Indulgence in Death (In Death #31)(26)

Her breath, already unsteady, feathered over his lips. “Sometimes you’ve just gotta take it.” She caught his bottom lip in her teeth, tugged.

She used her teeth again, on his throat, on his shoulder while her hand snaked between them to open his trousers.

She felt his muscles coil and release. All the power, she thought, under her. All that he was, hers for the taking. The thrill of that rode inside her while she helped herself, stirred him as she wanted him stirred until that power quivered for her.

He was hard and smooth, and she used her hands, her mouth to pleasure and to torment. Used her body to tease and arouse until her own needs nearly swallowed her.

He rolled, pinned her, his eyes fiercely blue.

“Now you’ll take it,” he said, and proceeded to destroy her.

She cried out once as those hands that had so coolly stroked the cat now used her, ruthlessly. He drenched her, saturated her with sensations that robbed her breath, shuddered through her body in choppy, drowning waves.

When she trembled, he hiked up her hips and plunged into her.

Filled and surrounded, caught and found. Craved. Power merged with power now as they drove each other.

Once again their eyes met, and he saw that deep and gilded brown. And now let himself fall into them.

A damn good welcome home, Eve decided as she dressed. She glanced over at Roarke. “I’ve got some work to get to.”

“Limo driver, crossbow. I figured as much. This would be the driver from Gold Star.”

She frowned a little, knowing he often checked the crime reports. “How much does the media have? I didn’t have time to monitor.”

“That’s about it. You’ve been stingy with the details.”

“They probably have the rest by now. Driver and co-owner, husband, father of two. Not a lot there to make too many ripples media-wise, until they get the crossbow angle. That’ll ripple some.”

“I expect it will.” She left off weapon and jacket, he noted, and slipped her feet back into her skids. Her comfortable work mode.

The murder might not ripple overmuch in the media, he thought, but for Eve it would be a drowning pool until she closed the case.

He had a bit more work to catch up on, but nothing, he decided, that couldn’t wait.

“Why don’t we have a meal in here and you can fill me in before you get to it?”

“That’ll work. I don’t want much. I took pity on Peabody and sprang for dogs and fries this afternoon.”

“Some cold pasta?”

“As long as it doesn’t come with a light white sauce. Vic’s last meal.”

“We’ll go for a light white wine instead.”

They ate in the sitting area of the bedroom while she relayed the basics.

“Are you convinced the killer didn’t know who’d be at the wheel?”

“It plays,” she said. “We’ll still look at the vic, the company, the employees, but it feels like the partner, the wife are telling it straight. The vic took the ride on a coin toss. When you listen to the transmissions during the ride, it’s easy, business as usual with casual personal stuff mixed in. I don’t, at this point, see Houston as a specific target. The company, maybe, but not him.”

“Add in the security expert. It’s interesting.” As he tore a hunk of olive bread, handed her a share, Roarke considered it. “Dudley and Son is an old company, with a long reach and very deep pockets. I’d expect a man in Sweet’s position to have been well vetted.”

“He was pissed. It felt real. Then again.” She shrugged and stabbed some curly pasta. “If he’d set it up, he’d be ready to make it feel real.”

“The question would be why.”

“Why Houston, why Sweet, why that company, why that method. Sweet’s PA’s off a little. Something off there,” she considered. “I want a closer look at that little bastard. Thinks a lot of himself. Whoever did this thinks a lot of himself. The method matters, the whole, elaborate setup. If you don’t know who you’re going to kill, then it’s about the killing, not the victim. When you go to this much fuss, it’s about how a lot more than who.”

“You’ve looked into who bought that particular make of bolt?”

“Yeah. I interviewed one of them on my way home. Iris Quill.”

“I know of her.” Roarke lifted his wineglass. “She’s got quite a reputation. A very serious hunter, and one of the founders of Hunters Against Hunger.”

“HAH.”

“An unfortunate acronym from the animal’s viewpoint, I imagine. Still, they do good work.”

“She struck me as solid. Gave me all her records on that weapon, even let me do a count of the bolts she has. And they add up. She also gave me a list of people she knows who use the same type. You don’t hunt.”

“No. It doesn’t appeal to me.”

“Mostly I don’t get why people want to tramp around the jungle or the woods, or wherever in the stone bitch of nature just to kill some stupid animal who’s just hanging around where it lives. You want meat, you can buy a dog on the street.”

“That’s not meat.”

“Not technically.”

“Not in any reasonable sense. I expect it’s the primal charge with hunting, the pitting yourself against the stone bitch of nature and so on.”