Til Death Do Us Part

by Beverly Barton

  CHAPTER SIX

  HIS HAND CLOSED over her mouth, silencing her scream. He gazed down into her eyes and laughed when he saw the terror she could not hide.

  “I promised I’d get out of prison and hunt you down, didn’t I?” Lenny Plott’s grin widened as he laid the knife across her throat. “I warned you that you’d be sorry if you testified against me. You and the other three.”

  She struggled to free herself, pushing up against him, but he pressed her down, trapping her with his body.

  “You can’t get away from me. There’s no one here to save you.” He removed his hand from her mouth, then kissed her hard, thrusting his tongue inside.

  Joanna moaned. He slipped his hand under her gown, inching his way up her leg.

  No, please, dear God. Not again. Not ever again! She prayed he would go ahead and kill her. She felt his fingers, painful and probing, and felt the knife at her throat.

  Joanna’s scream rent the night air. She jerked straight up in bed. Sweat coated her body, drenching her nightgown. Trembling from head to toe, she grasped the bottom sheet with both hands as she tried to slow her harsh, accelerated breathing. Reaching out a trembling hand, she switched on the bedside lamp.

  A dream. Only a dream. But it had seemed so real. Too real. Had it been a premonition? Was it inevitable that she faced Lenny Plott again?

  With his 9-mm Glock pistol held firmly and ready to fire, J.T. flung open the bedroom door and quickly scanned the area for an intruder. When he saw none, he turned to Joanna.

  “What happened?” Replacing his gun in the shoulder holster he was wearing, he walked toward the bed. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Where did you come from?” Sliding to the side of the bed, she slipped her legs off the edge.

  “I decided to have the ranch hands take turns standing guard outside. Starting last night. I woke up early and came over to relieve Chuck Webb.” J.T. sat down beside Joanna. “I hadn’t been here more than ten minutes when I heard you screaming.”

  Joanna scooted away from J.T., not thinking rationally, only feeling vulnerable and insecure. “It was just a dream. A nightmare, really.”

  “Must have been some nightmare,” J.T. said. “Want to tell me about it?” Joanna was acting skittish, like a spooked mare, he thought. If only she would let him, he’d take her in his arms and hold her, but he could see plainly that she didn’t want to be touched. Not right now.

  Joanna shook her head. “I’d like to forget it.”

  “Think you can go back to sleep?” he asked.

  “No.” She wondered if she’d ever sleep again without fearing the return of the nightmares. For months after the rape, in fact for nearly a year, she had seldom slept the whole night through. “What time is it?”

  “It’s about five o’clock. If you don’t think you can go back to sleep, I’ll fix us some coffee.”

  J.T. stood, but stopped abruptly before taking a step when he felt the tentative touch of Joanna’s fingertips against his hand. He looked down at her hand reaching out for him. His chest tightened; his stomach knotted. Turning his hand upside down, he offered her his open palm. Damn, but he wanted to grab her, drag her into his arms and hold her close and safe. Instead he waited, holding his breath.

  She laid her hand in his, threading her fingers through his fingers, clasping their hands together.

  Nothing in his life had prepared him for the feelings that coursed through him at that precise moment. Desire softened by overwhelming tenderness. A fierce protectiveness that made him want to fight the world for her. And a primitive possessiveness that shouted, This woman is mine!

  He could not bring himself to look at her, uncertain what he would see in her eyes, and afraid of what he might do.

  Holding tightly to his hand, she eased off the bed and stood. “Thank you, for being here.”

  He lifted his downcast gaze, drinking in the sight of Joanna, all feminine beauty in her teal silk nightshirt. Her rich, dark red hair tumbled around her shoulders in a thick, fiery mass. She stared at him with earthy, moss green eyes.

  He grew hard and heavy, the very sight of her arousing him painfully. “Joanna—”

  “Let me put on my robe and I’ll go fix our coffee.” She released his hand, turned and picked up her matching teal silk robe from the corner chair. “I have some banana-nut muffins I made fresh yesterday.”

