J.D. Robb - Visions In Death

She felt him shift and adjust, not quite stagger. "Tougher this way, right?" "I still think I can manage the bed, where I certainly hope you plan to revive a bit." "You're in good shape, but I bet you'd feel it if you had to carry me, say, twenty, thirty yards like this." "Since I haven't strangled you, yet, I won't have to." She boosted back up as he climbed the platform with her.

"Sorry. No murder in the bedroom tonight." She kept her arms locked around his neck when he lowered her to the bed. "You touch me." Obviously amused, he nipped at her chin and that wonderful hair brushed her cheeks like strands of silk. "That's definitely on the agenda." "No." She laughed again, then rolled over on top of him.

"When we're just hanging out, when you don't even think about it. I like it." She leaned down to rub her lips over his, and linking fingers, stretching sinuously down, slid his arms over his head. "I like this."

"Enjoy yourself," he invited.

"Probably should make it fairly quick, in case I lose this third, fourth wind." She closed her teeth over his jaw, nipping lightly.

Keeping his hands locked with hers, she ran her lips down his throat, traced them back to his. Then she curled back like a cat to unbutton his shirt.

"Yeah." She rubbed her hands over his chest. "You're in shape." Then her lips.

She could feel his heartbeat pick up, drum lightly under her hands and lips. He wanted. Wasn't it amazing he always wanted her? The muscles of his belly quivered when she tasted there, and jumped when she ran her tongue under his waistband.

She slid down the zipper, freed him. Tormented him.

Then uncurling, she watched him as she peeled off her shirt, as she took his hands and pressed them to her breasts.

On a low hum of pleasure her head fell back. His hands were hard and smooth and skilled. The long, liquid tugs began, from heart to belly, from belly to loins, when he used them on her.

"Let me. Let me have-" He reared up, clamped his mouth on her, and the hum became a sob, the tugs a burn.

Now it could be desperate, now it could be urgent. Slick body straining to slick body, hands and mouths greedy for more. The sharp nip of teeth, the quick bite of nails, the hot slide of tongues.

She was trembling when she straddled him. Once again their hands and eyes locked. She took him in, took him deep.

And cried out.

Breathless, she lowered her brow to his, fought for breath, for sanity. "A minute," she managed. "It's too much. Wait a minute."

"It's not too much." His mouth seared over hers. "It's never too much." Never would be. She rose up, and rode.

While Eve was curled in dreamless sleep against Roarke, a woman named Annalisa Sommers split her part of the check and said good night to a few friends.

Her monthly post-theater club had broken up a little later than usual as everyone had a lot of news to share. The club was just an excuse, really, for her to get together with some of her friends and have a bite to eat, a few drinks and talk about men, work men.

But it also gave her the benefit of several opinions on whatever play they'd seen. She used them, as well as her own, for her weekly column in Stage Right Magazine.

She loved the theater, and had since she'd played a yam in her first-grade Thanksgiving Day pageant. Since she couldn't act though she'd pulled the yam off well enough to have her mother cry a little had no skill for design or direction, she'd turned hobby into career by writing observations, rather than straight reviews, on plays on and off and way, way off Broadway.

The pay was lousy, but the benefits included free seats and regular backstage passes as well as the buzz of being able to make a semblance of a living doing something she enjoyed.

And she had a good feeling that the pay was going to improve, very soon. Her column was growing in popularity for the very reasons she'd hyped when talking herself into a job with Stage Right. Regular people wanted to know what other regular people thought about a play. Critics weren't regular people. They were critics.

After ten months on the job, she was beginning to get recognized on the street and enjoyed having people stop her to discuss, to agree or disagree, it didn't matter.

She was having the time of her life.

Everything was going so well. With work, with Lucas.

New York was her personal playground, and there was no place else on earth she'd rather be. When she and Lucas got married and her friends agreed things were definitely heading in that direction they'd find a mag apartment on the West Side, throw fun and quirky little parties, and be ridiculously happy.

Hell, she was ridiculously happy now.

She tossed back her hair, and hesitated at the northwest corner of Greenpeace Park. She always cut through the park, knew the route through like she knew the route from her own kitchen to her own bedroom.

A very short walk, she admitted, until that pay raise.

But two women had been killed in city parks in the last week, so a shortcut at one in the morning might not be a smart move.

That was ridiculous. Greenpeace was practically her backyard.

She'd be through it in five minutes, and home safe, tucked into her own little bed and counting sheep before two.

She was a native New Yorker, for God's sake, she reminded herself as she veered off the sidewalk and into the leafy shadows. She knew how to handle herself, how to stay aware.

She'd taken self-defense courses, stayed in shape. And she had Anti-Mugger spray with panic alarm in her pocket.

She loved this park, day or night. The trees, the little play areas for kids, the co-op gardens for vegetables or flowers.

It showed, to Annalisa, just how diverse the city was.

Concrete and cucumbers, spreading within feet of each other.

The image made her laugh as she walked quickly along the path toward home.

She heard the kitten mewing before she saw it. It wasn't unusual to find a stray cat, even a feral one in the park. But this one, she saw as she walked closer, wasn't a cat. It was just a kitten, a little ball of gray fur, curled on the path and crying pitifully.

"Poor little thing. Where's your mama, you poor little thing?" She crouched down, picked it up. It was only when she held it she realized it was a droid. She thought: Weird.

The shadow fell over her. Her hand dived into her pocket for the spray even as she started to spring back to her feet.

But the blow to the back of her head sent her sprawling.

The droid continued to mew and cry as blows rained down on her.

At seven hundred and twenty hours the next morning, Eve stood over Annalisa Sommers. The park smelled green.

Verdant she thought that was the word. Sort of alive and burgeoning.

You could hear the morning traffic, on the street and overhead, but here, there was a small slice of countrified with a vegetable patch spread out in tidy rows behind a screen of pest and vandal fence. She didn't know what the hell was growing in it. Leafy stuff and viney stuff and things that sprawled over small, neat hills.

Part of that verdant smell was probably fertilizer or manure or whatever the hell these people mixed in the dirt to grow things they'd eventually put in their mouths and call natural.

Well, come to think of it, there wasn't anything much more natural than shit.

Except blood and death.

At the end of the patch, behind the odd little vertical triangles where vines grew, behind the screen to keep dogs and street people out, was a statue of a man and a woman. Each wore a hat. He carried some sort of hoe or rake, and she a basket loaded with what was meant to be the fruits of their labor. A harvest.

Harvest was the name of the statue, she knew, but everyone called it Ma and Pa Farmer. Or just Ma and Pa.