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Final Chapter
Posted by
jlk
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20 October 2012
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It was an international sensation. At least the media thought so. Many of the citizens of the world and its associated planets and satellites thought so as well. Multiple governments and their myriad agencies didn’t think much of it, and responded with denial. Pinpointed as the villain, General Silva was nowhere to be found and therefore charged. With the known universe watching and demanding someone make bring some sort of official charges, several administrators at Interpol thought it would be a good idea to charge Dr. Charlotte Mira with deadly assault on coma patients. Her weapon in the assault was Lieutenant Eve Dallas. Stratospheric was the term one agency described both that idiocy and resulting level of media response.
The fashion and gossip channels were in heaven. Dr. Charlotte Mira was the most elegant woman of a certain age they had been able to focus on in absolutely a decade. The woman radiated a gentle beauty and distinction the cameras loved and the screens could show to endlessly fascinated viewers. Channels sold commercial time at vastly inflated rates. And of course the currently model-thin Lieutenant Eve Dallas wife of billionaire Roarke with her slavish devotion to wearing Leonardo to exclusivity was fabulously screen worthy.
Then there were the coma patients who had emerged from their sleep. Icove was being rivaled for the public’s fascination. Nadine Furst arrived with what seemed to be half of New York. Mavis Freestone the vid star and singer of the century arrived to support her friends with her family. When international attorney David Armadillo arrived in a Leonardo original cocktail dress (one not having yet been worn by Eve) in the Air Force One shuttle to take the case, the press corps gave up and collapsed in orgasmic ecstasy.
Eve was ready to return to New York, her job, and her normal life. She informed her husband that she wanted to go home, then sat back and waited for him to make it happen with supreme confidence. She had been amazingly cooperative with Interpol in her opinion, one agent with a broken nose was not anything to worry about, and had no intention of causing any problems. But she had no doubt that wiser heads would prevail and she and Mira would be cleared of all charges. Besides, Roarke had work to do and he had wasted quite enough time with her assorted little problems. He laughed when she told him this, announcing that if she found any big specific problems he would find a rock to hide under.
But Eve’s friend David worked his magic and she was suddenly free to go home. Mira chose to stay, intent on settling some things at the institute she had been forced to make Eve suffer in, and Dennis was agreeable to looking over her shoulder. Roarke arranged shuttles for those friends who wanted to return now or later, then took his grateful wife home.
On the shuttle Roarke settled Eve in his arms as he leaned back on a lounge chair. Over the past week he had bided his time, stopping himself from making demands on her as they were rushed from building to building only settling back at the hotel long enough for sleep and meals before yet another legal or political complication had tried to choke them. Now, he had Eve to himself and there would be no interruptions. In the past week he had woken her repeatedly, desperate to reassure himself of her presence, cursing his need even as he robbed her of her rest for his own pleasure. Those long erotic hours had been necessary, like the air they both needed to live, but Roarke knew what would come now was necessary to settle them both as well. It was time for what Mira would call closure.
She smelled of his soap a pleasure he would never tire of, would seek out even as Trina supplied Eve endlessly with other soaps. He smiled into her hair. His Eve never seemed to worry what was in the soap dispensers in their shower at home, never seemed to wonder that her soap ran out so quickly she had to use his repeatedly. Roarke muted the screen as it ran the stock market ticker, a sober anchorman giving the latest business report, the slow stabilization of the world’s economy as the crisis from the solar sun spots seemed to be at a final end. He waited.
Eve sighed, rubbing her head back against his shoulder, feeling her hair muss as he smelled her. It made her lips quirk. The man was like a great big Doberman at times. She was ready now. Sometimes when things had gone to hell and they were finally back together, Eve could pour her heart out to Roarke without hesitation. Others, it was harder. “I was outnumbered,” she told him. His arms tightened, offering her his strength. “I hate that. You know I train, I work on my combat skills. Why can I still be outnumbered?”
“You’re human, Eve. And you were just getting over exhaustion, the implant surgery. Plus, there is only so much you can do, so many men you can take down. No matter how much we train.”
