Nora Roberts - Remember When

"Or had facial restructuring."

"Kids today." Feeney blew out an aggrieved breath. "No faith."

"What about the son?"

"Working a morph on that, too. We've hit some possibles. Doing a secondary on them. And our boy here's looking for the money."

Eve looked away from the screens. The rapid movements were bringing back the headache. "What money?"

"She sold the house in Ohio," Roarke reminded her. "It takes a bit of time for the settlement, the payoff. The bank or the realtor would have had to send the check to her, or make an e-transfer per instructions. In the name she was using at the time, unless she authorized it to be paid to another party."

"You can find out stuff like that? From that long ago?"

"If you're persistent. She was a careful woman. She authorized the settlement check to be transferred electronically to her lawyer, at that time, then sent to another law firm in Tucson."

"Tucson?"

"Arizona, darling."

"I know where Tucson is." More or less. "How do you know this?"

"I have my ways."

She narrowed her eyes when Feeney looked up at the ceiling. "You lied, you bribed and you broke any number of privacy laws."

"And this is the thanks I get. She was in Tucson, from what I can find, less than a month in early 2004. Long enough to pick up the check, deposit it in a local bank. My educated guess would be, she used that point and those funds to change identities once again, then moved to another location."

"We're narrowing it down. Once the matches are complete, we'll take a hard look at the hits." Feeney rubbed his temple. "I need a break."

"Why don't you go down, have a swim, a beer?" Roarke suggested. "We'll see what we've got in another half hour."

"That's a plan I can get behind. You got anything for us, kid?"

Nobody but Feeney ever called her "kid." "I'll bring you up to date after you take a thirty," Eve told him. "I need to set a few things up in my office."

"Meet you there then."

"I could use a beer myself," Eve commented when Feeney walked out.

"A break seems to be in order." Roarke ran a finger down the back of her hand, then tugged it closer to nibble.

She knew that move.

"Don't even start sniffing at me."

"Too late. What is this scent? All over your skin?"

"I don't know." Warily, she lifted her shoulder, sniffed at it herself.

Smelled like soap to her. "Whatever was in the shower." She gave her hand a little yank, but made the mistake of glancing around in case Feeney was still nearby. The instant of distraction gave him the opening to hook a foot around hers, tip her off balance and into his lap.

"Jesus, cut it out!" Her voice was a fierce and frantic whisper. On the mortification scale, getting caught snuggled in Roarke's lap hit the top three, even above getting caught napping or barefoot by another cop. "I'm on the clock. Feeney's right here."

"I don't see Feeney." He was already nuzzling his way along her neck toward her ear. "And as an expert consultant, civilian, I'm entitled to a recreational break. I've decided I prefer adult activity to adult beverage."

Little demons of lust began to dance along her skin. "You can't even think I'm going to mess around with you in the computer lab. Feeney could come back in here."

"Adds to the excitement. Yes, yes." He chuckled as he nipped at a spot-his personal favorite-just under her jaw. "Sick and perverted. And though I'd wager Feeney suspects we have occasional sex, we'll take our recreational break elsewhere."

"I've got work to do, Roarke, and... Hey! Hands!"

"Why, yes, those are indeed my hands." Laughing now, he cupped them under her and levered out of the chair. "I want my thirty," he said, and carted her toward the elevator.

"The way you're going, you'll be done in five."

"Bet."

She struggled against a laugh of her own and put up a token struggle by clamping a hand on the opening of the elevator. "I can't just go off and get naked with Feeney in the house. It's too weird. And if he comes back and-"

"You know, I suspect Feeney gets naked with Mrs. Feeney, and this is probably how they had their little Feeneys."

"Oh my God!" Her hand trembled, went limp, and her face paled considerably.

"That's just despicable, the dirtiest of dirty fighting to shove that one into my head."

Because he wanted to keep her unbalanced, he reached behind her and keyed in the bedroom rather than using audio command. "Whatever works. Now you're too weak to hold me off."

"Don't count on it."

"Do you remember the first time we made love?" He touched his lips to hers as he said it, changing tactics with a gentle brush.

"I have a vague recollection."

"We rode up in the elevator like this and couldn't keep our hands off each other, couldn't get to each other quick enough. I was mad for you. I wanted you more than I wanted to keep breathing. I still do." He deepened the kiss as the elevator doors opened. "It's never going to change."

"I don't want it to change." She combed her fingers through his hair, shoving the band away so all that thick, soft black slid through her fingers. "You're so damn good at this." She pressed her lips to his throat. "But not quite good enough to have me doing this with the door open. Feeney could, you know, wander in. I can't focus."

"We'll fix that." With her legs hooked around his waist, her arms around his neck and her lips beginning to lay a hot line over his skin, he went to the door. He closed it. Locked it. "Better?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe you should remind me how we did this the first time again."

"I believe, if memory serves, it went something like this." He spun her around, trapping her between the wall and his body. And his mouth was fever hot on hers.

She felt the need, instant and primal, slice through her. It was like being cleaved in two-the woman she'd been before him, the woman she'd discovered with him.

She could be what she was, and he understood her. She could be what she'd become, and he cherished her. And the wanting each other, through all the changes, all the discoveries, never abated.

She let him ravish her, and felt the power in surrender. It pumped and swelled inside her as she slid down his body. Her hands were as busy as his, her mouth as impatient as they dragged each other toward the bed.

They stumbled up the platform, and remembering, she laughed. "We were in a hurry then, too."

They fell on the bed in a tangle of limbs, then rolled as they struggled to strip away clothes, to take and devour. Before, that first time, it had been in the dark. Groping and grasping and desperation in the dark. Now they were in the light that spilled through the windows, through the sky window over the bed, but the desperation was the same.

It ached in her like a wound that would never quite heal.

She'd been a mass and a maze of demands then, too, he remembered. All heat and motion, driving him toward frenzy so that he'd burned to ram himself into her and batter them both toward release.

But he'd wanted more. Even then, he'd wanted more of her. And for her. He gripped her hands, drawing her arms over her head, and she arched, pressing center to center until his pulse was a pounding of jungle drums.

"Inside me." Her eyes were blurred and dark. "I want you inside me. Hard.

Fast."

"Wait." He knew what it would be now, where they would take each other, and control was a thin and slippery wire. He cuffed her wrists with one hand. If she touched him now, that wire would snap.

But he could touch her. God, he needed to touch her, to watch her, to feel her body gather and quake from the assault of pleasure. Her skin was damp when he ran his free hand down her. The moan trembled from her lips, then broke with a hoarse cry as he used those clever fingers on her.