That’s the way my world works, Joe. You spend years clawing and scratching, hoping to get to this point. If you’re fortunate, you get there through sheer talent, but there are lots of people in the field just as talented, just as driven. So sometimes circumstances, or sometimes just dumb luck, lands a person at the top. In the end it doesn’t matter how I got here because now publishers are calling my agent, not the other way around. Of course the council is looking at the money and publicity this project stands to bring the tribe. Anyone who hires me at this point in my career is banking on the same thing.”
“And how will the publicity affect you?”
Puzzled, she turned in her seat to face him. “What do you mean?”
The look he gave her was grim. “I know how the press works. There will be…what do you call them, book tours? And interviews?”
“If my agent and publicist do their jobs, yes.”
“And the interviewers won’t just talk about your newest project, they’ll drag up your experiences in Baghdad, rake up the past. Why would you willingly put yourself in that situation? Don’t try to tell me it isn’t going to bother you. I’ve seen just how powerful those memories are, remember.”
There was a spurt of anger at the reminder. Yes, he’d seen her weak and vulnerable, and he’d never realize just how deeply that sliced. No one, not even her family, had ever known how close to the precipice she’d been at times, how little it would have taken to send her toppling over the edge.
Delaney didn’t speak until she could be certain her voice would be steady. “I can handle that when it happens. Maybe you don’t believe it, but I’m stronger, a lot stronger, than you give me credit for.” He didn’t have to know about the demons that still lingered in the night or her despair at recently realizing that she was not nearly as close to vanquishing them as she’d believed. “I don’t fault the council for wanting to cash in on all the publicity my name can bring them. They made a good business decision, the right one for all concerned.”
“Was it?” There was a bite to his words. “So who’s concerned about you, Delaney? Who’s looking out for what’s best for you?”
Stunned, she could only stare at him. She’d thought this conversation had stemmed from his disagreement with the council’s decision. But now…she could almost believe he sounded worried. About her.
Dusk was falling. He reached up to take off the dark glasses, folded them and stuffed them with just a little more force than necessary into place on the visor. “Just don’t pretend that this won’t cost you anything. Not with me.”
Something unfurled in her chest and her lips curved. “Well, Joe Youngblood. Careful, or you’ll have me thinking you’re concerned on my behalf.” The look he shot her was dangerous, but she just settled back, enjoying the crazy glow spreading through her system.
And it was crazy, she acknowledged freely. Crazy to be attracted to a man with whom there was no future. They had no connection, other than a chemistry that sparked to life every time they were together for more than a few minutes.
She’d seen a therapist for months when she returned to the States. He accused her of trying to exert control over her world because events in it had so rapidly rendered her helpless. Maybe he was right. Maybe she was seeing complications where none existed.
Despite what Joe thought, she was very, very good at protecting herself. But that didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate his showing a little protectiveness on her behalf.
The rest of the ride was accomplished in silence. But when Joe pulled up in front of her house and placed the vehicle in Park, Delaney slid toward him, slipped a hand along his jaw and pulled his head down to hers. She could feel the surprise in him, the sudden tension that spoke of wariness or something else. She didn’t try to identify it.
His inaction lasted only seconds. Then his mouth came alive beneath hers, and he pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her. His dark, sensual flavor arrowed through her system, played havoc with her pulse.
When his tongue pushed into her mouth, she met it with her own. Her fingers delved into his hair and she brought him closer. He knew exactly how to kiss, she thought dizzily, hard, hot and wet, as if he was staking a claim. He exuded a smoldering sexuality that a woman couldn’t help but want to test. And once tested, come back for more.
She unbuttoned the first three buttons of his denim shirt, then swept her hand in, fingers tingling where they touched warm smooth flesh. One of his hands came up to clasp hers, and slowly, reluctantly she opened her eyes.
“Hard to keep this straight. Are we done being smart?” he rasped.
