“Here’s how it is.” She set the box and coat on the sofa, unhooked her weapon harness. “One of the things I have to do is watch Matthew and Marlo have sex—all the way through this time since Feeney and I aren’t reviewing it together and suffering the mortification from hell. After doing that having sex with you is just going to be weird. So we’ll do it now, before it gets weird.”
“Maybe I’m not in the mood.”
She let out a snort. “Yeah. As if.” She sat to pull off her boots, eyed him. “I’d buy you dinner first, but we already ate.”
“We didn’t have dessert.”
She sent him a wicked grin. “That’s what I’m saying.”
He laughed, then sat on the side of the bed and took off his shoes. “Well, since you’re so determined.”
“Oh.” She stood, took off her shirt, her pants. “I can take no for an answer.”
“Who said no?”
She crossed to him, long and lithe, and sat on his lap, facing him. Grabbing his hair, she crushed her mouth to his, drawing the kiss down, down, coloring it dark and dangerous. She slid her hand down between them, gave him one hard stroke. “Yeah, you seem to be in the mood now.”
She angled away, slithered onto the bed, then rolled, lifted her eyebrows at him. “About those clothes.”
It took him roughly ten seconds to get rid of them. “What clothes?” he asked, and tumbled down to her.
She was laughing when they rolled. The cat, who’d assumed it was nap time, leaped off the bed to stalk away in disgust.
She needed to play, Roarke thought, to offset the brief journey into bad dreams and hard memories. He played his fingertips down her ribs, made her squirm and gasp out what was close to a giggle.
“Foul!” She grabbed his ass in a hard squeeze.
“What, this?” He tickled her ribs again until she bucked, choking on a laugh.
“Keep that up, you won’t get laid.”
“Oh, I think I will as you’ll be too weak to fight me off.” He drilled his finger into her side, and when she squealed—a sound so rare and foreign for her—he dissolved into laughter of his own.
“Got you now,” he murmured, nipping lightly at her shoulder. “A bit of a tickle and you turn into a girl.”
“You’re looking for trouble.”
“Oh, that I am, and as you’re all naked with girlish squeals under me, I think I can find it.”
“We’ll see who squeals, pal.” She caught his earlobe, not so lightly, between her teeth.
“That was a yelp,” he claimed. “And a manly one.”
She levered up, so he used the momentum to roll again, once, twice, until they ended up in the same position but across the bed.
“You’re outweighed, Lieutenant. And outmuscled.” He gripped her hands, drew them over her head. “Might as well give it over.”
He lowered his mouth to take her, and the sound she made now was pure pleasure. Her body went soft beneath his while the sole of her foot slid up to stroke his leg.
The next he knew he was on his back, her knee at his balls, her elbow at his throat. Her eyes glinted down into his.
“Weight and muscle fall beneath agility.”
“You’re a slippery one, you are.”
“Damn right, so you might as well give it over.” Now she lowered her mouth, then stopped a teasing breath away, drew back, teased in for a sampling nip, then another before she covered his mouth with hers.
“Who’s a girl?”
“You’re mine.” His hands glided down her back, around and up to her breasts. “You’re my girl.”
“Sap,” she said, but in a little sigh as she gave him her lips again.
She’d never been anybody’s girl, had never wanted to be. It had always seemed a weak term to her, one of submission and vulnerability. But with him, it was sweet and foolish, and just exactly right.
With more affection than passion—passion would come—she dropped kisses on his face. Oh, how she loved his face, the angles of it, the planes of his cheekbones, the line of his jaw.
She felt that affection, the simplicity of it, the scope of it from him as he wrapped his arms around her.
For a moment they stayed quiet, body to body, her lips resting on his cheek.
When she pressed her face into the side of his throat, he thought it the most magnificent thing.
His girl, he thought as hands and lips began to stoke the first embers of passion. His strong, complicated, and resilient girl. He loved every corner of her mind, her heart, even when she maddened him. There was nothing he wanted or treasured more truly, nothing he had craved or dreamed of in those dark, often desperate years of youth that was as rich or as powerful as what she’d given him.
He’d believed in love despite the lack of it in those early years, or perhaps because of the lack. But it had taken her to show him what love meant, what it gifted, what it cost, what it risked.
Breath quickened as the fire built to a blaze. She moved over him, supple as silk, then under him when he turned her. When he filled her.
Once again he took her hands, once again their eyes met, then their lips. Joined, they let the fire take them.
Later in her office, her board set up, her computer on the hum, she studied the faces, the facts, the evidence, the time line.
And felt as if she studied a blank brick wall.
“I don’t understand them. Maybe that’s why I can’t get a good hold on this. Acting, producing, directing—and all that goes into it. It’s a business, an industry, but it’s based on pretending.”
“You’re equating pretending with pretense,” Roarke responded. “They’re not the same. Imagination’s essential to the healthy human condition, for progress, for art, even for police work.”
She started to disagree about the police work, then reconsidered. She had to imagine, to some extent, the victim, the killer, the events in order to find the reality.
Still.
“These people—the actors. They have to become someone else. They have to want to become someone else. Playacting, isn’t that a term for it? Play. But they have to make a living at it. So you get agents and managers, directors, producers.”
She circled the board. “The director. He has to see the big picture, right? The whole of it even while he separates it into sections, into scenes. He calls the shots, but he’s dependent on the actors taking his direction, and being able to …”
“Become,” Roarke finished. “As you said.”
“Yeah. The producer, he’s got the financial investment and the power. He’s the one who says yeah, he can have that, or no, you can’t. He has to see the big picture, too, but with dollars and cents attached. So he needs more than what the actors and director put on-screen. He needs them to cultivate image and generate media so the public can imagine the real lives—the glamour, the sex, the scandals—of the actors who make their living being someone else.”
She circled again. “So specifically, you’ve got Steinburger as producer—and I imagine the suits that line up with him, because suits always line up—seeing to it the public are fed Julian and Marlo as an item. Because they consider the public largely made up of morons—and I don’t disagree—who’ll buy into the fantasy. More, who
“What does that tell you?”
“For one thing, Julian, Marlo, and everyone involved went along with that angle. Most of their interviews are playful, flirtatious, without actual confirmation or denial. If one or both of them is asked if they’re involved romantically, they give clever varieties of the old ‘we’re just good friends’—with little teases about chemistry and heat. The same goes for Matthew and Harris.”
Eve stopped her pacing in front of the board. “That’s more low-key, as the investment in their fantasy isn’t as important. K.T. did more playing that up—chemistry again, how much she enjoys her scenes with Matthew. He talks more about the project as a whole, or the cast as a group. He’s careful, even in the interviews, not to connect
