Morganna breathed out deeply, her gaze compassionate.
“The Whore’s Dust to begin the arousal,” Morganna finally said. “It only makes it worse. You don’t want him because of the drug. You want him because you’re a woman and he’s a very sexy, very desirable man. There’s nothing wrong with that, Risa.”
“Isn’t there?” She snorted mockingly. “You know, Morganna, if my friends had been so kind to just tell me what the hell was going on the night I met him, perhaps I would have understood that. I wouldn’t have made the mistake of going to bed with him, and I wouldn’t have to lie in that bed night after night, aware that it would take a bag over my head for him to get off. Thank you for that, by the way. It was a very enlightening experience.”
She came off the couch as Morganna stared back at her in blank shock.
“You…he…” Morganna breathed out roughly. “Damn. I didn’t know about that. He didn’t add that in his report of that night.”
“No kidding,” she muttered.
“What the hell happened to make you think he’d have to put a bag over your face to get off?” Morganna came out of her chair then. “That is simply not true, Risa. You have got to get over what Jansen Clay did to you in that regard. You are not an ugly woman.”
“Yeah, boy. I’d just win the next Miss America, wouldn’t I?” she sniped back angrily.
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Morganna admitted, which did little to soothe Risa’s anger as she turned to her. “Risa, you’re a very pretty young woman,” Morganna said then. “No, you’re not the next Miss America, but you’re a far cry from coyote ugly, I promise you that. And if there were issues that night, then you need to discuss them with Micah.”
“Why don’t I just do that?” She laughed mockingly. “I could just say, ‘Oh, by the way, Micah, remember when you couldn’t fucking get off? Well, why not just tell me—’”
She broke off as a flash of movement caught her attention. Heat filled her face at the sight of Micah and Clint standing in the open doorway, their hands full of bags, their expressions making it clear that they had heard every word of that last tirade.
Damn, damn, and double damn.
“Just tell you what?” Micah’s lips were a straight, furious line as he moved into the apartment and tossed the bags carelessly to the couch as Morganna moved quickly to the door.
Risa was aware of the couple leaving, the door closing and locking behind them.
“Why not just tell me what it would have taken to get you off?” she sneered. “What would I have had to do, give you my back so you didn’t have to look at my face?”
Micah tried. In all the years of his life he had never tried to push back the overwhelming anger as much as he tried to push it back now.
He reminded himself that she could be forgiven for her anger, for her snipishness at the mall. She could be forgiven for every damned thing she had said and done in the past two days. She was frightened. She was being put through another kind of hell and it couldn’t be easy for her. But this one. This one he wasn’t quite as willing to let go.
He had to admit, she was stronger than he had expected her to be. She wasn’t cowering; she hadn’t cowered a single time. She was trying to fight; unfortunately, she was fighting the wrong damned things and pissing him off in the process.
“You want to rethink that accusation you just made,” he told her carefully, attempting to push back the anger and draw forward the ice he used to protect himself and others. “You want to rethink it carefully and rephrase it quickly, Risa.”
She glared back at him. “Why should I?”
As she stood there dressed in a baggy silk blouse and loose black pants, her arms crossed over her breasts, her expression flushed and furious, Micah felt his erection flex and throb painfully. What was it about this woman that kept him hard? That kept him ready to fuck her at a moment’s notice? If only he had the excuse of the Whore’s Dust, he thought mockingly.
“Because I’m about five seconds from dragging you into that bedroom and spending the rest of the night showing you just how wrong you are,” he informed her. “I can’t believe you’d spout such idiocy from your mouth. Do you think if I didn’t find you attractive, didn’t ache for you, I would have been hard enough to pound nails?”
“You didn’t come,” she accused him roughly. “I know you didn’t. You couldn’t.”
He pushed his hands over his head, clenched his teeth, and tried to keep his hands off her. If he touched her, he’d never be able to stop.
“Because you didn’t get off,” he pushed between gritted teeth. “Did you think I would take my pleasure of you when you hadn’t taken yours of me? What the fucking hell is in your mind, woman? Have you lost your damned senses? I had to leave the bed to keep from pounding into you when you had obviously grown too tense to climax. I wanted to give us both a second to calm down. Just a moment to find my control. And when I returned, what did I find?”
He stepped closer when he hadn’t meant to. His hands gripped her shoulders and he jerked her closer, staring furiously down at her surprised little face.
“You were gone!” he snarled. “You ran from me, Risa, rather than giving me a chance to help you find the pleasure you were seeking.”
She shook her head, a jerky movement, as she swallowed tightly, her hands pressing against his chest.
“But I did,” she whispered. “I did.”
“You call what you gave me your release?” he bit out furiously. “You fought it. I understood why you fought it, and I understand even more now. The strength of it would have been frightening. You were with a man you did not know. Running was not the answer.”
She pulled away from him and it was all he could do to keep from jerking her back to him. Instead, he let her go. He had to take this slowly. She had already been hurt by one man; he wouldn’t add his name to her pain. He’d plotted out his seduction of her, and he would seduce her. She would come apart in his arms the next time he managed to get his dick inside that hot little pussy, and she would come apart with everything inside her. He’d accept nothing else. But he knew she wasn’t ready for that yet. Fear still held her back. Her own demons held her back.
