Until the night she met Micah.
What had made her so determined to draw his attention? she wondered as she pulled her shirt on. She’d bought clothes designed to draw attention, to tempt a man. And, she knew now, not just any man, but the man her friends had spoken so highly of.
“I’ll wear the clothes.” She lifted her shoulders almost defensively at the thought of wearing them. “But I’m not used to wearing clothes like that.”
“You should get used to it,” he told her. “You should learn what you like, and make certain you have it. A few days at the mall, trying on whatever catches your eye, looking for what pleases you as a woman, you would have no trouble, Risa, filling your closet with clothing that would please you. A beautiful woman should always have clothing that makes her feel confident and in charge.”
She almost laughed bitterly at that. “Yeah, I’m just real confident and in charge, with a hit man watching for me and a damned date rape drug messing with my arousal.”
The pleasure of moments before was fading now and the familiar anger taking its place. She was tired of the anger. She was tired of the building frustration and the lack of control in her own life. Every step, every breath, seemed measured to guard against this new threat.
Wasn’t it enough, she wondered, that she had had to survive what Jansen Clay, a man who should have wanted to protect her, had done to her? No, he’d compounded it by locking her in an asylum and keeping her in a drug-shadowed existence for nearly two years. If it hadn’t been for the kindnesses of the staff there, God knew she would have given up in the first months.
She had learned later that two of the orderlies, a husband and wife, had made it their personal mission to see that she was looked after and wasn’t abused. But they hadn’t been able to keep Jansen Clay from visiting, and they had never seen the other man who she was aware had arrived with her father several times.
Those times were remembered because of the pain, rage, and horrifying arousal that had sped through her system after she was injected with something during those visits.
She had later learned she had been injected with a drug similar to the Whore’s Dust.
She paused and turned to Micah.
“He was at the clinic,” she said, frowning, aware that the memory was hovering just out of reach.
It was the hands. She had always noticed his hands. Large, blunt, as soft as silk.
“Who was at the clinic?” Micah’s voice was soft now, distant, as though he didn’t want to intrude on whatever she was remembering.
She lifted her gaze to his. “The man that raped me in the cargo plane. He was at the clinic. He came with Jansen several times. The doctors would almost let me slip out of the sedated haze they kept me in. They did it because the man that came with Jansen always injected me with that drug. It wasn’t Jansen that did it. It was him.”
As she stared at Micah, a hazy memory whispered through her.
“His hands hurt,” she said. “I thought he’d break my arm when he held it down. Then he would shove the needle in and force the drug inside me, as though he had to do it quickly. It hurt.”
“The attempts they made to duplicate the Whore’s Dust,” Micah said. “They used it on you several times.”
She nodded slowly. “It wasn’t like Whore’s Dust, though.” She lifted her head and stared back at him miserably. “It was worse, Micah. What he had was worse than the Whore’s Dust. It didn’t go away as easy. The pain of it seemed to last forever. Long after they left. It seemed like it was never-ending.” She shook her head and shut her eyes quickly as she swung away from him.
“Don’t fight the memories, Risa.” His hands caught her shoulders when she would have run from him. “You were not at fault for what they did to you. You have no shame in this. It is entirely theirs. You can’t fight the memories, because they’re your only defense.”
Her defense against a killer.
Her breathing hitched as the memory receded faster than it had flowed into her. The knowledge remained, though. The knowledge that whoever had raped her hadn’t been content to destroy her that way. For some reason, he had wanted to torture her further. He’d wanted to watch her pain.
He had hated her.
CHAPTER 11
RISA WORE THE jeans with a long-sleeved dark blue silk blouse and the leather jacket Micah had forced on her at the mall. On her feet she wore thick cotton socks and the white leather sneakers.
She had to admit that below the neck she didn’t look too bad. She’d tried to do something about above the neck. She’d styled her expertly highlighted hair around her face and used makeup sparingly, hoping she wouldn’t feel like an over-made-up clown.
“Beautiful,” Micah announced as she re-entered the living room, his black eyes frankly admiring as they went over her. “Risa, my love, I’m doomed to walk around in a haze of arousal whenever you’re near.”
She flushed, told herself he certainly didn’t mean it, but she glanced this time. And yes, he was still aroused. His expression was wry as he shrugged on his own leather jacket, covering the proof of arousal that strained at his jeans.
“We could have gone to bed,” she whispered, still a bit embarrassed at the fact that he hadn’t released.
“You’re not ready for bed yet,” he told her. “When you’re ready, sweet, your body will let me know.”
He led her to the door as she shot him a frown over her shoulder. “That’s a very arrogant statement, Micah,” she told him, irritation seeping into her voice.
He had to be the most arrogant, irritating, frustrating man in the world.
“I’m a very arrogant man,” he informed her as they stepped from the apartment. Before the door closed, the apartment door across from them opened and Risa watched as the agent Micah called John sprinted across the hall into her apartment.
“What does he do in there while we’re gone?” she muttered as she heard the locks click behind them.
“Trust me, with John, you really don’t want to know,” Micah growled, his voice low. “Now be a good girl. We don’t discuss the pests in your apartment while outside it.”
