Til Death Do Us Part (18 page)

Every muscle in J.T.'s body tensed. “Joanna is my woman. That's all you need to know…cousin.” J.T. walked across the yard, onto the porch and into the mobile home, not once looking back at Joseph.

 

J
OANNA KNEW SOMETHING
had happened between J.T. and Joseph, despite Joseph's efforts at pleasant conversation during lunch. J.T. had been silent and withdrawn, speaking only when spoken to, his replies always the one-syllable variety. And he hadn't said a word to her on the ride from Kate and Ed Whitehorn's place to Mary's old house. Joanna hadn't even tried to talk to him, uncertain and a little wary of what he might say if she prompted him to speak.

He parked the Jeep at the back of the small, frame house. Peeling paint clung to the wooden surface. Several floorboards on the south side of the back porch had rotted. Joanna knew that this house had stood here, unoccupied since Mary's death, because Elena could not bear to part with her mother's home.

J.T. got out, but made no attempt to assist Joanna. Ignoring him, she walked around to the back of the Jeep. When she opened the lift gate, J.T. grabbed her hand.

“Leave the luggage. I'll get it later.” He slipped the house key out of his jeans, then pulled Joanna away from the Jeep, almost dragging her as he headed toward the house.

She balked, digging her heels into the ground. “What's going on with you? What's wrong?”

“Not a damned thing you can't fix, honey.” He growled the words in a deep, dark whisper.

She glared at him, wondering just who this man was and if inside him still existed any small part of the J. T. Blackwood she loved. “I don't understand what this is all about, but—”

He jerked her into his arms, staring at her with such intensity that she sucked in her breath. With their gazes still locked, he lifted her up in his arms and carried her onto the small wooden stoop, unlocked the door and kicked it open. Despite having been recently cleaned, the house reeked with the mustiness of disuse and abandonment. The living room windows had no curtains, allowing the afternoon sunlight to flood the small area.

With the front door wide-open and the whole room bathed in golden sunshine, J.T. lowered Joanna to her feet. Slowly. Allowing her to feel every inch of his big, hard body. She had never seen him this way—on the verge of passionate rage.

“J.T.?”

“Shh. Don't talk. I need you, Jo. I need you now.” He covered her mouth with his, taking her with ravenous hunger, consuming her with his desire.

She trembled, unable to control her body's compliance, realizing that there would be no gentleness in his lovemaking, no consideration for her. And yet she did not fear his possession, understanding, as if by instinct, that this time she must be the one to do the giving. Whatever was wrong with J.T., she and she alone could ease his suffering and make everything right for him.

In his haste to uncover her body, he popped two buttons from her blouse as he ripped it open. Burying his face against her lace-covered breasts, he undid her bra and pulled it and her blouse down her arms.

While he unsnapped and unzipped her jeans, she worked feverishly to do the same to his. Suddenly taking fire, her passion and need kindled by his, Joanna wanted nothing more than to be J.T.'s woman, to give him pleasure, to take him into her body and become one with him.

The minute he jerked her jeans and panties off, he drew her up against him and leaned back into the wall, bracing his body. Her breasts crushed into his hard chest. She cried out. Her nipples hardened into tight, throbbing points.

He cupped her buttocks, kneading her firm flesh, pressing her intimately, upward and against his arousal. She placed her arms around his neck. He kissed her, thrusting his tongue into the sweet warmth of her mouth.

“I love you, J.T.” She lifted her lips from his and whispered against his throat. “Only you. Always you.”

Freeing his sex from his briefs, he lifted Joanna, positioning her legs around his hips, and drove into her with jackhammer force. Clinging to his shoulders, she cried
out with the sheer pleasure of their joining, feeling as she had never felt before in her life. This was part of heaven and part of hell. Pleasure and agony combined. Bliss and torment. The promise of fulfillment grew stronger and stronger, increasing the savage ache at the very center of her being. Holding her hips in his hands, J.T. shoved her back and forth, taking her…taking her…taking her! And all the while she gave to him—all that was hers to give.

Passion to equal his raged inside her, threatening to consume her with its overwhelming power. She was a woman in all her glory. Ecstasy was hers to give or deny.

