“Listen, like it or not, he’s yours. I’m not going to kick at him when he’s twisted up worried about you. I’ll wait till he’s untwisted, then kick at him.”
That made him laugh and give the hand he still held a little swing. “Fair enough. You gave him a task. He’s the sort who does better when he has a task.”
On impulse, she headed for the bedroom rather than her office. Might as well get comfortable before diving in again.
“He’s still got his Urban Wars contacts. I want to see what he can dig up. I don’t know if what happened downtown is connected to two attacks, in Europe, decades ago, but it’ll be good to have the data. I’m no Urbans buff, but we had to study it in school. In the Academy we had lectures on tactics, riot control, chem and biological threats using the Urbans as a platform. I never heard of what Summerset talked about.”
“Nor have I, before this, and it sounds like the military shut the door on it. If any of it came here, or threatened to, Homeland would’ve had a part in that,” he added. “Closing it, covering it. It’s something they’re good at.”
“We’re not dealing with them yet.” She released her weapon harness, set it aside. “If and when we do, the more we know, the better.” Sitting, she pulled off her boots. “And if and when, if we find out they knew there was a formula, and what happened today was a possibility—and they just kept the lid on? I’m going to bury them.”
“You’ll need two shovels as I’ll want one of my own.”
If it came to it, she’d make sure he had an active part in exposing who and what in the agency played a part. Odds were, she mused, she wouldn’t have to make sure of anything, and he’d see to it himself.
They’d have different reasons, and his would be payback. Then again, that was its own form of justice.
“I want a shower before I get to it.” She walked toward the bath, stopped. Gave him a look and crooked her finger.
He lifted his brows. “Oh, really?”
“Up to you, ace, but in about thirty seconds, I’m going to be hot and wet. You’re going to want to finish getting out of that suit.”
A round of water sports might be just the thing, he decided, to take both of them away from the ugliness of the day for a time.
Life needed to be lived.
As he suspected, steam billowed through the wide opening of the glass-walled shower. She had every jet pumping, and brutally hot at that. He wondered it didn’t blister her skin.
But there she stood, long and sleek and glistening in the mists and the water, her face lifted, her short cap of hair glossy as a seal’s coat.
He stepped in behind her, winced at the boiling punch of the waterfall. A small price to pay, he thought as he wrapped his arms around her, nuzzled his lips at the curve of her neck.
“Knew I could count on you.” She hooked her arm around his neck, leaned back into him. “Feels good.”
“You do.” To prove it, he slid his hands up her body, glided them over her breasts. “I won’t speak of the lobster boil of the water.”
“We’re burning out toxins.”
“Is that the way of it?”
“That’s my story.” She turned, slippery and quick, to lock herself to him, to fix her mouth to his, drowning them both in the fast-rising flood of need.
His mind emptied but for her, the hungry mouth, the urgent press of her body. Steam rose up, swirled around them as he took his hands over all those lovely, familiar places. Made her gasp and moan and reach.
He spun her around, pressed her to the wall and gave himself the pleasure of her back. The line of it, the tough cut of muscle under smooth skin.
He tapped a tile then filled his hands with fragrant soap. Slowly at first, slowly running it over her in a slick foam. Back and shoulders, hips and thighs, belly and breasts, until her breath was deep and uneven, until the scent swirled like the steam.
Hands and mouth, only hands and mouth—still slow, lulling and seducing so his cop, his warrior, his wife trembled.
As did his own heart.
His fingers found her, teased, a featherlight torture.
Lost in him. Her hands fisted against the dripping wall as her system churned, yearned. She wanted to turn to him, take him in. Take him. But he’d trapped her, and used her, undid her.
Inch by inch he took her up, and held her, somehow held her back from that last reach so she quaked and writhed, steeped in pleasure, and just short of release.
“I can’t.”
“You can.” Once again he pressed his lips to the curve of her throat.
Release crawled through the madness of sensation. She couldn’t breathe without feeling. So much, so much. It rolled through her, a wave that built and built as it rose. Pleasure and relief blurred together, dizzying, glorious.
He turned her. She saw only the wild blue of his eyes, then his mouth was on hers again, ravaging, wrecking even as he drove into her.
Now the slap of wet flesh with the pounding drum of water, and the glory of mindless mating. He took her stroke by powerful stroke, stealing every thought, filling every void.
She fisted her hands in his hair, drew him back. She wanted his face in her eyes as well as her mind.
“You. Just you.”
The words, the magic of them struck his heart. Then for the last time he pressed his lips to the curve of her neck, and breathing her, let go.
They held each other up. Eve figured she’d get her breath back in a day or two. It might take up to a week before she got any strength back in her legs.
Otherwise, all good.
She’d figured they’d have a quick, stress-reducing bang, and instead, they’d come together in a way that left her both unwound and energized. If she didn’t count her still-weak knees.
“I think we need to get out of here,” she managed.
“Not yet.”
“I’m pretty sure I can crawl.”
“We’ll do better. Decrease jet temp to eighty-six degrees.”
“Wait—” The water poured cool considering what it had been. She squealed, cursed, struggled, but he held her snug to the wall.
Laughing, he snuggled her closer. “It’ll wake you up, and it’s the same temperature as the pool. Hardly an ice bath.”
It felt like one to her. “Jets off! Off, off, fucking off!”
When they shut down, she shoved her dripping hair out of her eyes, scorched him with a look.
He only gave her the most pleasant of smiles in return.
Hadn’t she said men had juvenile senses of humor? “You think that was funny?”
“I do, yes. And refreshing. And I bet you can walk under your own power now.”
Because she certainly could—and not to prove him right—she strode straight into the drying tube, letting out a relieved breath when the warm air swirled.
Through the glass she watched him select a towel. He sent her a grin as he dried off, then slung the towel over his hips and walked back to the bedroom.
He’d pulled on jeans and a T-shirt by the time she came out, so she did the same.
She gave one brief thought to the fact most people were in bed, or at least thinking about getting there at this time of night.
Cops weren’t most people.
“I’m going to get started,” she told him.
“As am I.” He walked out with her. “I’ll give you whatever help I can once I’ve sorted some things out.”
They separated to their adjoining offices.
She set up her board first, lining up the faces of the dead, those who lived, and those who connected to
