He had told her once they were two lost souls. He thought now he'd spoken no more than the truth. But with each other, they'd found something that rooted them.
For a man who had been wary of cops all of his life, it was staggering to know his happiness now depended on one.
Amused at himself, he slipped into the water with her. Eve managed to drum up enough energy to open her eyes to slits.
"I don't think I can move."
"Then don't." He handed her another flute of champagne, wrapping her fingers around the stem.
"I'm too relaxed to be drunk." But she managed to find her mouth with the glass. "It's such a weird life. Yours," she elaborated. "I mean you can have anything you want, go anywhere, do anything. You want to take a night off, you zip over to Mexico and nibble on lobster and – what was that stuff again, the stuff you spread on crackers?"
"Goose liver."
She winced and shuddered. "That's not what you called it when you shoved it in my mouth. It sounded nicer."
"Foie gras. Same thing."
"That's better." She shifted her legs, tangled them with his. "Anyway, most people program a video or take a quick trip with their VR goggles, maybe plug a few credits into a simulation booth down at Times Square. But you do the real thing."
"I prefer the real thing."
"I know. That's another odd piece of you. You like old stuff. You'd rather read a book than scan a disc, rather go to the trouble to come out here when you could have programmed a simulation in your holoroom." Her lips curved a little, dreamily. "I like that about you."
"That's handy."
"When you were a kid, and things were bad for you, is this what you dreamed about?"
"I dreamed about surviving, getting out. Having control. Didn't you?"
"I guess I did." Too many of her dreams were jumbled and dark. "After I was in the system, anyway. Then what I wanted most was to be a cop. A good cop. A smart cop. What did you want?"
"To be rich. Not to be hungry."
"We both got what we wanted, more or less."
"You had nightmares while I was gone."
She didn't have to open her eyes to see the concern in his. She could hear it in his voice. "They aren't too bad. They're just more regular."
"Eve, if you'd work with Doctor Mira – "
"I'm not ready to remember it. Not all of it. Do you ever feel the scars, from what your father did to you?"
Restless with the memories, he shifted and sank deeper in the hot, frothy water. "A few beatings, careless cruelty. Why should it matter now?"
"You shrug it off." Now she opened her eyes, looked at him, saw he was brooding. "But it made you, didn't it? What happened then made you."
"I suppose it did, roughly."
She nodded, tried to speak casually. "Roarke, do you think if some people lack something, and that lack lets them brutalize their kids – the way we were – do you think it passes on? Do you think – "
"No."
"But – "
"No." He cupped a hand over her calf and squeezed. "We make ourselves, in the long run. You and I did. If that wasn't true, I'd be drunk in some Dublin slum, looking for something weaker to pummel. And you, Eve, would be cold and brittle and without pity."
She closed her eyes again. "Sometimes I am."
"No, that you never are. You're strong, and you're moral, and sometimes you make yourself ill with compassion for the innocent."
Her eyes stung behind her closed lids. "Someone I admire and respect asked me for help, asked me for a favor. I turned him down flat. What does that make me?"
"A woman who had a choice to make."
"Roarke, the last woman who was killed. Louise Kirski. That's on my head. She was twenty-four, talented, eager, in love with a second-rate musician. She had a cluttered one-room apartment on West Twenty-sixth and liked Chinese food. She had a family in Texas that will never be the same. She was innocent, Roarke, and she's haunting me."
Relieved, Eve let out a long breath. "I haven't been able to tell anyone that. I wasn't sure I could say it out loud."
"I'm glad you could say it to me. Now, listen." He set his glass down, scooted forward to take her face in his hands. Her skin was soft, her eyes a narrow slant of dark amber. "Fate rules, Eve. You follow the steps, and you plan and you work, then fate slips in laughing and makes fools of us. Sometimes we can trick it or outguess it, but most often it's already written. For some, it's written in blood. That doesn't mean we stop, but it does mean we can't always comfort ourselves with blame. "
"Is that what you think I'm doing? Comforting myself?"
"It's easier to take the blame than it is to admit there was nothing you could do to stop what happened. You're an arrogant woman, Eve. Just one more aspect of you that I find attractive. It's arrogant to assume responsibility for events beyond our control."
"I should have controlled it."
"Ah, yes." He smiled. "Of course."
"It's not arrogance," she insisted, miffed. "It's my job."
"You taunted him, assuming he'd come after you." Because the thought of that still twisted in his gut like hissing snakes, Roarke tightened his grip on her face. "Now you're insulted, annoyed that he didn't follow your rules."
"That's a hideous thing to say. Goddamn you, I don't – " She broke off, sucked in her breath. "You're pissing me off so I'll stop feeling sorry for myself."
"It seems to have worked."
"All right." She let her eyes close again. "All right. I'm not going to think about it anymore right now. Maybe by tomorrow I'll have a better shot at sorting it out. You're pretty good, Roarke," she said with a ghost of a smile.
"Thousands concur," he murmured and caught her nipple lightly between his thumb and forefinger.
The ripple effect made it all the way down to her toes. "That's not what I meant."
"It's what I meant." He tugged gently, listened to her breath catch.
"Maybe if I can manage to crawl out of here, I can take you up on your interesting offer."
"Just relax." Watching her face, he slid his hand between her legs, cupped her. "Let me." He managed to catch her glass as it slipped from her hand, and he set it aside. "Let me have you, Eve."
Before she could answer, he shot her to a fast, wracking orgasm. Her hips arched up, pumped against his busy hand, then went lax.
She wouldn't think now, he knew. She would be wrapped in layered sensations. She never seemed to expect it. And her surprise, her sweet and naive response was, as always, murderously arousing. He could have pleasured her endlessly, for the simple delight of watching her absorb every touch, every jolt.
So he indulged himself, exploring that long, lean body, suckling the small, hot breasts, wet with perfumed water, gulping in the rapid breath that gasped from her lips.
She felt drugged, helpless, her mind and body burdened with pleasure. Part of her was shocked, or tried to be. Not so much at what she let him do, but at the fact that she allowed him complete and total control of her. She couldn't have stopped him, wouldn't have, even when he held her near to screaming on the edge before shoving her over into another shuddering climax.
"Again." Greedy, he dragged her head back by the hair and stabbed his fingers inside her, worked her ruthlessly until her hands splashed bonelessly in the water. "I'm all there is tonight. We're all there is. " He savaged her throat on the way to her mouth, and his eyes were like fierce blue suns. "Tell me you love me. Say it."
"I do. I do love you." A moan ripped from her throat when he plunged himself into her, jerked her hips high, and plunged deeper.
"Tell me again." He felt her muscles squeeze him like a fist and gritted his teeth to keep from exploding. "Tell me again."