The desire within J.T. overflowed, spilling into her, drowning him in the hottest, wildest, most complete fulfillment he had ever known. His release washed over her, bathing her in its fiery flood, igniting spasms of pleasure inside her so intense, she thought she would die from the sheer joy of them.

Completely spent, sweat dripping from their bodies, J.T. and Joanna clung to each other, their lips seeking and finding one final sweet contact as the last ripples echoed through their bodies.

Lowering her to her feet, J.T. held her in his arms, caressing her naked back. “I'm sorry if—”

She kissed him quickly, passionately, silencing him, then drew away from him and smiled. “Did I give you what you needed?”

“You know you did, you little she-cat.” He rubbed his cheek against hers. “You don't hate me, do you, honey, for taking you like that? I couldn't bear it if—”

“How could I hate you for needing me so desperately? Don't you think I figured out what this was all about?”

“Just what do you think this—” he rubbed himself against her “—was all about?”

“It was all about staking a claim,” Joanna said. “I assume you let Joseph know that I was your private property—”

“Now, honey, don't go putting words in my mouth.”

“As I was saying, you let Joseph know that I was your private property, but once that was done, you needed to make sure I knew just which man I belonged to.”

“You make me sound like some jealous, outraged, rutting animal.”

She cupped his cheek, caressing him with the tips of her fingers. “No, my love, you're just a man who doesn't want to share his woman.”

Grabbing her by the shoulders, J.T. surveyed her from head to toe, taking in every delicious feminine inch of her lovely face and beautiful naked body. “Why me and not him? He's Benjamin Greymountain's great-grandson, too. And he's the kind of man who could offer you everything you want. Marriage. Kids. ‘Forever after.' The whole works.”

“Maybe a part of me wishes it could have been Joseph,” she said, her voice a hushed whisper.

J.T.'s big fingers bit into her soft, womanly flesh. “Why not him? Tell me. Make me understand.”

“How can I make you understand when I'm not sure I do? All I know is that Joseph doesn't make me feel the way you do. When he kissed me, it was nice, but that's all.”

“He kissed you?” J.T. growled the question.

“From that first day, when I saw you astride Washington, I felt alive in a way I couldn't explain, not even to myself.” She ran her hand down his neck and shoulder, gripping his tense, muscular arm. “And I heard the drums. The drums Annabelle heard when she was with Benjamin.”

J.T. stared at her with disbelief in his eyes. “You didn't hear these drums when you were with Joseph?”

“No. Never.” Breath-robbing love filled her heart as she looked at J.T., at that strong, manly face, and saw pure, undisguised satisfaction. “Don't you know that I tremble when you look at me? That I shatter into a million pieces every time you touch me? And when you make love to me, I die from the pure pleasure of having you inside me?”

“Honey, you shouldn't say things like that to a man. Just look what you've done to me.”

She glanced down and saw that he was once again hard with desire. “How do I make you feel, J.T.?” She slid her hand down his chest, over his stomach and then circled his arousal.

He sucked in a deep breath. “You make me feel like a twenty-year-old.” He covered her hand with his, tutoring her in the precise moves his body craved. Within minutes, he stilled her caressing strokes. “Too much, honey. I can't bear any more. Let's go find a bed before I take you standing up again.”

He slammed the door shut, locked it, and lifted Joanna in his arms. Carrying her through the first door to the left, he found himself standing in a small, dark room. An old iron bed waited for them, the covers turned down. A fresh bouquet of wildflowers in a glazed pottery vase sat atop the chest of drawers.

J.T. laid Joanna down on the bed, divested himself of his clothes and gazed down at her. “Every time I look at you, I tremble inside from wanting you so much.” He lowered himself to the bed, straddling her body, aligning himself to perfectly fit her. When his hardness touched her softness, she cried out. “And when we touch, I shatter into a million pieces.” He spread her legs and entered her slowly, taking her with her full cooperation. “And when I'm inside you, making love to you—” he plunged in and then withdrew, only to delve deeper and harder “—I die from the pleasure of it.”

Their second joining did not possess the raging hunger of the first, but the joy was even deeper and the aftereffects longer lasting.

