Leverage in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel (In Death #47)(82)

“I drank the water.”

“Good.”

He carried her into the bedroom where Galahad was already sprawled on the bed, belly-up like roadkill. After sitting her on the side of the bed, Roarke sat himself to take his boots off.

His boots, she thought, not hers. Maybe a small, stupid thing, she considered, but she knew a flick in the eye when it stung her.

She was, as he’d thought himself only minutes before, very good at reading nuances.

“If you want to stay pissed off—”

“It isn’t a matter of want.”

“Fine. If you’re going to stay pissed off, I can stay right there with you.” She yanked off her own boots, tossed them aside before she shoved up to strip off her weapon harness.

“I took him off the list, didn’t I? I’m not going to report him over the fraudulent ID. But you should tell him he’s on my scope now.” In angry clicks and bangs, the contents of her pockets hit the dresser. “So if he’s not retired, or he gets a yen to come out of retirement, I’ll bust him. And that’ll be on him.”

Roarke rose to take off the sweater he’d changed into after his workday. “I did.”

“Fine. Good.” She dragged off her belt with a snap like a whip. “And goddamn it, if I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t get within fifty klicks of an investigation.”

“Unless it suited you.”

Hot, molten, flaming fury erupted against his cold and bitter ice. “Bullshit.” She stalked over to him. “Bullshit, bullshit.” Shoved him. “Bollocks.”

“Careful.” His voice, dangerously quiet, only pumped up the heat for her.

“Oh, bite me.” Shoved him again. “I opened the door, and I can close it because I’m the one with the badge. I’m in fucking charge. I opened it, and I leave it the hell open because I trust you. So knock it off.”

Viciously pleased to see flashes of heat melting the Arctic ice in his eyes—damned if she’d be the only one on boil—she pushed again. Then added an insulting gesture he’d once pulled on her. She flicked his shoulder.

“There, I knocked it off for you.” And there it was, the hot blue center of the flame. She started to flick his other shoulder. He grabbed her hand; she lifted her chin.

And they lunged at each other.

They landed on the bed in a grappling heap. The cat didn’t just leap up, he hissed, nearly spat before he stalked away. Ignoring him, they rolled over the bed, fighting for dominance.

Until she grabbed Roarke’s hair by the fistfuls and dragged his mouth down to hers.

A brutal meeting of lips, teeth, tongues became a greedy ravishing. Temper-fueled lust scorched through blood, burning away any thought of care, of caution, as he tore her sweater away, yanked down her tank.

And when that greedy mouth fixed on her breast, the shock of sensation held her on the tenuous edge between pleasure and pain. She clung there, breath tattered, a red haze of need clouding her mind, and her body alive, wildly alive.

Her fingers dug into his back, his hips, nails biting. She wanted flesh—the feel, the taste of flesh, wanted him—hard, hard, hard—inside her. She scissored her legs, shifted the balance to roll again, fought to strip him, strip herself, to take what she wanted.

Take him. Be taken. And now.

He reared up, and now his hand took her hair, yanking her head back to expose her throat. Fed there while his hands moved roughly down her body, that long warrior’s body he craved like his next breath.

When his fingers speared into her, she came on a cry that held triumph and shock. And wanting both, more of both, he drove her up again.

In that instant, that glorious instant when she went limp, before she could gather and rise again, he shoved her onto her back. Plunged into her.

One instant, one more instant while they both gripped that toothy edge, while they hung together in air too thick to draw in, where their eyes met—flaming blue, molten brown.

They took each other, driving, driven in a fever of need, a mad thirst for more, still more. Lost in the storm, he muttered in Irish, words both incoherent and savage.

When pleasure, building, building, impossibly building, peaked, it slashed like a blade.

She lay under him, weak, dizzy, empty of anger. And somehow tendrils of sorrow trailed in to fill the void.

“It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s never you.”

“It’s never me you want to distrust,” he countered. “But there are still times, just now and then, when those cop’s eyes are on me and say different.”

He rolled off of her. “The heart and the brain don’t always mesh, do they? I know your heart, darling Eve, but your brain still has some mysterious corners.”

They’d scattered clothes over the bed. He considered just kicking them to the floor, but as he needed a minute to settle himself, he rose to dump them in a handy chair.

When he turned back to the bed, she’d rolled onto her stomach, and slept.

Heart, brain, body, he thought, all meshing in this case with pure exhaustion.

He drew the covers over her, slipped in beside her. And waited for sleep to come.

*

The air smelled of smoke, blood, burnt flesh. She saw the charred remains, the blackened severed limbs where skin had bubbled off the bone. The blood—black as tar—splashed over the walls like a vicious painting.