Remembering their last conversation when she’d sent him away, she pressed a kiss to the side of his mouth. “How about if we settle for being careful?” He didn’t respond, just continued to look at her with that heavy-lidded gaze. “I’m going to be here for several months, Joe. And then I’ll leave. There’s really no reason to deny ourselves this, is there?” She took his bottom lip in her teeth, scored it lightly. “As long as we both want the same thing until then, what’s the harm?”
There was a long moment when she thought he’d answer. But then the moment passed and he opened his car door, her hand still in his. Fingers clasped, they walked up her front stairs, the sexual awareness growing with every step.
Delaney fumbled for the keys she’d slipped in her pocket, opened the door. Already she was having second thoughts. Who was she kidding here, really, herself or Joe? But before the thoughts could take root and doubt bloom, he followed her in the doorway and crowded her against the wall, his mouth in search of hers again.
Her muscles took on the consistency of warm wax. There was the hunger she remembered in his kiss. The hint of savagery that called to an answering wildness in her. She’d never been one to shy away from danger. And there was danger of a sort in Joe’s arms, in the fierce pressure of his mouth, in the dark promise of his touch. But it was a danger she longed to explore.
His hand went beneath her shirt, unsnapped her bra and she gave a hum of approval as she made short work of the rest of the buttons on his shirt, eager to feel flesh against flesh.
Their hands battled as they strove to undress each other and then he was pressed against her. She hissed in a satisfied breath at the contact. Her hands roamed his back, muscle punctuated by vertebrae, then traced the corded strength in his shoulders. His chest was smooth, his bronzed skin several shades darker than her own. And she had a slightly primitive compulsion to taste it with lips and tongue.
He shuddered against her when she did and Delaney had a moment to savor his reaction before she found herself swung up in his arms. His eyes glinted down into hers. “The bed this time.”
Lazily, she linked her arms around his neck. “We found the bed last time,” she reminded him. “Eventually.”
He dropped her on the bed, his face stamped with unmistakable male appreciation as he swiftly stripped, modesty obviously not a factor. And he definitely had no cause to be modest. Delaney propped herself on one elbow to admire his hard flat abs, lean flanks and the straining length of his manhood.
Her perusal was cut short when he joined her on the bed. Her hands streaked over him, down his sleek ridged sides, around to clutch at his taut buttocks.
He had her naked in a few swift movements, then she pushed at his shoulders, urged him on to his back. A satisfied smile curving her lips, she slid on top of him, and savored for a moment the exquisite sensation of bare flesh to bare flesh everywhere they touched-legs, hips, chests.
There was something fundamentally sexy about a man who let a woman enjoy his body, slowly, languorously, without attempting to take control or hasten toward the end. She kissed the cord at the side of his neck, tested it with her teeth, before moving lower to explore the dips and hollows where sinew met bone. She teased one hard male nipple with her tongue. Her palm slid along his side, over his hip, across his belly, and she felt the muscles jump and clutch und
er her touch.
His hands were hard, just shy of rough, as they swept over her shoulders to find her breasts. Her vision blurred as he took a nipple between thumb and forefinger, squeezing lightly. As a result her nip to the skin just above his hip was a bit sharper than she intended. But the resulting hiss she heard from him wasn’t one of pain.
He was hard, turgid and she pressed her mouth along his belly, careful not to touch him where he straining and ready with anything more than a whisper-soft breath. Her fingers skated down a solid muscled thigh, nails scraping lightly and she could tell the exact moment when his patience neared its end.
The fingers he threaded through her hair were just short of desperate as her palm skated closer, inch by infinitesimal inch, until she closed her fingers around his rigid length. The satisfied sound he made abruptly strangled when she took him into her mouth.
She had mere moments to relish the flavor of him, infinitely dark and sinful, to slide her tongue down his velvety shaft and up again to taste the heated drop of his desire at the tip. To stroke him in a way designed to create a madness in his blood, a frantic hammering that would echo the tattoo of her own pulse.