She almost laughed at the comment before he nipped at her ear gently and led her to the elevator. The smile lingered on her face. Micah had a way about him that made her want to smile, made her want to join in whatever amusement twinkled in his black eyes.
“Those jeans are killing me,” he sighed as they rode down the elevator.
“I could have worn the slacks,” she tried for a sober look as she glanced over her shoulder at him.
“I could spank you,” he muttered. “Such vile words should never come from such pretty lips.”
She had to turn her back and bite her lip to keep from laughing. But she felt him behind her, and she swore she felt him looking at her butt. The jacket did nothing to cover it.
As she stepped out of the elevator, it felt natural to have his hand riding at the small of her back, leading her through the lobby.
“Mr. Sloane, your vehicle is waiting outside.” The doorman handed him the key. “Have a nice outing, sir.”
“Thank you, Clive.” Micah accepted his key before moving to the car.
Micah opened the door for her, helped her in, then moved quickly around the vehicle to the driver’s side. Sliding in and shutting the door, he started the engine and pulled out into the traffic.
She stared around the car, wondering how safe it was here. Were there “pests” in the car as well?
His chuckle drew her gaze back to him.
“I can almost read your expression.” His smile was quick, warm. “The car is safe, sweet.”
“How do you know?” she asked. “It’s been parked in a public garage.”
“Locked, secured, and under the eagle eye of Nik’s camera,” he told her. “We rigged enough security to ensure we didn’t have any surprises.”
“That’s good then.” The plush interior was comfortable and warm, the car smooth as Micah flicked on the turn s
ignal and headed for the interstate.
“What kind of party has your grandmother arranged?” he asked her then.
“Just a small one,” she told him. “She nearly canceled it once she learned I was in danger. She was afraid the same thing would happen to me that happened to Emily.”
Her friend Emily. She wanted to cringe when she thought of the older girl. Emily had been with her the night of the kidnapping. Jansen had arranged for Emily’s second kidnapping six years before. He’d been determined to acquire her as his own personal pet. It had been during her rescue from that kidnapping that they had learned Jansen was involved. He had died in the cell where Emily had been held.
Such a tangled web of evil, she thought as she watched Micah take the ramp onto the interstate. There had been so many lives that Jansen had affected, so much pain that he had dealt.
He had been the cause of the disappearance and death of Nathan Malone, a friend to the SEALs whose wives had befriended Risa. He had nearly killed Emily and Kell, and only God knew how many other lives he had destroyed. He had been a monster, and the world should have been told what he was, rather than allowing the fictional reputation he had built for himself to stand.
“We’re not going to let anything happen to you,” Micah promised. “You definitely won’t be visiting the ladies’ room without plenty of company though.”
Emily had been taken through a concealed door in the ladies’ room when she had accompanied Jansen’s second wife, who had pretended to be upset and ill.
That woman had been diseased, Risa knew. Risa had spent years seeing the manipulating evil that had filled Jansen’s second wife as well as Jansen.
“I think I’ll just stay out of the downstairs ladies’ room to be certain,” Risa told Micah. “I only need to be at the party a few hours; then I can leave. It’s just a hundred people, her best friends and their guests, so there shouldn’t be any surprises there.”
“And unless Orion is intimately acquainted with your grandmother, then we should have no problems,” Micah told her as he handled the vehicle through the early evening traffic crush.
“I rather doubt it,” she said as she watched the traffic nervously. It was running fast and aggressive as it usually did at this time of the day. If it had been up to Risa, she would have left earlier or later. She hadn’t considered the traffic, though, when they left. Her mind had been on other things.
Things such as the erection beneath Micah’s jeans, and the flash of a fantasy that had run through her mind. The same fantasy that had followed her into her dreams last night. Her on her knees, his rough, aroused voice telling her to take him into her mouth. How to pleasure him.
She almost shivered, only barely managed to restrain the urge. She wanted that. She wanted to experience everything she could experience with him while he was in her life. And yet there was still the fear. She’d already been with him once, she’d felt his possession, knew he wouldn’t hurt her, but the fear was still there, and it wasn’t that easy to push out of her head. Because with the fantasies, there was also a mix of the nightmares. They intruded at the worst possible times, reminded her that pain could very well await her.
And she still wasn’t certain whether Micah wanted her because he found her desirable or because he felt sorry for her. She knew a man could become hard and could even climax whether he truly desired a woman or not, according to the Internet research she had done the day before while Micah was talking to several members of his team in the kitchen.
One site on military personnel had even stated that adrenaline alone could cause a man to get an erection and after the erection was attained, finding release wasn’t that difficult.
“You’re thinking too hard?” Micah stated, a question in his voice.
Glancing over at him, she felt a flush mounting in her face before she turned quickly away from him.
“Just quiet,” she said, trying to cover her embarrassment.
She was sitting here thinking about his erections while he was driving her to her grandmother’s home. Obviously she had little or no self-control, despite the promise to herself that she would force herself to stop focusing on the needs that she couldn’t seem to halt.
