Eve stumbled into her apartment at nearly one A.M. Her head was ringing. Mavis’s idea of dinner on her night off had been to take in a rival club. Already aware she would pay for the evening’s entertainment in the morning, Eve stripped on the way to the bedroom.
At least the evening out with Mavis had pushed the Towers case out of her mind. Eve might have worried she had no mind left, but she was too exhausted to think about it.
She fell naked and facedown on the bed and was asleep in seconds.
Eve woke, violently aroused.
It was Roarke’s hands on her. She knew their texture, their rhythm. Her heart tripped against her ribs, then bounded into her throat as his mouth covered hers. His was greedy, hot, giving her no choice, really no choice at all but to respond in kind. Even as she fumbled for him, those long, clever fingers pierced her, diving into her so that she bowed up into the frenzy of orgasm.
His mouth on her breast, sucking, teeth scraping. His elegant hands relentless so that her cries came out in whimpers of shock and gratitude. Another staggering climax to layer thick over the first.
Her hands sought purchase in the tangled sheets, but nothing could anchor her. As she flew up again, she gripped him, nails scraping down his back, up to grab handfuls of his hair.
“God!” It was the single coherent word she managed as he plunged into her, so hard, so deep she was amazed she didn’t die from the pleasure of it. Her body bucked helplessly, frantically, continued to shudder even after he’d collapsed on her.
He let out a long, satisfied sigh and lazily nuzzled her ear. “Sorry to wake you.”
“Roarke? Oh, was that you?”
He bit her.
She smiled quietly in the dark. “I didn’t think you’d be back until tomorrow.”
“I got lucky. Then I followed your trail into the bedroom.”
“I was out with Mavis. We went to a place called Armageddon. My hearing’s starting to come back.” She stroked his back, yawned hugely. “It’s not morning, is it?”
“No.” Recognizing the weariness in her voice, he shifted, gathered her close against him, and kissed her temple. “Go to sleep, Eve.”
“Okay.” She obliged him in less than ten seconds.
He woke at first light and left her curled in the middle of the bed. In the kitchen, he programmed the AutoChef for coffee and a toasted bagel. The bagel was stale, but that was to be expected. Making himself at home, he sat by the kitchen monitor and skimmed through the paper to the financial section.
He couldn’t concentrate.
He was trying not to resent the fact that she’d chosen her bed over their bed. Or what he wanted her to think of as their bed. He didn’t begrudge her the need for personal space; he understood well the need for privacy. But his house was large enough that she could have appropriated an entire wing for herself if she wanted it.
Pushing away from the monitor, he paced to the window. He wasn’t used to this struggle, this war to balance his needs with someone else’s. He’d grown up thinking of himself first and last. He’d had to, in order to survive and then to succeed. One was every bit as important to him as the other.
The habit was difficult to break—or had been, until Eve.
It was humiliating to admit, even to himself, that every time he went away to see to business, a seed of fear rooted in his heart that she would have shaken herself loose of him by the time he returned.
The simple fact was, he needed the one thing she had refused him. A commitment.
Turning from the window, he went back to the monitor and forced himself to read.
“Good morning,” Eve said from the doorway. Her smile was quick and bright, as much from the pleasure of seeing him as from the fact that her trip to Armageddon didn’t have the consequences she’d feared. She felt terrific.
“Your bagels are stale.”
“Mmm.” She tested by trying a bite of the one on the table. “You’re right.” Coffee was always a better bet. “Anything in
the news I should worry about?”
“Are you concerned with the Treegro takeover?”
Eve knuckled one eye as she sipped her first cup of coffee. “What’s Treegro and who’s taking it over?”