“I still don’t have to like it.” She put it aside. “Mira was a handicap. My Achilles kneecap.” She hid a smile as he corrected her. “Whatever. She can’t fight, can’t run, couldn’t swim far enough for me to get her safely away.” Eve rubbed her cheek on his silk shirt. Black. It was his favorite color. She thought he looked best in blue, had never told him that. He thought he looked best in black. “I wished for you a hundred times. Maybe more.”
He thought of that island. All the resources she’d had no idea how to use, would never be able to see the potential. “I would have helped you,” he agreed. “What was that mess of wires for,” he’d been wanting to ask her that.
“I tried sending out an SOS. Morse Code. I used the wires to try and signal someone.” You. “I’d sit there half the night tapping it out on the damn Autochef keypad.”
Roarke stared at the screen across the room from them. It filled the long partitioned wall. For the life of him Roarke couldn’t figure out what she thought she’d made. Some kind of communication device. That sent out an SOS. He kissed her ear. “Brilliant.”
Eve smiled. “It was like being on vacation on the island. Except you weren’t there. And I had to read all the time. And Mira made me cook and wash dishes. I wasn’t even scared or worried. Not there.” She was silent, thinking of the tank. The bodies floating. “I had to let Mira put me into this hypnotic state where I could try and help that poor man.” Boy. In her mind, he was like a boy. Maybe that was why she had called on herself as a child to chase the monster away. The real monster. “I really didn’t want to, Roarke.”
He shifted her, cuddling her across his lap, her head tucked under his chin. “Get it out, aghra. Hard and fast, then it’s over.” His arms held her safe, nothing could get through him to her.
Eve thought how nice it was to be safe, here with him. “I knew General Silva wanted me left in that tank. Forever floating, everything but dead. He’d simply let them experiment with me, even if I rescued his son. I suppose Mira will ask him why, after she gets to evaluate him.” An answer that would have to wait.
“How did you get out?” He’d made time to fly back and look at the facility, watched the poor bloody souls that Eve hadn’t somehow woken as they floated endlessly. Roarke knew that he would never have left Eve there. If things had gone so wrong that she was left in a coma, it wouldn’t be floating among those other hopeless forms that she spent her life. He closed his eyes, willed his arms not to crush her to him.
“I told myself to wake up” she answered simply. “I was so pissed off that the others wouldn’t listen to me, I just couldn’t stay where I was any longer. And I just told myself to wake up.” She moved suddenly, straddling his lap, brown eyes just a little wild as they focused on his, reliving the minutes as she woke up in the suspension tank. “Then I was awake and I couldn’t breathe because they had these tubes stuffed down my throat and nose. I couldn’t take it, Roarke. They were trying to pull them out of me, but not fast enough and I could feel them all down inside me and I couldn’t breathe, Roarke!” She was choking now, gasping for breath, chest heaving as she remembered the terror. She clung to his eyes with her own, trying to hold to the incredible blue of his eyes that she sometimes saw in her dreams when she needed help. “I can’t breathe” she gasped, unable to draw breath into her lungs. Her vision began to fade, grey mists floating to her.
Roarke hit her on the back, twice, hard. When she still couldn’t seem to get air in, he shook her harder. Her head snapped back, forward, and she drew in a breath. Then another. Her eyes had glazed, the shock overwhelming her now as it hadn’t had time to then. She’d been focused on escape, the need to find Mira and escape that building and its horrors. Roarke shook her again. “Look at me. Eve, look at me now. You’re safe. You’re here with me and you’re safe. Breathe, aghra. Mo gra go deo. You are my love, Eve. My love forever.” Roarke kissed her, his mouth rough and urgent on hers, demanding awareness of the present. Of him. “You’re not there now. You’re here with me. Let it go now, Eve.” Christ he hadn’t meant for her to relive the terror, only to bring it to the surface so she could be free from its weight. “Come back to me, Eve.”
“Roarke?” She was under the heavy water. It’s pale fluctuating movement hiding his face from her eyes. It was like looking through the mist again. He was indistinct, too far away. He was going to go through that door and leave her behind. “Roarke!”
“I’m here, Eve. Reach out for me. I’m right here, my Eve. Darling Eve. I’m right here.” He rocked her, feeling when she began to come out of the visualization, her arms surrounding him, short nails digging into his shirt to hold onto him. “That’s right. Hold me. I’m real and I’m right here. Eve.”