It hadn’t been this bad before Micah, except in her sleep.
“Well now, if that isn’t a pretty blush,” he crooned, and the sound of his voice was like black velvet. Or black magic. Completely tempting and forbidden. “Maybe you’ll tell me what you were thinking about when I get you home this evening.”
Home. She cleared her throat and risked another glance at him. There was a hint of a smile at his lips. It made them look even more kissable than before.
“Maybe,” she said breathlessly, remembering how he had convinced her to sit in his lap earlier, and the results of it. “You may have a chance at convincing me.”
He chuckled. No sooner had the sound left his chest than he tensed. Risa saw his hands clenching on the steering wheel as the car jerked, nearly throwing them into the lane of traffic next to them.
His eyes jerked to the dash, then the road. His hands had a white-knuckled grip on the car as he cursed viciously.
“Hold on,” he growled, his voice still calm, the vehicle his attempts to steer it.
Risa felt her heart rise to her throat. It was obvious there was a problem. The car was shuddering, the steering wheel jerking in his grip as he attempted to steer onto the center median.
The car wasn’t wanting to be steered. The steering wheel kept jerking to the left as he attempted to pull it to the right. He jerked the gearshift down, tore the parking brake up. There was a scream of tires against the blacktop as the car seemed to jump partially into the opposite lane.
Micah was fighting the wheel as horns blared around him. A black SUV plowed into the side of the car, throwing it back into the lane, then onto the median.
Risa fought the screams rising in her throat as she heard the sound of glass shattering. Her hands were braced against the seat, her fingers digging into the cushioned side as they bumped over a dip a second before the car tilted.
Something hit the back, throwing her into the door as she wondered frantically where the air bags were. Their seat belts were latched securely but weren’t protecting Micah from the glass that flew around them as the front end hit a cement barrier and the windshield shattered.
“Micah!” she screamed out his name as the car rocked to a stop, smoke drifting from the engine as he slumped against the seat.
She reached for him, her hands almost touching him when her door was jerked open and hard hands reached for her.
She turned, expecting Nik or Travis, one of the men she had seen from Micah’s team. It was a stranger reaching for her. Dark glasses, dark hair. A vehicle was parked too close to the car, doors open as strong hands gripped her arm and pulled at her.
“Micah!” she screamed his name as hysteria began to take over.
She clutched at his arm, her nails digging into the leather of his jacket as she clawed for purchase and fought the hands trying to tear her from the vehicle.
“Micah, wake up!” she screamed as she lost her battle. Those brutal hands grabbed hers, squeezing until she released Micah with a scream of pain.
She was torn from the car with enough force that she slammed to her knees. Scrambling against the grass beneath her, she fought to find her footing, to throw herself back into the car as she screamed out for Micah.
Why wasn’t anyone helping? She could hear the horns, the cars passing. She glimpsed the shocked faces as she was lifted by her hair and thrown toward the SUV.
“Micah!” She couldn’t let this happen. No one would do this unless it was the man sent to kill her.
She tried to see his face, tried to slap the glasses from it, to identify him. She had to get details. Micah would save her. He would need to know what this man looked like. Micah needed to know who Orion was.
“Bitch!” Her claws raked his face as she fought him, twisting and jerking against his hold
, her hands flying out, slapping at him, trying to claw him again.
He was pushing her closer to the SUV. Dragging her by her hair and her arm, trying to throw her inside it. She felt a pinch at her arm and a feral insanity surged through her.
An injection; the bastard had shot something into her arm. Her scream was enraged as she tore as his arm, clawed at his hand, and felt the darkness edging at her vision.
No. No. She couldn’t let this happen. She couldn’t let him take her. Micah would never forgive himself. She wouldn’t have a chance to live if this man got her in that SUV.
“Micah!” She felt herself weakening.
Tears streamed from her eyes as her knees collapsed and the darkness began to swell through her. She felt herself falling, felt her face scrape the grass, and before she lost consciousness, she could have sworn she heard a gunshot.
MICAH CAME BACK to consciousness with Risa’s screams ringing in his head. He could hear her terror, the sharp, imperative sound of rage and pain, and he knew in that instant what had happened.
The steering had been sabotaged as well as the brakes. He’d felt the explosion beneath the car a second before everything had gone to hell. He’d almost had a handle on it, almost had them safely out of traffic, when that damned SUV plowed into them.
The air bags hadn’t deployed. Somehow they, too, had been deactivated. A gunshot through the back windshield had also taken out the front one, shattering the already-broken window and throwing glass through the car.
Blood filled his vision as he struggled against his seat belt. It took precious seconds to tear his weapon from the pocket of his jacket and too damned long to struggle to lie across the seats where he could glimpse her struggling with the hulking form of a male trying to push her into the black SUV that had pushed them off the interstate.
He couldn’t see. He swiped at the blood that smeared over his eyes, but the figures were wavering. His vision was fucked the hell up. He was seeing double for too long. He couldn’t tell where she was, and the bastard had her too close. There was no way to fire at the man attempting to take her without possibly hitting her instead.