He drew her up for a long desperate kiss, teeth and tongue clashing, his fingers wrapped in her hair, cupping the back of her head to hold her close. And she knew then that her efforts to drive him just a little mad entrapped her as well. In seducing, she was seduced. Her ministrations had the blood chugging through her veins, inflaming her passion even as she deliberately stoked his.
She felt him tense below her and knew that in another instant he’d have her stretched out beneath him. But she wasn’t ready for it to be over. Not until they both were shuddering with desperation. Not until she’d etched a lasting memory on his mind, one that time and distance wouldn’t completely erase, even after she was gone.
She tore her mouth from his and straddled him, her hands stroking his sweat-slicked skin. His clever wicked fingers were finding all the places guaranteed to make her forget everything but the urgent need to find the shattering satisfaction she already knew he could bring her.
He was fumbling with the foil packet he must have taken from his jeans pocket, cursing viciously when it took too long to open. Delaney took the latex sheath from him, positioned it and then rolled it with excruciating slowness down his shaft.
His face was a hard mask of desire, brutal in its intent. The sight called to something reckless in her, a fervent wish to tempt and tease until his uncertain control shattered. But his hands were on her breasts, the deliberate teasing of her nipples firing a path straight to her womb. He rose to take one in his mouth, not quite gently, and her vision hazed.
She pressed him back, guiding his hands over his head to close his fingers around the old iron headboard. His eyes slitted as she took him in her hand and guided him to her softness. Then paused until he gasped a curse, a prayer, before taking him in, one tiny fraction at a time.
He felt thick, huge. That first bolt of pleasure had her head lolling, breathing growing strangled. She took him farther inside and then, when she heard him groan, lifted again. She drove them both a little crazy by keeping her movements shallow, denying them both the urgent motion they craved.
Somewhere in the distance she heard an animal’s mournful cry and the sound called to something basic in her, an elemental primal need to mate. She opened her eyes, tried to focus. Joe’s face was sheened with sweat, his hands clutching tightly around the worn painted iron. Every muscle in his torso, his biceps and shoulders stood out in stark relief. She leaned forward, closed her teeth against one rock-hard pec and unleashed the beast.
In an instant his hands streaked to clutch her hips, and he jerked upward, impaling her on his length, seating himself fully, deeply inside her. Bracing her hands on the muscled planes of his chest she sat up and took over the motion, meeting the rhythmic pumping of his hips with wild frantic movements of her own.
The pleasure careened and collided through her system. Nothing else existed. There was only his slick muscles beneath her fingers, clenching and releasing with each movement, their harsh mingled breathing, the tight grip he had on her hips and the incredible full sensation of his possession.
His hand slipped between their bodies to fondle her, rubbing the sensitive bundle of nerves until need fisted tightly in her belly. His hips slammed against hers, in wild shuddering lunges, until the implosion of her climax tore through her.
And through the fog of her release she thought she heard her name on his lips, a low guttural sound as he followed her headlong into pleasure.
“I knew it,” Joe muttered, scanning the list of incoming and outgoing numbers Lucas Tallhorse had managed to get from his exam of Quintero’s cell phone. Looking up, he said, “Good job. I appreciate you getting to this so quickly.”
“No problem. It was locked with a security code, but that was made easier by the fact that there are only a couple carriers available around here.” Lucas animatedly explained how he’d gotten the information and Joe could feel his eyes begin to glaze. He listened to talk about SIM cards, IMEI and ESN numbers and digital communication protocols. Finally the man seemed to wind down. “They teach law enforcement classes on cellular forensics now.” His broad face took on the wistful look a man usually reserved for an unattainable woman. “If I could take one, I’d probably get even better at it.”
Joe’s attention was back on the two typed pages stapled together. “Yeah? Maybe you should write a grant. Get the money that way.”