Eve looked around at all those eyes, wanting her to do something, needing her help, or not wanting anything from her. Wanting her to leave them to the hell of a mind trapped forever in a body unready to die. Then she looked at Roarke. Here was her life. He needed her. She could accept his need. It had scared her so horribly when he had forced that need on her three and a half years ago. Been so unprepared to take on that responsibility of another living thing needing her, Eve Dallas, for his own happiness. How could that be?
But she didn’t ask that question anymore. Roarke needed her and it was a need she could and would fill. A need she and no one else could fill. No one else. “Roarke.” The tension left her body and she held him. “Oh, Roarke. You saved me.” He hadn’t been there, not physically, but the imprint he had left on her soul had refused to be ignored. Roarke wouldn’t be left in that tank, and she had had to ensure he wasn’t, through her. “You save me.”
“Always. I couldn’t do without you, Eve.”
They were silent for a while, arms around each other, foreheads touching, breathing in the same air … in love. Roarke blinked when she suddenly framed his face, staring into his eyes intently. “What is it, darling Eve?”
“I can’t remember the last time I told you I love you.” She frowned at him looking puzzled.
Roarke smiled. “You could tell me now.”
Eve made a face, hiding her smile. “What’ll ya give me?”
He smiled wider. “I’ll give you a bowl of milk for the cat.”
“Huh?” She wrapped her arms tighter around his neck, watching his eyes flicker like chandeliers with love and laughter. For her.
“What did you write, that message you left me in Gaelic.” Roarke stroked her arms, her shoulders, down her back, enjoying the feel of her slender body under a silk blouse, no longer so fragile that he felt only the bones. Now there was the sensation of supply skin and muscle under his hands.
“To remember that I was with you.” Eve narrowed her eyes. “Why? Did I write it wrong?” She hadn’t known how to spell the words, just say them. She’d tried to write them as they sounded.
Roarke began to unbutton her blouse. “I think we can practice more another time. Right now there are other things you can do for me.”
Eve’s eyebrows shot up.
He had her shirt off, was admiring the lace bra he’d purchased for her perhaps six months ago and Summerset had sent along sometime in the past week since he had returned to New York with Galahad. It made no effort to cover her, simply enhancing the beauty of Eve’s lovely firm breasts. He was looking forward to seeing if she was wearing the matching panties. Leaning forward he nipped her collarbone, heard the sharp intake of her breath before nipping her again. He sank his teeth into her neck, over the quickly beating pulse, nipped her, released the tender flesh. This time he soothed the sin with his tongue. He felt her shiver. Eve swallowed hard as his tongue licked the skin over her entire collarbone. Hesitantly, she leaned forward, brushing her lips against his ear, “again” she whispered. Then shivered as he nipped the soft skin between her shoulder and the clavicle. Her breathing deepened, becoming ragged. When he shifted and took her to the thickly carpeted floor of the plane, her eyes closed. The next nip a mere inch from where the lacy bra ended, over a soft spot where the ribs were no longer digging at her flesh, made her moan.
Within minutes she was panting, gasping in air as he aroused her expertly, never leaving marks, laving the fast nips with his tongue and fingers, driving her higher. When he began the erotically stinging bites on the soft flesh inside her thighs, she sobbed his name, writhing. “Please, Roarke. I need you to be inside me.”
Her voice, begging for him, it was the only thing that could have made him stop Roarke thought. He kissed his way up her body, lingering over the lace before stripping the pieces from her. “Tell me you love me,” he demanded, finding her mouth to ravish it. He twisted his fingers through her hair, arching her head back as he slid inside her. His heart was beating fiercely, need dampening his skin. “Jesus you are so perfect” Roarke growled as she climaxed, her body tight around him making him shudder with his restraint. Not yet. He wasn’t ready to let go yet. “Tell me you love me” he demanded again.
Eve struggled, grasping his hair in her fists as she tried to breath, her body arched and tensed. Her legs flailed, were trapped by his. Her eyes shot open and she stared up at him. He had her trapped, controlled under him exactly as he wanted her. If she demanded it of him, Roarke would let her go. Right now. Unfulfilled. “Yes. I love you. I love you, Roarke. And I will always need you to need me.” She pulled his head down to lay claim to his mouth.
