Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42)(17)

“I’ll take a look at them, and their spouses.”

“I’ve some work of my own unless you need something more.”

“No, go ahead. Thanks.”

He gave her until midnight and, as expected, found her starting to droop over the work.

“That’s a big enough jump on things for one night.”

She didn’t argue, knew she had to let it simmer and settle. And if she was wrong, Edward Mira might limp home before morning.

But she wasn’t wrong.

“Did you know Mr. Mira and his cousin both went to Yale? The senator was a year ahead of him—would’ve been two but Mr. Mira graduated early. And he came out of Yale with that Latin deal—the magnum thing.

“Magna cum laude.”

“Yeah, that. And the Phi Beta deal, too. Graduated third in his class. The senator graduated like seventy-whatever in his. Mr. Mira has all these letters after his name. Don’t know what half of them are, and he served as class president his senior year, was the valedictorian. The senator did more than okay, but on an academic level, Mr. Mira kicked his ass.”

“I imagine that didn’t sit well with the future senator.”

“I’m thinking not. Anyway, the Urbans were just starting to rumble, and Mr. Mira was a frigging captain of the campus peace patrol. The campus was far enough out of the city, so reasonably safe, but there was trouble, and demonstrations, and regular bomb threats.”

In the bedroom, she sat to take off her boots. “The senator got his law degree, and took a job with a law firm in Sunnyside—away from the conflict. Mr. Mira came back to New York, got his master’s from Columbia. He got the doctorate from there, too, so they’re both Dr. Mira. He and Mira cohabbed for like a year.”

She shook her head as she undressed. “I never figured them for cohabs, you know? And looking into that stuff felt weird. Voyeuristic, but still. And they’re both starting out their careers and their life together in a city shaking from the Urbans. They got married at the grandparents’ house. There was this whole story I dug up. I shouldn’t have been taking time to look at stuff like that, but . . .”

“It’s lovely.”

“Yeah. And it shows another reason why the house matters so much to him.” She pulled on a sleep shirt, crawled into bed. “The senator and Mandy tied it up at the Palace—before your time—in a big, splashy deal.”

She turned to him when he slid into bed with her. “You could’ve had a big, splashy deal when we tied it up. Why didn’t you?”

“You wouldn’t have liked it.” He wrapped around her, drawing her in where he liked her best. “And for myself, I wanted our lives to begin where it mattered most. Home. I wanted that memory to be here—like the painting you had done for me. Of the two of us, under the arbor on our wedding day.”

She let out a sigh. “Maybe we’ll make it there.”

“Make it where?”

But she’d already dropped away into sleep, and didn’t answer.





3


She hovered just under the surface of sleep with strange little dreams winding through, braiding together, then fading off like ribbons of smoke.

Despite the misty parade of dreams, more odd than disturbing, she felt warm and secure and content.

So when Roarke shifted away, she edged over, holding on to that warmth, that security, that contentment.

His lips brushed her brow as he started to untangle himself from her.

She said, “Uh-uh.”

“Sleep,” he murmured, and would have lifted her arm away but she tightened her hold.

“Too early. Still dark. Stay.”

“I’ve a holo conference in—”

She just didn’t care, and angling her head found his mouth in the dark.

She wanted not just the arousal, but the intimacy of the quiet, the silky splendor of unity before the world woke and pulled them both back into the bright and the hard.

Just him—she wanted just him—in the big bed under the sky window before dawn crept in cold.

So she drew him with her into the soft and the sweet.

He heard her sigh with the kiss that built a shimmering bridge between night and day, one that poured love into him like liquid gold. And she shifted over him, laying heart to heart, mouth to mouth, body to body.

The long lines of her enchanted him: smooth skin, firm muscle. His hands roamed, slid under the thin shirt she slept in, glided up the lean length. He thought he could be content, his world complete, if a moment just like this spun into forever.

Then she rose up, tugged her shirt up and away, and took him in.

Pleasure leaped, one hot, hard bound, then settled into soft beats, like a pulse, a proof of life. They were shadows in the dark, cocooned in its secrets, bathed in its silence, enspelled by each other. She rocked him, rocked herself, toward bliss with slow, undulating movements that gripped his heart, ruled his body.

He rose up to her, his hands lost in her hair, his mouth locked on hers, and his heart—all its chambers—flooded with love. They took each other now into the slow burn of sensations kindled by that steady flame of love, beat by beat until the pulse was all.

Joined, they rose and they fell together.

Again she sighed, still wound around him, her cheek pressed to his. “Okay,” she said, sighing again. “Okay.”