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.