And with that admission, with her admitting that she needed him, Roarke felt himself live. This woman was his life. Only with her was he truly alive. He gasped out her name and began to move.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Having made the point that her emissions were deadly, the Sun made her schedule for the next decade. She’d create a solar storm on …
End.
The fashion and gossip channels were in heaven. Dr. Charlotte Mira was the most elegant woman of a certain age they had been able to focus on in absolutely a decade. The woman radiated a gentle beauty and distinction the cameras loved and the screens could show to endlessly fascinated viewers. Channels sold commercial time at vastly inflated rates. And of course the currently model-thin Lieutenant Eve Dallas wife of billionaire Roarke with her slavish devotion to wearing Leonardo to exclusivity was fabulously screen worthy.
Then there were the coma patients who had emerged from their sleep. Icove was being rivaled for the public’s fascination. Nadine Furst arrived with what seemed to be half of New York. Mavis Freestone the vid star and singer of the century arrived to support her friends with her family. When international attorney David Armadillo arrived in a Leonardo original cocktail dress (one not having yet been worn by Eve) in the Air Force One shuttle to take the case, the press corps gave up and collapsed in orgasmic ecstasy.
Eve was ready to return to New York, her job, and her normal life. She informed her husband that she wanted to go home, then sat back and waited for him to make it happen with supreme confidence. She had been amazingly cooperative with Interpol in her opinion, one agent with a broken nose was not anything to worry about, and had no intention of causing any problems. But she had no doubt that wiser heads would prevail and she and Mira would be cleared of all charges. Besides, Roarke had work to do and he had wasted quite enough time with her assorted little problems. He laughed when she told him this, announcing that if she found any big specific problems he would find a rock to hide under.
But Eve’s friend David worked his magic and she was suddenly free to go home. Mira chose to stay, intent on settling some things at the institute she had been forced to make Eve suffer in, and Dennis was agreeable to looking over her shoulder. Roarke arranged shuttles for those friends who wanted to return now or later, then took his grateful wife home.
On the shuttle Roarke settled Eve in his arms as he leaned back on a lounge chair. Over the past week he had bided his time, stopping himself from making demands on her as they were rushed from building to building only settling back at the hotel long enough for sleep and meals before yet another legal or political complication had tried to choke them. Now, he had Eve to himself and there would be no interruptions. In the past week he had woken her repeatedly, desperate to reassure himself of her presence, cursing his need even as he robbed her of her rest for his own pleasure. Those long erotic hours had been necessary, like the air they both needed to live, but Roarke knew what would come now was necessary to settle them both as well. It was time for what Mira would call closure.
She smelled of his soap a pleasure he would never tire of, would seek out even as Trina supplied Eve endlessly with other soaps. He smiled into her hair. His Eve never seemed to worry what was in the soap dispensers in their shower at home, never seemed to wonder that her soap ran out so quickly she had to use his repeatedly. Roarke muted the screen as it ran the stock market ticker, a sober anchorman giving the latest business report, the slow stabilization of the world’s economy as the crisis from the solar sun spots seemed to be at a final end. He waited.
Eve sighed, rubbing her head back against his shoulder, feeling her hair muss as he smelled her. It made her lips quirk. The man was like a great big Doberman at times. She was ready now. Sometimes when things had gone to hell and they were finally back together, Eve could pour her heart out to Roarke without hesitation. Others, it was harder. “I was outnumbered,” she told him. His arms tightened, offering her his strength. “I hate that. You know I train, I work on my combat skills. Why can I still be outnumbered?”
“You’re human, Eve. And you were just getting over exhaustion, the implant surgery. Plus, there is only so much you can do, so many men you can take down. No matter how much we train.”
“I still don’t have to like it.” She put it aside. “Mira was a handicap. My Achilles kneecap.” She hid a smile as he corrected her. “Whatever. She can’t fight, can’t run, couldn’t swim far enough for me to get her safely away.” Eve rubbed her cheek on his silk shirt. Black. It was his favorite color. She thought he looked best in blue, had never told him that. He thought he looked best in black. “I wished for you a hundred times. Maybe more.”
