Celebrity in Death (In Death 34)

“Oh, I think I will as you’ll be too weak to fight me off.” He drilled his finger into her side, and when she squealed—a sound so rare and foreign for her—he dissolved into laughter of his own.

“Got you now,” he murmured, nipping lightly at her shoulder. “A bit of a tickle and you turn into a girl.”

“You’re looking for trouble.”

“Oh, that I am, and as you’re all naked with girlish squeals under me, I think I can find it.”

“We’ll see who squeals, pal.” She caught his earlobe, not so lightly, between her teeth.

“That was a yelp,” he claimed. “And a manly one.”

She levered up, so he used the momentum to roll again, once, twice, until they ended up in the same position but across the bed.

“You’re outweighed, Lieutenant. And outmuscled.” He gripped her hands, drew them over her head. “Might as well give it over.”

He lowered his mouth to take her, and the sound she made now was pure pleasure. Her body went soft beneath his while the sole of her foot slid up to stroke his leg.

The next he knew he was on his back, her knee at his balls, her elbow at his throat. Her eyes glinted down into his.

“Weight and muscle fall beneath agility.”

“You’re a slippery one, you are.”

“Damn right, so you might as well give it over.” Now she lowered her mouth, then stopped a teasing breath away, drew back, teased in for a sampling nip, then another before she covered his mouth with hers.

“Who’s a girl?”

“You’re mine.” His hands glided down her back, around and up to her breasts. “You’re my girl.”

“Sap,” she said, but in a little sigh as she gave him her lips again.

She’d never been anybody’s girl, had never wanted to be. It had always seemed a weak term to her, one of submission and vulnerability. But with him, it was sweet and foolish, and just exactly right.

With more affection than passion—passion would come—she dropped kisses on his face. Oh, how she loved his face, the angles of it, the planes of his cheekbones, the line of his jaw.

She felt that affection, the simplicity of it, the scope of it from him as he wrapped his arms around her.

For a moment they stayed quiet, body to body, her lips resting on his cheek.

When she pressed her face into the side of his throat, he thought it the most magnificent thing.

His girl, he thought as hands and lips began to stoke the first embers of passion. His strong, complicated, and resilient girl. He loved every corner of her mind, her heart, even when she maddened him. There was nothing he wanted or treasured more truly, nothing he had craved or dreamed of in those dark, often desperate years of youth that was as rich or as powerful as what she’d given him.

He’d believed in love despite the lack of it in those early years, or perhaps because of the lack. But it had taken her to show him what love meant, what it gifted, what it cost, what it risked.

Breath quickened as the fire built to a blaze. She moved over him, supple as silk, then under him when he turned her. When he filled her.

Once again he took her hands, once again their eyes met, then their lips. Joined, they let the fire take them.

Later in her office, her board set up, her computer on the hum, she studied the faces, the facts, the evidence, the time line.

And felt as if she studied a blank brick wall.

“I don’t understand them. Maybe that’s why I can’t get a good hold on this. Acting, producing, directing—and all that goes into it. It’s a business, an industry, but it’s based on pretending.”

“You’re equating pretending with pretense,” Roarke responded. “They’re not the same. Imagination’s essential to the healthy human condition, for progress, for art, even for police work.”

She started to disagree about the police work, then reconsidered. She had to imagine, to some extent, the victim, the killer, the events in order to find the reality.