Apprentice in Death (In Death #43)(15)

“Well, the colors are strong. Strong colors are good, I guess, but it’s a little in-your-face. Distracting, I guess.”

“How about these?” He brought up the third option.

She didn’t know what fancy name the colors went by in some designer speak. Bullshit names like Contented Fawn and Zen Retreat and Chocolate Drizzle.

To her it was browns and sort of greens and whites that weren’t bright and shiny.

“Yeah, see, the colors are good, and they’re quiet but not girlie. They’re not saying, Hey look at me. It’s more like they’ve been there awhile. And the command center looks, well, commanding. No bullshit. But, I guess, most of the other stuff doesn’t look like anybody lives with it.”

“Try this.” He stepped over to her computer, keyed in a code. The second design slid on—with the color scheme from the third.

“Huh. You can just . . . Okay, yeah, this is . . .”

“If you’re not sure, not pleased, we wait. I’ll give her your input and she’ll incorporate what you like and take away what you don’t.”

“It’s just that . . . I like it. I really like it, and I didn’t expect to. The stuff doesn’t look as, I don’t know, fussy in these colors like it does in the in-your-face ones. It looks more . . . real, I guess. I like it. I figured I’d live with the one I could live with, and that would be okay. But I like it. It’s efficient, it’s not fussy or weird.” Sincerely baffled, she turned to him. “I like it. Jesus, the appreciation sex is going to get out of hand.”

“My fondest wish.” Hip-to-hip with her, he studied her choice, and found himself pleased he liked it, very much, as well. Still.

“Do you want to take a few days, think it over, make any changes that might occur to you?”

“No. Really no. It would make me crazy. Let’s just go for it. But I can’t have this place torn up or people running around in there when I’m working an investigation.”

“Leave that to me.” He turned to her, took her shoulders, dropped a kiss on her forehead. “This will be good for both of us.”

“I know that, too. I won’t miss it. I remember how I felt when you first brought me in here, when I saw what you’d made for me. That doesn’t change.”

“The reason I made it for you doesn’t change, either.” He slid an arm around her waist, led her out. “Hopefully you remember how you felt the first time I took you into the bedroom.”

“That’s imprinted.”

“Good, as she’ll have designs for the bedroom for us to go over in a day or two.”

“You were serious about that?”

“Absolutely.”

“But the bedroom—”

“Is ours, but was designed for me. Now it will reflect both of us, our needs, wants, tastes.”

“We don’t have the same tastes, exactly. I don’t even know if I have tastes.”

“You know what you like, what you don’t. And won’t it be interesting to see how it all melds? And as with your office, it has to suit you. It has to suit me as well, so may it take a bit more work than the two minutes you spent picking your office design.”

It wouldn’t take two minutes, no, not with Roarke weighing in on it. “Are we going to fight over, like, fabric?”

“I sincerely doubt it, but if we do, I’m sure we’ll make up, on whatever bed we choose together.”

Frowning, she stepped into the bedroom, looked at the enormous bed on its platform under the sky window. And couldn’t imagine anything that could suit her more.

“I like that bed.”

“And we may end up designing around it, but if not, we should bid it farewell as we did your desk. In anticipation.”

“The way you are, we’ll have nailed each other another five dozen times on this one before it’s gone.”

“Think of it as an undress rehearsal,” he said, and scooped her up.

Since it was hard to laugh and protest at the same time, she just went with it, so when she hit the bed, she wrapped her legs, boots and all, around him.

“We’re still dressed.”

“I can fix that. In a minute,” he added, and took her mouth.

Here was the payoff for a long and difficult day. His body pressed down on hers, that magic mouth sparking heat, spreading thrills. No dark thoughts pressing like bloody fingers against glass, pushing, pushing to come in. Here, she could have, she could take, love.

She heard the click as his fingers—as magical as his mouth—released her weapon harness. She shifted so he could tug it off, shove it aside.

“You’re disarmed, Lieutenant.”

“That’s not my only weapon.”

“I’m aware. But I’ve a few of my own.”

When his teeth scraped lightly down the side of her neck, she thought: Yeah, you do. In response, she pressed up, center to center.

“And yours is, as usual, already cocked.”

Against her skin, his lips curved. “Someone has her punny pants on.”

“I’m thinking about trading them in for naked.”

She managed to toe off her boots, the rise and fall of her hips with the effort pleasing them both. Rather than pull her sweater off, he slid his hands under it, skimmed them over the tank she wore beneath. When her nipples hardened against the snug material, he roamed down to unhook her belt, then up again to mold her breasts, to tease.