She could have said no, and he'd have wheedled it out of her. "Later." She eased back into his arms, held on.
"I missed you, Eve. Missed holding you like this. Missed the smell of you, the taste."
"You could make up for it." She turned her head so that her lips skimmed over his jaw.
"I intend to."
"Intentions are easy." Now she used her teeth. "I prefer action. Right here, right now."
He let her back him toward a long, padded chaise. "What about Lars and Sven?"
"I'll take care of them later."
He grinned, spun her around so she hit the chaise first. "I think you're going to be much too tired for a lap dance."
"I don't know. I'm feeling pretty energetic." She shifted to cradle him between her thighs. And her eyebrows winged up. "Hey, you, too."
"I seem to have caught my second wind," He opened the first button on her shirt, paused. "Isn't this my shirt?"
She winced before she could stop herself. "So?"
"So." Touched, amused, he dispatched the rest of the buttons. "I'm afraid I'll have to have it back."
"Yeah, like you don't already have about five hundred…" She trailed off when his fingers traced over her breasts. "Okay, if you want to be that way about it."
"I do." He touched his lips to hers.
He sank into her, layer by layer. The taste of her mouth, her skin, and the texture of both, aroused, soothed, seduced. The shape of her – the long legs, the narrow torso, the small, firm breasts – were an unending delight.
She tugged at the shirts, the one he wore, the one she'd borrowed, and flesh met flesh. She arched; he burrowed.
The night air cooled around them, but blood heated. She sighed as their mouths met again, as lips parted, as tongues slicked in a long wet kiss that slipped from gentle to urgent.
And her sigh was a moan as his mouth began to move restlessly down her body.
More. All. Everything,he thought. Then stopped thinking.
Her throat, her shoulders, the lines and curves of them. He fed on them, then hungrily on her breasts until it seemed he fed on her heart as well.
Shuddering, she bowed to him, offering more while her hands streaked over him to take.
He made her want more than she'd known there was to have. It was always the same. And when his mouth, his hands stroked down her, she gripped the side of the chaise and rode the ferocious storm of pleasure.
She saw the stars wheeling in the sky overhead, felt others explode inside her body. She went limp, she went liquid, and moved against him now in a slow, sinuous rhythm.
Urgency mellowed toward tenderness. A caress, a whisper, a gentle shift, body to body.
Her fingers stroked through his hair. Her lips found the curve of his throat, nuzzling against the pulse that beat for her. When he slipped inside her, she opened her eyes to find him watching her.
No one, she thought as the breath trembled through her lips, no one had ever looked at her as he did. In a way that told her she was the center.
She rose to him, fell away, rose again in a dance that was both patient and pure. The rhythm stayed slow, silky and slow as their lips met again.
She heard, felt him say her name. "Eve."
She wrapped her arms around him, held him close, as they slipped home together.
He unearthed robes from somewhere. Eve sometimes wondered if he had some factory of silkworms buried in the house as he never seemed to run out of silk robes. These were black and just weighty enough to keep a body comfortable on a warm spring night while dining alfresco.
She decided it was hard to beat eating rare steak, from actual cows, drinking a full-bodied red wine at a candlelit table on the roof garden. And all this after stupendous sex.
"It's a pretty good deal," she said between bites.
"What is?"
"Having you back. No fun having a fancy dinner by yourself."
"There's always Summerset."
"Now you're going to spoil my appetite."
He watched her plow through the steak. "I think not. Haven't you eaten today?"
"I had a doughnut, and don't start. What's Pinot Noir forty-nine run?"
"What label?" he retorted just as casually as she had asked.
"Ahh, shit." She closed her eyes until she had the image of the bottle in her head. "Maison de Lac."
"Excellent choice. About five hundred a bottle. I'd have to check to be certain, but that's close."
"One of yours?"
"Yes. Why?"
"It's one of the murder weapons. Do you own the apartment building on Tenth Street?"
"Which apartment building on Tenth Street?"
She hissed, rifled through her mental files, and gave him the address.
"I don't believe I do." He smiled easily. "Now how did I miss that one?"
"Very funny. Well, it's nice to know I can catch a murder someplace in the city you don't own."
"How is a five-hundred-dollar bottle of very nice wine used as a murder weapon? Poison?"
"In a way." She debated about five seconds, then told him.
"He courts her through e-mail," Roarke said. "Romances her with poetry, then slips two of the most despicable illegals ever devised into her drink."
"Drinks," Eve corrected. "He was plying her through the evening."
"And sets the stage – romance, seduction – and uses her. Uses her up," he said softly. "All the while telling himself, I'd think, that she was enjoying it. That it wasn't rape, but again, seduction, romance. Non-violent, erotic, and mutually satisfying."
Eve set down her fork. "Why do you say that?"
"You said he was disguised. Once he was in her apartment, and she was already under the influence, he could have done what he wanted with her. If he'd wanted to hurt her, if violence was part of his turn-on, he could have done so. But he added candlelight, music, flowers. And gave her a drug designed to make her aggressive and needy sexually. The illusion that she was not only willing, but passionate. Did he need that for his ego, to be able to perform physically? Or both?"
"That's good. That's good," she said again with a nod. "I haven't been thinking enough like a guy. The disguise is part of the seduction, too. The expensive clothes, the hair and makeup. He wanted to look like…"
She stopped, stared at the exceptional specimen across from her.
"Oh shit, he wanted to look like you."
"Excuse me?"
"Notyou you – he went for really long, curly hair and green eyes. But you as a type. The perfect fantasy."
"Darling, you'll embarrass me."
"Fat chance. What I'm saying is the look was part ofhis fantasy, too. He wants to be the great lover, the irresistible image. How he looks and what he is, or pretends to be. Rich, traveled, well-read, sophisticated yet hopelessly romantic at the core. There's a certain type of woman who's prime target for that kind."
"But not you, Lieutenant," he said with a smile.
"I just married you for the sex." She picked up her fork again. "And the regular servings of red meat. Which brings me to a little sidebar here. Louise Dimatto lives in the same apartment building."
"Does she?"
"And she was standing on the sidewalk when Bankhead hit the pavement."
He topped off their glasses. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"I swung by the clinic today to bring her up to date. Lot of changes around there."
"Hmm."
"Yeah, hmmm. Why didn't you tell me you'd given the clinic three million dollars?"
He lifted his glass, sipped. "I make quite a number of charitable donations I don't tell you about." He offered a smile. "Would you like to be copied on the data in the future?"
"Don't get smart with me, ace. I'd like to know why you went around me and gave her five times the amount agreed on. I'd like to know why you didn't tell me about this shelter you asked her to give time to."
"I liked the work she was doing."
"Roarke." She laid her hand over his. Firmly. "You started this shelter for me. Did you think I'd be upset, or pissed off or what if you told me about it?"