He thought of that island. All the resources she’d had no idea how to use, would never be able to see the potential. “I would have helped you,” he agreed. “What was that mess of wires for,” he’d been wanting to ask her that.
“I tried sending out an SOS. Morse Code. I used the wires to try and signal someone.” You. “I’d sit there half the night tapping it out on the damn Autochef keypad.”
Roarke stared at the screen across the room from them. It filled the long partitioned wall. For the life of him Roarke couldn’t figure out what she thought she’d made. Some kind of communication device. That sent out an SOS. He kissed her ear. “Brilliant.”
Eve smiled. “It was like being on vacation on the island. Except you weren’t there. And I had to read all the time. And Mira made me cook and wash dishes. I wasn’t even scared or worried. Not there.” She was silent, thinking of the tank. The bodies floating. “I had to let Mira put me into this hypnotic state where I could try and help that poor man.” Boy. In her mind, he was like a boy. Maybe that was why she had called on herself as a child to chase the monster away. The real monster. “I really didn’t want to, Roarke.”
He shifted her, cuddling her across his lap, her head tucked under his chin. “Get it out, aghra. Hard and fast, then it’s over.” His arms held her safe, nothing could get through him to her.
Eve thought how nice it was to be safe, here with him. “I knew General Silva wanted me left in that tank. Forever floating, everything but dead. He’d simply let them experiment with me, even if I rescued his son. I suppose Mira will ask him why, after she gets to evaluate him.” An answer that would have to wait.
“How did you get out?” He’d made time to fly back and look at the facility, watched the poor bloody souls that Eve hadn’t somehow woken as they floated endlessly. Roarke knew that he would never have left Eve there. If things had gone so wrong that she was left in a coma, it wouldn’t be floating among those other hopeless forms that she spent her life. He closed his eyes, willed his arms not to crush her to him.
“I told myself to wake up” she answered simply. “I was so pissed off that the others wouldn’t listen to me, I just couldn’t stay where I was any longer. And I just told myself to wake up.” She moved suddenly, straddling his lap, brown eyes just a little wild as they focused on his, reliving the minutes as she woke up in the suspension tank. “Then I was awake and I couldn’t breathe because they had these tubes stuffed down my throat and nose. I couldn’t take it, Roarke. They were trying to pull them out of me, but not fast enough and I could feel them all down inside me and I couldn’t breathe, Roarke!” She was choking now, gasping for breath, chest heaving as she remembered the terror. She clung to his eyes with her own, trying to hold to the incredible blue of his eyes that she sometimes saw in her dreams when she needed help. “I can’t breathe” she gasped, unable to draw breath into her lungs. Her vision began to fade, grey mists floating to her.
Roarke hit her on the back, twice, hard. When she still couldn’t seem to get air in, he shook her harder. Her head snapped back, forward, and she drew in a breath. Then another. Her eyes had glazed, the shock overwhelming her now as it hadn’t had time to then. She’d been focused on escape, the need to find Mira and escape that building and its horrors. Roarke shook her again. “Look at me. Eve, look at me now. You’re safe. You’re here with me and you’re safe. Breathe, aghra. Mo gra go deo. You are my love, Eve. My love forever.” Roarke kissed her, his mouth rough and urgent on hers, demanding awareness of the present. Of him. “You’re not there now. You’re here with me. Let it go now, Eve.” Christ he hadn’t meant for her to relive the terror, only to bring it to the surface so she could be free from its weight. “Come back to me, Eve.”
“Roarke?” She was under the heavy water. It’s pale fluctuating movement hiding his face from her eyes. It was like looking through the mist again. He was indistinct, too far away. He was going to go through that door and leave her behind. “Roarke!”
“I’m here, Eve. Reach out for me. I’m right here, my Eve. Darling Eve. I’m right here.” He rocked her, feeling when she began to come out of the visualization, her arms surrounding him, short nails digging into his shirt to hold onto him. “That’s right. Hold me. I’m real and I’m right here. Eve.”
Eve looked around at all those eyes, wanting her to do something, needing her help, or not wanting anything from her. Wanting her to leave them to the hell of a mind trapped forever in a body unready to die. Then she looked at Roarke. Here was her life. He needed her. She could accept his need. It had scared her so horribly when he had forced that need on her three and a half years ago. Been so unprepared to take on that responsibility of another living thing needing her, Eve Dallas, for his own happiness. How could that be?
