J. Robb - Conspiracy in Death

Flames burst in her body, seared her mind clean as glass. There was nothing but the feel of his hands and mouth on her, the violent glory of being driven slowly, thoroughly, then brutally to peak again and again while her trapped hands flexed helplessly, then finally went limp.

There was nothing he couldn't take from her. Nothing she wouldn't give. The sensation of his skin sliding and slipping over hers made her breath catch, her heart stutter.

He dazed her, delighted and destroyed her.

He knew there was nothing, nothing more arousing than the surrender of a strong woman, that melted-bone yielding of a tough body. He took, tender and patient until he felt her float, heard her sigh. Then, ruthless and greedy, so that she shuddered and moaned. The arrow point of purpose now was to pleasure her. To make that long, limber body pulse and glow. To feed it as he fed on it.

He dragged her clothes aside, spread her wide. And feasted.

Her breath sobbed out, became his name repeated mindlessly, again and again, as she came in a long, hot gush. Her hands, free now, clutched and clawed at the sheets, at his hair, his shoulders. The desire to taste him was a desperate ache. The blood burned in her head, hammered her heart toward pain.

She reared up, bowed back as his mouth began to travel up her, scraping teeth against her hip, sliding tongue along her torso. Then she was rolling with him, her ringers digging into damp flesh, scraping viciously along the muscled ridge of his shoulders, her mouth wild and willful as it found his.

With one hard thrust, he was deep inside her, with each violent plunge, he seemed to go deeper, stroking into her fast and fierce. Still, the thirst couldn't be slaked.

Once again her body bowed, forming a bridge with muscles quivering from strain and pleasure. His fingers dug into her hips, his eyes were slits of wicked blue that never left her face.

Her body gleamed with sweat. Her head thrown back in full abandon as she absorbed each violent stroke. He watched it build one last time, felt the power of it swarming into her, into him, that surge of outrageous energy, the one shivering stab of fear that came when control was about to snap.

"Scream." He panted it out with the madness of her swallowing him whole. "Scream now."

And when she did, he went blind and emptied himself into her.

He'd bruised her. He could see the marks of his own fingers on her skin as she lay facedown on the rumpled bed. Her skin had a surprising delicacy she was never aware of and that he forgot at times. There was such toughness under it.

When he started to draw the sheet over her, she stirred.

"No, I'm not sleeping."

"Why don't you?"

She shifted, balled the pillow under her head. "I did want to use you."

He sat beside her, sighed heavily. "Now I feel so cheap."

She turned her head to look at him, nearly managed a smile. "I guess it's okay, since you got off on it."

"You're such a romantic, Eve." He gave her a playful swat on the butt and rose. "Do you want to eat in bed or while you work?"

He glanced back from the AutoChef, intending on heating up their meal. Seeing her studying him with narrowed eyes, he lifted a brow. "Again?"

"I don't think about sex every time I look at you." She scooped back her hair and wondered idly if she had any clothes left that could still be worn. "Even if you are naked and built and just finished fucking my brains out. Where are my pants?"

"I have no idea. Then what were you thinking?"

"About sex," she said easily, and, finding her jeans inside out and tangled, tried to unknot them. "Philosophically."

"Really." He left the plates warming and came back to search out his own trousers, making do with only them as she'd already confiscated his shirt. "And what is your philosophical opinion of sex?"

"It really works." She hitched on her jeans. "Let's eat."

She plowed her way through a rare steak and delicate new potatoes while she studied the data on-screen. "The first thing we have are connections. Cagney and Friend in the same class at Harvard Medical. Vanderhaven and Friend consulting at the center in London sixteen years ago, at the Paris center four years ago." She chewed, swallowed, cut more beef. "Wo and Friend serving on the same board and working the same surgical floor at Nordick in '55, then her continuing to be affiliated with that clinic to the present. Waverly and Friend both officers of the AMA. And Friend regularly consulting at the Drake where Waverly is attached, and has been attached for nearly a decade."

"And," Roarke continued, topping off their wineglasses, "you can follow the pattern deeper and connect the dots. Every one of them meshes in some manner with another. Links to links. I imagine you can expand and find the same incestual type of relationship in the European centers."

"I'm going to have McNab do the match, but yeah, we'll find other names." The wine was cool and dry and perfect for her mood. "Now, we have Tia Wo, who does regular consults at Nordick. McRae was checking public transpo to see if she'd traveled to Chicago on or around the date of his murder. He didn't find anything but that doesn't mean it isn't there."

"I'm ahead of you," Roarke told her and ordered up new data. "No records of private or public transportation tickets in her name, but that wouldn't include the mass shuttle that goes back and forth hourly between the two cities. You just need credit tokens. I have her schedule at Drake showing she had rounds on the afternoon of that date. Should have been finished by four o'clock. I'm pulling up her office log now."

"I won't be able to use it. I mean, Feeney won't be able to use that data. He'll need a warrant."

"I don't. Her security's rather pathetic," Roarke added as he finessed controls. "A five-year-old hacker with a toy scanner could break this. On-screen," he ordered.

"Okay, rounds until four, office consult four-thirty. Logged out at five, and has a six o'clock dinner with Waverly and Cagney. Feeney can check to see if she kept that appointment, but even if she did, it would give her time. She didn't have anything the next day until eight-thirty a.m., and that's a lab consult with Bradley Young. What do we know about him?"

"What would you like to know? Computer, all available data on Young, Dr. Bradley."

Eve pushed away from her plate and rose while the computer worked. "Dinner with Cagney and Waverly. Cagney put pressure on Mira to shuffle the case back or drop it. Waverly just struck me wrong. There's more than one person involved in this deal. Could be the three of them. They have a dinner meeting, discuss the when and how. One or all of them head over to Chicago, do the job, come back. Then Wo transports the sample to Young in the lab."

"It's as good a theory as any. What you need is to find the buried records. We'll work on that."

"Vanderhaven rabbits to Europe rather than face a routine interview. So… how many of them?" Eve murmured. "And when did it start? Why did it start? What's the motive? That's the hang-up here. What's the point? One rogue doctor who'd gone over the edge would be one thing. That's not what we've got. We've got a team, a group, and that group has ties to East Washington, maybe to the NYPSD. Weasels, anyway, in my department, maybe others. In health clinics. Somebody passing data. I need the why to find the who."

"Organs, human. No real money in them today. If not for profit," Roarke mused, "then for power."

"What kind of power can you get from stealing flawed organs out of street people?"

"A power trip," he said with a shrug. "I can, therefore I do. But if not for power, then for glory."

"Glory? Where's the glory?" Impatient, she began to prowl again. "They're useless. Diseased, dying, defective. Where's the glory factor?" Before he could speak, she held up a hand, eyes going to slits in concentration. "Wait, wait. What if they're not useless. If someone's figured out something that can be done with them."