by J. D. Robb
She looked down at his hand, and the gold ring, their symbol, that shone on his finger. “You’re wrong if you think I don’t understand. I understand because I’ve got my own father’s blood on mine.”
“Oh Christ.” It sickened and infuriated him—he’d wallowed so deep into the mire of his own life that he’d so carelessly thrown that in her face. He drew her against him. “I’m sorry. Baby.”
“It wouldn’t help.” She eased back so he could see her. “Take my word. And believe me, you’re more of a man than any other I’ve known.”
He rested his forehead on hers. “I can’t do without you. I don’t know how I ever got by before you.”
“We’ll just go from here. You’ve had a rough couple of days, so I’ll try one of your favorite sports and make you eat something.”
He smiled, finally, when she rose to go to the AutoChef. “Tending to me, are you?”
Glancing back she studied him. He wore nothing but the trousers. Though there were hints of amusement in his eyes now, the shadows under them still dogged them.
And he was pale yet, pale from worry and fatigue.
Well, she would damn well fix that.
“I think I can figure out how, since I’ve been on the receiving end often enough.” She went for soup. “I don’t know much about mothers—neither do you—but from everything you’ve just said she’d hate you blaming yourself for what happened. If she loved you, she’d want you happy. She’d like knowing you got away from him. That you grew up to be successful and important.”
“However I managed it.”
“Yeah.” She fiddled with the soup, then brought it to him. “However you managed it.”
“He’s in me, you know.”
She nodded, sat beside him again. “I guess it works that way, which mean she’s in you, too. Gives you a big one up on me, on the DNA chart.”
“I’ve been shuffling the past behind me all my life. It doesn’t shadow me the way it does you.” He ate, without much interest, because she’d gone to the trouble for him. “I didn’t want to bring you into this, or anyone. I wanted to sort it out for myself, that’s all. But it’s eating at me. I can see her face now, and I always will. I have family I didn’t know of, people who lost her. I don’t know what the hell to do about it. So I find myself guilty and churned up and frustrated.”
“You don’t have to do anything until you feel easier about it.” She lifted a hand, stroked his hair. “Give yourself a break.”
“I couldn’t tell you straight off.” He looked at her now. “Couldn’t get the words out. Shutting you out was easier. Easier yet, it seems, was taking some of that guilt and frustration out on you.”
“Not so easy when I knocked you on your ass.”
He leaned over, kissed her softly. “Thanks for that.”
“Anytime, pal.”
“I’m sorry I left you alone last night. You had a nightmare.”
“I’d say we both did. We’ll figure this out, Roarke.”
“Not so much to . . .” Her face blurred, doubled, shimmered briefly into focus again. “Ah, fuck me. You tranq’d the soup.”
“Yeah, I did.” Her tone was cheerful as she took the bowl before it tipped out of his limp fingers. “You need to sleep. Let’s get you into bed while you can still walk. I can’t carry you the way you do me.”
“You’re enjoying this part.”
“Well, duh.” She got his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist, and hauled him up. “And I’m beginning to see why you get such a charge out of putting me under when you think I need it. It makes me feel all righteous and gooey inside.”
“Let me complete the reversal,” he managed in a voice slurring with the drug, “and say, ‘Bite me.’ ”
“Happy to, when you wake up. Step up, there you go. One more, that’s the spirit.”
“I should probably be pissed off at you, but I can’t quite focus on it. Come sleep with me, darling Eve. Let me hold you.”
“Yeah, you bet.” She eased him onto the bed, lifted his legs. His face was already going slack. “Just rest now,” she whispered as she pulled the covers over him.
He murmured in Gaelic words she’d heard before. I love you. She sat beside him, brushed the hair back from his cheeks, then touched her lips to his.
“Same goes.”
She set the lights on five percent so that if he surfaced, he wouldn’t wake in the dark. Then she went down to speak to Summerset before going back to her office.
While she worked late into the night, she kept the bedroom on-screen, so she could watch over him.
Chapter 13
His hands were on her, and his mouth, heating her blood, tripping her pulse before she was fully awake.
Languidly, Eve moved under him, sighing a little. Her senses were tuned to him—the scent of her mate, his taste, his shape—and the need for him rose up even as her mind flitted around the blurred edges of sleep.
Gently, lightly, fingertips stroked over soft, warm flesh. The slide of a tongue, the brush of lips, and an erotic whisper close to her ear. She was aroused, still floating on that liquid spill where pleasure was lazy and sweet.
Then he said her name. Said her name before his mouth ravished hers, before his hand slid down to cup where she was already wet, already aching.
And he shot her from dreamy drift into urgent demand.
Now there was only sensation, the pounding of blood and shocks of heat, and the tangle of limbs as they rolled to find more. She ran her hands over him, thrilling herself with the angles, the smooth skin, the hard lines of muscle.
He was starved for her. He’d wakened wanting her, just the warm comfort of her beside him in the quiet light she’d left burning against the dark. But he’d only had to touch her, to see her face, to need.
She was his constant.
