He used the move to carry himself over into a flip, punched the landing with a grace she admired. Even as she was hurling at him, springing up to a flying kick. Her heel landed on the bridge of his nose, and she heard the satisfying crunch.

“That's game,” Roarke said. “End program.”

The figures faded away, as did the dojo. She stood, in her work clothes now, catching her breath. “Good fight,” she managed.

“Not bad. You finished them up in… twenty-one minutes, forty seconds.”

“Time flies when you're… ow.” She rubbed her right inner thigh. “What I get for not warming up.”

“You pull something?”

“No.” She bent to stretch it out. “Just a little tender.” She blew her hair out of narrowed eyes as she glanced toward Roarke. “Twenty minutes?”

“Twenty-one forty. Not quite the high score. I did it in nineteen twenty-three.”

She lifted her head, squinted at him as she pulled the heel of her right foot to her butt in a stretch. “Under twenty first time out?”

“All right, no, not the first time. That took me twenty and change.”

“How much change?”

He laughed. “Fifty-eight.”

“I'd say the difference is negated as you programmed the game. Gimme a sip of that.”

He offered her the glass. “Feel better?”

“Yeah. Nothing like punching your fist into a face to brighten up the day. I don't know what that says about me either, but I don't care.”

“Then we'll have another game. Recreational hour's not up,” he said before she could protest. “Initiate Program Island-3.”

They were on a white sand beach that flowed into water of blue crystal. There were flowers-pink, white, rosy red-strewn along the shoreline. Jewel-colored birds winged into a sky as clear and blue as a glass bowl.

Floating gently on the sea was a wide white bed.

“There's a bed on the water.”

“I've never made love to you on the water. In it, somewhat under it, but never on it. You like the beach.” He lifted her hand to his lips. “I like the idea of floating away with you.”

She looked at him. He wore a thin white shirt now, unbuttoned so it rippled in the breeze, and loose black pants. His feet were bare, as hers were.

He'd programmed her for white as well, she noted. Floating white dress with wire-thin straps. There were flowers in her hair. A long way from a black gi and flying fists. “From combat to romance?”

“Can you think of anything that suits us more?”

She laughed. “Guess not. I wouldn't have been able to step away like this for an hour, not a couple of years ago. I hope I'm better for it, all around.”

She took his hand, walked with him into the warm, clear water. And laughed as they rolled onto the bed. “It's like a really sexy raft.”

“And infinitely more comfortable.” He brushed his lips over hers. “I stepped away whenever I chose. But I was never able to take myself away, as I can with you. I know I'm better for it.”

In another world there was death and pain, grief and rage. And here was love. The white sand and blue water might have been fantasy, but this world was as real as the other. Because he was real, they were real.

“Let's take ourselves away, then. Float away.”

She drew him to her, mouth to mouth, heart to heart. The bed dipped gently on the blue water, and the restlessness inside her eased.

She tasted the wine on him, rich, and felt the warm, moist air bathe her skin as he touched her.

A dreaming time now, she thought. Without the hard brightness of that other world. Without the pain and the blood and the incessant violence of the everyday. Calming and soothing, a kind of easy arousal that steadied the heart and fed the soul.

When she held him like this, when her mouth was on his in a long, long kiss, she could forget what it was to be hungry and hurting. Being held like this, she knew she could go back to the hurt stronger.

She slid the shirt from his shoulders, let her hands explore warm skin, tough muscle, let herself float as the bed floated, when he nudged those thin straps down her arms.

The warrior was his. The woman who had only moments before waged combat, defeated foes with a concentrated and fearsome violence, was soft beneath him, pliant and eager and impossibly sweet.

She would battle again and again, shed blood and spill it. Yet, miraculously, she would come back to him, again and again. Soft and pliant and eager.

He murmured in Irish. My love. And trailed kisses over those strong shoulders, those long arms where muscles were carved in alabaster. He slipped a flower from her hair. Tracing it over her even as his lips traced. Making her shiver.

“This is something special.”

“The flower?”

“The flower, yes. Extra.” He twirled it on its stem while he watched her. “Will you trust me?”

“I always trust you.”

“I want to give you this. To give it to both of us.”

He flicked the petals over her breast. And with his tongue he tasted them, and her.

She arched up, floating still, still floating, but higher now as if the wave of heat lifted her. Desire shimmered through her like the wine. She could hear birdsong, some exotic, erotic music with the quiet underscore of water lapping against the shore. She could hear his voice, the music of it, as he drew the white gown away.

The sun, his hands, his lips, all on her skin-as hers were on his. The bed rocked on the water, soothing as a lullaby.

Then he swept the flower between her legs.

The sensation had her fingers digging into him. “God.”

He watched her, watched that baffled pleasure run over her face. His cop, his warrior, and still oddly innocent about her own pleasures.

“It's called the Venus Bloom, and is grown on a colony on Green One. Hybridized,” he said, brushing it over her, watching her eyes blur, “with certain properties that enhance and heighten sensation.”

Her breasts were tingling from it as if the nerves were raw-edged and exposed. And when his mouth closed over her, his teeth a light nip on her nipple, the shock of it had her crying out. He pressed the flower against her as he suckled.

Her body erupted.

She lost her mind. It was impossible to think through the barrage of sensations, the unspeakable pleasure. The shock of it had her body pulsing, plunging as the orgasm gushed through her.

“When I'm inside you…” His voice was thick with Ireland now, his eyes wild and blue. “When I'm in you, Eve, it will do the same to me. Taste it.” His mouth crushed to hers, his tongue sweeping in. “Feel it.” He crushed the flower against her. “Come again, I want you to come again, while I'm watching you.”

She bucked, riding out the storm, brilliantly aware of every cell in her body and the pleasure that flooded them. “I want you inside me.” She gripped his hair, dragged his mouth back to hers. “Feel what I feel.”

He eased into her, slowly, so slowly she knew from the tremors in his body how rigidly he controlled himself. Then his breath caught, and his eyes, his beautiful eyes, went blind. “Christ.”

“I don't know if we'll live through it,” she managed, and wrapped her legs around him. “Let's find out. Don't hold back.”

He wasn't sure he could have, not now, not with the sensations that pounded him, not with her reckless words ringing in his ears. He let the chain snap and rode it with her, wave by hot, towering wave.

When the last swamped him, it swamped them both.

She wasn't sure she would ever get her breath back, or the full use of her limbs. Her arms had slid away from him, limply, until her fingers trailed in the water.

“Is that thing legal?”

He was flat out on top of her, breathing like a man who'd climbed up, or fallen off, a mountain. And his laugh rumbled against her skin. “God, only you.”

“Seriously.”

“We really ought to have Trina tattoo that damn badge on your breast permanently. Yes. It's been tested, and approved, and licensed. A bit tricky to acquire yet. And as you can see, its effects are transitory.”