Chapter Three

He watched his wife, her eyes closed, take a long, slow swallow of her booster.  Pleasure touched her face and she made a sound that he was goddamned sure he was the only man to hear.  Then she touched her tongue to the corner of that mouth he was also solely privileged to, and made another purring trill he recognized initiating just before dawn this morning.  Involuntarily Roarke hardened.  He heard Nadine’s voice, realized this was from no more than an hour ago.  When Eve took another long swallow, this time finishing with a hum of satisfaction echoed in lazy golden brown eyes being opened slowly, his fists clenched.  She offered Nadine a taste of the drink.  The camera swung to Nadine, always feline sexy, in a glowing green suit showing a long expanse of bare thigh, who drank and made an equally sexually gut-wrenching sound.  Eve all but did a commercial for the damn protein booster, then with delicate greed, finished it.  The image ended.

    Roarke looked around the room.  Feeney was on screen, trying to halt the madness as another screen flickered the number of tags the vid was being viewed throughout the earth and its satellites, the planetary system.  He saw that Jamie had given up.  The boy knew there was no stopping it now.  So did McNab.  Feeney probably only kept trying because he was too embarrassed to watch the vid again.  Corsico taped occasionally at his PPC, but Roarke doubted his expert network man was doing more than noting the escalating madness.  Kenneth Chalmers, department head of Inventory sent him a text saying they’d just taken in an order for one trillion coffee mocha boosters from the 24/7 Corner Market chain.  Production sent him an urgent email with a hysterical edge to it.  Without consciously thinking about it, Roarke checked Roarke Industries stock.  They’d risen 100 points in the last half hour.

    Caro came in. “The World Securities and Exchange Commission president is on line twelve.  Summerset wants to know if he should have a tranq ready for the Lieutenant at home, and if you want to administer it or him.  Channel 75’s owner is on line seven and swears he had nothing to do with the posting.  Legal has informed me that a NYPSD officer is not allowed to endorse or advertise any product, so they’ll be drawing up papers denying awareness of or responsibility in creating the vid clip.  They think the NYPSD will let her off with just a one week suspension.  As I’m assuming Lieutenant Dallas has no intention of doing any pornography, I’m dumping all those calls without response.  And Nadine Furst wants to know if you’ve put a contract out on her and should she still come to dinner tonight.”  She smiled sweetly at him.

    Roarke didn’t realize his head was in his hands.  “Perfect.”