Desperation in Death (In Death #55)(33)

“Because you have to focus on finding her, and on finding who abducted her and Mina, who killed Mina, and if there are others being held. This is extraneous.”

“Also brilliant. It’s handy having a business genius around.”

“Absolutely true. Finish that up now. We’ll do another round with the wand in the morning after you’ve had some sleep.”

He shifted the cat, then got up, set the wand aside.

Eve considered as he took off his shirt. “I think since you did the wand thing, the soother thing, you should finish me off.”

He angled a look at her as he took off his shoes. “Emotionally, physically, or sexually?”

She wound a finger in the air. “All of that.”

“Feeling better, are you now?”

“Nothing hurts.”

“I’d like to keep it that way.”

“If you don’t think you have the finesse…” She lifted her shoulders.

“Aren’t you the clever one?”

He unhooked his belt, then gestured for her to stand as he took off his jeans. He stepped forward to unbutton hers, added another gesture for her to lift her arms.

She wore a simple white sports bra, wiser, he thought than her usual support tank that would have put pressure on the ribs. Eyes on hers, he peeled it up and off, slowly, before cupping her breasts, sliding his thumbs over them.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, met his mouth with hers. He tempered the heat she put into the kiss, kept it soft, gentle, deep. When his hands glided down her—butterfly wings—her arms tugged to take them both to the bed. But he held her in place so they stood, body to body, as he nudged her jeans over her hips.

His mouth moved from hers to brush lightly, lightly over her jaw, then to her throat where her pulse beat. She ran her hands over his shoulders, then they locked there when he skimmed his lips over her breast. A feather of a touch that tripped her heartbeat while her hands skimmed through his hair to press him closer. Closer until he took more, until he felt her heart sprint under his lips.

When once again she would have pulled him down to the bed, he turned her until her back pressed against the bedpost. Then his hands, his lips traveled down so he treated himself to the taste of her skin. He could never get enough.

The length of that narrow torso, the hard body under soft flesh, and the quiver he could bring inside that tough, disciplined body all enchanted, aroused, overwhelmed him.

She felt those clever fingers ride her jeans down her legs, then slide back up her thighs until her legs went weak and wobbly.

He could make her float, make her want to float, weightless and weak and willing.

Then she was bared to him as his mouth found her, as his tongue slipped over, around, into her.

“Okay. Okay. God!” She had to wrap an arm behind her, around the post to stay upright. “Wait until—”

But he didn’t wait, so the orgasm spread like a fever, so it rocked through her, left her gasping. Helpless, desperate, thrilled, she moved against him and took more.

“Again.” He nipped at her inner thigh, then soothed that tiny, glorious pain with his tongue. He’d take all she had, then find more. When she came again, quaking with it, crying out from it, he slid slowly up her body and set off a storm in her with his fingers.

“Take me now,” he said as he slipped, slowly, slowly, into all that heat. “As I take you. Where we stand. Together.”

She saw his eyes, only his eyes, that wild, wonderful blue. And she knew love so keen she wondered it didn’t slice through them both.

Perhaps it did.

So she wrapped around him, her body pulsing like a heart, and took him as he took her.

Eyes open and locked.

When he dropped his forehead to hers, when he found the ability to draw breath back into his body again, he gathered her up. Her body felt so lax, he wondered she didn’t just pour like rainwater through his hands before he got them both in bed.

There he drew her against him, stroked her back.

“Enough finesse for you?”

“Any more, I’d be in a coma.”

He felt the cat leap back onto the bed, take his place.

All’s well then, he thought, as she fell asleep in his arms.



* * *



The dream didn’t surprise her. She’d expected it. But even in the dream she willed herself to handle it, not to let it weaken her.

Maybe she hadn’t expected to find herself in that room in Dallas with the red light blinking, the air so goddamn cold. But it didn’t hold the terror for her it once had. She wasn’t a child now, and Richard Troy was dead.

She’d killed him, after all.

She stood there, in the room of so many nightmares, dressed in black, her weapon in place, and waited for Mina Cabot to speak.

Mina stood in her school uniform, her hair bright and shiny and smooth, her eyes bold and alive.

“You think you understand me? You came from this. I didn’t. I had family who loved me. You didn’t. I had friends and a nice room of my own. You didn’t have anything. What do you know about me?”

“I know they took all of that from you. I know what that’s like.”

“You didn’t have anything to take.”

“Tell me something I don’t know. Something I don’t know I know.”