this little space outside the world with all its noise and harsh lights, mean shadows.
She slipped his shirt up and away, gave herself the pleasure of the warm flesh, the lean muscle, arched like a purring cat under the skill of his hands. Her heart began to kick, its beat spurred by his lips, his tongue, his teeth.
Need spread, simmering low like the fire in the hearth, then snapping into flame.
He took her over, he always could, so need and pleasure knotted together, tight, tight, driving her up, holding her on that single pinpoint of glory, then over to release.
She could have wept from the simple joy of it.
Cupping his face in her hands, she found his mouth with hers again. Sank with him, sank deep. Murmuring, she eased him onto his back. Now she straddled him, now she took him in. Slowly, slowly, slowly, her eyes on his face. she took his hands, pressed them to her heart as she began to move.
Fluid as water, building on the pleasure, drawing it out and out while her heart thudded under his hands.
He let her take, let her give while the beauty of it burned in his blood. Firelight shimmered gold on her skin, caught in her eyes. Gauzy layers of sensation thickened until he wondered he could breathe through them.
She pressed a hand to his heart, leaned over to take his mouth with hers.
“Eve.”
“I know, I know, I know.” Rising up again, she let her head fall back, let her eyes close, and rode them both into the perfect dark.
Now in comfortable at-home clothes, a glass of wine in her hand, and slices of some sort of savory chicken along with little golden potatoes and some unidentifiable leafy green on her plate, Eve figured the long day had rewards.
She felt loose and relaxed now instead of tired and traumatized. And though they’d missed their morning ritual, at least they’d preserved the evening’s.
She’d set up her board—or started to—and now she could roll through the day over dinner at the little table in her home office.
“First,” Roarke began, “what did you buy?”
“A lot of stuff. Heavy on bags.”
“A lot of stuff makes for a heavy bag.”
“Exactly.” She pointed at him with her fork, then stabbed some chicken. “If people didn’t cart around so much stuff, they wouldn’t need bags to hold it all. Handbags, shoulder bags, tote bags. People carry their life around with them, like refugees. I don’t get it.”
“But you bought them anyway, as gifts, which is what giving is all about, isn’t it?”
“There were socks, too. Fuzzy socks,” she remembered, dimly. It was like the fog of war, she realized. “And caps, and things to put other things in that go in the bags. They make fancy little cases just for lip dye. It’s crazy.”
“You can’t be serious!” He widened his eyes, got a narrowed stare from hers. “Astonishing.”
“Funny. And I got roped into buying a talking unicorn.”
“Excuse me, a what?”
There, at least, she’d surprised him, she decided—and wasn’t sure why she found it satisfying.
“A talking unicorn that goes in the unicorn bag for Bella that matches the big-ass unicorn bag for Mavis. It’s pink—the unicorn—with a silver horn thing, and it says stuff. And it dances. It’s probably going to scare the shit out of her.”
“I wager she’ll love it.”
“It kind of scared me. But Tiko kept zipping out, then zipping back with more stuff. He had to tag his grandmother, get a little extra time due to all the zipping out and back. I think he put the whammy on me.”
“Yet here you are, with your shopping done.” He toasted her. “Kudos.”
“I’d rather go hand-to-hand with a couple of Zeused-up chemi-heads than go through that again. What is this green stuff?”
Roarke only smiled. “Any progress on your investigation?”
“I’m learning the vic was probably a bigger asshole than I already thought. I’ll verify tomorrow when I go by the lab, but I think he roofied one woman, and probably more.”
Roarke’s smile faded. “That makes him more than an asshole.”
“Yeah, it does. And if I’m right, it’s a damn shame he won’t get his ass kicked for it. But since he got himself murdered, I’ve got to do the job.”
“A woman who found out what he did to her? I’d be inclined to take her side of it.”
“He deserved a cage, not a slab. Maybe a woman who found out he’d given her a boost, maybe a husband or boyfriend who found out. Maybe a woman who didn’t