But she didn’t ask that question anymore. Roarke needed her and it was a need she could and would fill. A need she and no one else could fill. No one else. “Roarke.” The tension left her body and she held him. “Oh, Roarke. You saved me.” He hadn’t been there, not physically, but the imprint he had left on her soul had refused to be ignored. Roarke wouldn’t be left in that tank, and she had had to ensure he wasn’t, through her. “You save me.”
“Always. I couldn’t do without you, Eve.”
They were silent for a while, arms around each other, foreheads touching, breathing in the same air … in love. Roarke blinked when she suddenly framed his face, staring into his eyes intently. “What is it, darling Eve?”
“I can’t remember the last time I told you I love you.” She frowned at him looking puzzled.
Roarke smiled. “You could tell me now.”
Eve made a face, hiding her smile. “What’ll ya give me?”
He smiled wider. “I’ll give you a bowl of milk for the cat.”
“Huh?” She wrapped her arms tighter around his neck, watching his eyes flicker like chandeliers with love and laughter. For her.
“What did you write, that message you left me in Gaelic.” Roarke stroked her arms, her shoulders, down her back, enjoying the feel of her slender body under a silk blouse, no longer so fragile that he felt only the bones. Now there was the sensation of supply skin and muscle under his hands.
“To remember that I was with you.” Eve narrowed her eyes. “Why? Did I write it wrong?” She hadn’t known how to spell the words, just say them. She’d tried to write them as they sounded.
Roarke began to unbutton her blouse. “I think we can practice more another time. Right now there are other things you can do for me.”
Eve’s eyebrows shot up.
He had her shirt off, was admiring the lace bra he’d purchased for her perhaps six months ago and Summerset had sent along sometime in the past week since he had returned to New York with Galahad. It made no effort to cover her, simply enhancing the beauty of Eve’s lovely firm breasts. He was looking forward to seeing if she was wearing the matching panties. Leaning forward he nipped her collarbone, heard the sharp intake of her breath before nipping her again. He sank his teeth into her neck, over the quickly beating pulse, nipped her, released the tender flesh. This time he soothed the sin with his tongue. He felt her shiver. Eve swallowed hard as his tongue licked the skin over her entire collarbone. Hesitantly, she leaned forward, brushing her lips against his ear, “again” she whispered. Then shivered as he nipped the soft skin between her shoulder and the clavicle. Her breathing deepened, becoming ragged. When he shifted and took her to the thickly carpeted floor of the plane, her eyes closed. The next nip a mere inch from where the lacy bra ended, over a soft spot where the ribs were no longer digging at her flesh, made her moan.
Within minutes she was panting, gasping in air as he aroused her expertly, never leaving marks, laving the fast nips with his tongue and fingers, driving her higher. When he began the erotically stinging bites on the soft flesh inside her thighs, she sobbed his name, writhing. “Please, Roarke. I need you to be inside me.”
Her voice, begging for him, it was the only thing that could have made him stop Roarke thought. He kissed his way up her body, lingering over the lace before stripping the pieces from her. “Tell me you love me,” he demanded, finding her mouth to ravish it. He twisted his fingers through her hair, arching her head back as he slid inside her. His heart was beating fiercely, need dampening his skin. “Jesus you are so perfect” Roarke growled as she climaxed, her body tight around him making him shudder with his restraint. Not yet. He wasn’t ready to let go yet. “Tell me you love me” he demanded again.
Eve struggled, grasping his hair in her fists as she tried to breath, her body arched and tensed. Her legs flailed, were trapped by his. Her eyes shot open and she stared up at him. He had her trapped, controlled under him exactly as he wanted her. If she demanded it of him, Roarke would let her go. Right now. Unfulfilled. “Yes. I love you. I love you, Roarke. And I will always need you to need me.” She pulled his head down to lay claim to his mouth.
And with that admission, with her admitting that she needed him, Roarke felt himself live. This woman was his life. Only with her was he truly alive. He gasped out her name and began to move.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Having made the point that her emissions were deadly, the Sun made her schedule for the next decade. She’d create a solar storm on …
End.
