“You’d think I’d be used to the lies,” she mused roughly. “I should be by now, shouldn’t I? It shouldn’t affect me so much, that you had lied about something so small.”
She turned and faced them. No one said a word. They were watching her cautiously, as though they still weren’t certain exactly what she knew. Even Kira seemed to be on alert, watching her intently. Micah’s black eyes were penetrating, his brows lowered heavily as he watched her.
“Is he even American?” She turned to Ian as though she were only curious. “I could swear at times that he’s not. Can any of you even tell me the truth there?”
“Risa.” Ian cleared his throat.
“Please don’t lie to me again, Ian,” she said conversationally, as though the tears weren’t ripping into her soul. “I counted you and Kira both as friends. People I could depend on.” She almost snorted at that thought. “Perhaps I should have known better. The operation is more important, correct?”
“I warned you,” Kira said softly to her husband as her gray eyes stayed on Risa.
Risa hated the look in her eyes. She hated being watched as though she were a bug under a damned microscope.
“Why did you lie to me!” she screamed back at them, barely aware of the subtle flinch that jerked through Micah’s body as she glared at Ian and Kira.
“Because you needed to trust the man that was going to be sleeping with you, Risa.” Kira was the one who answered her.
The other woman rose to her feet, her look so damned pitying that Risa had to curl her fingers into fists to keep from going for her face.
“Look at you,” Risa accused roughly. “You feel so damned sorry for me, don’t you, Kira? I get sick of the pity in all your eyes. Try telling me the damned truth for a change and you wouldn’t have to feel sorry for poor little Risa.”
Kira winced. “Guilty as charged.” She nodded. “And you’re right: We should have been honest with you. But in our defense, Risa, we could never be certain how strong you were, or how you would have accepted the unvarnished truth.”
“And that truth is?” Risa laughed bitterly. “Let’s see.” She turned to Micah. “That first night he was your good and dear friend who fought with your husband in the Middle East. The next morning he was one of Jordan Malone’s agents committed to protecting me.” She turned back to Kira. “What is he now?”
No one answered her. They stared back at her as though she were demented, but there were no answers forthcoming. She could feel the bitterness tearing through her. It cramped her stomach, ripped at her chest. She felt as though her knees were going to give out on her and leave her clawing at the floor in pain.
She turned to Micah. “No explanations? No answers?” Her voice was grating as she shuddered at the look in his eyes. Part torment, part complete impenetrable male arrogance.
“I can’t tell you what you want to know,” he finally stated. “But know this, Risa: I didn’t lie to you. Nothing I’ve done, nothing I’ve given you, has been a lie.”
“Liar.” She wanted to scream, but the accusation was torn, ragged, instead. “You lied every time you touched me, Micah. You lied to me with every word out of your lips so you could see this mission through. At least admit that.”
“I didn’t have to lie, Risa,” he stated somberly. “Because you didn’t ask questions. And now, you’re asking questions I can’t answer.”
“Of course you can’t.” Her stage whisper was bitter and filled with pain. “Super-secret agents don’t answer questions, do they, Mr. Sloane?”
“This is ridiculous, Risa,” he accused her, his gaze snapping with ire now. “You knew this was a mission. You knew what we were trying to do. You can’t cry foul now. And you can’t expect me to endanger that mission by answering questions that contain information that could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Information that could only end up hurting you.”
She flinched at the anger in his voice and his refusal to answer something as simple as what the hell he was.
“Well, I guess I’m asking the wrong person.” She turned and swung for the door. “Let’s see what Jordan has to say.”
“No, Risa.” Micah jumped for her, but he was too late. She was out the door, across the hall, and pounding on the door where she knew the so-called agents lodged.
She wanted answers. She didn’t want more lies and she didn’t want more cover-ups. She wanted to know exactly whom she had given her body and her heart to. She wanted to know the man she was going to lose.
“Risa, not right now,” Micah growled, his fingers curling around her arm.
