Dead of Eve (Trilogy of Eve)

by Godwin, Pam

  His tongue pushed into my mouth. I caught it between my lips and sucked.

  Fingers stabbed through my hair, tilting my head the angle he wanted. My feet arched on tiptoes as I stretched to meet him.

  “I missed ye so much,” he said at my lips, “I can’t stop this.”

  Oh no. Stop was on my tongue, but his swept it away. Oak and chocolate filled my mouth. Desire pooled between my thighs. Didn’t I learn last time?

  I shoved his chest. “Talk, Roark. That’s why we’re here.”

  Strong fingers yanked my waist toward the bed. He fell with me, pinned me with his hips.

  “We’ll talk like this.” His brogue was deep and very male.

  I groaned. “No way.”

  His thumb bit into my bottom lip, parted it. His mouth opened over mine, hovered. “Talk.”

  “What is this?” I rocked against his erection.

  A rumble vibrated low in his throat. “Ye know what that is.”

  “No. You doing this.” I punctuated this with a snap of my hips.

  He ground me into the bed, his belt buckle digging into my pelvis. “This is me loving ye the only way I can.”

  Oh, my fickle priest. What did I do with that answer? I crunched the muscles in my core and lifted to meet him. “Then this is me loving you back.” Knowing it would only end in more pain.

  Our hips rolled together, found the right spot, the right pace. I gave myself over to the sensations, the solace of his touch, the pull of our bodies rubbing and climbing together.

  “There. Right there.” I clung to his shoulders, consumed by his mouth.

  His grinding hips slowed. One twist. Two. His body shook and he threw back his head, eyes squeezed shut. “Unghhh.”

  Seeing him like that, losing himself to something as simple as dry humping, it pushed me over. I screamed out my release.

  He clamped a hand over my mouth and laughter bellowed from his chest. “I hate to quiet ye, love, but knowing wha’ those cries do to me, it’d be a bugger to stir up the same reaction from the wankers on deck.”

  “Kiss me then,” I murmured through his fingers. And damn, he did in a frantic feasting. Open-mouthed and urgent, his chin scratched against mine. Then he tilted his head, deepened the feeding. His hands moved over my neck, my breasts, down my thighs, always returning to knead my ass.

  He raised his head, looked down at me. “Ye den’ know how bad I’ve been gummin’ to do this.” His nose traced the length of mine. “I’ve been a right perv thinking about us a’ it.”

  I licked his swollen lips. “I missed you, too. This shit with your vow, with Michio”—I hugged him, poured my heart in it—“it fucking hurts.”

  “I promise ye, I’ll bind me soul to Satan for a thousand years in a bottomless pit if it means you’ll never hurt again.”

  Those jade eyes bored into me with such stark focus that my mouth went dry and my bones softened. “Then stop fucking me around. You chose your vow. Yet here you are. Again.”

  He dropped his forehead to mine. “There’s a balance between reason and faith. I’m going arseways about it, but I’ll find it. Ye wait in that balance. I need ye, Evie.”

  “I don’t know about the balance, but you can have me without the orgasm.”

  He groaned. “Right ye are. I survived thirty-three years without one. One buck with ye and I’m banjaxed beyond all help.”

  “Voodoo vagina.”

  He burst out laughing. I could get high off that sound. “Lay this out for me. Tell me how you see us going forward.”

  “I see ye leaving me with me head hanging like Beelzebub’s ball sac.”

  I gasped. “Never that.”

  Our lips collided in more laughter.

  “This.” He held my face between his hands. “This is how I see us, Evie.”

  My smile filled my face and tingled through my body. “Okay.”

  “Hold that thought.” He rolled off me and jogged to the bathroom. The water turned on, turned off. Then he returned with a scrap of paper and a pen in hand. “We’re going to define our physical relationship. Our limits in regards to me relationship with God and your…other relationships.”

  My brow wrinkled. “My other relationships? Michio?”

  “And the Lakota.”

  “Oh. We’re not like that.”

  A laugh cascaded from his perfect lips. “Your arse and parsley. I spent a rake of time with that mentaller. He’s lost the rag over ye.”