Her mouth was eager, her hands quick and greedy. Their moods matched here, he knew. Give me more, and more. And take all you can.
Half-mad, he dragged her up. He could see her eyes, gleaming, focused on him as she locked her legs around him, as her hips surged to take him in—into the wet heat. She watched him still as she clamped around him, already coming as she surrounded him.
His breath snagged in his throat. His heart leaped after it.
He might have spoken, or tried, but she pulled him closer, took him deeper, and banding her arms around him used those strong, narrow hips to drive him.
Just hold on, she thought. Hold onto me this time. And she held him while the hunger consumed them both.
They slid down together, shuddering. When his head rested between her breasts, she closed her eyes again.
“Guess you’re feeling better,” she managed.
“Considerably. Thanks.” He brushed his lips gently over the side of her breast. “I suppose I deserved the tranq.”
“Goes without saying, seeing as you’ve doused me too many times to count. Point is though, you needed to sleep.” With her hand caught in his hair, she looked up through the sky window at the colorless morning sky. “You scared me, Roarke.”
“I know it.” Turning his head, he pressed his lips to her heart, then shifted so he could draw her over to him, rest her head on his shoulder. “This, all this . . . it sucker punched me. I don’t seem to have my wits about me yet.”
“I get that. But I think you broke a rule. The one about not sharing a personal crisis with your life partner.”
“Life partner.” He smiled up at the ceiling. “Is that your new, more comfortable alternative for wife?”
“Don’t try to change the subject. You broke the rule. I’ve been collecting marriage rules over the last year.”
“Always the cop,” he retorted. “You’re right though, and if it’s not a rule it should be. I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I don’t know altogether why I did. I have to turn this around in my head awhile more, figure out what to do. Or not.”
“Fine. But no shutting me out. Not again.”
“Tha
t’s a deal.” He sat up as she did, then caught her face in his hands. How she could have thought, even for a moment, that he’d grown tired of her was beyond him. “Life partners,” he said. “It’s got a nice ring to it. But you know, I still prefer the sound of ‘wife.’ ” He touched his lips to hers. “Mine.”
“You would. I’ve got to get moving. I have to report to the commander this morning.”
“I haven’t been keeping up with you. Why don’t we catch a shower together, and you can tell me about the case.”
She lifted a shoulder as if it didn’t matter to her one way or the other. But the fact was she’d missed, very much, being able to run through the steps and stages of an investigation with him. “Okay. But no funny business.”
“And here I was, about to grab my big red nose and squirting carnation.”
Naked, she turned in the bathroom doorway to stare at him. “You’re a strange guy, Roarke. But there will be no clowning around—haha—in the shower.”
He considered changing her mind, just on principle, but as he listened to her run through, he got caught up. And found it a relief to think about something other than his own worries.
“It shows how quick you can lock yourself into your own little world. I didn’t know there’d been a second murder. Both young, both students—different universities, backgrounds, interests, social circles.”
“There are connections. The club where the transmissions originate for one. Hastings and Portography.”
“And their killer.”
“Yeah.” She scooped her hand through her wet hair as she stepped out of the shower. “And their killer.”
“Maybe they both modeled for the killer at some point.”
“I don’t think so.” She stepped into the drying tube as Roarke reached for a towel. “Why the candids?” She lifted her voice over the hum of the tube. “Why take photographs of them when they’re unaware if they were modeling. Plus, they’re kids, right? It seems to me a kid would get all puffed up or jazzed up about the idea of modeling and tell their friends or family. Neither victim mentioned it to anyone we’ve questioned.”
She stepped out, and this time scooped her hand through dry hair, considered it styled for the day. “I’m starting to think this guy, or woman, isn’t a professional. Or at least, not successfully. Wants to be, believes he’s just aces.”
“Frustrated artist.”
“That’s what I get. If he does commercial work, he considers it beneath him. Stews about it. Sits around in his room whining to himself that the world doesn’t appreciate his genius. He has such a gift,” she continued as she walked to the closet to hunt up clothes. “A light inside, but nobody sees it. Not yet. But they will. He’ll make them see it eventually. When he’s done, it’ll be so bright, it’ll all but blind them. Some will say he’s insane, deluded, even evil. But what do they know? More, he’s sure of it, more will finally recognize who and what he is—what he can do, and give. The brilliance of it. The artistry. The immortality. Then, finally, he’ll get his due.”
She yanked a sleeveless tank over her head, then noted Roarke was simply standing, watching her, with the faintest of smiles. “What? Jesus, what’s wrong with this top? If I’m not supposed to wear the damn thing, why is it in the closet?”
“The top’s fine, and that strong blue’s a nice color on you, by the way. I was thinking what a marvel you are, Lieutenant. An artist in your way. You see him. Not the face and form, not yet. But you see inside him already. And that’s how you stop him. Because he can’t hide from someone who sees inside him.”
“Long enough to kill two people, so far.”
“And if you weren’t standing for them, he might never pay for it. He’s smart, isn’t he?” He crossed to the closet, chose a jacket for her before she could do so herself. “A clever mind, and oh so organized.”
