Seduction In Death

He caught her halfway, lifted her right off her feet even as his mouth found hers.

There was heat, one quick flash, and warmth beneath it, a spreading, settled warmth that reached down to the marrow.

Home, he thought as the taste of her coated over the grief and fatigue of the last days. Home at last.

"You failed to inform me of your schedule," she said in a reasonably accurate mimic of Summerset. "Now I guess I have to cancel the hot date I lined up with the lap-dancing twins."

"Ah, Lars and Sven. I've heard they're very inventive." He rested his cheek against hers as he set her on her feet again. "What are you doing up here?"

"I don't know exactly. Couldn't settle, wanted air." She eased back to study his face. "You okay?"

"Yes."

But she angled her head, took his face in her hands. "Are you okay?" she repeated.

"It was difficult. More than I expected it to be. I thought I'd put it away."

"He was your friend. Whatever else, he was your friend."

"One who died so I didn't. I've resolved that." He laid his brow on hers. "Or thought I had. This wake Brian wanted, the gathering of so many from my past, then seeing where Mick had been put in the ground… it was difficult."

"I should have gone with you."

He smiled a little. "Some of the mourners might have been a little uneasy with a cop in the midst. Even my cop. Still, I've a message from Brian for you. As he stood behind his bar at the Pe

"It's always good to have backup. You have di

"Not yet, no."

"Why don't we try a little role reversal? I'll make you eat, sneak a soother in your food, then tuck you into bed."

"You've shadows under your eyes, so it seems to me you're the one in need of food and bed. Summerset said you were out all night."

"Summerset is a big, fat tattletale. I caught a case last night."

He feathered his long fingers through her hair, letting all those shades of brown and blonde spill through. "Want to tell me about it?"

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 gri

"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 di

"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 fu

"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?"