“You didn’t come here to talk, did you, Rafferty?”

“No.” A hint of a smile played at one corner of his mouth. “I came here to get laid.” The smile vanished like a ghost, and he touched her cheek just below the bruise Clyde had given her. “But it won’t kill me to do without. I don’t reckon you feel up to it.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she murmured wistfully. “It might be nice to feel wanted. Why don’t you kiss me and find out?”

“You sure?” he asked, the concern in his voice and in his eyes almost more than she could stand.

“Kiss me,” she ordered.

He complied with the lightest, sweetest of kisses, as if he thought her lips were made of spun glass. His care brought tears to her eyes. He was so big, so tough, and yet he handled her so gently, showing her something he would never tell her-that he cared… at least a little. Her heart pounded at the idea. The tears burned her eyes. She felt too vulnerable, too fragile. What she wanted suddenly was passion hot enough to temper steel, hot enough to burn away the sense of defenselessness and hopelessness.

Rising up on her toes, she cupped the back of J.D.’s head with one hand and pulled him into the kiss, into her mouth. She kissed him deeply, hungrily, wildly. The sparks struck and flared instantly. J.D. pulled her against him, bending her back over his arm. He answered her aggression with aggression, opening her mouth wider with the pressure of his, thrusting his tongue deeper. His hand slipped between them, inside the open front of her jacket, and found her breast. Kneading, squeezing, fondling her through the soft fabric of the old chambray shirt she wore. Then his fingers hooked in the placket and the buttons gave way, dropping to the deck like discarded pearls, skittering and rolling.

Her hands wound into the fabric of his shirt, tugging it free of his jeans, tugging it open snap by snap so she could touch him. She loved touching him. The heat of his skin. The crisp silk of his chest hair. The hard ridges of muscle and ribs. She felt drunk on it, on desire. Dizzy. Floating. Then she realized dimly that he had lifted her up.

He settled her on the glass-topped table. Laying her down, he opened her jacket and shirt, baring her to the starlight. He bent over her and kissed her breasts, one and then the other. She arched into the contact.

He crushed the fragile fabric of her skirt in his fists and pulled it up into a drift across her waist. Too impatient to be civilized, he dealt with her panties by tearing them free. Spurred on by the need, he parted her legs roughly and buried his face against the hot moist flesh of her woman’s body, ravenous for the taste of her.

When J.D. straightened away from her, chest heaving, Mari sat up and reached for him, drew him to her. She kissed him slowly, softly, deeply, savoring the taste of loving.

“I want you,” he growled, kissing her lips, her cheek, the side of her neck.

“I want you too,” she answered back, her voice as faint as a dream.

J.D. backed away from the table, drawing her with him. He dropped down into one of the armless deck chairs, pulling Mari onto his lap, straddling him. Mouths locked, teeth clashed, tongues dueled. Her hair tumbled forward across her cheeks and his, shrouding their faces like a curtain of rumpled silk.

J.D. closed his big hands on her hips, lifted her, and pulled her down on his shaft. Mari’s fingers dug into the muscles of his shoulders. She held herself stiff while the line between pleasure and pain blurred. Then slowly she began to move. As they came, J.D. crushed her in his embrace and she held on.

Afterward, she sank down against him, her arms looped around his neck. She felt utterly spent, physically and mentally drained of all energy. She had never felt so wanton or so helpless in the aftermath. J.D. held her. His heart beat strongly against her breast. She felt safe in the circle of his arms. She wished the sensation would last forever, but she knew it wouldn’t. That knowledge lay like a rock in her heart.

“You all right?” His voice was a low purr.

“At the risk of sounding immodest,” Mari said, trying to stretch humor over the vulnerability, “I thought I was better than all right.”

“Mmm…” he growled, nuzzling the side of her throat. “Fishing for compliments, Mary Lee?”

“If you don’t want to use up your daily quota of adjectives, I’ll settle for a butter mint.”

He chuckled and fished one out of his shirt pocket. Their eyes locked as he slipped it into her mouth. Mari caught hold of his wrist and kissed his fingertip, then drew it between her lips and sucked gently. J.D.’s nostrils flared. He was still buried deep inside her. As their gazes heated and sparked, her body tightened around him.

Mari shivered, not at the night air, but at the desperate need to keep him with her-not just for a few moments of bliss, but much longer. A time she wouldn’t set a limit on even in the deepest corner of her heart. She felt safe with him in a way that wasn’t smart. She felt complete in a way that she prayed was false. But tonight, when she was feeling so beaten and so lost, she couldn’t find the strength to let it go.

“Stay the night,” she whispered, terrified at the way the need made her voice tremble.

J.D. stared at her, knowing this moment was more than he would have allowed himself on any other night. She wanted more than he could give. He needed her more than he would ever admit.

Just tonight, he promised himself. It’s just sex.

He didn’t give the lie a chance to ring in his ears. He pushed past it with a hundred excuses.

“Stay the night,” she whispered.

J.D. lowered his mouth toward hers, his heart beating a little harder. “Try to make me leave.”

Del watched the lights go out in the downstairs of the house and come on in the bedroom that faced the yard. There was no shade at the window. He could see them clearly through the 6 2 44 sniper scope on the Remington 700. No night vision green haze. Amber light spilled out from the dormer into the ranch yard, falling just short of J.D.’s pickup. J.D. and the blond woman taking each other’s clothes off. Kissing. Touching.

J.D. and the blond woman. Like before, but different, Del knew. A different blond woman; the talker, not the dead one. Still, he didn’t like it. Not a bit. Things were getting too confusing. The blondes were running together in his mind, their features melding until they were almost interchangeable. Their images multiplied until he felt as if he had a swarm of fireflies in his head, swirling around, blinking on and off, distracting him from the business of maintaining his sanity. He needed to concentrate, but he couldn’t. He needed to stay within himself, but he couldn’t hold his mind steady enough. It kept exploding outward in a dozen directions at once. In his mind’s eye he saw that happening as if his head were a pumpkin exploding upon the impact of a 168-grain.308 hollowpoint load. Boom! Pumpkin pudding. That was his mind.

He was breathing hard as he lowered the nose of the Remington. His vision blurred. He pressed his lips together as best he could. Still, spittle drooled down over the button of puckered flesh on his jaw and dripped onto his shirt. There was something he ought to do. He knew there was. The blondes were haunting him day and night. They were after J.D. J.D. said they were after the ranch.

There had to be something he could do. He’d been nothing but a burden since the ’Nam. During those glory days he would have known what to do. During that time his mind had been as sharp as a blade, his instincts honed to perfection. He’d been a hero, a machine, a human rifle with a hair trigger and a true shot. Now he couldn’t hold his train of thought long enough to form all the right questions, let alone find the answers. The tracks ran together in his mind in an indecipherable tangle, like the rails at the big stockyards in Billings.