The In Death Collection Books 16-20 - J. D. Robb [82]
Half-mad, he dragged her up. He could see her eyes, gleaming, focused on him as she locked her legs around him, as her hips surged to take him in—into the wet heat. She watched him still as she clamped around him, already coming as she surrounded him.
His breath snagged in his throat. His heart leaped after it.
He might have spoken, or tried, but she pulled him closer, took him deeper, and banding her arms around him used those strong, narrow hips to drive him.
Just hold on, she thought. Hold onto me this time. And she held him while the hunger consumed them both.
They slid down together, shuddering. When his head rested between her breasts, she closed her eyes again.
“Guess you’re feeling better,” she managed.
“Considerably. Thanks.” He brushed his lips gently over the side of her breast. “I suppose I deserved the tranq.”
“Goes without saying, seeing as you’ve doused me too many times to count. Point is though, you needed to sleep.” With her hand caught in his hair, she looked up through the sky window at the colorless morning sky. “You scared me, Roarke.”
“I know it.” Turning his head, he pressed his lips to her heart, then shifted so he could draw her over to him, rest her head on his shoulder. “This, all this . . . it sucker punched me. I don’t seem to have my wits about me yet.”
“I get that. But I think you broke a rule. The one about not sharing a personal crisis with your life partner.”
“Life partner.” He smiled up at the ceiling. “Is that your new, more comfortable alternative for wife?”
“Don’t try to change the subject. You broke the rule. I’ve been collecting marriage rules over the last year.”
“Always the cop,” he retorted. “You’re right though, and if it’s not a rule it should be. I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I don’t know altogether why I did. I have to turn this around in my head awhile more, figure out what to do. Or not.”
“Fine. But no shutting me out. Not again.”
“That’s a deal.” He sat up as she did, then caught her face in his hands. How she could have thought, even for a moment, that he’d grown tired of her was beyond him. “Life partners,” he said. “It’s got a nice ring to it. But you know, I still prefer the sound of ‘wife.’ ” He touched his lips to hers. “Mine.”
“You would. I’ve got to get moving. I have to report to the commander this morning.”
“I haven’t been keeping up with you. Why don’t we catch a shower together, and you can tell me about the case.”
She lifted a shoulder as if it didn’t matter to her one way or the other. But the fact was she’d missed, very much, being able to run through the steps and stages of an investigation with him. “Okay. But no funny business.”
“And here I was, about to grab my big red nose and squirting carnation.”
Naked, she turned in the bathroom doorway to stare at him. “You’re a strange guy, Roarke. But there will be no clowning around—haha—in the shower.”
He considered changing her mind, just on principle, but as he listened to her run through, he got caught up. And found it a relief to think about something other than his own worries.
“It shows how quick you can lock yourself into your own little world. I didn’t know there’d been a second murder. Both young, both students—different universities, backgrounds, interests, social circles.”
“There are connections. The club where the transmissions originate for one. Hastings and Portography.”
“And their killer.”
“Yeah.” She scooped her hand through her wet hair as she stepped out of the shower. “And their killer.”
“Maybe they both modeled for the killer at some point.”
“I don’t think so.” She stepped into the drying tube as Roarke reached for a towel. “Why the candids?” She lifted her voice over the hum of the tube. “Why take photographs of them when they’re unaware if they were modeling. Plus, they’re kids, right? It seems to me a kid would get all puffed up or jazzed up about the idea of modeling and tell their friends or family. Neither victim mentioned it to anyone we’ve questioned.”
She stepped out, and this time scooped her hand through