Til Death Do Us Part

by Beverly Barton

  He was killing her by slow degrees, but she knew, despite his iron-will performance, that he was getting closer and closer to losing control. He could not hide his aroused state. His manhood stood at attention, hard and pulsating, passionate moisture trickling from the tip.

  He took his own sweet time removing her panties, his hands caressing their way downward, his fingertips giving off electrical energy that sent shock waves through her body.

  When her panties fell down to her ankles, she kicked them aside and reached out for Roarke. When she touched him intimately, he growled like a beast in pain.

  She smiled as she encompassed him, stroking him with her closed hand. He jerked. Running her thumb across the tip, she spread the juice around his shaft.

  “Dammit, woman!” Roarke hauled her up against him, but when he tried to lift her, she pulled away, then quickly dropped to her knees. He gazed down at her, his vision slightly blurred from the raging desire boiling inside him. “Don’t tease me, honey. Not about this.”

  And that was the last coherent thing Simon Roarke was able to say for quite some time. Cleo played with him, tormenting him with her tongue, promising but not fulfilling, until Roarke’s big body trembled. He was a mighty oak ready to fall. All it would take was one tiny push. One sweet, sweet tiny little push.

  He grabbed the back of her head, urging her to give what she had promised. Threading his fingers through her hair, he pressed her face toward his body.

  She made love to him with her mouth, tenderly, thoroughly, learning from his grunts and sighs what he preferred and what he didn’t want. She brought him to the very edge, then hesitated, her own body quivering with need. Then she pushed him over the edge, headlong into earth-shattering release.

  When some measure of sanity returned to him, he lifted her off her feet and up into his arms. His mouth took hers in a frenzy, feeding off her passion. He tasted himself on her lips, on her tongue, and his body reawakened. How was it possible? he wondered. He was damn near forty years old. Maybe he should remind a certain part of his anatomy that men his age couldn’t make such a quick recovery.

  Roarke carried her to the edge of the creek and set her on the grassy bank, letting her feet and calves hang over into the water. He walked into the creek, then lifted her to straddle his hips and eased the two of them into the water. She cried out when he entered her, surprised that he was ready again so soon. He guided her movements, back and forth, splashing the water around them. With her legs wrapped around his hips and her arms draped loosely around his neck, Cleo allowed Roarke complete control. The sensations mounted inside her quickly. He plunged deeper and harder, pounding into her until she screamed her pleasure.

  The aftershocks of her fulfillment pelted him. He drove into her repeatedly, with quick, hard lunges, then jetted his release into her receptive body.

  They clung together, their bodies shaky, their breathing harsh. Roarke supported her weight with his strength, and she was glad because her bones had melted and offered no support.

  Gradually their weakness diminished and Roarke carried her out of the creek and up onto the grass. The horses grazed contentedly nearby. Roarke looked around for a secluded spot and spied two weeping willows, their long, feathery branches overlapping where they touched the ground. He carried Cleo inside the verdant cocoon, placed her on the warm, soft grass and lay down beside her. She reached over and clasped his hand.

  They lay there, side by side, for several minutes. Neither of them speaking. Each listening to the other one’s breathing. They dozed off and slept until the sun was high in the sky.

  Rousing from her nap, Cleo gently awakened Roarke. “Let’s don’t go back to the house,” she said. “Let’s stay out here all day. If anyone needs to find us, Willie knows where we are.”

  “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than lie here under this willow with you all day. Both of us naked.” He stroked the underside of her wrist with his thumb. “But we can’t hide out here forever. Sooner or later, we’ll have to go back and face what’s waiting for us.”

  “What’s waiting for us is my family, who have suddenly started acting like a Stepford family. Like sweet, docile robots.” Cleo shook her head. “And I dread the thought of Aunt Beatrice finding out that Uncle Perry is the sheriff’s number-one suspect.”

  “She still loves him, doesn’t she?” Roarke ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Yes, I’m afraid she does.”

  “But you’re not still in love with Paine Emerson and you were never in love with Hugh Winfield. Is that right?”

