by J. D. Robb
He ripped through the session, taking dark satisfaction in the burn of his muscles, the ache of the healing wounds, and the drip of his own sweat.
* * *
She was exactly where he’d assumed she’d be, doing precisely what he’d assumed she’d be doing. She stopped pacing long enough to give her desk three hard kicks.
And the hip she’d injured battling beside Roarke protested.
“Damn him. Damn him! Can’t he stay out of anything?”
The fat cat, Galahad, padded in, plopped down in the doorway of the kitchen as if prepared to enjoy the show.
“Do you see this?” she demanded of the cat, and slapped a hand on her sidearm. “You know why they gave me this? Because I can handle myself. I don’t need some—some man charging in to tidy up my mess.”
The cat angled his head, blinked his dual-colored eyes, then shot a leg in the air to wash it.
“Yeah, you’re probably on his side.” Absently, she rubbed her sore hip. “Male of the fricking species. Do I look like some wilting, helpless female? ”
Okay, maybe she had, she admitted as she resumed pacing. For a couple of minutes. But he knew her, didn’t he? He knew she’d pull it together.
Just like he’d known Lombard would come sniffing around him.
“But did he say anything?” She threw her hands up. “Did he say: ‘Well now, Eve, I think perhaps the sadistic bitch from your past will likely be paying me a visit?’ No, no, he did not. It’s all that damn money, that’s what it is. It’s what I get for getting hooked up with a guy who owns most of the world, and a good chunk of its satellites. What the hell was I thinking?”
Since she’d exhausted a good portion of her energy with her anger, she flopped into her sleep chair. Scowled at nothing in particular.
Hadn’t been thinking, she admitted as the worst of the blind, red rage faded. But she was thinking now.
It was his money. He had a right to protect himself from poachers. She sure as hell hadn’t stepped up to do it.
She sat up, dropped her head in her hands. No, she’d been too busy wallowing and whining and, screw it, wilting.
And she’d attacked the one person who fully understood her, who knew everything she kept bottled inside. Attacked him because of that, she realized. Mira would probably give her a big gold star for reaching that unhappy conclusion.
So, she was a bitch. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t made full disclosure before the I do’s. He’d known what he was getting, damn it. She wasn’t going to apologize for it.
But she sat, drumming her fingers on her knee, and the scene in the parlor began to play back in her head. She closed her eyes as her stomach sank, and twisted.
“Oh God, what have I done?”
* * *
Roarke swiped sweat off his face, reached for a bottle of water. He considered programming another session, maybe a good, strong run. He hadn’t quite worked off all the mad, and hadn’t so much as started on the resentment.
He took another chug, debated whether to sluice it off in the pool instead. And she walked in.
His back went up, he swore he could feel it rise, one vertebra at a time.
“You want a workout you’ll have to wait. I’m not done, and don’t care for the company.”
She wanted to say he was pushing himself too hard, physically. That his body hadn’t healed well enough as yet. But he’d snap her neck like a twig for that one. Deservedly so.
“I just need a minute to say I’m sorry. So sorry. I don’t know where it came from, I didn’t know that was in me. I’m ashamed that it was.” Her voice shook, but she’d finish it out, and she wouldn’t finish it with tears. “Your family. I’m glad you found them, I swear I am. Realizing I could be small enough somewhere inside to be jealous of it, or resent it, or whatever the hell I was, it makes me sick. I hope, after a while, you can forgive me for it. That’s all.”
When she reached for the door, he cursed under his breath. “Wait. Just wait a minute.” He grabbed a towel, rubbed it roughly over his face, his hair. “You kick the legs out from under me, I swear, like no one else. Now I have to think, I have to ask myself, what would I feel, should that family situation have been reversed? And I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find some nasty little seed stuck in my belly over it.”
“It was ugly and awful that I said it. That I could say it. I wish I hadn’t. Oh Jesus, Roarke, I wish I hadn’t said it.”
