by Lora Leigh
Risa was on the bed staring up at the light fixture curiously. Where would someone have planted a camera? The decorative glass light cover was frosted with a series of designs cascading over it. It took her a while, but as she stared at it, she noticed that within the pattern of raised rosebuds, one was missing. Right in the center.
A glass rosebud for a camera? She imagined it could be done; technology was clearly able to produce one. Too bad that the men who used that technology couldn’t be sane.
Maybe sanity, like beauty, though, was in the eye of the beholder.
God, she was a mess. She could feel herself shaking from the inside out. It had been all she could do to sign her name to the papers the attorney had given her at the Federal Building.
Running and hiding wasn’t an option, he had assured her, as though he had known that was exactly what she wanted to do. Unfortunately, there didn’t appear to be a hole deep enough or dark enough to protect her from the man they called Orion.
A killer. A man who strapped his victims down and drained them of their blood. Watched them die and probably found immeasurable pleasure from it.
She had to press her hand to her stomach. Again. She fought back the need to gag, because there was nothing in her stomach to throw up.
She hadn’t even eaten today. She almost laughed as she remembered that. Hunger hadn’t been high on her list of priorities this morning. When her attorney had called requesting that she and her grandmother accompany him to the Federal Building to sign some papers, Risa had never imagined that the thought of food would only make her sicker later.
Now she understood why he had been so vague about explaining why they had to sign those papers immediately. He’d implied the papers had to do with the vast holdings the government had seized from Jansen Clay.
Risa had been fighting for years for items that had belonged to her mother, who had died years before Risa’s kidnapping. Jewelry, a few antiques Jansen’s second wife had taken possession of, and some pictures. Risa had prayed that was being resolved, only to learn that her life was only going to hell faster than it had been.
She still couldn’t make sense of it. Jansen hadn’t thought she was worth trying to sell, but someone else thought it was worth 2 million to kill her. It was enough to be laughable. She would laugh again if she weren’t afraid she would end up screaming.
Sitting up on the bed, knees bent, she laid her head against her arms, closed her eyes, and breathed out as she fought the panic rising inside her.
She had agreed to play bait. Here she sat, in her apartment, for all intents and purposes with her new lover. That was enough to make her cry. Her body was still sizzling, despite the truth of her situation, and the need to touch him again was like a fever burning inside her. Because of that fucking drug. Because it was messing with her normal arousal and making it worse. It was destroying her from the inside out.
At the sound of the bedroom door opening, she tensed, biting her lip as she swore she felt Micah enter the room.
“I ordered dinner.” His voice washed over her and sent ripples of awareness coursing over her.
She nodded in reply.
“I’ve also sent out an order for groceries.” His voice hardened, Risa nodded again.
“We need to talk about this, Risa. Now, while it’s safe to talk here. Ignoring the situation isn’t going to make it better.”
“I’m really good at ignoring things,” she muttered. “Trust me, it’s not that hard to do, and it really does make life easier.”
“Until you’re dead?” he asked coldly.
Her head lifted at that. “Fate’s a bitch, isn’t she?”
His lips tightened. “Get out of bed and get in here and talk to me, before I join you.”
She laughed at that. She was amazed that she could laugh without breaking into hysteria.
“Well, wouldn’t we just hate to make you do that?” she stated mockingly as she pulled herself from the bed and moved for the door. “I’d hate to put you out to that extent again.”
Electricity seemed to race over her body as she passed him at the doorway. It was all she could do to control the gasp that built in her throat, or the need to touch him.
“You ran out on me last night,” he stated as she moved to the couch and curled into the corner. “Why?”
She stared back at him in surprise. “That’s rather self-explanatory, wouldn’t you think?”
Why did he care? It wasn’t as though she had done anything for him.
“If you had waited, Risa, we could have fixed the problem.”
Looking away from him, she wondered rather mockingly exactly how they could have fixed that problem for him.
“There’s nothing to fix,” she pushed out between stiff lips. “We’re stuck together; I understand that. I’ll try to stay out of your way as much as possible.”
“Yeah, you do that,” he snarled back at her.
She looked away from him, concentrating instead on the small office area she had created in the corner of the room. The corner desk, file cabinet, and computer. She had work to do there, but she couldn’t seem to get a handle on actually doing the work. The accounting she did from home kept the bills paid; it kept her from having to dip into the small trust fund her mother had left her, and kept her grandmother from having to support her.
“Did we need to discuss anything else?” she asked. “I’m tired. I thought a shower and a nap—”
“I said I ordered dinner.” He sat down in the chair across from her. “And I said we needed to talk.”
“Just because you said it doesn’t mean I agree with your decision.” There was a chance she didn’t have much longer to live anyway; she wasn’t going to spend her last days on earth kowtowing to his arrogance. It was bad enough that now that he was here, she couldn’t seem to get a handle on her own arousal. She needed to change panties, she was so damned wet.
He ran his hand over his face, and for a second Risa saw the weariness that marked his expression. He must not have slept last night, she thought, then felt perversely glad. Because she hadn’t slept last night, either.
“Risa, we need to come to an understanding to make this work,” he warned her, his dark eyes flashing with frustration.
