New York to Dallas

rough and ready, whipping her to the place where there was no room for thoughts, for worries, for a world of the cruel.
    His mouth, his mouth, scorching her skin, devouring her heart right through her breast while his hand shoved between her legs. The first orgasm ripped her as he dragged her under the water.
    Breathless, blind, she sank into the pool, into him and the battering sea of sensation. Only to surface on a wild cry of release when he pulled her up again.
    She wrapped around him, slick with water, hot with needs. Her hands and mouth were as busy as his, as demanding and urgent. The trouble he’d seen in her eyes, the sadness he’d sensed coiled in her dropped away. With them went his worry, went everything but this mad, almost brutal wanting.
    Snared in it, he shoved her to the wall. His fingers dug into her hips as he plunged into her.
    Breathless gasps muffled against his mouth. He wanted to swallow them, swallow her in deep, dark gulps. The water slapped and slithered, sluiced off skin faintly and eerily blue in the light.
    “Take more.” Steeped in her. Drowning in her. “Take more.” Yes, she thought, yes. More. Gripping the edge, she wrapped her legs around his waist. Arching up, arching back, she took until her cries echoed around the garden. Took until there was nothing left.

3
     
    H e knew if it was left up to Eve they’d have the conversation and what passed for a meal in her home office. Another case, he decided, where she needed more. As summer refused to retire for the season, he arranged for the meal on one of the terraces where the gardens burst with color and scent.
    There, with the air stubbornly holding the damp from the morning’s storm, tiny lights glimmered, candles flickered against the dark.
    “I’ve got a lot of research to get to,” she began.
    “Undoubtedly, and we’ll take all the time you need once I understand the situation, and you’ve got some food in you. Red meat.” He lifted the cover off a plate.
    Eve eyed the steak. “Playing dirty.”
    “Is there another way? We’ve a barrel of salt for your fries.”
    She had to laugh. “Really dirty.” She took the wine he offered. “You know my weaknesses.”
    “Every one.” And he hoped the pretty table, the pretty evening would help her through what she had to tell him. “I’ll wager you missed lunch.”
    She sipped, sat. “I had to hack away at paperwork all morning, and kept thinking if I just had a body, I could skate out of it. It’s that careful what you wish for bit. Sucks that it’s usually true.”
    She told him about Tray and Julie, then of the prison administration dragging their feet on notification of McQueen’s escape. Bookending the worst of it, she supposed. Building up to going back.
    “He wants your attention.”
    “And he’s got it. He’ll keep it until he’s back in a cage. He should’ve been transferred to an off-planet facility six years ago when Omega was complete. But . . .”
    She shrugged, continued to eat.
    “They never charged him with the murders. His mother, the girls never recovered, the other women?”
    “No. Not enough evidence, especially if you’re a PA more concerned with your conviction rate than actual justice.”
    “You were disappointed,” Roarke commented.
    “I was green.” She shrugged again, but with more of a jerk. “I figured we had enough solid circumstantial on the four missing girls, on the dead mother, partners. We had enough to try him on those charges, too. But that wasn’t my decision. That’s not my job.”
    “You’re still disappointed.”
    “Maybe, but I’m not green now, so I’m realistic. And McQueen wouldn’t break. Feeney worked him for hours, days. He let me observe. He even brought me into the box briefly, hoping seeing me would shake, or just piss off McQueen enough for him to say something, make some mistake. And I’m getting ahead of myself,” she realized. “I guess I’d better start at the beginning.”
    “Twelve years,” he prompted her, wanting her to talk it out, for both of them. “You’d barely begun.”
    “I’m trying to remember me, to see myself. To feel. I wanted to be a cop so bad. A good cop, solid. To work my way up to detective. I wanted Homicide, that was always the goal. Homicide detective. I didn’t really know anybody in the department, in the city for that matter. Most of the rookies who graduated with me were scattered around the boroughs. I got Manhattan, and that was big. I needed to