“We’ve both said things at one time or another we wish we hadn’t. We can put that aside.” He tossed the towel on a bench. “As to the rest…”
“I was wrong.”
His brows shot up. “Either Christmas has come early, or this should be made another national holiday.”
“I know when I’ve been an idiot. When I’ve been stupid enough I wish I could kick my own ass.”
“You can always leave that one to me.”
She didn’t smile. “She came after your money, you slapped her back. It was just that simple. I made it complicated, I made it about me, and it never was.”
“That’s not entirely true. I slapped her a good deal harder than was necessary, because for me, it was all about you.”
Her eyes stung, her throat burned. “I hate that… I hate that— No, no don’t,” she said when he took a step toward her. “I have to figure out how to get this out. I hate that I didn’t stop this. Wasn’t even close to capable of stopping it. Because I didn’t, couldn’t, and you did, I stomped all over you.”
She sucked in a breath as the rest came to her. “Because I knew I could. Because I knew, somewhere in the stupidity, that you’d forgive me for it. You didn’t go behind my back or betray any trust, or any of the things I tried to convince myself you had. You just did what needed to be done.”
“Don’t give me too much credit.” Now he sat on the bench. “I’d like to have killed her. I think I’d have enjoyed it. But you wouldn’t have cared for that, not at all. So I settled for convincing her that’s just what I’d do, and very unpleasantly, should she try to put her sticky fingers on either of us again.”
“I sort of wish I could’ve seen it. How much did she figure I was worth ?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’d like to know.”
“Two million. A paltry sum considering, but then, she doesn’t know us, does she?” His eyes—a bold, impossible blue that saw everything she was—stayed on her face. “She doesn’t know we wouldn’t give her the first punt. She doesn’t know there’s no limit on your worth to me. It’s only money, Eve. There’s no price on what we have.”
She went to him then, dropping into his lap, wrapping arms and legs around him.
“There,” he murmured. “There we are.”
She turned her face, pressed it to his throat. “What’s a punt?”
“A what? Oh.” He gave a baffled laugh. “It’s an old word for an Irish pound.”
“How do you say ‘I’m sorry’ in Gaelic?”
“Ah… ta bron orm ,” he said. “And so am I,” he added when she’d mangled it.
“Roarke. Is she still in New York?” When he said nothing, she leaned back, met his eyes. “You’d know where she is. It’s what you do. I made myself feel stupid. Don’t make me feel incapable on top of it.”
“As of the time I left the office, she hadn’t yet checked out of her hotel, nor had her son and his wife.”
“Okay, then tomorrow … No, tomorrow’s the thing. I’m not forgetting the thing, and I’m going to do… whatever.”
And whatever the whatever was that went into preparing for a major party would be her penance for bitchy idiocy.
“Somebody’ll have to tell me whatever it is I should do for the thing.” She framed his face with her hands, spoke urgently. “Please don’t let it be Summerset.”
“There’s nothing you have to do, and the thing is called a party.”
“You do stuff. Coordinate stuff, and approve it, blather with the caterer and that kind of thing.”
“I never blather, not even with the caterer, but if it’ll make you feel better you can help supervise the decorating up in the ballroom.”
“Am I going to need a list?”
“Several. Will that help with the guilt you’re feeling?”
“It’s a start. On Sunday, if Lombard’s still here, I’m going to see her.”
“Why?” Now he framed her face in turn. “Why put yourself through that, or give her any sort of an opening to stab at you again?”
“I need to make it clear to her she can’t. I need to do it face-to-face. It’s—and this is embarrassing enough that I’ll have to hurt you if you repeat it—but it’s about self-esteem. I hate being a coward, and I stuck my head in the sand on this.”
“That’s an ostrich.”
“Whatever, I don’t like being one. So, we do what we’ve planned to do tomorrow—because she’s not worth putting on the list—and if she’s still here on Sunday, I deal with her.”
