J. Robb - Possession in Death

“You give me the names, I'll start your runs — on the condition that you rest. An hour,” he said as she started to protest. “Nonnegotiable.”

“I just need to clear my head. And I'm starving,” she admitted. “I feel like I haven't eaten in days, like everything's burned off.”

“Possibly a side effect of possession.”

“That's not funny either.” She stepped inside, gave Summerset a beady stare. “Baszd meg,” she suggested and watched his eyes widen.

Suspected she saw his lips twitch in what might have been a restrained smile.

“I see you're broadening your linguistics.”

“That wasn't Russian,” Roarke said as they headed up the stairs.

“I think it's Hungarian. It just came to me — and I figure he knows I just told him to fuck off.”

“Rude, yet fascinating.” He went with her to her office. “You, up.” He pointed at the cat currently sprawled in Eve's sleep chair. “You, down,” he ordered. “Give me your list, and I'll get those runs going.” He brushed a hand over her hair, struggling against worry. “How about pizza?”

“I could eat a whole pie.” She dropped into the chair. “Thank God my appetite's not running to that borscht, because I'd really rather have a brain tumor than beet soup.” She dragged her notebook out of her pocket. “Most of the names are in here. I have to get more. Peabody and McNab were hitting the theaters where she worked or would have, and I need neighbors. But that's a big start.”

“Food first.” He walked into the kitchen.

Galahad didn't leap into her lap but sat eyeing her.

“I'm still me,” she murmured. “I'm not her. I'm still me.” When he bumped his head against her leg, her eyes stung. “I'm still me,” she repeated.

Roarke came back with a plate on a tray. “I ordered up a whole one, but you start with that. And drink the soother. Don't argue,” he warned. “I doubt you've looked in the mirror in the last few hours, but when I came in to the morgue, you looked like you belonged there. You'll eat, drink a soother, then we'll see.”

With that, he turned to her desk, sat, and began inputting names into her computer. Eve ate like a horse.

“God, that's better. No shakes.” She held out a hand, a steady one. “No queasiness, no jumps.” Still she looked down at the cat. “He won't sit in my lap, even for pizza. He's not sure of me. I guess he senses something's off. That I'm off. How long do you think — ” She couldn't say it.

“It's going to be fine.” He rose to go to her. “We'll do whatever needs to be done, then we'll do whatever comes after that. You'll be fine.”

“I have to live with the dead, Roarke, I don't want to chat with them. I see the advantage for a murder cop. Hey, sorry about the bad luck, but who killed you? Oh yeah, we'll go pick him up. Move on. I don't want to work that way. I don't want to live that way. I don't think I can.”

“You won't have to.” He took the tray, set it aside. “I swear to you, we'll find whatever needs finding.”

She believed him. Maybe she had to, but she believed him.

“In the meantime . . . ” She took his hand. “Can you be with me? I need to be me. I need you to touch me — me — and feel what I do when you're with me. Know that you feel me.”

“There's no one but you.” He slid onto the chair beside her. “Never anyone but you.”

“Don't be gentle.” She dragged his mouth to hers. “Want me.”

She needed those seeking hands, that mouth hungry for hers. Needed to feel and taste and ache, needed to know that it was her mind, her body, her heart meshed with his.

Love, the dark and the light of it, was strength, and she took it from him.

He tugged her jacket down her shoulders, hit the release on her weapon harness as his mouth captured and conquered hers. And those hands, those wonderful hands lit fresh fires, a new fever that raged clean and bright in her blood. Her fingers fumbled for the chair controls so they tumbled back when it slid flat.

It wasn't comfort she wanted, he knew, but lust — the greed and speed. Perhaps he needed the same. So he pinned her arms over her head, used his free one to torment until she bucked beneath him, crying out as she came.

And there was more. Dewy flesh quivering under his hands, frantic pulses jumping at the nip of his teeth. The lust she wanted beat inside him as wildly as her heart.

His woman. Only his. Her flesh, her lips, her body. Strong again.

“Now. Yes. Now!” Her nails dug into his hips as she arched against him, opened to him.

Hot and wet, she closed around him, crying out again as he thrust hard and deep, as she bowed to take him. Holding there, holding for one heady moment as he looked in her eyes. As he saw only Eve.

Then the whirlwind, wicked and wild, spinning them both too high for air, too fast for fear.

And when the world settled back, all the colors and shapes and light, then came the comfort. She lay locked in his arms, breathing him in. Her body — her body — felt used and raw and wonderful.

Eyes closed, she ran a hand through his hair, down his back. “No problem, considering you might have just indirectly banged a ninety-six-year-old woman?”

“If I did, she gave as good as she got.”

She laughed, tangled her legs with his. “We'll still bang when we're ninety, right?”

“Count on it. I'll have developed a taste for old women by then, so this could be considered good practice.”

“It's got to be sick to even be thinking this way, but it's probably like making jokes in the morgue. It's how you get through.” She untangled, sat up. “What I'm going to do is grab a shower, then coffee, then go over your runs. I'm going to work this like it needs to be worked and keep this other thing off to the side. Because if I think about it too hard, I'm just going to wig out.”

He sat up with her, took her shoulders. And what she saw in his eyes blocked the air from her lungs. “What? What?”

“You are who you are. I know you. You believe that?”

“Yeah, but — ”

“You're Eve Dallas. You're the love of my life. My heart and soul. You're a cop, mind and bone. You're a woman of strength and resilience. Stubborn, hardheaded, occasionally mean as a badger, and more generous than you'll admit.”

Fear edged back, an icy blade down the spine. “Why are you saying this?”

“Because I don't think you can put what's happened aside, not altogether. Take a breath.”

“Why — ”

“Take a breath.” he said it sharply, adding a shake so she did so automatically. “Now another.” He kept one hand on her shoulder as he shifted and touched the other to her ankle.

And the tattoo of a peacock feather.

She got her shower, got her coffee. She told herself she was calm — would be calm. Panic wouldn't help; raging might feel good, but in the end wouldn't help either.

“There are options,” Roarke told her.

“Don't say the E word. No exorcisms. I'm not having some priest or witch doctor or voodoo guy dancing around me, banging on his magic coconuts.”

“Magic . . . Is that a euphemism?”

“Maybe.” It helped to see him smile — to think she might be able to. “But I'm not going there, Roarke.”

“All right then. What about Mira?”

“You think she can shrink Szabo out of me?”

“Hypnosis might find some answers.”

She shook her head. “I'm not being stubborn. Or maybe I am,” she admitted when he cocked his eyebrows. “Right now I'd rather not bring anybody else into this. I just don't want to tell anybody I invited a dead woman to take up residence in my head, or wherever she is. Because that's what I did.”

She shoved up, began to pace. “I said sure, come right in. Maybe if I'd been paying attention to what she was saying, what she meant, I'd have locked the door. Instead I'm all, yeah, yeah, whatever, because I'm trying to keep a woman science says was already dead from bleeding out. It doesn't make any sense, goddamn it. And because it doesn't, I have to set it to one side. I have to,” she insisted. “I have to work the cases — cases — with my head, my gut. Fucking A mine. Which I damn well would've done anyway if she'd left me the hell alone.”