Calculated in Death

the shirt up and off, then slid her hands down his back.
    “I thought ahead.” He pulled her up to slip off the harness, peel off her jacket. “You didn’t.”
    “I was just going to recharge.” She grinned as he dragged off her sweater. “Still am.” She wrapped around him, still wearing her tank, trousers, and the baby-fist diamond on a chain he’d given her.
    Hooking her legs around his waist, she over-balanced him, reversed positions until she straddled him. “I think the power nap set me up.” She pulled off the tank, tossed it aside. “But I could use a hand.”
    “I have two.” He closed them over her breasts.
    “Yeah, you do.” She closed her eyes, let the sensations soak in.
    She leaned down to him, sank into a kiss that was welcome and lust wrapped in promise.
    Slim and strong, he thought. Shadows of fatigue dogging her eyes, but energy revving in her body. His Eve, his gift at the end of a long, hard day.
    When he flipped her he heard the laugh in her throat, heard it go to a purr as he replaced his hands with his mouth. Her heart beat under his lips, its pace kicking up as his hands roamed over her. She boosted up her hips when he tugged at the trousers, and his lips trailed down—torso, belly. As he teased, glided, possessed, her breath caught and the fingers stroking his back dug in.
    She coiled, released. Moaned soft as silk with pleasure.
    He knew what to give, what to take. He always knew. With him, she could love, without fear, without doubts and know she was loved the same way. She reached for him, reached for that love, for the welcome, and once more looked into the wild, wild blue of his eyes.
    When he filled her, joy married pleasure. Movement echoed need. Slow, slow, then building into a rise and fall that shut out everything but that mating, that merging. She took his face in her hands as each thrust took her higher.
    In his eyes she saw herself fly. And saw him fly after her.
    •   •   •
    S ince her body clock was already inside out and backwards, she didn’t see any reason not to just lie there a few more minutes. Maybe the mind-clearing/recharging agenda hadn’t gone exactly as she planned.
    But this was better.
    “I’ve talked to too many people today,” she commented.
    “Tell me about it.”
    She stared up at the sky window above the bed, wondered when it had gone full dark. “You never get tired of talking to people.”
    “You’d be wrong about that.”
    “You can pay people to talk to the people. Even pay people to talk to the people talking to the people you don’t want to talk to.”
    Amused, he linked his fingers with hers. “And who would talk to them?”
    “You could do it all by text or e-mail and never have to speak to a living soul. I can only dream of days like that.”
    “Ah, but if I paid people to talk to the people—which I actually do when necessary, and then paid more people to talk to the people I paid, there’s no doubt some things would be lost in translation, and I’d end up having to talk to even more people after it all got bollocksed up.”
    “Maybe. But you like people more than I do.”
    “That’s probably true, until you factor in you risk your life for people every day.”
    “Not today, especially.”
    “Then we should celebrate. God, I want a bloody glass of wine.”
    She lifted his head with her hands, took a long look. “You had a bad day.”
    “No, a bumpy one, a long one, but in the end not bad at all. Especially the homecoming portion.”
    “Well that part goes without saying.”
    “It should always be said.” He nudged up to kiss her.
    “Then I’ll say it, too. And I want a shower, maybe some wine, and since I paid you in advance I want you to look at the vic’s file.”
    “A deal’s a deal. Shower, wine, food—and my end of the bargain.”
    “I had food before.”
    “Before what?”
    She laughed, rolled out of bed with him. “I had a fake Danish this morning, and magic chicken soup this afternoon.”
    “More cause to celebrate.”
    They walked into the shower, with Roarke already resigned to having his skin boiled off.
    “It was really good soup from a deli near the crime scene.” She ordered jets on full, one-hundred-two degrees.
    He winced and bore it.
    “How about you?”
    “Food?” He couldn’t recall she’d ever asked that question of him. “I had an actual breakfast, then lunch in the exec dining room where I talked to entirely too many people for entirely too long. It quite