He watched as she pushed her fingers through her hair, feathering it around her shoulders and face like multi-hued strands of silk. Turning back to her, he watched as her light blue eyes seemed darker, the shadows under her eyes more pronounced. She hadn’t slept in two nights. She had lain on her side of the bed and done no more than doze. She was killing them both and seemed unaware of it.
How did she affect him this way? There was something about the pain in her eyes that made him want to kill. The unsmiling curve of her lips made him hungry to kiss her, to make her smile. The mischievous tilt of her nose made him wonder at the many ways she could make a man insane, if she were to just be herself.
“Running was the only option,” she finally stated proudly.
Pride kept her shoulders straight, her head high, no matter what was thrown at her.
“How can you consider that an option?” he growled back at her. “Running is a coward’s way out, Risa. If there is one thing you have never displayed in the six years you’ve tried to rebuild your life, then it’s cowardice.”
Her smile was mocking, bitter. The pain that filled her eyes, her expression, tore at the heart he thought had already been ripped from him years ago.
“No, Micah,” she whispered, her voice laden with the haunting pain that filled her eyes. “You’re wrong. It took me six years to try to take a lover. Six years to get up the nerve, for that damned Whore’s Dust to make me desperate enough to try. I failed. Evidently I failed more than I thought I had. You see, I thought I had orgasmed.” Bitterness shaped her lips. “I guess I didn’t. And we both know you didn’t. So evidently, I’m a bigger coward than you believed, because I’ll be damned if I can face allowing it to happen again.”
She swung away from him again. She ran from him again. She closed herself
in that bedroom, and it took every ounce of his control not to follow her, not to rip that damned door from its hinges and show her exactly what happened when she ran from her man.
Her man. He was losing his damned mind. Micah Sloane was no more than a man. The man who faced her daily was a dead man. Dead men didn’t claim a woman. Dead men didn’t dream of holding one forever. Dead men didn’t talk, and dead men didn’t dream. Because hell exacted an incredible price for allowing a dead man to walk. And that price might very well be the life of the woman he knew a part of him was already beginning to claim.
He breathed out roughly and reminded himself of his seduction schedule. He wouldn’t think about claiming or loving. He couldn’t. He would think of healing and protecting. That he could do. He could heal her, he could protect her, and he could destroy that last demon intent on taking her life.
He was two days into his campaign to seduce his lovely little lover. Getting her used to his body at night, lying against her, touching her, letting her feel his heat. The couple thing today was inspiration. He remembered his mother mentioning that when a man was seeking a bond with a woman, then he should develop friends who already had that bond, and have outings.
She hadn’t been pleased with the shopping.
He moved to the fallen bags and picked them up. He straightened them on the couch and noticed a scrap of violet lace that still lay on the floor. She had looked at this particular piece and he had seen the need for it in her eyes, despite her protest. With each piece he had bought, he had seen her curiosity build.
His Risa wanted pretty clothes and pretty underthings. He had seen that the night he had taken her to his bed. She had worn silk and lace beneath her dress. Silken stockings and a lacy thong. Pretty, feminine, and delicate. As she was.
And just as damned fiery.
She was killing him. He’d once heard his father say that Micah’s mother had caused him to grow gray hairs when he was trying to get her to commit to him. Micah wasn’t after the commitment, but he could definitely feel the gray hairs coming on.
ORION SMOOTHED his hand over the metal table, his eyes narrowed as he tested the strength of it. Risa Clay was a little thing, but his employer had assured him she had some strength when attempting to escape. Fear could provide an amazing amount of power, even to a fragile, delicate little woman such Risa Clay.
Patting the metal table in satisfaction, he then turned his attention to the metal bars attached by chains to the roof. He pulled himself up, but he couldn’t quite touch his chin to it. He chuckled a bit; he was obviously losing a bit of strength himself.
Ah well, it happened once a man passed that forty mark. But it didn’t take strength to do his job. It took cunning, calculation, and patience. He was still at the top of his game there. Perhaps even more than he had been in his youth. With age and experience came wisdom, he decided as he dropped from the bar and moved to test the tilt of the table he had found. He would have preferred to do this deed in Risa Clay’s home, but her new bodyguard had changed Orion’s original strategy.
He never bought the articles he needed in a way that could be traced. He stole them for the most part. This table had come from a junk dealer’s yard. Orion and managed to slip in and take it with no one the wiser. The bar was taken from the apartment he had leased. It was the clothes rod. A simple metal bar, clean of prints and ready for use. Everything in his little lair was clean of prints. He made certain it was spotless and prepared. He didn’t want the poor little thing to die in filth. She wasn’t pretty, she was really rather ugly, but from all he’d gathered, she was a kind girl. One who tried to do nothing but live her simple life.
Hell, she didn’t even cheat on her taxes.
That was frightening. Perhaps she deserved to die. Anyone that conscientious needed to be taken out before she could breed and make more moralistic little bastards for the world to deal with.