“We deal.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, okay. We deal.” She pressed her cheek to his. “You’re all sweaty.”
“I used my temper constructively, as opposed to kicking my desk.”
“Shut up, or I might not still feel guilty enough to offer to wash your back in the shower.”
“Lips are sealed,” he murmured, and pressed them to her throat.
“After.” She gripped his tank, yanked it up and off. “After I screw your brains out of your ears.”
“Far be it from me to dictate how you should assuage your guilt. Do you have a lot of it?”
She bit his good shoulder. “You’re about to find out.”
She toppled them both off the bench and onto the mat. “Well, ouch. I take it guilt doesn’t bring out your gentler side.”
“What it does is make me edgy.” She straddled him, planted her hands on his chest. “And a little mean. And since I’ve already kicked my desk…”
She lowered down, her breasts skimming his damp chest, her nails raking lightly over his skin on their way to the waistband of his shorts. She tugged again, freed him.
Then her mouth clamped over him like a vise.
“Oh, well then.” He dug his fingers into the mat. “Have at it.”
His mind switched off, his vision went red, and pulsed. She used her teeth—yes, just a little bit mean—and tore the breath out of him. Muscles he’d tuned and oiled in temper began to quiver, helplessly. And a moment before his world imploded, she released him. Slicked her tongue up his belly.
He started to roll her over, but she scissored her legs, shifted her weight, and pinned him once more. Her eyes were dark gold and full of arrogance.
“I’m starting to feel a little better.”
He caught his breath. “Good. Whatever I can do to help.”
“I want your mouth.” She crushed it under hers, using her teeth, her tongue, her lips, so his own blood pounded through him, a hundred drums.
“I love your mouth.” Hers was wild on his. “I want you to do things to me with it.” She dragged and pulled at her own shirt. This time when her breasts skimmed his chest it was flesh to flesh.
She let him flip her to her back, arched up to him so that his mouth, hot and ravenous for her, could take. Her stomach clenched, twisted, a fist of need and pleasure. Her breath was already going ragged when he yanked down her pants.
His hands, she thought on a fresh leap, his hands were as skilled as his mouth. And the fist in her belly tightened, tightened, then flew open in release.
Her fingers tangled in his hair, gripped all that black silk to guide him down, down to where the need was already blooming again, so full, so ripe, it took only a flick of his tongue to send her flying.
And he was with her, right with her through every breath and beat.
Now she quivered, and the heat poured off her. She was wet and wild and his. When he braced himself over her, looked down at her face, she gripped his hair again.
“Hard,” she told him. “Hard and fast. Make me scream.” And pulled his mouth to hers even as he drove himself into her.
He plunged, a beast on fire, and she raced with him. Her hips surged up, demanding more even as his lips muffled the scream.
They whipped each other mercilessly to the edge, and over.
* * *
She nearly had her breath back, and figured she’d recover the full use of her legs, eventually.
“Just remember, it was my fault.”
He stirred. “Hmm?”
“It was my fault, so I’m the reason you just got your rocks off.”
“Entirely your fault.” He rolled off her, onto his back, breathed. “Bitch.”
She snorted out a laugh, then linked fingers with him. “Do I still have my boots on?”
“Yes. It’s quite an interesting and provocative look, particularly since your trousers are inside out and hooked on them. I was in a bit of a rush.”
She braced on her elbows to take a look. “Huh. I guess I’ll get them the rest of the way off, maybe takea swim.”
“I believe you’re scheduled to wash my back.”
She glanced over. “Strangely, I’m no longer feeling guilty.”
He opened one eye, brilliant and blue. “But here I am, with my feelings so bruised.”
She grinned, then levered up to work off her boots. When he sat up beside her, she turned so they sat facing each other, naked, forehead to forehead.
“I’ll wash your back, but it goes on the credit side of my account, to be counted the next time I’m a complete asshole.”
