She knew who she was now. She’d become Eve Dallas, and it was more than a name the system had labeled her with. Who she’d been before, what had come before, couldn’t be changed.
If that broken, frightened child still lived inside her, that was okay.
They’d both survived.
She dragged herself upstairs, stripping off her jacket, releasing her weapon harness. Stumbling and peeling off her clothes as she headed for the bed. She tumbled in, curling under warm, smooth sheets and willing the voices that still echoed in her head to quiet.
In the dark, Roarke’s arm came around her, drew her back against him. She shuddered once. She knew who she was.
She felt his heart, the steady beat of it, against her back. His arm, the comforting weight of it, over her waist.
The tears that stung her throat shocked and appalled her. Where had they been hiding? The sudden wave of cold warned her the shakes would follow.
She turned to him, into him. “I need you,” she said as her mouth found him. “Need you.”
Desperate for warmth, for him, she fisted her hands in his hair.
She knew him in the dark—taste, scent, texture. Here, with him, there were no questions. Just answers. All the answers. She felt his heart that had been so steady against her back leap against her breast.
He was there for her as no one else had ever been.
“Say my name.”
“Eve.” His lips ran warm over the bruise on her face, took the ache away. “My Eve.”
So strong, he thought. So tired. Whatever images that were playing in her brain she sought to fight, he’d fight with her. It wasn’t tenderness she sought, but a kind of ruthless comfort. He slid a hand down her body, used his mouth and fingers to bring her that first sharp release.
She trembled, but no longer from cold. The aches that ravaged her body were no longer from fatigue. She arched against him when he found her breast. Quick little bites that shot flashes of pleasure into her. A busy tongue that laved heat over heat.
She rolled with him, her breath ragged as they tangled in the sheets. Her body was a rage of wants and grew slick under the hands that met them.
He loved the long, lean length of her, craved it with a hunger that was never quite sated. Her skin, always a surprise of delicacy, was damp and hot so that it slid like wet silk over his as they moved together. Her mouth came back to his, burning like a fever, and drenched them both in madness.
“Inside me.” She rolled, crawling, clawing over him. Straddling him. “Inside me.” And took him hard, fast, deep.
Her hips pistoned, a speed that blurred his brain. He could see the shape of her over him, the gleam of her eyes against the dark as she drove them both, brutally.
Battered, he rocked in the pleasure, let her take and take until her head fell back, until he felt the orgasm punch through her like a fist through glass.
Until she shattered.
Then he reared up, dragged her still shuddering body against him. And let go.
She fell into sleep like it was a pit and stayed there, sprawled facedown, for three hours.
She felt considerably better when she woke. She told herself the headache was gone, and it was so deeply buried under denial, it was nearly the same thing.
And a couple of catnaps during the day, she was sure, would do more for her than some chemical.
She didn’t even make it out of bed before Roarke was sitting beside her, fully dressed. He had his morning stock reports on screen, muted, a pot of coffee still seductively steaming on the table in the sitting area.
And he held a pill in one hand, a suspicious-looking glass of liquid on the bedside table.
“Open up,” he ordered.
“Uh-uh.”
“I hate to give you more bruises, but if I must, I must.”