  The moment she pulled away from him, he felt bereft, as if he’d been robbed of the tentative closeness blossoming between them.

  “Muffins and coffee sound good to me,” he said, and followed her out of the bedroom.

  She flipped on a lamp in the living room as they passed through, then turned on the fluorescent light in the kitchen. J.T. sat down in a Windsor chair at the table.

  “Are you sure I can’t help you?” he asked.

  “Thanks, but I know where everything is and can do it quicker without any help.”

  He sat and watched her as she prepared the coffee and warmed the muffins. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Damn! What was wrong with him? He hadn’t been this horny in years. If he needed a woman, he could solve that problem easily enough. But that was it. He didn’t want just any woman. He wanted Joanna Beaumont. And despite her denials and her brave show of strength, she was vulnerable and fragile and filled with distrust. There was a raging bull inside him, a rutting animal. But the object of his desire needed a patient, gentle and understanding lover. Hell, what a mess!

  He traced the lines and shapes on the table cover, then noticed it was a woven cloth of Navajo design. He’d seen enough Navajo rugs and blankets and other items to recognize them. When he’d given Elena permission to redecorate the ranch house after she’d married Alex, she had used various Navajo items in almost every room.

  Joanna placed two mugs of piping-hot coffee down on the table, then removed the huge muffins from the microwave and laid each on a separate plate. Placing a plate in front of J.T., she sat down opposite him. She tore her muffin in half, broke off a piece and popped it into her mouth. Chewing slowly, she swallowed, then washed the morsel down with a sip of coffee.

  J.T. lifted his mug. The coffee smelled good. He always started his mornings with a pot of coffee. But this morning, he’d been too anxious to bother with it. His gut instincts had told him he should be near Joanna. Somehow he had known she was going to need him.

  Holding the mug in both hands, he sipped the coffee. “Was your dream about Plott?”

  She gazed down into the dark liquid in her mug. “Yes. He had found me and was—” Joanna looked at J.T. and drew in a deep breath when she saw him staring at her, an odd expression on his face. “He was raping me…before he killed me.”

  “No wonder you woke up screaming.” J.T. laid his hand, palm up, on the table. “It’s not going to happen, Jo. You’re safe with me. Plott may find out where you are, but he’ll have to go through me to get to you. And tougher bastards than Plott have found out it’s not so easy to get through me.”

  Joanna glanced down at his outstretched hand. He was offering her comfort and support, the way he’d done in the bedroom. He wasn’t grabbing, wasn’t taking, wasn’t forcing anything. He was just waiting for her to make the first move. She laid her hand in his. With gentle strength, he encompassed her hand with his.

  She looked up at him and smiled. He returned the smile and squeezed her hand.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I’ll admit that I’m scared, but I’m dealing with it. I’ve had to deal with it before. For a long time after the rape, I had nightmares. I kept reliving what had happened over and over, and each time it got worse. That first year, even after I came out here to New Mexico, I seldom slept the whole night through.”

  “Yeah, I can understand,” he said. “I had a few nightmares after this.” He pointed to his black eye patch. “The bullet severed the optical nerve and screwed things up pretty bad inside my head. I was lucky I didn’t die or wind up some sort of vegetable.”

  “The eye
patch suits you. Makes you look roguish and a little dangerous.”

  “I am dangerous, Jo. You might do well to remember that.”

  “Are you trying to warn me about something?” she asked.

  He squeezed her hand, released it and stood. Lifting his coffee mug, he took a swig of the warm, sweet liquid, then set the mug back down on the table. “You’re a sentimental, romantic woman. You need something I can’t give you. I don’t want to wind up hurting you, but I could, if you let me.”

  He walked into the living room, propped his booted foot on the hearth and stared up at the portrait hanging above the fireplace. A beautiful woman with coppery-red hair, cut in a fashionable twenties bob, stared down at J.T. with compelling blue-green eyes.

  “That’s Annabelle Beaumont.” Joanna walked into the living room. “I painted her portrait, using some old photographs to go by and from studying the portrait of her that was painted when she was sixteen. Her father had it done and it hangs in one of the guest bedrooms at Mother’s house.”