“Now.” She jerked out of his grip as the door swung open.
Jordan stared back at her, his blue eyes glowing with anger as he glared at Micah over her head. But Jordan wasn’t the one who held her attention.
She heard Micah’s vicious curse behind her, Ian’s “God, Jordan, what the hell are you doing?”
Her eyes were held by the man who stared back at her, his topaz gaze shattered as his head lifted from the pictures scattered over the table.
Mac Knight.
He had been her friend when so few young men would even take the time to speak to her. He had danced with her when she would have been humiliated at not having an escort for a particular part of an event.
He had been like a brother. He and his parents had lived on the estate next to the Clays’, so they had socialized often. He had taught her how to play poker one summer. He had slipped her her first bottle of beer.
He was one of the few good memories she had from her youth.
“Risa.” Mac rose slowly to his feet, his oddly colored eyes damp, filled with horror as he stared back at her with pity. “I didn’t know. God, Riss, I didn’t know.”
His voice was thick with anger, regret. And pity.
“I would have done something.” His voice was thick with emotion, with regret.
Risa ignored it. Her gaze was captured by the pictures spread out on the table.
Pictures of her.
She remembered the flash of lights as someone had taken pictures in the plane. She also remembered something about video. They always took pictures and video of their victims, she remembered distantly. Diego Fuentes had insisted on it. He’d had a very small supply of Whore’s Dust, so it was only used on victims who could benefit him. The sons and daughters of powerful men. Women who worked in sensitive or classified areas. They were predominantly the victims he’d chosen himself.
Sometimes, his associates had bought the Whore’s Dust from him and used it in other ways. But always there had been pictures and videos.
“It wasn’t exactly my best pose,” she said, staring at the top picture.
Her face was red, her eyes wild and filled with tears. There were more under that one. Vivid, shocking, explicit pictures.
She heard Micah behind her; it sounded as though he were ready to kill, but her gaze was held by the pictures.
“Riss,” Mac’s protest was swallowed by the roaring in her ears.
She hadn’t seen the pictures. She’d had no idea Jordan had them.
“They made you look at these,” she said as she gestured to the pictures, feeling the numbness in her lips before it moved through her body. “I guess you were being berated for telling on Micah.”
She slid a few more pictures free. They were grainy but explicit. Nothing was hid from the eye of the camera that night. It was all there in glaring detail. At least it wasn’t in color, she thought faintly.
She had to put her hand over her mouth to hold back her screams, to hold back the need to gag as she was greeted with the sight of her own nude body. Bruised, filthy. The canvas beneath her was smeared with her blood.
“How tacky, showing these to you.” She couldn’t breathe. She could feel the need to draw oxygen into her lungs, but she couldn’t seem to get enough inside her. “You should have shredded them for me.”
She could hear herself screaming. In the back of her head, she was screaming and begging Janse
n. Daddy, please. Please make it stop.
You damned crybaby. Big girls don’t cry, you little bitch, he had accused her.
And she could hear his laughter. It raked through her mind like diseased talons and left her feeling feverish, weak.
She could hear voices behind her. She could hear Micah cursing Jordan, Ian, Mac, and anyone else he could curse. She didn’t see the tears Kira had to hide, or the redhead who had turned her face to the wall as her own tears began to fall from her eyes.
Risa lifted her gaze to Mac. “How sad,” she whispered. “Definitely the ugly duckling, aren’t I?”
Her expression was twisted in those photos. She was ugly, blemished, dirty. She had been a creature, an enraged animal, and it showed in the grainy photos that had been printed out.
“Stop this.” Micah jerked her around.
Risa stared up at him in shock. His black eyes were primal, sparking with bits of white light that almost held her entranced.
“Did Jordan show him the video as well?” She told herself she was merely curious. It wasn’t as though the video could be any worse than the pictures.
