Echoes in Death (In Death #44)(33)

“I’m all right.”

He brushed his lips to her brow. “I wondered how long it would take. You held it back all day.”

“I could see it in her face, in her eyes.” Because she could, Eve burrowed into him while the cat bumped his head against her shoulder. “I know what she felt, I know what it is to be trapped in that kind of shock, to run with that kind of fear. It echoed inside me, all day, but I couldn’t do the job if I listened.”

“I know it.” He held her close, held her tight. “I know it.”

“You heard them, too. I can’t let it break me.”

“You haven’t, and you won’t.” He tipped her face to his, met her eyes. “You won’t. But it had to be acknowledged.”

“It took me years to remember, and there are still blank spots. She’s not a child, Roarke, but there’s something defenseless about her. I don’t know how much she’ll remember, if she’ll be able to give us details we can use.”

“She’s alive.”

“Yeah, she’s alive. Mira’s already seen her, and Daphne seems okay with that. She trusts Nobel, that’s clear, and seems all right talking to me. It helped her, I think, when I could tell her the man who did this wasn’t a devil. It was makeup, a disguise. A false face.”

“She’ll know, as well as you and I, there was a monster under the false face.”

“Yeah. Yeah, but she knows he’s real. Flesh and blood.” Steadier now, she reached back to scratch the loyal Galahad between the ears. “Did you get any sleep?”

“I’d say we both got a bit more than an hour. Or rather the three of us did.”

“That’s good. And it’s one checked off.”

“Checked off?”

“We slept in the fancy new bed.”

“On more like, but check.”

She brushed back his hair. “How about we check off number two?”

He smiled at her. “I’m always in favor of finishing off a checklist.”

He continued to smile when she pressed her lips to his, as he stroked a hand over her. “You’re still armed, Lieutenant.”

She slid her own hand down, found him. “You, too.”

He laughed as she rolled over, straddled him. Studying his face, she pulled off her jacket, hit the release on her weapon harness. “You know, the first time I walked in here and saw the bed—the other one—it was: Wow. This one’s an even bigger wow,” she continued as she tossed the jacket aside, draped the harness over the footboard. “But I liked that bed.”

“It’s still in the house.”

“Is it?”

“In one of the guest rooms. I have very fond memories of that bed as well,” he reminded her. “We can visit it whenever you like.”

“Huh.” Considering, she pulled off her sweater, tossed it after the jacket. “You know how they have those pub crawls?”

“I do, yes. Have participated more than once in my time.”

“I’ve always been more find a bar, stay there, and do the drinking you came to do in one spot. But … one of these days we should have a bed crawl through this house. We’ll see how you hold up, ace.”

He laughed again. “Challenge accepted.”

He drew her down to him.

And there it was, she thought, the real deal. Her place, her man, her heart, all right here. Wherever she’d been, whatever brutal the beginnings, however lost, however broken she’d once been, she’d found this. And this, this was worth every painful, bleeding step of the journey.

Overwhelmed by it, she cupped his face in her hands, poured herself into the kiss.

“Eve,” he murmured.

“I’m alive.” She pressed his hand to her heart. “I love you.”

“You’re everything. All. Only. Everything.”

He shifted her so they lay facing each other, so he could glide his hands over her to soothe, to awaken. Gently, tenderly.

His only.

Every sigh, every murmur, every small tremble of response took him deeper into the beauty. The way she drew his sweater away to run warm hands over his skin, the way her mouth fit perfectly to his. He counted the pulse beats in her throat when he tasted there, felt the way her warrior’s body softened.

How she looked watching him, with firelight in her whiskey-colored eyes.

He could make her want simply by existing. There’d been no one else who could ever hold her heart with no more than a look, a word. He’d given her a life beyond survival, beyond even the badge that had been her world, and the symbol of that survival.

He’d given her love when she hadn’t truly believed in it, had never felt worthy of it.

And he’d made her believe, absolutely, she’d given him the same.

Now there was pleasure, pure and theirs. Flesh against flesh, hands and lips stoking that warm, glowing fire until it snapped and burned.

She arched when he undressed her, offering. She wrapped tight around him, giving. Her lips sought his, taking.

And when, as breath quickened, as pulses tripped, he slipped inside her, they shuddered together.

“A ghrá,” he said, and her pounding heart melted.

With every rise and fall, it poured out for him.