She would battle again and again, shed blood and spill it. Yet, miraculously, she would come back to him, again and again. Soft and pliant and eager.
He murmured in Irish. My love. And trailed kisses over those strong shoulders, those long arms where muscles were carved in alabaster. He slipped a flower from her hair. Tracing it over her even as his lips traced. Making her shiver.
“This is something special.”
“The flower?”
“The flower, yes. Extra.” He twirled it on its stem while he watched her. “Will you trust me?”
“I always trust you.”
“I want to give you this. To give it to both of us.”
He flicked the petals over her breast. And with his tongue he tasted them, and her.
She arched up, floating still, still floating, but higher now as if the wave of heat lifted her. Desire shimmered through her like the wine. She could hear birdsong, some exotic, erotic music with the quiet underscore of water lapping against the shore. She could hear his voice, the music of it, as he drew the white gown away.
The sun, his hands, his lips, all on her skin-as hers were on his. The bed rocked on the water, soothing as a lullaby.
Then he swept the flower between her legs.
The sensation had her fingers digging into him. “God.”
He watched her, watched that baffled pleasure run over her face. His cop, his warrior, and still oddly innocent about her own pleasures.
“It's called the Venus Bloom, and is grown on a colony on Green One. Hybridized,” he said, brushing it over her, watching her eyes blur, “with certain properties that enhance and heighten sensation.”
Her breasts were tingling from it as if the nerves were raw-edged and exposed. And when his mouth closed over her, his teeth a light nip on her nipple, the shock of it had her crying out. He pressed the flower against her as he suckled.
Her body erupted.
She lost her mind. It was impossible to think through the barrage of sensations, the unspeakable pleasure. The shock of it had her body pulsing, plunging as the orgasm gushed through her.
“When I'm inside you…” His voice was thick with Ireland now, his eyes wild and blue. “When I'm in you, Eve, it will do the same to me. Taste it.” His mouth crushed to hers, his tongue sweeping in. “Feel it.” He crushed the flower against her. “Come again, I want you to come again, while I'm watching you.”
She bucked, riding out the storm, brilliantly aware of every cell in her body and the pleasure that flooded them. “I want you inside me.” She gripped his hair, dragged his mouth back to hers. “Feel what I feel.”
He eased into her, slowly, so slowly she knew from the tremors in his body how rigidly he controlled himself. Then his breath caught, and his eyes, his beautiful eyes, went blind. “Christ.”
“I don't know if we'll live through it,” she managed, and wrapped her legs around him. “Let's find out. Don't hold back.”
He wasn't sure he could have, not now, not with the sensations that pounded him, not with her reckless words ringing in his ears. He let the chain snap and rode it with her, wave by hot, towering wave.
When the last swamped him, it swamped them both.
She wasn't sure she would ever get her breath back, or the full use of her limbs. Her arms had slid away from him, limply, until her fingers trailed in the water.
“Is that thing legal?”
He was flat out on top of her, breathing like a man who'd climbed up, or fallen off, a mountain. And his laugh rumbled against her skin. “God, only you.”
“Seriously.”
“We really ought to have Trina tattoo that damn badge on your breast permanently. Yes. It's been tested, and approved, and licensed. A bit tricky to acquire yet. And as you can see, its effects are transitory.”
“Good thing. Wicked effective.”
“Erotic, arousing, enhancing, without taking away the will or choice.” He lifted the flower, twirled it, then tossed it into the water where it floated. “And pretty.”
“Are all of these like that?”
“No, just the one.” He kissed her again, savored the fading heat on her lips. “But I can get more.”
“I bet.” She started to stretch, and frowned at the sound of a beep.
“Ah. Looks like we're through the first levels, and my attention's required.”
She sat up, shoved at her hair. She took one last look at blue water, white sand, and flowers strewn like jewels on the shoreline. “Playtime's over.”
He nodded. “End program.”
18
EVE SAT AT ONE OF ROARKE'S SUBSTATIONS AND began to pick her way through the lives of Kirkendall and Clinton. They needed a base of operations, a place to set up, to store equipment, to plan strategies and do sims.
A place to take someone like Meredith Newman.
She started with childhood-Kirkendall inNew Jersey, Clinton inMissouri. Kirkendall relocating toNew York with custodial parent at the age of twelve. Clinton doing the same, toOhio, at the age often. And both had enlisted in the army at eighteen. Both had been recruited into Special Forces at twenty.
Corporals Kirkendall and Clinton had both trained atCampPowell, Miami.
“It's like a mirror,” Eve said. “No, like magnets. They just kept duplicating each other's moves until they slapped together.”
“No talking.”
Eve frowned over at him. Sleeves rolled, hair tied back, he hammered at a keyboard with one hand and tapped icons on a viewboard with the other. And for the last ten minutes, he'd been muttering in a stylish combination of Gaelic-she supposed-and the weird Irish slang he fell into when revved up.
Bugger this, bollocks to that, shagging, bloody, and a heavy sprinkling of fucks that sounded more and more likeyboy as he geared up.
“You're talking.”
“Feisigh do thoin fein!” He rattled that off, sat back for a moment, and studied his board. “What? I'm not talking, I'm communing. Ah yes, there you are, you bitch.”
Communing, she thought as he hunkered over the keys. Get him. But she turned back to her own work. If she wasn't careful, she'd get caught up watching him. He made a hell of a picture when he was in the zone.
The army had-as the army did-shuffled them around over the next few years. They'd lived in military housing, even after they married their respective spouses-within three months of each other. And when they had opted to leave the military, to buy homes, they'd plunked down in the same development.
She toggled back and forth between locations, financials, added Isenberry into the mix. And slid into her own zone.
When the in-house 'link beeped beside her, she wished she could curse in Gaelic.
“Detective Baxter and Officer Trueheart have arrived and would like to speak with you.”
“Have them wait in my office.” She clicked off, then shot the data and the notes she'd been working on to her office unit. “I've got some stuff,” she said to Roarke.
“So do I. I'm in Kirkendall's CIA file right now. Busy, busy boy.”
“Tell me one thing. Do agencies like that pay fees-outside fees- for wet work? For special assignments?”
“Apparently. I'm finding a number of what's listed as 'op fees' in his file. His top seems to be a half mil-USD-for the termination of a scientist in Belingrad. He worked fairly cheap.”
“How do we manage to live in the same world when you actually exist on a plane where half a million is cheap?”
“True love hobbles us to the same post. Freelancers can get double that for an assassination. Easily.” He looked up from his work. “I was once offered that, at the tender age of twenty-to do away with the business rival of a weapons' runner. A bit difficult to turn it down- quick money-but murder for pay has always struck me as tacky.”
“Tacky.”
He just smiled at her. “I'm in now, so I'll keep with it, and run through Clinton's and Isenberry's. It won't take long now, as I've already punched through.”
“I'll be in my office. Just for curiosity, what does…” She paused, brought the Gaelic phrase back in her mind, and mangled it in the repeating.