  Another Jesse puzzle to sort out. I wanted him with a heart already divided between two others. It felt wrong to love three men. But it felt more wrong not too. “Let’s focus on us. You want to negotiate our relationship?”

  “Our physical relationship.” He joined me on the bed, facing me. “I wen’ hurt ye again. I can make this work if we’re on the same page.” He nodded to the paper.

  The desperation in his eyes and the plea in his expression would make me do just about anything. “Why are we writing this down? Just tell me what you want.”

  “So one answer wen’ sway the other.”

  We sat cross-legged, knees to knees, heads down. I scrawled my only requirement and passed it to him, face down.

  When he finished writing his on the other side, he pulled me into his lap and leaned against the headboard. The paper quivered in his hand.

  I kissed his bottom lip. “You’re nervous?”

  He kissed me back. “Bloody terrified.”

  “We don’t have to do this.”

  The paper floated to my lap. “Read them aloud.”

  I flipped to his elegant penmanship. “You want to maintain your relationship with God by refraining from intercourse.” I looked up. “I already know this. This is what you were fretting over?”

  A swallow bobbed his throat. “It’s what’s not on there. I want everything else, love. The holding, the touching, the kissing—”

  “The ejaculating in your boxers.”

  A quirk touched his lips.

  “I’m pretty sure just thinking about any of those things breaks your vow.”

  His thumb meandered over my knee. “I’m redefining me relationship with God. By refraining from the temptation of intercourse, by touching your fit body everyday knowing I’ll never fully have ye, I’m still holding back a part of me self for Him. He understands me need to be physically comforted by ye amidst this devastating world. And He understands I’m still making a huge sacrifice. You’re me biggest temptation, Evie. I promise, this will be a continual test of me faith.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And your limit?”

  I turned the paper over and held it up. “Accept my sexual relationship with Michio. My open affection with him. I won’t be sneaking off to make out in dark corners.”

  His thumb jerked on my leg. “Nor will I. And all you’re other relationships?”

  “I told you—”

  “You’re the only woman in the world, love. There will be others.” His arms went around me and he pressed a kiss into my hair. “We have our terms.”

  “That’s it? After your possessive display yesterday?”

  He pulled me closer. “I thought your relationship with Michio meant the end of ours. It scared me.”

  “He hasn’t barged in yet. Admit you misjudged him and behaved like a belligerent child.”

  “Right.” His smile was back. Maybe it would stay put. But as he rolled me over and buried his face in my neck, I wondered if Michio would sympathize with Roark’s new definition of celibacy.

  That night, a hum tingled low in my belly. I opened my eyes. Michio’s steady breath brushed the top of my head. Roark’s chest rose and fell against my back.

  The buzz increased, spiraled up my spine. I raised my head and rubbed my eyes. A black figure blotted out the middle of the room. The shape expanded, stretched sideways.

  My heart thundered in my ears. I blinked, adjusted my eyes to the dark. My throat closed up.

  Transparent wings spread from wall to wall. Onyx eye
s drank in the shadows. Lips curled back and fangs extended. “Now we finish where we left off, Eveline.”

  I am not afraid… I was born to do this.

  Joan of Arc

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: THE ARC

  All at once, I was alone in the bed. The clash of steel on wood rang out. Shadows writhed in the doorway and moved out of the room.

  I jolted up and barreled into the cabinet that housed the carbine.

  Empty clip. Next clip. Empty. Shit. I grabbed the USP, ejected the mag. A strip of brass peeked out. Adrenaline surged. I chambered a round, pivoted, elbows locked, and lined up the sights.

  Roark leaned over his sword, chest heaving. And the Drone….

  “Where is he?” He couldn’t be far. I ran through the door and crashed into Michio.

  His arms enfolded me, his staff nudging my back. “He’s gone.”

  “His wings. Did you see—”

  “Yes.” He tucked my head under his arm. “He flew away.”

  “I didn’t dream that? He can fly?” My voice pitched on the last word.

  His other arm hooked around my waist, pulled me closer. “Yes,” rattled from his chest, against my face.