He patted a hand on her knee. “Done,” he said, then pushed up, and offered her a hand.
* * *
In a small hotel room on Tenth Avenue, Trudy Lombard studied herself in the mirror. He thought he’d scared her, and maybe he had, but that didn’t mean she’d just turn tail and run like a whipped dog.
She’d earned that compensation for tolerating that nasty little bitch in her home, nearly six months of her. Six months of having that dirty child under her roof. Feeding and clothing her.
Now, the mighty Roarke was going to pay for the way he’d treated Trudy Lombard—make no mistake about it. It was going to cost him a lot more than two million.
She’d taken off her suit, put on her nightgown. Preparation was important, she reminded herself, and washed down a pain blocker with the good French wine she preferred.
No point in chasing the pain, she thought. No point at all. Though she didn’t mind a little pain. It sharpened the senses.
She took slow, even breaths as she picked up the sock she’d filled with credits. She swung it at her own face, striking between jaw and cheekbone. Pain exploded, nausea rolled in her belly, but she gritted her teeth, struck a second time.
Woozy, she lowered herself to the floor. It hurt more than she’d bargained for, but she could take it. She could take a great deal.
Once her hands had stopped shaking, she picked up the homemade sap again, slammed it into her hip. She bit her lip to bring blood, and smashed it twice against her thigh.
Not enough, she thought, even as tears leaked out of eyes that glittered with purpose and a kind of dark pleasure. Not quite enough, as the thrill of the pain coursed through her. Every blow was money in the bank.
With a keening wail, she swung the sap into her belly, once, twice. On the third blow, her stomach revolted. She vomited in the toilet, then rolled away. And passed out cold.
* * *
There was more to it than she’d realized, Eve admitted. The house was full of people and droids, and at this point it was tough to tell which was which. It looked as though an entire forest had been purchased and replanted in the ballroom, with another acre spreading to the terrace. Several miles of garlands, a few tons of colored balls, and enough tiny white lights to set the entire state aglow, were hung, about to be hung, waiting to be discussed where they should be hung.
There were ladders and tarps and tables and chairs, there wer
e candles and fabrics. The guy in charge of setting up the platform for the orchestra, or band-—she wasn’t sure which it was—was arguing with the guy in charge of some of the miles of garland.
She hoped they came to blows. That, at least, would be her territory.
It seemed Roarke had taken her at her word about supervising the ballroom decorations.
What had he been thinking?
Someone was always asking her what she thought, what she wanted, if she’d prefer this to that, or the other thing.
One of the crew had actually rushed from the room in tears the third time Eve said she didn’t care.
Okay, she’d said she didn’t give a gold-plated crap, but it meant the same thing.
Now she had a stress headache circling the top of her skull just waiting to clamp down on her brain and destroy it.
She wanted to lie down. More, she wanted her communicator to beep and have Dispatch inform her there was a triple homicide that needed her immediate attention.
“Had about enough?” Roarke whispered in her ear.
Such was her state that she jumped like a rabbit. “I’m fine. I’m good.” And she broke, spinning to him, gripping his shirt. “Where have you been?”
“Why, blathering with the caterer, of course. The truffles are spectacular.”
A steely light came into her eyes. “The chocolate kind?”
“No, actually, the sort the pigs snuffle out for us.” He ran an absent hand over her tousled hair while he scanned the room. “But we have the chocolate kind as well. Go, make your escape.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll take over here.”
She nearly bolted. Every instinct had her out the door, running for I her sanity. But it wasn’t only pride, it was marriage that held her in place. “What am I, stupid? I’ve run ops bigger than this when lives are on the line. Just back off. Hey, you!”
Roarke watched as she strode across the floor, cop in every swagger.
“I said you!” She shoved between Garland Guy and Platform Guy before blood was spilled. “Button it,” she ordered as each began to complain. “You, with the shiny stuff, put it where it belongs.”
