Survivor in Death

“They're coming to get me. They're coming to kill me.”

“They're not. It was a dream.” Roarke sat, Nixie curled in his lap. “A very bad dream. But you're safe here, as you can see. With me, and the lieutenant and Summerset.”

He patted the bed, and the cat gathered his porky self and leaped up nimbly. “And here, here's Galahad as well.”

“I saw the blood. Is it on me?”

“No.”

“We'll get a soother in her.” Opening a wall panel, Summerset pressed buttons on a mini AutoChef. “She'll be the better for it. Here now, Nixie, you'll drink this for me, won't you?”

She turned her face into Roarke's shoulder. “I'm afraid in the dark.”

“It's not very dark, and we'll have more lights if you like.” Roarke ordered them up another ten percent. “Is that better, then?”

“I think they're in the closet,” she whispered, and her fingers dug into his shirt. “I think they're hiding in the closet.”

That, Eve thought, was something she could do. She went directly to the closet, opened it, did a complete search while Nixie watched her.

“Nobody can get into this place,” she spoke flatly. “Nobody can get past us. That's the way it is. It's my job to protect you. That's what I'll do.”

“What if they kill you?”

“A lot of people have tried. I don't let them.”

“Because you're a major butt-kicker.”

“You bet your ass. Drink the soother.”

She waited, watched, while Nixie drank, while Summerset took over. He sat on the bed, talking to the child in a quiet voice until her eyes began to droop.

And waiting, watching, Eve felt raw and scraped inside. She knew what it was to be chained in nightmares where something unspeakable came for you. The pain and the blood, the fear and the agony.

Even after it was over, the dregs of it stained the edges of your mind.

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 room.

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. “Wi

“I don't want the wine.” Craving the co

“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, pi

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.

She locked her legs around him, locked those eyes on his. “Now,” she said. “Now. Hard and fast and… Yes. Oh God.”

He drove into her, felt her clamp around him, a wet, velvet vice, as she came. Felt that long, lean body shudder and shudder as he plunged. Still her hips pistoned, taking him in deeper, driving him brutally on.

“Don't shut your eyes. Don't.” His voice was thick. “Eve.”

She lifted her hands, and though they trembled, they framed his face. “I see you. I see you. Roarke.”

And her eyes were open, on his, when they fell.

In the morning she was relieved it didn't appear on the “normal” list to have breakfast with Nixie. It might've been small, even cowardly, but Eve didn't think she could face the questions, or those steady, seeking eyes, without a couple of quarts of coffee first.

She did what was normal for her instead and took a blistering shower, and a quick spin in the drying tube while Roarke did his usual scan of the stock reports on-screen in the bedroom.