  I jerked from his hold, heart racing, and skin crawling. Slivers of wood jabbed my feet as I darted back to the cabinet. “We’re surrounded by water. No messenger bugs. How did he find us?” If he could find me on a boat in the Ligurian Sea, he could find me anywhere.

  The Drone’s right hand man, member of the Shard, doctor with a hypothesis for everything, stared at me, eyes blank.

  Not good. “Obviously, he learned our route. But how—” No, no, no. The hungry guards, the dungeon, meat hooks, torture. My hand went to my breast, to the turquoise stone there. “Oh God…Jesse.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, Evie.” Michio’s knuckles blanched around his staff. Steel spikes protruded from the end. No blood.

  The tip of Roark’s sword dug into the teak floor, its sharp edge clean as well.

  “How did the Drone get past you?” So quickly and uninjured?

  “He flashed.” Roark pointed the sword at the door. “He moves faster than ye doing that blurry thing when you’re lamping bugs.”

  Knew that after two months on the painful side of his flashing fist. “Tallis and Cliff?”

  “They saw him fly off starboard.” Michio hauled on jeans and a shirt, the blades gone from the staff in his hand.

  “And they didn’t get a shot off? Harpoon his ass with their fishing gun? Nothing?”

  Brows collided over black eyes. “It’s dark.”

  “He flew all the way here, just to be chased away? He’s fucking with us.” I strapped on my arm sheaths and four knives. Jesse must have collected my spares from the Humvee. “How close is Genoa?” Goddammit, Jesse better be there. In one piece.

  “On the horizon.” Michio kissed my bare shoulder and draped a tee over it. “I’m going up.” The door snicked behind him.

  Roark leaned against the cabinet beside me. I scoured the racks for mags, filled the ones I found with ammo, unable to ignore the weight of his gaze. “What?”

  “Ye were just gonna hurl along up there after the Drone in the nip, were ye?” His eyes made a perusal over my nude skin, stopping on the only thing I wore. Michio’s boxers, rolled at the waistband, determined to give up their fight against gravity.

  I tugged them up and slammed my pistol in the holster. “Survival before modesty.”

  His eyes darted to the shirt flung over my shoulder. “Think your doctor disagrees.”

  A shaky sigh escaped. “Add it to our list of disagreements.”

  His slouch against the cabinet grew taller. “That so?”

  We didn’t have time for melodrama, but my fragile relationships wouldn’t work without communication and honesty. I turned toward him and traced fingers around his curling ones, intertwining our hands. “He knows about our negotiation. We talked after you went up on deck last night.” Talking wasn’t the only thing we did.

  The tic in his cheek told me he caught the flush in mine. I straightened the strap on my holster, stalling. “We’ll work it out. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Tell me wha’ I’m not worrying about, then.” His expression, so open and full of affection, made it easy to bare all, give him all.

  “Okay.” I raised our laced hands, pressed a kiss to his scarred knuckles. “It’s the touching.”

  His eyes darkened, locked on my mouth. “What about it?”

  “The intimacy you and I share…he’s wants to draw lines at—”

  He tossed his hands in the air. “Then throw us a bloody Sharpie, why den’ he? We’ll just draw ‘Do Not Enter’ zones on your body. Is that wha’ he wants?”

  “Stop making him out like a barbarian. It’s not any different than the lines you and I drew. And don’t forget, he just left us alone down here, with me wearing only underwear.” I stretched out my arms, baring the reminder.

  Cheeks splotched, he dropped his head and asked the floor, “Wha’ do ye want?”

  I stepped into him and raised his whiskered chin with a cupped hand. The worry bracketing his gorgeous eyes was my undoing. “I want you, you fickle, fucked up, beautiful man.”

  His lashes dropped through a ragged inhale and snapped back up. “Ye want the doctor.”

  My selfish heart jumped to my throat, choked my response. “Him, too.” When he tried to look away, I hardened my grip, waited for those eyes to focus on mine. “And if he loves me like he says he does, he’ll understand that nothing is worth holding on to like the love we share in touch. I won’t let anyone take that from us, okay?”