  Cleo braced her elbow on the ground, placing her body in a half sitting, half lying position. She gazed directly into Roarke’s questioning eyes. “That’s right. Despite the strong family resemblance, I am not a carbon copy of my aunt Beatrice. I’m not the type to spend my whole life pining away for a man I could never have. Besides, I wouldn’t have Paine Emerson now if he threw himself at my feet and begged me to forgive him.”

  Roarke positioned himself on one elbow and turned toward Cleo, his body mimicking the way hers rested on the bed of grass beneath them. “What about Hugh Winfield?”

  “What about Hugh?”

  “Any regrets where he’s concerned?”

  “Only that I ever dated him in the first place,” she said. “We’ve been friends since we were kids, but I never seriously considered going out with him. Not until Uncle George suggested it.”

  “Uncle George wanted you to marry Hugh.” Roarke broke off a blade of grass and put it in his mouth.

  “Uncle George wanted to make sure I didn’t make the same mistake his daughter made. He was damned and determined to see me married and a mother. He truly believed I’d never be happy otherwise.”

  “He must have hated Perry Sutton for hurting Beatrice the way he did. What I can’t understand is why your uncle George allowed Oralie and her family to live with him.” Roarke removed the blade of grass from his mouth and ran the tip up and down between Cleo’s breasts.

  Her nipples hardened instantly. “I’m sure Uncle George did hate Uncle Perry for years, but after time passed and he saw that Perry paid dearly for his mistake every day of his life, then Uncle George’s attitude mellowed. He never forgave Uncle Perry, but I think, in the end, he pitied him.

  “To understand the situation fully, you have to know that my father and Aunt Oralie had lived with Uncle George since their early teens, after their parents died. Uncle George was really a father to his brother’s children as well as to his own daughter. Would you believe that at one time Aunt Beatrice and Aunt Oralie were like sisters? Uncle George allowed Oralie to continue living with him because Aunt Beatrice asked him not to kick her out. Uncle Perry had very little money at the time and Aunt Oralie has always had very expensive tastes.”

  “Beatrice is a remarkable woman,” Roarke said. “Not many in her position would have been so generous.”

  “That’s the kind of person she is. Loving and forgiving to a fault.”

  “Let’s keep our suspicions and Sheriff Bacon’s from Beatrice as long as we possibly can.” Roarke ran the blade of grass across Cleo’s tight nipples.

  She gasped as the tingling sensation in her nipples raced downward. “I agree, but sooner or later, she’s bound to find out. Especially if Uncle Perry really is guilty.”

  “You know, Cleo, despite all the circumstantial evidence against him, my gut instincts tell me that Perry Sutton didn’t place those spiders in your towels and he didn’t poison your tea.” Roarke repeatedly raked the grass blade across Cleo’s nipples.

  She grabbed his hand. He looked at her and grinned, then pulled free and threw away the blade of grass.

  “Why would an intelligent man, who is an entomology expert, with free access to the science lab where the spiders were kept, be foolish enough to take such a risk?” Roarke reached out and lifted an unruly strand of hair off Cleo’s cheek. “And why on earth would a man use an outdated rodenticide, which he kept in his own greenhouse,
to poison your tea?”

  “It’s almost as if someone were trying to set him up. But who? Why would Trey or Daphne set up their own father? And Lord knows, Aunt Oralie wouldn’t. She couldn’t survive without Uncle Perry’s constant attention.”

  “If you’re right, that leaves only Hugh Winfield. And he’d have nothing to gain unless he can persuade Daphne to marry him. Of course, I’m not as generous in my estimation of Daphne as you are. I believe she’d use anyone to get what she wanted. It’s possible that she’s capable of setting up her own father. Could be that she and Winfield are working together.”

  “Anything’s possible, isn’t it?” Cleo lay flat on her back, looking up through a fluttering, feathery green curtain at the bright blue sky overhead. “We’re really no closer to the truth than we were two weeks ago.”

