Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42)(54)

“You’re right. You’re right.” Though she’d have to ask, directly at some point. “That’s something anyway. It’s going to be rough enough on the Miras.”

“We’ll be there for them. Whatever they need from us. Now it’s late, and you’ll need to reinterview with all this in mind tomorrow. And considering how this may go, we could both use the sleep while we can get it.”

“You hardly sleep anyway.” She continued to prowl. “I don’t want you worrying about me before there’s even anything to worry about. I can deal with what was, Roarke, just like I can deal with . . .” She stopped at the desk, ran her hand over it. “What was.”

She had dealt with it, she reminded herself. And didn’t need replications of what she’d once had, not when she knew and cherished what she had now.

She sent him a speculative look. “Do you really want to get rid of this desk?”

“That will be up to you.”

She shook her head, waved that off. “No, I’m asking you. Do you want to get rid of it?”

“For reasons of aesthetics, efficiency—Christ, yes. It’s a bloody, miserable excuse for a workstation.”

“Huh. You’re seriously soft on me to leave it sitting here for nearly three years, offending your aesthetics and efficiency levels. Its days are probably numbered, so . . . we should send it off with a bang.”

She boosted up to sit on it, sent him a slow smile. “Come on over here, pal, and bang the hell out of me on my bloody, miserable excuse of a workstation.”

He let out a half laugh. “I never know what odd path that mind of yours might take. But it never disappoints.”

It wasn’t about the ridiculous desk, he thought—though knowing her, that could be part of it. But it was to show both of them she could take whatever ugliness would come her way. She’d face the nightmares, the fears, the brutal memories to do the job she’d sworn to do.

So he went to her. Though the glint in her eyes dared and demanded, he cupped her face again. And thinking of the nightmares, the fears, the memories, laid his lips gently on hers.

To cherish.

In response she took two fistfuls of his hair, yanked him to her, hard. “Uh-uh. This is desk sex. That means it might hurt a little.” So saying, she bit him.

Then she shoved him back, deliberately rough, so she could pull off her sweatshirt. “Give me what you have.”

“What I have?”

“Yeah. And more.”

“And when you say you can’t take it, remember what you asked for.”

“Oh, I can take it. Let’s see if you can when—”

He slid a hand between her legs, pressed, and the rest of the words died in a gasp. Before she could draw the next breath, his free hand clamped on the back of her neck, holding her in place while his mouth ravaged hers.

Now he used his teeth, left her breathless and churning on that erotic edge just this side of pain. She wrapped her legs around him, holding him hard and tight against her, rocking, rocking against the hand driving her mad.

“Inside me. You should be inside me.”

“Not yet, no. I’ve more than that,” he reminded her and caught her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Light pinches, relentless friction drove her straight over the edge.

Her legs tightened around him like a vise as she came, but he didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop.

Even as she moaned out her release, he shot her up again.

Her own breath burned her lungs as she stumbled along that edgy, dangerous line of pleasure. She dragged at his suit jacket with hands that trembled with outrageous needs.

“Take it off, take it off.”

Desperate, she tore at his shirt, sent buttons flying. Then at last her hands found skin. Hot, firm, hers. Now her arms wrapped around him, her fingers digging into flesh, her nails scraping, biting.

“Now. God. Now.”

But he said, “More,” and sent her flying.

Something thudded to the floor when he pushed her back on the desk. Her flailing hands sent disc files tumbling.

Then he was feasting on her breasts even as his hands drew the cotton pants over her hips. She struggled to reach his belt, to unhook it, to find him. To take him.

He left her quivering to glide his tongue down her body, to take it over her, into her.

The world was heat and glory, and needs newly incited the moment they were met, hungers keenly sharpened the instant they were sated.

She gripped his hips, said his name, only his name, saw his eyes, a wild and wicked blue with what they made each other.

And at last, at last, he plunged into her. Hard and fast, whipping them both past all borders of control. She met him madness for madness, greed for greed until the world dropped away.

She wondered her heart didn’t break through her ribs. Its crazed beat rang in her ears as aftershocks—for that had been an earthquake of sex—shook her body.

They sprawled over the desk like barely conscious survivors of a cataclysm, and she gave a passing thought to the desk.

How bad could it be if it could support all that weight?

“I might be lying on murder files. That’s just not right. It’s so disrespectful.”

“You’re not.” His face was buried between her breasts. “They fell over. Maybe off. We’ll sort it out. Christ Jesus, I can’t find my breath.”