 

J.T.
STOOD JUST
outside his mother's house gazing into the distance at the ragged, monolith-type stone formations reaching upward into the crisp, blue, morning sky. His mother had been raised in a fairly traditional Navajo family, or so Elena had told him. Her love affair with the son of a white rancher had been heartbreaking for her parents.

He had no real memories of his grandparents, could not put faces to the names Elena had given him. He thought he remembered a voice singing to him when he was a small child. Elena said it must have been their grandmother; she had often sung to her.

Glancing back at the house, he wondered if Joanna had awakened yet or if, naked, warm, and with his scent still clinging to her skin, she lay sleeping peacefully. He had never lived with a woman; had never wanted that close a relationship. He kept his affairs brief and uncommitted. But Joanna was different. And she made him different. Gut-wrenching jealousy was something new to him. He hated that anyone had so much power over him, but he could not deny the fact that the mere thought of another man touching Joanna sent him into a rage.

Maybe the coffee he'd put on was ready. He sure could use a shot of caffeine. Rubbing his hand over his face, he decided he should shower and shave after he'd downed the first cup of coffee. The small two-bedroom house had one tiny bathroom, with a shower stall and no bathtub. He didn't mind the idea of sharing a shower with Joanna. He could go back inside, kiss her awake, make love to her again and carry her to the bathroom.

Just thinking about her aroused him. Hell, he was
thirty-seven. He shouldn't be walking around in a state of partial arousal most of the time because of one sweet little redhead.

J.T. breathed deeply, taking fresh morning air into his lungs. Reaching upward, he stretched the muscles in his long arms, in his broad back and lean waist. The mud-roofed stone hogan about fifty yards from the house caught his attention. Elena had told him that their mother had been born in that hogan, which now, like her house, was unoccupied. Close by the hogan stood the remains of a ramada. Had his mother, like her mother before her, sat inside that brush arbor, shielded from the sun, weaving intricately designed rugs?

A cloud of dust a good half mile up the road alerted J.T. that a vehicle was approaching. Although he was reasonably sure their early-morning visitor had to be a family member, his gut instincts warned him not to take anything for granted. He unlocked the Jeep, lifted his rifle out of the back and turned to await their guest.

Joanna opened the front door and stepped outside. “J.T.?”

Snapping his head around, J.T. took in the sight of Joanna standing there wearing nothing but his unbuttoned shirt. “Go back inside, honey. And put on some clothes.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Probably not, but you don't want to welcome our first guest that way, do you?”

Nodding agreement, she went back inside. J.T. watched and waited while the cloud of dust grew larger and thinner. Suddenly he recognized Joseph Ornelas's truck. Hell and damnation, what did that man want?

Joseph pulled his truck to a stop behind J.T.'s Jeep. Smiling, he got out and walked toward J.T., calling out the typical Navajo greeting.

“Yá' át' ééh,”
Joseph said.

“You're out and about mighty early.” J.T. glared at his handsome, younger cousin.

“I have some news—official news—for Joanna.” Joseph glanced at the house. “Is she still asleep?”

“What sort of official news? Something about Plott?”

“In a way.” Joseph looked up when he saw the front door open. “Ah, there you are,
nizhóní.
I have good news for you.”

When J.T. saw Joanna, he sucked in his breath. His cousin had been right to call her beautiful. She'd brushed her hair back into a hastily tied ponytail. Tendrils of red hair curled around her makeup-free face. Her billowing striped caftan hid the luscious curves of her body, the body J.T. now knew so well.

J.T. clamped his hand down on Joseph's shoulder, leaned toward him and whispered, “Any news for Joanna, good or bad, goes through me first. Remember that. You have my cellular phone number. From now on, use it.”

“What sort of good news?” Joanna rushed out to meet Joseph, stopping abruptly when she saw the look in J.T.'s glittering eye.

Stepping out of J.T.'s grasp, Joseph glanced back and forth from his bare-chested cousin to Joanna. “Claire Andrews has been found. Alive.”

“Oh, thank God.” Without thinking, Joanna threw her arms around Joseph and hugged him.