  “Have I failed you, Cleo?” he asked. “Did you expect—”

  She covered his lips with two fingers, silencing him. “McNamara Industries is secure and well policed by Mr. Kane and his security force. That was your doing.” She traced the line of his jaw with her fingertip. “I’m alive and well and happier than I’ve ever been in my life. And that, too, is your doing.”

  “Ah, honey, you shouldn’t say things like that to a naked man.”

  “Then you’d better put on your clothes,” she told him.

  “Later.” He reached for her, grasping her by the shoulders and drawing her into his embrace. “I have something in mind that requires both of us to be naked.”

  “Oh, is that right?” She rubbed her breasts against his chest and smiled when he moaned. “Just what do you have in mind?”

  “It involves a little payback for my loving wife,” he said, slipping his hand between her legs.

  “Payback? Tit for tat?”

  He massaged the tiny kernel hidden in the apex between her thighs. Cleo lifted her hips up off the ground. “You’ve got the idea, honey,” he said.

  “You’re going to give me what I gave you.” Her body dampened against his fingers, surrounding them with moisture.

  “Lick for lick.” Roarke inserted his finger inside her welcoming warmth.

  Cleo blew out a deep breath. “No one has ever…I mean…well, it’ll be a new experience.”

  “What you did for me was a new experience, too, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “And afterward, we’ll rest for a while, then later, I want us to go for a ride in your Sherwood Forest.” Lowering his head, he kissed her belly. “And you’re going to experience another first once we enter Sherwood.”

  “Another—” she gasped when he kissed her triangle of fiery curls. “Another first? When we ride into the woods?”

  “When we ride into Sherwood Forest,” he corrected her. “Today you’re going to be Maid Marian.”

  “Oh, I am, am I?”

  He spread her legs and lifted her hips. “Yes, my Cleo Belle, you are.”

  She swallowed hard. “I suppose that means you want to be Robin Hood.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” he said.

  He flicked her intimately with his tongue. She moaned, the sound reverberating in her throat.

  “All right, just this once—” she gasped as his mouth moved over her “—I’ll be Maid Marian and you’ll be Robin Hood.”

  “Whatever you say, Boss Lady.”

  Roarke took her where she’d never been, into an erotic paradise of pleasure. His mouth worshipped her femininity, savoring the smell and taste of her body, reveling in the feel of her undulating against his tongue, loving the sound of her hot, ecstatic cries.

  And when she fell apart, shattering into a million shards of pleasure, he lifted her on top of him and told her to ride him hard and fast, to pretend he was a wild stallion she had to tame.

  And tame him she did.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ROARKE READ THE report Morgan Kane had given him, then glanced up over the edge of the manila folder, looking his fellow Dundee agent square in the eye.

  “All this does is make me wonder if we’re dealing with more than one person.” Roarke flung the file on the desk. “And whether or not the attempts on Cleo’s life and the problems at McNamara Industries have a common perpetrator or if we have two family members working independently of each other.”

  “My guess is that we’re dealing with at least two individuals,” Kane said. “And they have separate agendas. Whoever was behind the problems at the plant wanted to force Ms. McNa—that is, Mrs. Roarke…” Kane hesitated, but continued when Roarke smiled. “To sell her uncle’s company. But I’d say the person threatening your wife wants to see her dead.”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid you’re right.” It had been a long time since an assignment had frustrated Roarke to such an extent. Hell, who was he kidding? Despite the failures and near failures he’d experienced, despite all the stress and frustration of his worst assignments, nothing compared with this one. But then, he’d never allowed himself to become so personally involved before.

  It wasn’t as if Cleo was nothing more than a client. Dammit, she was his wife, albeit only temporarily, but still she was his wife. She slept in his arms every night.

  He worked at her side every day. And in stolen moments out of time, like yesterday’s swim in the Great Mississippi, the hours spent shaded beneath the willow trees and an unforgettable trip into Sherwood Forest, he could almost convince himself that he and Cleo belonged together. But he knew better. He couldn’t allow great sex with an incredible lady to cloud his vision of reality or give him any delusions that life actually offered people happily ever afters.

