“A. E. Strongbow was her chance, to be someone, to become visible and important, and DeLano stole it. Killing DeLano wasn’t, isn’t, enough. Before it comes to that,” Roarke said, “she has to steal DeLano’s work, flip the theme of the morality play, and rewrite it with herself as the center.”
“That’s the circle,” Eve agreed, “and around it are plenty of angles to work. Okay. Okay.” She had them lined up in order of priority in her head, and now she looked at Roarke.
“Well, strip it off, pal, and let’s get this done.”
His eyebrows winged up as she hit the release on her weapon harness. “That’s quite the pivot.”
“Summerset-free house, library not yet checked off. It’s a straight line, not a pivot.” After laying her weapon on the bench table, she pulled off a boot. “That’s a good couch.” She tossed the boot aside, pulled off the other. “It’ll work.”
“I don’t believe I had that purpose in mind when I bought it. Then again, that was before you.”
“I’m here now.” She pulled off her belt. “You, too.”
“I am, yes, and currently watching my wife strip in the most practical and efficient way. And wondering just why that only makes her more alluring.”
“ ‘Alluring,’ right.”
She stripped off her sweater and shirt to the tank beneath. And he timed it well, he thought, waiting until her trousers dropped to her ankles.
Before she could fully step out, he grabbed her—quick and sharp as a whip—so she tumbled on top of him.
“You’re still dressed,” she pointed out.
“Not for long.” And rolled her under him.
Since she seemed in the mood for heat and speed, and he felt the same, he took her mouth, ravished it with his. Her hips pumped up, circled in grinding invitation even as her hand
s wedged between them to make quick work of the buttons of his shirt.
He dragged her tank down to her waist so flesh pressed to flesh.
“Two more minutes, we’d have been naked.” Her voice came breathless; her teeth nipped. “But this way works.”
While her mouth warred with his, she unhooked his trousers, freed him. He rolled her panties down to her knees.
When he thrust into her, she rose up to meet him, to take him.
“Yeah, yeah.” Her fingers dug into his hips; her breath went ragged. “This works.”
He let himself go. It was what she wanted, what he needed, so he took, took. Found himself taken. Pistoning hips, muffled gasps, hot bodies, hot minds merging into one frantic unit.
Mating, he would think later when capable of thought again, at its most elemental.
No frills, no sweet words, no seductions needed here and now, not for two people who knew love spread under and over and through all.
To be needed always struck her as elemental. To be needed by him added miraculous to the basic.
So she, too, let herself go, to take and be taken hard and fast until pleasure, already keen, sharpened blade bright.
In those last seconds, on that thin, edgy point of release, her eyes met the wild blue of his. She said, as that blade slashed them both, “I love you.”
Elemental.
Later in the night, curled up against him in bed, Eve dreamed strange dreams.
She walked through the pages of a book until the words blurred under her feet and became the cheap, scarred floor of the flop where Rosie Kent died.
She saw two bodies, two beds, two white sashes tied into bows. As if, she realized, on facing pages of a book.