J. Robb - Indulgence in death

“The youngest would have started school.”

“She’s the one I want to talk to first. Tomorrow. They’re not going to hold off the next round too long. Not too long.”

She sat, went back to work.

EVE WOKE IN THE QUIET, IN THE STILLNESS, and for an instant thought the waking a dream. But she knew the arms around her, the legs tangled with hers. She knew the scent of him, and drifted into it as her mind waded through the thinning fog of sleep.

She barely remembered going to bed. He’d carried her, as he often did when she conked out over her work. Reams of data, she thought, and nothing solid in that fluid stream to push the investigation beyond theory.

She’d run it all again, picked at it and through it, re-angled it. Connections to connections always meant something, so they’d conduct more interviews.

Swim in the stream long enough, she told herself, you’d rap up against something solid.

“You’re thinking too loud.”

She opened her eyes, looked at Roarke. It was rare to wake with him on a workday as he habitually rose well before she did. She often thought he conducted more business in the hours just before and after dawn than most did in a full day.

Did they live their work or work their lives? And boy, her brain wasn’t ready to tackle that kind of question at this hour. Better just to know whichever it was-or maybe it was both-they did okay with it.

In the normal course of things, by the time she got up he’d be checking the stock and other financial reports on-screen, drinking coffee, fully dressed in one of his six million perfectly fitted suits.

And why did men wear suits? she wondered. How and why had it worked out so men wore suits and women wore dresses, unless you were talking about trannies? Who decided these things? And how come everybody just went along so guys said, “Sure, I’ll wear suits and tie a colorful noose around my neck,” and women said, “No problem, I’ll wear this thing that leaves my legs bare, then stick these shoes with stilts on the back on my feet”?

That was something to think about, she decided. But some other time because right now it was nice to wake this way, all warm and soft and naked together, as they had on vacation.

“Still too loud,” he murmured. “Mute your brain.”

It made her smile, the slurry voice, the before-coffee irritability. That was usually her job. She tried to judge the time by the soft gray light sliding through the sky window, tried to calculate how much sleep they’d managed to catch.

He opened his eyes. Like a blue bolt of lightning, she thought, in the soft gray.

“Not going to shut up, are you then?”

The hell with the time, she decided. If he was still in bed, it was pretty damn early.

“I guess I could think about something else.” She stroked a hand down his flank. Watching his eyes as she glided it up again between their tangled legs. “Since you’re up anyway. It’s funny, isn’t it, how a guy’s dick wakes up before he does. Why is that?”

“It doesn’t like to miss an opportunity. Such as now,” he added when she guided him inside her.

“Nice.” She sighed, and when she began to move, it was just as slow and easy.

Soft, sweet-this aspect of his cop, his warrior never failed to dazzle him. His mind and body woke to her, roused to her in a long, quiet rise while day took its first breath in the sky above them.

Her whiskey-colored eyes intoxicated, but more, in them was the light he’d yearned for all of his life. She was his daybreak, his sunrise after the long, hard shadows of night.

Wanting more, needing more, he shifted to bring her under him, pressed his lips to the curve of her neck. And with the taste broke his fast with her.

She sighed again, but longer, deeper with a catch in her throat as pleasure saturated every pore. Her mind emptied so all those circling thoughts drifted away under the blissful hum of sensation. That steady beat that was heart and blood and breath belonged to them in this still and hazy moment before dawn. With it there were no questions, no cases, no sorrows, no regrets.

She gave herself to it, and him, let herself open on that slow ride.

When her breath quickened, when it all coalesced inside her, burgeoning on that thin line between need and release, she framed his face in her hands. She wanted his face in her eyes when the line dissolved.

For a long, lovely moment the world slid away so the morning shimmered to life with quiet joy.

With the jump start to the day, she didn’t feel guilty about loitering over a breakfast of berries and a bagel. While the morning reports scrolled on-screen, she indulged in a second cup of coffee.

“Ninety-six.” She nodded toward the forecast. “And look at that humiture.”

“The city’ll be a steambath.”

“I like steam.” She bit into her bagel as the cat watched her with hope and resentment. “And we’ll be out of the city for a while anyway. Connecticut,” she reminded him. “I spent a lot of time getting the skinny on Dudley’s former fiancée, and his ex-wife, and Moriarity’s ex. Nobody knows you like an ex, and generally, nobody’s happier to share the crappier sides of you.”

“Then I’d better keep you.”

“Be a fool not to. Neither of them’s been able, or maybe it’s willing, to maintain a serious long-term relationship. Except, the way it looks, with each other.” She plucked a fat black raspberry out of the bowl. “That’s telling. I burned my eyes reading society squibs, articles, gossip shit. They’ve dated a lot of the same women, and that’s interesting, too. Another kind of competition maybe.”

She scooped up more berries. “And another thing I found interesting. There’s all these little bits about one or both of them being at some bullfight in Spain, some big premiere in Hollywood, or skiing the Matterhorn or whatever. Doing the shiny spots when other people in that strata do the shiny spots. Would we be doing that if I wasn’t such a bitch about it?”

“Absolutely. Pass me that coffee, bitch.”

She snorted out a laugh. “Remember your crappier side, ace, and my knowledge thereof. Anyway, what was interesting was none of the exes were in any of the shiny spots at the same time as they were. Not once that I could find a mention of. They still occupy that same strata, and the ex-wives in particular run the same kind of loop, but they never seem to hit the same spot at the same time. Running with that, I scraped a little more off. Ex-Moriarity has a second ex, but they do. Hit the same spot at the same time, often. I want to get her to tell me why that is.”

She paused. “Did you know there are all kinds of write-ups and little features on us, on our vacation?”

Roarke pointed a finger at Galahad who’d begun his crouch toward the berries. The cat turned his head toward the screen as if suddenly enraptured by the financial news.

“I expect there would be.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“No, it’s just what is.” He watched her drink some of the orange juice he’d fortified with a vitamin supplement. “And none of those who write up that sort of thing have any idea I’m sitting here having breakfast with my bitch of a wife after some very pleasant morning sex.”

She shifted her gaze. “The cat knows.”

“He’ll keep his mouth shut if he knows what’s good for him. We have home.” He touched a hand briefly to hers. “Outside of it? Privacy isn’t as important, or as possible.”

“I get that, mostly. Some of these people, and I think these two are in that type, they seek out that kind of attention. They want to read about what they were wearing when they had pizza in some trattoria in Florence.”