He had enough to deal with himself. The bounty on his head by several government agencies was causing him a bit of concern. His last hit, an American scientist who had nearly cracked a cure for a particularly nasty man-made virus, had caused several governments a bit of worry.
That job had netted Orion several million when it was finished. He had enough to retire in peace now, buy him a nice little island somewhere, and import several luscious little girls to take care of his needs. He wouldn’t have to work. Wouldn’t have to balance his play any longer. He could retire.
This would be his last job, he decided. The excitement had fizzled; it didn’t pique his interest as it had before. Now, it was simply a job.
When had this begun?
Ah yes, six years ago. Ariela Abijah.
He shook his head. Mossad hadn’t taken kindly to her death, and neither had her son. The boy had nearly caught up with him. If it hadn’t been for a bit of luck, then David Abijah would have managed to capture him on the merchant vessel Orion had used for his escape from Russia several years after he’d killed Abijah’s mother.
Thankfully, luck had been with him. David Abijah had fed the fishes that night. He was no longer a problem that Orion had to deal with.
But yes, this was the reason the excitement had faded. Abijah had tracked him tirelessly, especially after his father had thrown himself on a suicide bomber.
Orion shook his head. He hadn’t enjoyed killing the boy. There had been something in those black eyes that touched Orion. A strength, a flame of determination. A look very similar to the look that had been in Ariela’s eyes.
The memory of that look rather reminded him of the man Risa Clay had moved into her apartment. He hadn’t seen his eyes, but Orion had seen his face clearly. There was a stamp of determination and arrogance on it that had sent a chill up his spine.
What a bit of timing there, he thought angrily as he tapped his latex-covered fingers on the metal table.
The little wretch hadn’t even looked at a man in the six years she had been out of the asylum; now, she had a lover—a very experienced, intuitive lover. One who had disposed of the bugs Orion had placed in her apartment. After a single night at some club, a friend of a friend had managed to pick her up, and to move in with her.
He’d learned that much. And she had Navy SEALs for friends. That had caused him a moment’s hesitation when he had identified them. Retired SEALs, but SEALs were SEALs until the day they died. Perhaps even beyond. They were like a plague that refused to go away when they were riled.
He’d nearly backed out of this deal, but he’d never backed out of a deal with this particular employer. It wasn’t possible.
Shaking his head, he moved to his opened laptop and once again clicked through the digital pictures he had taken of them.
The man wore glasses; Orion had yet to see his eyes or snap a picture of them. The identification program Orion used didn’t work very well with glasses. So far, it had pulled up only five pictures and two were of dead men, Abijah being one of them.
He was going to have to talk to the programmer he had bought it from. Or perhaps not. It was his last job; he was going to make certain of it.
He stared at the couple again, tilted his head, and stared at the woman. Was that a flash of prettiness in her face as she stared up at the man who walked with her? She looked furious, yet there was a hint of prettiness there that Orion hadn’t seen before.
It had to be a trick of the light, he thought. He’d seen many pictures of her, and never had he seen this, this something that made him wonder if she wasn’t so very ugly after all.
Not that she was dog ugly. She was very, very plain, he decided, looking at her closely. And when had he decided she was simply plain rather than ugly?
He must definitely be getting on in age. He shuddered at the thought that he could be so old that his eyes were giving out on him. The eye doctor he saw once a year had assured him that his eyes were fine. Twenty-twenty vision, the doctor had promised him. Orion had never had trouble with his vision.
He clicked through a few more pictures, ti
lted his head again, and frowned deeply. Yes, there it was. One he had snapped as they moved through the mall. The man had his hand at her neck, as though he were rubbing it. There was a hint of sensuality in her face. A certain tilt of her eyes. Her too-large mouth seemed sensual rather than out of place here. Even with her baggy clothes she looked almost pretty.
He shook his head. What new phenomenon was this? And what did it matter? He’d make his move soon. A rather public one, simply because it wouldn’t be expected. No one could anticipate his next move. He’d made certain of it.
CHAPTER 10
“I HAVE THINGS I need to do,” Risa announced the next morning after breakfast dishes had been cleared away and an uncomfortable silence had descended between them.
“Things?” A dark brow arched as Micah watched her from the easy chair.
He was entirely too confident, too arrogant, she decided as she eyed him. And too damned sexy. The blue cotton shirt he wore did nothing to hide the power beneath it, and the jeans and boots made him look much too male, too virile.
“Yes, things,” she told him. “I need to go to Grandmother’s and discuss some last-minute details for the party she’s having in a few weeks. I’m handling the arrangements this year for her, and I want to make certain everything runs smoothly.”
“Your grandmother could come here,” he suggested, his gaze running over Risa’s body.
He was always doing that. Looking her over, his black eyes gleaming with an intent she didn’t understand. But her body responded to it. She almost sighed at the rush of desire that washed over her and pulsed between her thighs.
“I need to go to the house, Micah. I shouldn’t have to argue over that. It’s a simple enough trip and one you should be able to arrange.” Besides, her grandmother was worrying and Risa needed to reassure her.