Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(41)

“You’d better not be.”

He laughed, rolled to reverse their positions. “Never with you around. My cop.”

Now he nipped at her lip as his fingers got busy on her shirt.

“You’ve still got all this suit on,” she complained, and fought off his jacket. “There are too many pieces.”

“No rush.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Is that the way of it?” Willing to oblige, he slid his hand down the trousers he’d opened, and shot her straight to peak.

When she cried out in shock and satisfaction, he lowered his lips to her throat. “Not as much of a rush.”

He fed there, where her pulse hammered, then at her breast, so firm, so smooth, where her heartbeat thundered.

Her body was a constant joy and wonder to him. So slim, so tight. Satin skin over tough muscle. He knew where to touch to make her quiver, where to taste to loose a sigh in her.

He did both as they struggled themselves and each other out of clothes.

There, she thought, there he was, naked and hard and hungry for her. Everything about him so familiar and only more exciting for the knowledge. All that glorious hair sliding over her skin, those strong shoulders, the narrow hips.

She curled her fingers around him—hot, ready, as she was—would have guided him into her, but he pulled her up with him. Her arms locked tight around his neck to pull him closer.

And joined with him.

Shuddering, shuddering, she dropped her face to his shoulder. Impossible to feel so much, incredible to know there was more to give, to take.

The fire simmered, casting shadows and subtle light. The tree sparkled, casting joy.

Once again their lips met, clung.

She moved with him, surrounded him. Her hands came to frame his face in a gesture that burst through his heart.

Only with her had love and lust so perfectly twined. Only she met every need, every longing, every wish he’d ever made, every one he’d never thought of.

She bowed back, caught, caught on that final rise. Her hair streamed with the firelight, her skin glistened in it.

Once more he pressed his lips to her throat—a taste to take with him on the fall. And surrendered with her.

• • •

All the pretty young girls sat in a circle, cross-legged on the floor. She recognized three—Linh, Lupa, Shelby. All the others wore masks. All the masks were of Eve’s face.

“We’re all the same anyway,” one of the Eves said. “Under it. We’re all the same until you know.”

“We’ll find your names, your faces, who you were. We’ll find who killed you.”

“I just wanted to have some fun. My parents are so strict, so totally lame about stuff.” Linh sulked, shrugged. “I needed to show them they couldn’t treat me like a kid anymore. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It’s not fair.”

“Fair’s a bunch of shit.” Shelby snorted out a bitter laugh. “Life sucks. Dead just sucks louder. You can’t trust anybody,” she told Eve. “That’s the deal. You know the deal.”

“Who did you trust?” Eve demanded.

“You have to trust people,” Lupa insisted. “Bad things happen even when you’re good. Most people are good.”

“Most people are ass**les, and just out for themselves.” But even as she said it, a tear rolled down Shelby’s face. “If I’d had a knife like you did, I wouldn’t be here. You just got lucky. I never had a chance, not ever. Nobody gives a shit about me.”

“I do,” Eve said. “I give a shit.”

“It’s a job. We’re a job.”

“I’m good at my job because I give a shit. I’m what you’ve got, kid.”

“You’re just like us. Not even as much as us,” Shelby shot back. Bitter, bitter. “They didn’t even give you a name. The one you have’s just made up.”

“Not anymore. It’s who I am now. I made myself who I am now.”

And all the pretty girls sitting in the circle stared at her. And all of them said, “We’ll never have a chance to be anything.”

She woke with a jolt. Roarke sat, fully dressed, on the bed beside her, his hand on her cheek.

“Wake up now.”

“I am. I’m awake.” She sat up, stupidly relieved to have him so close as she shook off the sorrow of the dream. “It wasn’t a nightmare.” And still she was comforted by him, and by the cat who stopped bumping his head against her hip to worm his way across her lap. “Just my subconscious giving me a little mind f**k to start the day. I’m okay.”

He cupped her chin, his thumb brushing lightly over the shallow dent in it as he studied her face. Then nodded as he could see she was. “You’ll want coffee then.”

“As much as my next breath.”

He got up to fetch it, and to give her another moment to settle.

She sat, replaying the dream as she stroked the cat.

“All the vics, sitting in a circle,” she told him when he came back in. “The ones we haven’t ID’d had my face.”

“Disturbing.”

“Weird, but . . . apt, I guess. The lost and nameless. That’s what I was.” She took the coffee he brought her, drank some down—strong and black. “Mostly Shelby Stubacker had her say, being she’s really pissed off. Who did she trust? Who did she trust enough he or she or they got by her defenses, because I’d think her defenses, her survival instincts would’ve been pretty sharp.”