  “Bloody hell.” His face softened, as did his body. We melted together, forehead to forehead, palms holding cheeks, and let our mingling breaths seal my vow.

  I perched between Roark and Michio against the starboard bow. Cliff monitored port side. Tallis stretched behind the wheel. A cigarette sagged from his brazen lips as he steered us into Genoa’s harbor.

  Pale-breasted gulls screeched into the early morning twilight. Piers fingered from the shoreline, buried under concrete and metal. Disemboweled ships leeched the decrepit docks.

  My grip on the railing clenched. In that moment, with the defensive walls of a dead city collapsing around us and the jaws of death echoing through the devoured streets, I felt so very far away from home. My breath caught in my throat, clinging to a lost hope.

  One little girl.

  My past followed me to every city, weighing me down. Surrounded by a foreign horizon, I lost the fight to keep all things familiar buried. Maybe it was the countdown to docking, the dread that came with the dangers waiting on land. Maybe it was the empty wharf, the sickening feeling that Jesse didn’t make it. When I released a long-held breath, it escaped with an unobtainable wish.

  One little boy.

  I longed for wings. To let the wind carry my feet. To fly home, to the brick and boarded husk of the life I once had, to the woman I used to be. I ducked my head, didn’t want them to see me, crumbling like the ships in the harbor.

  A hand settled over mine on the railing. Sandalwood breaths stirred my hair. “Let it go.”

  “As if it were that easy.” My voice wobbled. I swallowed the weakness, hardened it. “Did you let…someone go?”

  “Parents. Brother.” Michio’s fingers curled, straightened, stroking between mine. “My girlfriend.”

  I cleared my throat. “What was her name?”

  “Isabella.”

  Beside me, Roark closed his eyes and hooked his pinkie around my free one. Words didn’t comfort, didn’t undo what was done. So I said nothing.

  Michio dropped his forehead to my temple. “Everything sad, everything dead, the past brought us here, alive.”

  The blades on my arms glinted against the sparkling ebb of the sea. “It’s unforgiving.”

  His lips feathered my earlobe. “It’s living.”

  “Living is relative. And not always ideal.” I steeled my shoulders
against the glaring empty wharf. But where would I be without Roark’s faith in me, Jesse’s loyalty, and Michio’s strength. Things would be much, much worse.

  Distant barking fluttered across the harbor. I jumped.

  Cliff’s voice ripped through the tension. “The dog’s our green light to berth.”

  My heart panted as I leaned over the railing and squinted. A blur of black and tan streaked across the pier. I shoved my way to the port side. Darwin squatted on the edge of the dock, tongue lolling, tail whipping.

  A man loomed on the shore, his back to us. He glanced over his shoulder and the first rays of sun caught the copper in his eyes. Then he returned to his watch, bow and arrow at his side. A position that would allow lift and release in one breath. My pulse sped up.

  The yacht docked. I scrambled down the ramp and dropped to my knees in a furry reunion. Lathered in puppy kisses and dog hair, I caught the amusement cartwheeling across Roark’s face. “What?”

  He shook his head and gestured up the dock with his chin. “Ye gonna give your Lakota the same greeting?”

  Tallis and Cliff walked the perimeter, rifles raised. Jesse leaned against a pier support, hands stuffed in the pockets of jeans hung low on his narrow hips. He didn’t have Roark’s height or Michio’s bulk, but his trim physique was solid and intimidating all the same. He watched me with his usual bored expression.

  Roark’s hand found mine and gave it a squeeze. I loped up the pier with Darwin bouncing at my heels and stopped an arm’s length away.

  Last time I saw him, he was saving my ass on Dover pier. And there we were, another pier, another ass saving. There was so much to say, yet the only thing my mouth could produce was a weak smile. Definitely not a high-confidence moment.

  “The doctor give you my message?”

  I missed that smooth Texan accent. His gaze floated to my shirt where my scar curved above the low neckline. His copper eyes darkened under furrowed brows and his mouth dipped in a scowl.

  “You weren’t responsible for what happened in Dover. Or River Tweed.”

  His jaw clenched and his fists went to his hips. “Fuck if I wasn’t. I was there.” Such pain in his voice.