“We have an understanding,” she assured him. “I understand you have to stay here to catch a killer. There’s a spare bedroom and bathroom; make yourself at home. I’ll try to stay out of your way as much as possible.”
Something dark and dangerous flashed in his eyes. His expression became emotionless, cold. For a moment fear skated down her spine; then her shoulders straightened. It wasn’t as though he could kill her for talking back to him. And God, she was tired of putting her head down and simply trying not to antagonize fate.
Fate had slapped her so damned hard already that she was still reeling.
“Look.” She lifted her hand as he started to speak. “Last night was a mistake, and I apologize for dragging you into my problems. I…” She swallowed tightly. “Sometimes, you just need to be touched, you know? I shouldn’t have chosen you. I should have walked away and just picked up a damned drunk stranger or something.”
She wondered if Micah could have fucked her drunk. She hated that he hadn’t found any pleasure with her. It sliced into her with a sharper pain than her own inability to find the satisfaction she had needed. It wasn’t his fault. He’d been dragged into this. He had probably felt that he had to go through with taking her because of this operation he was on. He appeared willing to do anything to catch Orion. Even fuck her.
“You amaze me.” His voice was cold; his eyes were like pits of black ice.
“Yeah, I amaze myself sometimes.” She held back the tears, the need to cry. She held back the need to curl into his arms and find some hint of comfort. She was tired, shaky, and terrified. And in her entire life she had never known a place as secure as she had felt when he had held her the night before.
“What else do we need to talk about?”
&
nbsp; “Your inability to climax.”
She flinched at the statement. Humiliation curled in the pit of her stomach.
She shrugged. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have waited on your doctor’s report,” he said. “If I had known the Whore’s Dust was still in your system, then I would have known what to do.”
She crossed her arms over her breasts and stared away from him. Heat seared her face, her neck. She didn’t want to talk about this. She couldn’t bear to talk about this.
“Risa, the effect of the Whore’s Dust is frightening. We’ve been gathering reports for years on the men and women who survived the initial wave of that drug. You were given enough that it attached to the pleasure receptors in your brain. It leaves the body slowly, very slowly. To understand what’s going on when it kicks in, you need to understand the effects of it.”
No. She didn’t want to know. She swallowed convulsively, remembering last night all too well as the need for touch built inside her again.
“After the initial injection, it doesn’t make you want sex so much as it makes the need for sex stronger. It makes the sensations stronger.”
“I can’t talk about this.” She came to her feet as hysteria threatened to break through the fragile control holding it back.
“We have to discuss this, Risa.” He rose as well, facing her now, staring down at her with the inky ice of his gaze. “We have to deal with it. Because I won’t be sleeping in your spare bedroom, or using your spare bath. I’ll be sleeping in the bed with you. This isn’t just a cover, because no doubt Orion knows I’m your bodyguard. This is about us. Period.”
She shook her head. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let Micah in her bed; she couldn’t share that much of herself with him. God, she didn’t want to share that much with herself. The nights she awoke, her fingers beneath her pajamas, stroking her flesh because she couldn’t protect herself in her sleep. The nightmares. Waking herself with her screams, her pleas. Begging Jansen Clay not to hurt her. Please don’t, Daddy, don’t let him hurt me.
“No.” The word was a hoarse, desperate sound. “That’s not possible.”
She couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t stand knowing she couldn’t satisfy Micah, that she would awaken them both trying desperately to achieve her own satisfaction, or that she would awaken them with her screams.
“That’s very possible,” he assured her. “I’m to be your lover, Risa. You are aware of what a lover is for, aren’t you?”
She shook her head. “No. That wasn’t the deal. The papers didn’t say I had to sleep with you. No one said it had to go that far.”
“But you want it to go that far,” he stated then. “Deny it. You’re aroused.”
She was going to lose the battle with her tears. She was going to collapse to the floor in agony. The ache in her mind, her body, was too strong. The pain was physical, it bit into her so deeply.
She wanted him. Oh God, she wanted to touch him, wanted to be touched. She wanted to feel him inside her again, pressing into her, stretching her, burning her. She wanted him to fuck her so wild and so hard that she felt nothing but the burn, that pleasure and pain combined, and she couldn’t fight either. She needed it until her nails bit into her palms. Until she could taste the need surging into her mouth, reminding her of his kiss.
He had said she wanted it to go that far. That she was aroused. Not that he did. Not that he was. And she was too frightened to even look to see how unaroused he was. If she looked and saw nothing, saw no sign of his erection, she was afraid it would finally break that last thread she had on the control that kept her trying to live day by day.
How sterile had her life become? In the six years since she had been taken from the asylum, she had fought just to live, day by day. To get up in the morning, to make friends, to learn how to defend herself, to find a balance in her life when sometimes she feared there would never be balance.
Now here she stood in front of the only man in those six years whom she had been able to touch, who had touched her. She had gone out several times in the past year determined to find a lover and had always chickened out. Until last night. Last night she had gone to his bed, and she still hadn’t repaired the wound she had suffered from it.