  “I can see why Benjamin Greymountain wanted her,” J.T. said. “She was a beautiful woman.” Turning his head, he ran his gaze over Joanna’s face. “As a matter of fact, you look a bit like her.”

  “Yes, I know. I resemble my father a great deal, and he was told he took after his grandmother.”

  J.T. wondered what she’d say if he told her that he looked a bit like Benjamin Greymountain, that although he’d never seen any photographs of his ancestor, and didn’t even know if any existed, he had seen Benjamin’s likeness. When his mother had given him the silver-and-turquoise ring, she had also given him a yellowed sketch, the edges of the paper frayed and the charcoal drawing somewhat faded. She had told him that the sketch went with the ring, that both had belonged to her grandfather, Benjamin Greymountain, a Navajo silversmith and a revered leader to his people.

  J.T. paced around the living room, knowing he should leave before he said or did something he would regret, but he didn’t want to desert Joanna. If he left, she’d know he was running from her. And where could he run? Outside to stand guard? He had the oddest notion that there was nowhere on earth he could run to get away from Joanna, to escape the way he felt about her.

  He stopped at the easel set up before the row of windows looking out onto the front porch. Glancing down at the sketch, he caught his breath. Damn! Yesterday when he’d taken her to the site of the old archaeological dig, she’d spent a couple of hours sketching and several times he had caught her watching him. But he’d had no idea she was using him as subject matter.

  Hell, he shouldn’t be surprised. She’d already filled half a notebook with rough sketches of him. But this was not a rough sketch. This was a completed work. And there was something about the way he looked in the picture that greatly disturbed him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something—something alien to him.

  “I didn’t mean for you to see that.” She walked up beside him. “I suppose I should have asked your permission before drawing you.”

  He grabbed her wrist. She gasped. “Why would you have bothered to ask my permission to do another sketch, when you’d already filled a notebook with sketches of me?”

  She jerked away, glaring at him, her mouth rounded in surprise. “How did you know? When did you see my sketches?”

  “I found the pad yesterday while I was waiting for you to change clothes. It was sticking halfway under the chair I sat down in.”

  “Why didn’t you say something then?”

  “I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

  “You didn’t want—” Joanna laughed. “You’re so damn egotistical, J. T. Blackwood. Those sketches aren’t what you think. And neither is that one.” She pointed at the completed sketch on her easel. “If you think I’m some lovesick fool—”

  “I never said you were a lovesick fool. Just a sentimental, romantic fool. You’ve got it in your head that because your great-grandmother had an affair with a native, you’re destined to do the same.”

  “I wish I’d never told anyone, least of all you, about Annabelle’s diary!” Spinning around, she marched over to the easel, ripped off the sketch and threw it to the floor, then lifted her foot and stomped on the torn paper.

  “There’s no need for you to get violent. I didn’t mean to upset you, only warn you not to build any romantic fantasies around me.”

  J.T. grinned, a stupid, smirky, macho grin, and Joanna wanted to slap that silly smile off his face. “For your information, I have five commissioned works to do, all with a Native American theme. I’ve built my career on creating unique oil and watercolor paintings as well as finely detailed sketches. But somehow I’ve never been able to truly capture the spirit of this land or the Navajo people. Using you as a subject has helped me focus on your ancestry. In a couple of sketches I’ve come so close to putting my emotions on paper, in delving deep enough inside myself to find the truth.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You might have been raised as a cowboy, J.T., but when I try to sketch you as a cowboy, I know something is missing. In this sketch—” she stomped her foot on the object under discussion “—I somehow captured the real you. A man who is both cowboy and Indian, and yet is truly neither.”

  He grabbed her, not heeding the warning voice inside his head, listening only to the primitive needs inside him and to the whispers of his heart. Pulling her up against him, he glared at her. “You see too much, Jo. You understand too much.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she said, tilting her chin defiantly as she stared directly at him.

