Big Jack

“We’ll fix that.” With her legs hooked around his waist, her arms around his neck and her lips begi

“I’m not sure. Maybe you should remind me how we did this the first time again.”

“I believe, if memory serves, it went something like this.” He spun her around, trapping her between the wall and his body. And his mouth was fever hot on hers.

She felt the need, instant and primal, slice through her. It was like being cleaved in two-the woman she’d been before him, the woman she’d discovered with him.

She could be what she was, and he understood her. She could be what she’d become, and he cherished her. And the wanting each other, through all the changes, all the discoveries, never abated.

She let him ravish her, and felt the power in surrender. It pumped and swelled inside her as she slid down his body. Her hands were as busy as his, her mouth as impatient as they dragged each other toward the bed.

They stumbled up the platform, and remembering, she laughed. “We were in a hurry then, too.”

They fell on the bed in a tangle of limbs, then rolled as they struggled to strip away clothes, to take and devour. Before, that first time, it had been in the dark. Groping and grasping and desperation in the dark. Now they were in the light that spilled through the windows, through the sky window over the bed, but the desperation was the same.

It ached in her like a wound that would never quite heal.

She’d been a mass and a maze of demands then, too, he remembered. All heat and motion, driving him toward frenzy so that he’d burned to ram himself into her and batter them both toward release.

But he’d wanted more. Even then, he’d wanted more of her. And for her. He gripped her hands, drawing her arms over her head, and she arched, pressing center to center until his pulse was a pounding of jungle drums.

“Inside me.” Her eyes were blurred and dark. “I want you inside me. Hard. Fast.”

“Wait.” He knew what it would be now, where they would take each other, and control was a thin and slippery wire. He cuffed her wrists with one hand. If she touched him now, that wire would snap.

But he could touch her. God, he needed to touch her, to watch her, to feel her body gather and quake from the assault of pleasure. Her skin was damp when he ran his free hand down her. The moan trembled from her lips, then broke with a hoarse cry as he used those clever fingers on her.

He watched those blurry eyes go blind, felt the scramble of her pulse in the wrists he held and heard her release a sob in the air before she went pliant. Wax melted in the heat.

Again, was all he could think as his mouth came down on hers, fierce and frantic. Again and again and again.

Then her arms were free and banded around him, and her hips pistoned up. He was inside her as she’d demanded. Hard and fast.

She knew, with the part of her brain that could still reason, that he’d gone over, gone where he could so often send her. Somewhere beyond the civilized and sensible, where there were only sensations fueled by needs. She wanted him there with her, where control was impossible and pleasure saturated both mind and body.

As her own system quivered toward that last leap, she heard his breath catch, as if on a pain. Wrapping around him, she gave herself over. “Now,” she said, and pulled him with her.

She stretched under him, curled and uncurled her toes. She felt, Eve discovered, pretty damn good. “Okay.” She gave Roarke a noisy slap on the ass. “Recreational break’s over.”

“Christ. Christ Jesus.”

“Come on, you’ve had your thirty.”

“I’m sure you’re wrong. I’m sure I have five or six minutes left. And if I don’t, I’m having them anyway.”

“Off.” She gave his butt another slap, then a pinch. When neither budged him, she shifted her knee over, and up.

“Son of a bitch.” That moved him. “Mind the merchandise.”

“You mind it. I’ve already used it.” She was smart enough to roll over and away before he could retaliate. She landed on her feet, rolled up to the balls, back to the heels. “Man, I’m revved.”

He stayed where he was, flat on his back, and eyed her. Long, lean, naked, with her skin glowing from the energetic recreational break.

“You look it.” Then he smiled, slyly. “I wonder if Feeney’s finished his swim.”

The color drained out of her cheeks. “Oh jeez, oh, shit!” She made a dive for her clothes. “He’ll know. He’ll just know, and then we’ll have to avoid looking at each other while we pretend he doesn’t know. Damn it.”

Roarke was laughing as she dashed with her bundle of clothes into the bath.

Feeney beat her into her office, and that made her wince. But she strode in briskly and moved straight to her desk to set up files.

“Where were you?”

“Just, ah, you know… dealing with a couple things.”

“I thought you were go

“I think I’ll-um-” His voice cracked a bit. She didn’t glance over but she could feel him looking frantically around the room. “Get some coffee.”

“Coffee’s good. That’d be good.”

When she heard him escape to the kitchen, she rubbed her hands over her face. “Might as well be wearing a sign,” she muttered. “ ‘Just Got Laid.’ ”

She set up her disks, her case board, then shot Roarke a vicious glare when he strolled in. “I don’t want that look on your face,” she hissed.

“Which look?”

“You know which look. Wipe it off.”

Relaxed, amused, he sat on the corner of her desk. When Feeney walked in, he could see the fading flush. Feeney cleared his throat, very deliberately, then set the second mug of coffee he carried on the desk. “Didn’t zap you one,” he said to Roarke.

“It’s all right. I’m fine for now. How was your swim?”

“Fine. Good.” He rubbed a hand over the drying sproings of ginger and silver hair. “Good and fine.”

He turned away to study the board.

Weren’t they a pair? Roarke thought, two veteran cops who’ve waded through blood and madness. But put a bit of sex on the table between them, and they’re fidgety as virgins at an orgy.

“I’m going to bring you both up to date,” Eve began. “Then I’ll work on my angles while you work on yours. You see the artist’s sketch on the board, and on screen.”

She picked up a laser pointer, aimed it toward the wall screen. “Detective Yancy did the Ident, but isn’t confident enough in this rendering for us to pass it to the media. But I think it gives us some basics. Coloring and basic facial structure, in any case.”

“Looks, what,” Feeney asked, “range of thirty?”

“Yeah. Even if Crew’s son has spent the better part of a fortune on face work and sculpting, I don’t think a guy in his sixties is going to look this young. And the witness never put him over forty. We may be looking for a family co

“Yeah, and it opens it up instead of narrowing it down,” Feeney commented.

“We caught a break on narrowing it.”

Eve told them about the trace evidence, and her field-work to date attempting to find the location of the Cobb crime scene.

“It’s the first trace he’s left. When we nail this down, we’ll have another link toward identifying this creep. He chose the place, so he knows the place. He knew he could get in, do what he wanted to do in private and clean it up enough to have the crime undetected.”

“Yeah.” Feeney nodded agreement. “Had to splash some blood around. He cleaned up, or there’d be a report. A construction crew’s not going to strap on tool belts with blood all over the damn place.”