He liked the pale, silvery gray jacket against the strong blue, and set it aside for her to put on after she’d strapped on her weapon. “He watches. Spends a lot of time blending rather than standing out, don’t you think? Better to watch. More to see when you’re not particularly noticed.”
She nodded. “That’s good.”
“But still, if they knew him as you believe, there’s something about him that made them see him as friendly, or at least unthreatening.”
“They were kids. Most, at twenty, don’t think anything can hurt them.”
“We knew better.” He stroked a fingertip over the shallow dent in her chin. “But I think you’re right again. In the normal way of things, at twenty you’re invulnerable. Is that something else he wants? That careless courage and innocence.”
“Enough, I think, that he lets them keep it right to the end. He doesn’t hurt them, mark them, rape them. He doesn’t hate them for what they are. He . . . honors them for it.”
It was good, she realized, really good to talk it out. She’d needed just this. “It’s not envy, it’s like appreciation. I think he loves them, in his twisted, selfish way. And that’s what makes him so dangerous.”
“Will you show me the portraits?”
She hesitated while he went to the AutoChef to program coffee. He should be studying the morning stock reports, monitoring any breaking news over breakfast, she thought. That was his routine. And she should be heading out to Central right now to prepare for her morning briefing.
“Sure.” She said it casually before sitting down and calling up the file on the sitting room unit. “I’ll have a couple of eggs, scrambled, and whatever else you’re having.”
“A very smooth way of ensuring I eat.” He programmed breakfast, then studied the screen—the two images Eve had called up on it. “Different types entirely, aren’t they? And yet, the same . . . vitality, I suppose.”
He thought of the picture of the woman he knew to be his mother. Young, vital, alive.
“It’s monsters who prey on the young,” he declared.
He couldn’t get the images out of his mind, even after Eve had left the house. They haunted him as he went down to make amends with Summerset. The two young people he’d never met, the mother he’d never known.
They linked together in his head, a sad and sorrowful portrait gallery. Then another joined him, and he saw Marlena in his mind’s eye. Summerset’s lovely young daughter. She’d been little more than a child when the monsters had taken her, Roarke thought.
Because of him.
His mother, Summerset’s daughter, both dead because of him.
He stepped through the open door of Summerset’s quarters. In the living area PA Spence was running a hand scanner over the skin cast to check the knitting of bone.
The wall screen played one of the morning newscasts. Summerset sat, drinking coffee, watching the news, and ignoring the PA as she cheerfully detailed the progress of his injuries.
“Coming right along,” she chirped. “Excellent progress, particularly for a man of your age. You’re going to be up and around on your own again in no time, no time at all.”
“Madam, I would be up and around on my own now if you’d go away.”
She clucked her tongue. “We’ll just get a reading of your blood pressure and pulse for the chart. Bound to be elevated since you insisted on drinking that coffee. Black as pitch. You know perfectly well you’d do better with a nice herbal tonic.”
“With you nattering in my ear I may take to starting my day with vodka. And I can take my own vital signs.”
“I’ll take your vital signs. And I want no trouble from you today about your vitamin boost.”
“If you come near me with that syringe, you’ll find it deposited in one of your own orifices.”
“Excuse me.” Though he’d have preferred to slink away unnoticed, Roarke stepped inside. “Sorry to interrupt. I need Summerset for a few moments, if you’d excuse us.”
“I’m not quite finished. I need to update his chart, and he needs his booster.”
“Ah, well.” Roarke slid his hands into his pockets. “You look be
tter today.”
“I’m quite well, considering.”
And angry with me, Roarke noted. “I wonder if some fresh air might be in order. Why don’t I take you out through the gardens for a bit, before the day heats up.”
“That’s a fine idea,” Spence said before Summerset could answer. And she whipped the pressure syringe from behind her back, had it pressed against his biceps and administered before he could blink. “Nothing like a nice turn around the garden to put roses in your cheeks. No more than thirty minutes,” she said to Roarke. “It’ll be time for his physical therapy.”
“I’ll have him back for it.” He started to step behind Summerset’s chair.
“I can navigate this bloody thing perfectly well myself.” To prove it, Summerset engaged the controls and propelled himself toward the terrace doors.
Roarke managed to get there in time to open them before he whisked through.
Back poker straight, Summerset drove over the stone terrace, turned down one of the garden paths. And kept on going.
“He’s in a very sour mood this morning,” Spence commented. “More so than usual.”
“I’ll have him back for the therapy.” Roarke shut the door behind him, and followed Summerset down the path.
The air was warm and close, and fragrant. He’d built this world, he thought, his world surrounded by the city he’d made his own. He’d needed the beauty. It hadn’t been simply desire, but survival. With enough beauty, he could cover up all the ugliness of all the yesterdays.
So there were flowers and pools, arbors and paths. He’d married Eve out here, in this manufactured Eden. And found more than his measure of peace.
He let Summerset glide himself along for the first few minutes, understanding the man probably wanted to put some distance between himself and Spence as much as he wanted the control.