  “You should be,” he told her. “But heaven help me, I don’t want you to be.” Lowering his head, he took her mouth in a hot, bold kiss that quickly had her clinging to him.

  The moment she responded, giving herself over to his ravenous attack, he gentled the kiss, then cupped her buttocks and drew her up against his arousal. He ached with the need to take her, to be inside her.

  Lifting her in his arms, he gazed into her questioning eyes, then carried her over to the apricot leather sofa. He laid her down, untied her robe and spread it apart, revealing her silk nightshirt. Pulling the robe down her arms, he paused to kiss one and then the other shoulder. Joanna trembled.

  “Easy, honey.” He removed her robe and tossed it on the floor. Then he brought his body down on the wide sofa, placing his legs on either side of her. He braced himself by laying his hands flat on the cushion, one on each side of her head.

  She raised her arm, reached out and caressed his face. “I’m not sure I can do this. There hasn’t been… I don’t—”

  “Only as far as you want to go.” J.T. kissed her forehead. “Trust me just a little, Jo. When you tell me to stop, I’ll stop. It may kill me, but I’ll stop. I promise. Just don’t deny us some pleasure. I need this, and I think you do, too.”

  Nodding agreement, she tried to smile, but couldn’t. Although she longed for J.T. to touch her intimately, to lead her along a passionate path to fulfillment, she wasn’t sure that at some point she wouldn’t freeze in his arms. And if she did, what would he do? Could she trust him to keep his promise?

  He unbuttoned her nightshirt—slowly, kissing each inch of newly exposed flesh, painting a moist trail down her throat, between her breasts, over her stomach, then stopping just below her navel. He raised his head and looked at her. With the utmost gentleness, he spread apart her nightshirt, exposing her naked body completely.

  “Joanna.” He had never seen anything as beautiful as the woman who lay beneath him, all slender curves and creamy flesh.

  He ached with wanting, his need urgent and painful. Patience, he told himself. Patience!

  He slid over onto his side, lifting her as he turned. She gasped, grabbing him, holding on to his shoulders as he placed her on top of him. Raising her body up, she stared down at him. He slipped his hand beneath her nightshirt to caress her buttocks. Joanna sighed and closed her eyes, savoring the sensations his touch ar
oused in her.

  Capturing her nipple with his teeth, J.T. tugged playfully. Joanna moaned, then shivered. He licked and suckled one breast, then moved hurriedly to give the other equal attention. And just when she thought she could bear no more of the torturous pleasure, he stopped and kissed her throat. Lifting his arms, he slipped the fingers of his right hand through those of his left and placed his hands behind his head.

  “J.T.?” With labored breathing, she spoke his name in a harsh whisper.

  “I’ve been doing all the work,” he said. “It’s your turn.”

  “My turn?” What did he mean? What did he expect her to do?

  “Undo my shirt.”

  “Oh.” She obeyed his command instantly, her nervous fingers working quickly to unsnap his shirt. Sliding her hands beneath the chambray material, she spread his shirt back, revealing his chest the way he had revealed hers. She sucked in a deep breath. Dear God, he was the beautiful one. All sleek, hard muscle and hot bronze flesh. Lowering her head she licked one tiny, pebble-hard nipple, then kissed it. He groaned. She repeated the process on the other nipple.

  He reached around and grabbed the back of her head in one hand, threading his fingers through her hair. She dotted kisses all over his chest, moving steadily downward until her mouth reached his belt buckle.

  Grasping her shoulders, he pulled her upward until her breasts scraped over his chest. He took her mouth, thrusting his tongue inside. Her breathing quickened and she responded with a fervor that astonished her.

  He drew away from her, and whispered against her lips, “Would you like to unbuckle my belt, honey?”

  Nodding her head, she smiled, then sat up on top of him, resting her hips on his legs. She clutched her hands into fists, trying to stop the trembling. Taking her hands into his, he lowered them slowly to his belt. He helped her undo the heavy silver-and-turquoise belt buckle, then released her hands and waited for her to make the next move. She touched the zipper tab, then jerked her hand away.