“You can’t deny it, Risa.” His voice was lower, warmer. It throbbed with knowledge, with a false arousal she knew he couldn’t actually feel. He couldn’t want her now. Not after last night.
“Don’t do this to me,” she whispered, feeling the tears building in her throat, nearly strangling her with their strength. “Please, Micah. Don’t hurt me like this.”
Too much was building inside her, too much information she couldn’t handle, that she couldn’t deal with. The Whore’s Dust making her hurt for sex, making her willing to beg to be touched. A contract on her life. And now Micah, a man stronger, more arrogant and dominant, than any she had ever known, and a fascination she couldn’t seem to break away from.
All this for the ugly little girl who couldn’t get a boyfriend when she was a teenager and couldn’t get a lover now unless he had an agenda that required he force an interest in her. A man who hadn’t been able to achieve his satisfaction with the ugly woman she had become.
She covered her mouth with her hand and turned away from him, all but running from him. She was running away. She was hiding because she was weak, because she couldn’t face the truth of what she or her life had become.
“Risa, dammit,” he cursed as the door slammed closed behind her.
She pressed her back to it as her legs gave out and she slid to the floor. As she hugged her knees to her chest, the tears began to fall. She couldn’t hold them back; the pain was too intense. It dug inside her soul and sent a wash of ugly black emotion tearing through her.
For the first time in her life, she hated. Hated with a vicious, horrible strength that frightened her. And the awful truth of it was, there was no one she hated more than herself. She hated her weakness, she hated the helplessness she felt against the events transpiring against her, and she hated the face that Jansen Clay had always assured her was so ugly. So ugly he couldn’t pay a man to fuck her. And God forbid, he had once said, that she would have children and pass that ugliness on.
God forbid that Risa should ever believe that she deserved the things other women did.
FRUSTRATION ATE at Micah as he paced the living room in the apartment across from Risa’s. Morganna was in the apartment with her, giving him a chance to gather his control after she had run back to her bedroom. She was running away from him and running away from the danger. She had to face both. She would face him, and she would do it soon, he assured himself.
He was willing to let her bury her head in the sand for the moment, because he understood that the implications of the danger she was in were overwhelming. But tonight she would face him, and she would face the fact that there would be no turning away any longer.
“I have her psychologist’s report here.” Kira Richards was sitting on the floor in front of a long coffee table scattered with files. “This is a mess, Micah,” she sighed. “Her father did a job on her before he ever allowed her to be raped.” Micah flinched at the word but turned back to Kira and retook his seat on the couch.
He hadn’t had the reports before meeting with Risa last night. There hadn’t been time. They knew Orion had accepted the job. Moving quickly had been imperative. It was still imperative, but for different reasons.
Micah had read the files when he stepped in the room. He’d spent over an hour reading them as he waited for the delivery time that the restaurant had quoted for the food. Blanchard’s, one of his favorite restaurants, didn’t deliver fast; they delivered good food instead.
That extra time had given him the chance to go over the files, pages and pages of childhood events that Risa had told the psychologist about, as well as the psychologist’s diagnosis.
“How did she survive this?” Kira whispered as she read one of the papers. “He told he
r she was so ugly he couldn’t imagine her passing it on to her children?” Horror crossed her face as she lifted her gaze to Micah. “She remembers when he helped drug her, that he laughed that he’d never be able to sell her. He was lucky to pay someone to fuck her? She had no boyfriends when she was younger, and only a few friends.” She shook her head. “Her psychologist is amazed she doesn’t have to put her on drugs. According to her report—”
“According to her report, ‘Risa is sound mentally, physically, and psychologically, with only a few issues that need to be worked out. Most important is that of her worth to herself as well as to others,’” he quoted. “I read the report.” He may not totally have agreed with it. Risa was wounded, but she was strong. Healing her would require more than dealing with a few issues.
He forced himself to calm as he checked his watch again. He wanted to be there when dinner was delivered. He was going to make certain she ate. She had lost too much weight in the past year. She was still healthy, but he knew it wouldn’t take much longer before that changed. She hadn’t eaten before the meeting this morning, and she definitely hadn’t eaten afterward.
“Risa is our best chance to catch Orion.” Jordan spoke up from where he sat at a bank of security monitors. “If she cracks emotionally or mentally, then there’s a chance he’ll take her and we’ll lose her.”
“She won’t crack.” Micah was going to make sure of it.
“Micah, you might not be able to stop it,” Morganna said softly. “She’s twenty-six; she’s had a lifetime to believe the crap her father filled her head with. With the addition of the Whore’s Dust and now Orion, she may not come out of this without scars none of us can fix.”
“There will always be scars.” He flashed her a harsh look. “Her soul is scarred from the inside out, Kira. No one can change that. That doesn’t mean she can’t be happy. It doesn’t mean she’s not a beautiful, vibrant woman.”
Kira knew that Risa wasn’t ugly in any way—she had pretty eyes, a beautiful smile when she bothered to smile—but she wasn’t exactly pretty, either. The girl leaned a bit to the plain side. Her features weren’t distinguishing. She was a woman who would easily be overlooked unless you knew her. But the more Kira got to know her, the more she saw that there was a uniqueness to Risa that made her very pretty.
