Creation in Death (In Death #25)(60)

She snorted, jabbed her elbow back lightly as he drew her back against him. “Perv.”

“There you go, stirring me up when we need our sleep.” His fingers brushed lightly over her breast, trailed down her torso, teased, trailed lightly up again.

On a sigh, she laid her hand over his, encouraging the caress. This was better, she thought, this was the way to end a long, hard day. Body to body, sliding away in the dark.

When his lips found the nape of her neck, she stretched like a lazy cat. “Sleep’s only one way to recharge.”

“So it seems. Just as it seems I can’t keep my hands off you.”

She felt him harden against her, and heat. “Funny place for a hand. You ought to see a doctor about that. It could…Oh.” She shuddered, seemed to shimmer when he slipped into her.

“There’s a better place.” Now his hand glided down, pressed against her as he pleasured them both with long, slow strokes.

She went soft, breath catching, body fluid as wine. His hands were free to touch, to take, to tease. Breasts, torso, belly, that glorious heat where they joined.

He could feel every quiver and quake that passed through her even as she surrounded him.

She breathed out his name as she rolled up and over, rolled through the climax. In the utter dark he knew all of her: body, heart, mind. Steeped in the moment, he murmured to her in the language of his shattered childhood. With her, he was complete.

So easy, so exquisite and simple, this merging, this melding. No empty spaces when he was with her, no haunting images of blood and death. Just peace, she knew only peace and pleasure. Those hands, so skilled, so patient. The whispers she knew were love dipped from a deep and turbulent well.

Here she could be pliant, here she could yield. So she rose up, and up, trembling as she clung, one moment, just one moment more to that breathless peak. Holding as she felt him climb with her, hold with her.

And so she slid down again, wrapped with him.

In the dark, she smiled, clutched his hand to bring it between her br**sts. “Buenas noches, Pablo.”

“Bonne nuit, Vivien.”

She dropped, grinning, into sleep.

I t was a shame. A true shame. But he could do nothing more with Gia. Nothing in his research of her had indicated she would have a mind so easily broken. Honestly, he felt as if they’d barely begun, and now he had to end it.

He’d risen early, hoping against hope that she’d revived sometime in the night. He’d given her dopamine, tried lorazepam—which weren’t easy to come by, but he felt the trouble he’d gone to was necessary.

He’d tried electric shock, and that he could admit had been very interesting. But nothing—not music, not pain, not drugs, not the systemic jolts—had been able to reach in and find the lock to the door her mind had hidden behind.

After the truly rousing success with Sarifina, this was a crushing disappointment. But still, he reminded himself, it took two to make a partnership.

“I don’t want you to blame yourself, Gia.” He laid her arms in the channels that ran the length of the table so the blood would drain. “Perhaps I rushed things with you, approached the process poorly. After all, we each have our own unique tolerance for pain, for stress, for fear. Our minds and bodies are built to withstand only so much. Now, it’s true,” he continued as he made the first cut on her wrist, “that training, exercise, diet, education can and do increase those levels. But I want you to know I understand you did your very best.”

When he’d opened the veins on her right wrist, he walked around the table, took her left. “I’ve enjoyed our time together, even though it was brief. It’s simply your time, that’s all. As my grandfather taught me, every living thing is merely a clock that begins winding down with the very first breath. It’s how we use that time that counts, isn’t it?”

When he was done, he moved away to wash and sterilize the scalpel, to scrub the blood off his hands. He dried them thoroughly under the warm air of his blower.

“Well now,” he said cheerfully, “we’ll have some music. I often play ‘Celeste Aida’ for my girls when it’s time for them to go. It’s exquisite. I know you’ll enjoy it.”

He ordered the aria and, as the music filled the room, sat, eyes dreamy, his memory stretching back decades, to her.

And watched the last moments of Gia Rossi’s life drain away.

13

EVE SHUFFLED INTO THE SHOWER AS ROARKE was drying off from his. Her voice was rusty when she ordered the jets on, and her eyes felt as if someone had coated a thin adhesive inside her lids during the night.

The hot blast helped, but she knew it was going to take considerably more to get all engines firing. She considered the departmentally approved energy pill, then opted to hold that in reserve. It would boost her, no question, and it would leave her feeling overwired and jumpy all day.

She’d stick with caffeine. Lots and lots of caffeine.

When she came out, Roarke was wearing trousers. Just trousers, she noted—all bare-chested, bare-footed, with all that gorgeous black hair still a little damp from the shower.

There were other things that gave the system a good jolt, and he was certainly top of her personal list.

And when he crossed to her, offering a mug of black coffee, her love knew no bounds.

The sound she made was as much in appreciation of him as that first life-giving gulp.