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Summerset rose, stepped away from the bed. “That should help her. I have her room on monitor, should she wake again. For the moment, sleep is the best thing for her.”
“The best thing is me finding who did this,” Eve stated. “Yeah, her parents will still be dead, but she’ll know why, and she’ll know the people who did it are in a cage. That happens, it’ll be better than a soother.”
She walked out, straight to her own bedroom. Cursing, she sat on the arm of the sofa in the sitting area to drag off her boots. It relieved a little tension to heave them across the roo
m.
Still, she was glaring at them when Roarke came in.
“Will she have them all of her life?” Eve pushed off the sofa. “Will she relive that in her dreams all her life? Can you ever get rid of the images? Can you cut them out of your head like a fucking tumor?”
“I don’t know.”
“I didn’t want to touch her. What does that say about me? For Christ’s sake, Roarke, a little kid, screaming, and I didn’t want to touch her, so I hesitated. Just for a minute, but I hesitated, because I knew what was in her head, and knowing it, put him in mine.” She yanked off her weapon harness, tossed it aside. “So I’m standing there, looking at her and seeing my father, and the blood. All over me.”
“I touched her, and you showed her there were no monsters in the closet. We each do what we do, Eve. Why ask yourself for more than you can do?”
“Goddamn it, Roarke.” She whirled around, spun by her own demons. “I can stand over a body and not blink. I can grill witnesses, suspects, and not break stride. I can wade through blood to get where I need to go. But I couldn’t cross the room to deal with that kid.” It sat in her belly like lead. “Am I cold? God, am I that cold?”
“Cold? Sweet Jesus, Eve, you’re nothing of the kind.” He went to her, laying his hands on her shoulders. Firming his grip when she started to shrug him away. “You feel too much, so much I wonder how you stand it. And if you have to close off certain things at certain times, it’s not coldness. It’s not a flaw. It’s survival.”
“Mira said . . . she said to me not long ago that once—before I met you—she’d figured I had maybe three years left before I burned out. Before I couldn’t do the job anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because the job was it. It . . .” She lifted her hands, dropped them. “It was all I had at the center of it. I didn’t—maybe couldn’t—let anything else in. And maybe, no matter how much I felt, there was too much cold with it. If things had gone on that way—I think I’d have been more than cold . . . I’d’ve been brittle by now. I’ve got to do what I do, Roarke, or I couldn’t survive. I’ve got to have you, or I wouldn’t want to survive.”
“It’s no different for me.” He pressed his lips to her brow. “Winning was my god, before you. Winning, whatever it took. And no matter how much gain you stuff in your pocket, there are still empty spaces. You filled them for me. Two lost souls. Now we’re found.”
“I don’t want the wine.” Craving the connection, she locked her arms around him. “Or the pool.” Crushed her mouth to his. “Only you. Only you.”
“You have me.” He swept her up. “Now and always.”
“Fast,” she said, already tugging at the buttons of his shirt as he carried her to bed. “Fast and rough and real.”
He climbed the platform, and didn’t lie her down so much as fell with her, pinning her arms as they hit the sea of bed. “Take what I give you, then.”
His mouth covered her breast over her shirt, teeth nipping so that the pricks of heat stabbed through her. Filled all the cold, dark corners.
She reared up, ground herself to him, let herself be overpowered. For a moment, for a shuddering moment, that lusty desperation flooded her, washing away all the doubts, the fears, the smears of the day. Now just her body and his, hard and eager, strong and hot.
When he freed her hands to take more of her, she tangled her fingers in his hair, dragged his head up so that her mouth fixed urgently to his.
There was his taste, those firm, full lips, that quick and clever tongue. The scrape of his teeth, small, erotic bites that stopped just short of pain.
Feel me, taste me. I’m with you.
Her hands were more impatient now, greedier now, as they pulled at his shirt. As he pulled on hers.
Her skin was like a fever and her heart a thundering storm under his hands, his lips. The demons that haunted her, those monsters they both knew forever lurked in closets, were cast out by passion. For now, for as long as they had each other.
The violence of her need whipped at his own, burning like a sparking wire in the blood.
He dragged her up, fixing his teeth into her shoulder, ripping what was left of her shirt away. She wore his diamond, the sparkling teardrop on a chain around her throat. Even in the dark he could see its fire. Just as he could see the gleam of her eyes.
The thought passed through his mind that he would give anything he had—life and soul—to keep her looking at him with everything she was in those strong, brown eyes.
She pulled him back with her, so that they rolled now, a sweaty tangle over the midnight ocean of the bed.