  “Unfortunately all the evidence I’ve collected and the sheriff’s department has collected is nothing more than circumstantial,” Kane said. “The rifle that fired the shot that barely missed Mrs. Roarke belonged to her great-uncle and everyone in the house had access to the gun case. Since the person didn’t hit the target, we don’t know whether they were a poor shot or just didn’t intend to kill in the first place.”

  Pushing the oversize leather swivel chair back away from the Jacobean desk in the study, Roarke motioned toward a chair across from him. “Sit down.”

  Kane slumped into the chair, his big, hard body filling it completely. “The brown recluse incident and the tea poisoning both point the finger at Perry Sutton, but there’s nothing to link him to any of the problems at the plant. According to the guards and the secretaries at McNamara Industries, Mr. Sutton seldom even visits the place.”

  “My gut instincts tell me that Sutton isn’t our man.” Roarke tapped his index finger on the manila folder he’d tossed on top of the desk. “What I hate most about this situation is that there’s not much we can do about unearthing this would-be killer until he or she strikes again. And I’ll be honest with you, Kane. I hate like hell that Cleo is the only bait we can use to catch this person.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.” Leaning slightly forward, Kane rested his arms on his thighs and allowed his hands to dangle between his legs. “Protecting a woman you’re married to can’t be easy. I mean, even if there’s no love between y’all and the marriage is a business arrangement, the two of you having a relationship has to make it difficult for you to view things objectively.”

  Roarke wanted to vehemently deny Kane’s observation, but there was no way he could. The man was right. “I’m trying to handle things, not to let what’s between Cleo and me get in the way of my judgment or interfere with doing my best to keep her safe.”

  “Maybe we can’t catch the person trying to kill Mrs. Roarke until another attempt is made on her life, but we can do something about catching whoever wreaked havoc at McNamara Industries.”

  Roarke glanced down at the folder. “Trey Sutton was a prime suspect, until I read your report. Now I have to place Hugh Winfield and perhaps Daphne Sutton at the top of my list.”

  “I know Ms. Sutton and Winfield are dating, but why suddenly, after her uncle’s death, did she start stopping by the plant
on the nights Winfield worked late, when she’d never done that before? Was she encouraging Winfield to tamper with McNamara’s computer system? Were they planning the accidents that plagued the plant for weeks?”

  “It’s possible,” Roarke admitted. “Very possible. But the fact that Marla Sutton started having lunch at the plant with her husband, in his office, a couple of times a week, is suspicious. According to Trey’s secretary, his wife seldom if ever had lunch with him at the plant before George McNamara’s death. And Trey wasn’t known for eating in his office.”

  “That means that during her lunch visits, Marla Sutton could have been using her computer knowledge to do some major damage. Since she was once a secretary at McNamara’s, she’d be familiar with their computer system.”

  “What do you suggest we do, short of eliminating all the security systems you’ve put into place, to catch our culprit?” Roarke asked.

  “I suggest we set a trap for our big rat,” Kane said.

  “Using what as bait?” Leaning back in the enormous leather chair, Roarke narrowed his eyes and grinned. “Ellen Denby?”

  “The fact that Ellen is a woman has worked to our advantage before when we’ve brought her in on a case. Men tend to make the mistake of believing that because she’s an attractive female, she’s not as smart or tough or capable as her fellow agents.”

  Laughing robustly, Roarke shook his head. “That’s why you brought her in and pretended to hire her as part of McNamara’s new security team. You wanted her in place, just in case we needed her.”

  “She can play the dumb blonde around Trey Sutton and Hugh Winfield. And when we think the time is right, we’ll put her on night duty. Alone. She’ll tell each one of our boys in advance.”

  “Hell, who knows, it just might work,” Roarke said.

  “It’s worked before. Ellen can be mighty convincing when she wants to be.”

  “Yeah, but woe be it to any who gets fooled by her. Behind that pretty face and gorgeous figure, our little Ellen is a pit bull.”

  A knock at the closed door interrupted Roarke and Kane’s private meeting. Both of them tensed instantly.