“Hey, that’s a good idea, Joe. I might do that.” Tallhorse walked away, still talking. “A grant. Huh. I could do that.”
But Joe had ceased listening. Graywolf, the little scumbag, was in this thing up to his lying teeth. Joe flipped through the pages, counting twelve calls from Quintero’s cell to Graywolf’s, and more than twice that many from Graywolf’s to the dealer, all in a three-month period.
There were nineteen different numbers in all. He pulled out his notebook, found the page where he’d written Mary Barlow’s number. Comparing it to the ones on the sheet, he found that calls to and from Barlow accounted for a full third of the ones on the list. Then he went back over the sheet and double-checked the numbers from the contact information he had on Quintero’s known clients. When he was done, there were still several numbers unaccounted for. But only two of them showed up several times a month. It would be interesting to see if those two numbers would have shown up on Graywolf’s cell, as well.
Joe sat back, considered. Where did Graywolf figure on the food chain here? Had he been selling drugs for Quintero? That seemed unlikely. Navajo Nation lands were small, relatively speaking. And chances were Quintero would not have wanted to share the wealth.
Which meant that Graywolf was connected to Oree in some other way, or that he was a step above Quintero in the same organization.
Joe considered the idea, decided it had merit. From what he could determine, Graywolf was working at a low-level job for his father’s construction company. Would he be happy making an hourly wage after the kind of money he used to pull down dealing drugs?
They had focused their investigation on Quintero, hoping he could lead them to his supplier, the one in charge of the pipeline smuggling drugs in from Mexico. At this point they had no other suspects.
But Joe had a whole lot of suspicion regarding Graywolf. And however Graywolf was involved in this thing, Quintero’s death meant either an opportunity or a problem. Either way, Graywolf would be unable to remain inactive.
He was going to need a couple officers to help with surveillance on the punk. And they were going to have to do it in a way that would avoid having the kid’s old man bring a mob of lawyers down here and close the kid off.
Glancing at the captain’s door, Joe saw he was on the phone. While he waited for the captain to get free, he went to the computer and brought up the software program he’d told Delaney about. Scanning in the composite picture, he typed in the commands to have it provide a
match to the sketch and sat back to wait.
Delaney had been sleeping soundly when he left her this morning, well before dawn. Even in slumber she didn’t appear completely at ease, curled in a ball facing away from him, as if unused to sharing a bed with another. She was going to have to get used to it.
Just a few months and then she’d walk away. She’d made that clear enough. And it was what he wanted, too. Exactly what he wanted. No ties. No pretending the relationship meant more than it did.
And if the thought of that day had his chest tightening, his thoughts darkening, it was because he hadn’t had his fill of her yet. Hadn’t unlocked all the secrets that he sensed she was still hiding. He could only wonder if a few months was going to be long enough.
“In my next life, I want to be a special investigator. Lots of desk work. Probably drink coffee all day.” FBI agent Delmer Mitchell leaned over his shoulder to peer at the computer screen. “You aren’t downloading porn, are you?”
“Of course. I always do it at work because we have a faster connection here.” Rising, he surveyed the fed. “You look like… hell.”
“If it makes you feel better, I feel worse than I look. Where can we talk?”
Joe checked the staff room, found it empty and motioned him in. The man placed his briefcase on the table and sank into a chair. “I am getting too old for this job, or the victims are getting too young. Either way, it’s been a helluva few weeks.”
Multiagency cooperation had been key to the case Joe and Arnie had been assigned. The DEA was working the undercover drug connections and the FBI had been brought in to cover the felony aspect. The NTP had focused on the local angle, with the hope that by comparing information they would more quickly stop the supply of ice to the reservation, before the problem spiraled out of control.
That hope had been extinguished when the three young men were found murdered and their bodies dumped at the side of a road. The FBI had quickly claimed jurisdiction in the case while Joe and Arnie concentrated on the supplier of the drug found in the boys’ systems. That investigation had led to Quintero.