J. Robb - Glory in Death

Still carrying her, he walked closer to the glass wall until it seemed to Eve that the entire world was made of frantic color and shifting shapes.

"I love you, Eve."

She looked away from the sun, the ocean, and into his eyes. And it was wonderful, and for the moment, it was simple. "I missed you." She pressed her cheek to his and held him tightly. "I really missed you. I wore one of your shirts." She could laugh at herself now because he was here. She could smell him, touch him. "I actually went into your closet and stole one of your shirts – one of the black silk ones you have dozens of. I put it on, then snuck out of the house like a thief so Summerset wouldn't catch me."

Absurdly touched, he nuzzled her neck. "At night, I'd play your transmissions over, just so I could look at you, hear your voice."

"Really?" She giggled, a rare sound from her. "God, Roarke, we've gotten so sappy."

"We'll keep it our little secret."

"Deal." She leaned back to look at his face. "I have to ask you something. It's so lame, but I have to."

"What?"

"Was it ever…" She winced, wished she could muffle the need to ask. "Before, with anyone else – "

"No." He touched his lips to her brow, her nose, the dip in her chin. "It was never, with no one else."

"Not for me, either." She simply breathed him in. "Put your hands on me. I want your hands on me."

"I can do that."

He did, tumbling with her to a spread of floor cushions while the sun died brilliantly in the ocean.

Taking a break with Roarke wasn't quite like stopping off at the deli for a quick veggie hash salad and soy coffee. She wasn't sure how he managed it all, but then, great quantities of money talk, and talk big.

They dined on succulent grilled lobster, drenched in real, creamy, rich butter. They sipped champagne so cold it frosted Eve's throat. A symphony of fruit was there for the sampling, exotic hybrids that sprinkled harmonized flavors on the tongue.

Long before she could admit that she loved him, Eve had accepted the fact that she was addicted to the food he could summon up with the flick of a wrist.

She soaked naked in a small whirling lagoon cupped under palm trees and moonlight, her muscles slack from the heated water and thorough sex. She listened to the song of night birds – no simulation, but the real thing – that hung on the fragrant air like tears.

For now, for one night, the pressures of the job were light-years away.

He could do that to her, and for her, she realized. He could open little pockets of peace.

Roarke watched her, pleased at the way the tension had melted from her face with a bit of pampering. He loved seeing her this way, unwound, limp with pleasuring her senses, too lax to remember to be guilty for indulging herself. Just as he loved seeing her revved, her mind racing, her body braced for action.

No, it had never been like this for him before, with anyone. Of all the women he'd known, she was the only one he was compelled to be with, driven to touch. Beyond the physical, the basic and apparently unsatiable lust she inspired in him, was a constant fascination. Her mind, her heart, her secrets, her scars.

He had told her once they were two lost souls. He thought now he'd spoken no more than the truth. But with each other, they'd found something that rooted them.

For a man who had been wary of cops all of his life, it was staggering to know his happiness now depended on one.

Amused at himself, he slipped into the water with her. Eve managed to drum up enough energy to open her eyes to slits.

"I don't think I can move."

"Then don't." He handed her another flute of champagne, wrapping her fingers around the stem.

"I'm too relaxed to be drunk." But she managed to find her mouth with the glass. "It's such a weird life. Yours," she elaborated. "I mean you can have anything you want, go anywhere, do anything. You want to take a night off, you zip over to Mexico and nibble on lobster and – what was that stuff again, the stuff you spread on crackers?"

"Goose liver."

She winced and shuddered. "That's not what you called it when you shoved it in my mouth. It sounded nicer."

"Foie gras. Same thing."

"That's better." She shifted her legs, tangled them with his. "Anyway, most people program a video or take a quick trip with their VR goggles, maybe plug a few credits into a simulation booth down at Times Square. But you do the real thing."

"I prefer the real thing."

"I know. That's another odd piece of you. You like old stuff. You'd rather read a book than scan a disc, rather go to the trouble to come out here when you could have programmed a simulation in your holoroom." Her lips curved a little, dreamily. "I like that about you."

"That's handy."

"When you were a kid, and things were bad for you, is this what you dreamed about?"

"I dreamed about surviving, getting out. Having control. Didn't you?"

"I guess I did." Too many of her dreams were jumbled and dark. "After I was in the system, anyway. Then what I wanted most was to be a cop. A good cop. A smart cop. What did you want?"

"To be rich. Not to be hungry."

"We both got what we wanted, more or less."

"You had nightmares while I was gone."

She didn't have to open her eyes to see the concern in his. She could hear it in his voice. "They aren't too bad. They're just more regular."

"Eve, if you'd work with Doctor Mira – "

"I'm not ready to remember it. Not all of it. Do you ever feel the scars, from what your father did to you?"

Restless with the memories, he shifted and sank deeper in the hot, frothy water. "A few beatings, careless cruelty. Why should it matter now?"

"You shrug it off." Now she opened her eyes, looked at him, saw he was brooding. "But it made you, didn't it? What happened then made you."

"I suppose it did, roughly."

She nodded, tried to speak casually. "Roarke, do you think if some people lack something, and that lack lets them brutalize their kids – the way we were – do you think it passes on? Do you think – "

"No."

"But – "

"No." He cupped a hand over her calf and squeezed. "We make ourselves, in the long run. You and I did. If that wasn't true, I'd be drunk in some Dublin slum, looking for something weaker to pummel. And you, Eve, would be cold and brittle and without pity."

She closed her eyes again. "Sometimes I am."

"No, that you never are. You're strong, and you're moral, and sometimes you make yourself ill with compassion for the innocent."

Her eyes stung behind her closed lids. "Someone I admire and respect asked me for help, asked me for a favor. I turned him down flat. What does that make me?"

"A woman who had a choice to make."

"Roarke, the last woman who was killed. Louise Kirski. That's on my head. She was twenty-four, talented, eager, in love with a second-rate musician. She had a cluttered one-room apartment on West Twenty-sixth and liked Chinese food. She had a family in Texas that will never be the same. She was innocent, Roarke, and she's haunting me."

Relieved, Eve let out a long breath. "I haven't been able to tell anyone that. I wasn't sure I could say it out loud."

"I'm glad you could say it to me. Now, listen." He set his glass down, scooted forward to take her face in his hands. Her skin was soft, her eyes a narrow slant of dark amber. "Fate rules, Eve. You follow the steps, and you plan and you work, then fate slips in laughing and makes fools of us. Sometimes we can trick it or outguess it, but most often it's already written. For some, it's written in blood. That doesn't mean we stop, but it does mean we can't always comfort ourselves with blame. "

"Is that what you think I'm doing? Comforting myself?"