Survivor In Death (In Death #20)(95)

She slid the shirt from his shoulders, let her hands explore warm skin, tough muscle, let herself float as the bed floated, when he nudged those thin straps down her arms.

The warrior was his. The woman who had only moments before waged combat, defeated foes with a concentrated and fearsome violence, was soft beneath him, pliant and eager and impossibly sweet.

She would battle again and again, shed blood and spill it. Yet, miraculously, she would come back to him, again and again. Soft and pliant and eager.

He murmured in Irish. My love. And trailed kisses over those strong shoulders, those long arms where muscles were carved in alabaster. He slipped a flower from her hair. Tracing it over her even as his lips traced. Making her shiver.

“This is something special.”

“The flower?”

“The flower, yes. Extra.” He twirled it on its stem while he watched her. “Will you trust me?”

“I always trust you.”

“I want to give you this. To give it to both of us.”

He flicked the petals over her breast. And with his tongue he tasted them, and her.

She arched up, floating still, still floating, but higher now as if the wave of heat lifted her. Desire shimmered through her like the wine. She could hear birdsong, some exotic, erotic music with the quiet underscore of water lapping against the shore. She could hear his voice, the music of it, as he drew the white gown away.

The sun, his hands, his lips, all on her skin--as hers were on his. The bed rocked on the water, soothing as a lullaby.

Then he swept the flower between her legs.

The sensation had her fingers digging into him. “God.”

He watched her, watched that baffled pleasure run over her face. His cop, his warrior, and still oddly innocent about her own pleasures.

“It's called the Venus Bloom, and is grown on a colony on Green One. Hybridized,” he said, brushing it over her, watching her eyes blur, “with certain properties that enhance and heighten sensation.”

Her br**sts were tingling from it as if the nerves were raw-edged and exposed. And when his mouth closed over her, his teeth a light nip on her nipple, the shock of it had her crying out. He pressed the flower against her as he suckled.

Her body erupted.

She lost her mind. It was impossible to think through the barrage of sensations, the unspeakable pleasure. The shock of it had her body pulsing, plunging as the orgasm gushed through her.

“When I'm inside you ...” His voice was thick with Ireland now, his eyes wild and blue. “When I'm in you, Eve, it will do the same to me. Taste it.” His mouth crushed to hers, his tongue sweeping in. “Feel it.” He crushed the flower against her. “Come again, I want you to come again, while I'm watching you.”

She bucked, riding out the storm, brilliantly aware of every cell in her body and the pleasure that flooded them. “I want you inside me.” She gripped his hair, dragged his mouth back to hers. “Feel what I feel.”

He eased into her, slowly, so slowly she knew from the tremors in his body how rigidly he controlled himself. Then his breath caught, and his eyes, his beautiful eyes, went blind. “Christ.”

“I don't know if we'll live through it,” she managed, and wrapped her legs around him. “Let's find out. Don't hold back.”

He wasn't sure he could have, not now, not with the sensations that pounded him, not with her reckless words ringing in his ears. He let the chain snap and rode it with her, wave by hot, towering wave.

When the last swamped him, it swamped them both.

She wasn't sure she would ever get her breath back, or the full use of her limbs. Her arms had slid away from him, limply, until her fingers trailed in the water.

“Is that thing legal?”

He was flat out on top of her, breathing like a man who'd climbed up, or fallen off, a mountain. And his laugh rumbled against her skin. “God, only you.”

“Seriously.”

“We really ought to have Trina tattoo that damn badge on your breast permanently. Yes. It's been tested, and approved, and licensed. A bit tricky to acquire yet. And as you can see, its effects are transitory.”

“Good thing. Wicked effective.”

“Erotic, arousing, enhancing, without taking away the will or choice.” He lifted the flower, twirled it, then tossed it into the water where it floated. “And pretty.”

“Are all of these like that?”

“No, just the one.” He kissed her again, savored the fading heat on her lips. “But I can get more.”

“I bet.” She started to stretch, and frowned at the sound of a beep.

“Ah. Looks like we're through the first levels, and my attention's required.”

She sat up, shoved at her hair. She took one last look at blue water, white sand, and flowers strewn like jewels on the shoreline. “Playtime's over.”

He nodded. “End program.”

18

EVE SAT AT ONE OF ROARKE'S SUBSTATIONS AND began to pick her way through the lives of Kirkendall and Clinton. They needed a base of operations, a place to set up, to store equipment, to plan strategies and do sims.

A place to take someone like Meredith Newman.

She started with childhood--Kirkendall in New Jersey, Clinton in Missouri. Kirkendall relocating to New York with custodial parent at the age of twelve. Clinton doing the same, to Ohio, at the age often. And both had enlisted in the army at eighteen. Both had been recruited into Special Forces at twenty.