Eve - Iris Johansen [56]
“I don’t blame you. I have no right. I was no saint when I was a kid. Hell, I’m no saint now. That’s not why I’m so damn upset.”
“Then why?”
“I’m jealous.”
“What?”
“Oh, not of Gallo,” he added grimly. “Though that may come. I’m jealous of the fact that there’s part of you I don’t know, that I might never know. I hadn’t thought about it before. When I met you, I knew I loved you almost from the very first. I couldn’t do anything about it because you were in agony about losing Bonnie, and you stayed that way for years. All I could do was stand by and be your friend. Then I got my chance, and I took it.”
“Thank God.”
“But because there was so much history between us, it blurred everything else. You were the complete package by the time I met you. I couldn’t imagine you any differently.”
“A very broken package.” She cuddled closer to him. “You helped put me back together. As I said, by that time, that other girl didn’t exist.”
“She has to exist. She’s part of you.” He added flatly, “And I don’t know her. I have to know her.”
Because Joe’s love was as possessive as it was passionate. Even Catherine had recognized that about him.
“What do you want to know?”
“I can’t demand, you have to offer. And you’re not willing to do that right now. Because I wasn’t part of your world, you don’t think I’d be able to relate.”
“And could you? You were a rich kid. You went to Harvard, for heaven’s sake. Do you want me to tell you about the stink of the projects, the graffiti on the walls? How it felt to be a teenage female and afraid of when I’d be targeted next? How I was afraid I’d never break free of them? As a cop, you’ve seen them, but you haven’t lived them.”
Silence. “And John Gallo has.”
“Yes, he told me that the project where he grew up was worse than the one where I lived.”
“So you became soul mates.”
“Our souls had nothing to do with it. Do you want me to tell you that we were drawn to each other because we were both slum kids? I can’t do that.” She was saying exactly what Catherine had warned her against. She couldn’t help it. She wouldn’t be anything but honest with Joe. “We were both loners. The only reason we came together was chemistry. And the reason we separated was that both of us realized that chemistry could ruin any chance of our climbing out of the dung heaps where we were born.” She was silent, then said, “Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Hell, yes. Every single detail, but I’m not going to ask because that would probably drive me crazier than not knowing. Damn chemistry.”
She suddenly started to chuckle. “Joe, don’t damn something that we value so highly. Chemistry may not have brought you and me together originally, but it’s helped to keep us together and strong for years. Do you think that anything I had with that kid, John Gallo, could have had the same kind of endurance and staying power?”
“I’ve no idea. But you’re not going to find out.” He was suddenly on his knees on the bed. “And I find I’m becoming annoyed at being thought of as the steady, boring stallion in the barn.” He threw the sheet that covered them on the floor. “Endurance? Staying power?”
She inhaled sharply as she gazed at him. She always loved the look of Joe naked. Beautifully muscular shoulders and thighs, tight buttocks and belly. He looked completely at home with his nudity, like Adam in the garden, or a sultan in his harem. Joe was a magnificent lover, innovative, passionate, sometimes teasing, sometimes wicked. In those moments, he was completely sexual, completely devoted to the act itself. Yet tonight there was something else …
His expression. His eyes were glittering recklessly as his hand reached out and cupped her breast. “Shall I show you endurance, Eve?”
Her heart was suddenly pounding beneath his hand. “I don’t know. Should I be worried?”
“Not you.” His mouth was suddenly on her nipple, drawing strongly. “You can take me.” His lips moved down to her belly. “You can match me. We just have to go to the next level.” He moved over her, cupped her buttocks in his two