“Risa, stop.” Micah’s hand framed her face, his long fingers pushing into her hair as he stared back at her, his gaze tormented. “Knight refused to listen to Jordan’s explanations. He wanted proof. He wasn’t backing down without it, honey. It was give him proof or kill him.”
A smile curved her lips. She felt it. An automated response as something began to tear loose inside her soul.
“I think I would have preferred that you kill me,” she stated. “Have you seen them?”
“Risa,” he objected roughly. “Let’s go back home; we’ll talk about this there.”
She jerked her head from his grip and stared around the room. Ian and Kira; there was the agent John who stayed in the apartment. How interesting, the chauffeur who had driven them earlier stood in the doorway to a bedroom. Nik watched her with icy Nordic blue eyes. There was the redhead from the elevator. And lo and behold, why, there was Risa’s good friend Emily’s husband stepping into the room, Kell.
“Have all of them seen those pictures?” Risa turned back to Micah. “Did you have like a meeting? What do you call it? A mission objective where you looked at the gory evidence first? Did you get to see the video? I can’t imagine it was very interesting.”
She was talking too fast. Risa felt cut off, disconnected with herself, as voices echoed in the back of her head.
“No, Risa,” he bit out roughly. “The pictures were part of the file we had. I didn’t look at the pictures and neither did the others. We knew what had happened to you.”
“And you’re not a SEAL.” She knew he wasn’t. She leaned forward almost playfully; she felt like a wooden doll with no soul. “I bet that was Emily’s idea, huh? She knew I used to dream of a SEAL slipping into my bedroom and rescuing me when I was a child. Did she tell you that?”
“Risa. Baby.” Micah’s voice lowered, and she wondered if that was his hand that shook as he touched her cheek or if she was simply shaking that hard.
“No answer?” She felt weak. She felt as though she were being ripped apart inside and she couldn’t even let the rage escape. She couldn’t hit him; she couldn’t hate him. She stared up at him, and in that second of agony she actually realized she loved him.
She almost laughed at that thought. Poor ugly Risa. She thought she’d found a SEAL, and now she didn’t even know what stood in its place.
“Micah is former Israeli Mossad, Risa.” That was Jordan’s voice. It was low; it was wicked dark. Funny, she shouldn’t even care that he sounded as though he was in pain.
“Mossad,” she said faintly. “Yeah, it fits. Jewish. No bacon.”
“Risa, stop this.” His expression was worried, filled with pain. Tormented.
She turned her head and stared at Mac. His eyes were darker than she had ever seen them. “We were friends,” she whispered.
“We’re still friends.” He swallowed heavily. “We’ll always be friends, Risa. Do you think I’d blame you?”
She shook her head. “No friends, Mac. Don’t have friends, they just lie to you, don’t you know that?”
She heard someone sob and thought maybe it was the redhead.
“Micah, get her the hell out of here,” Jordan cursed. “I’ll call her psychologist and get her over here.”
Risa wanted to laugh at that.
She whirled on Jordan instead. “Don’t worry, Mr. Malone, I have medication, and I know how to take it if I need it.” She stared at him with cold, brutal anger. “Do you know, every time I’ve seen you you’ve been like the Grim Reaper of goodwill and cheer. You should find another profession.”
Surprise glittered in his eyes.
Risa shrugged off Micah’s hold and moved carefully, deliberately, across the room. She wasn’t going to cry here. As she reached the door, she turned and looked across the room to Kell. His green eyes were filled with regret.
“Tell Emily I love her anyway,” Risa whispered, as she had to clamp her lips together to keep from sobbing. “She lied to me, Kell. Both of you lied to me.”
She felt loss, and she felt alone. She stared around the room, realizing that everyone she loved had lied to her as though she were a child who couldn’t handle the truth, who couldn’t handle reality.
“All you had to do was tell me the truth.” She stared at Micah, her heart breaking as her first tear fell. “Just the truth.”
She opened the door. Micah was behind her, silent, as icy as death, as he walked her across the hall and back into her apartment.
The door closed behind them and she kept walking. She moved through the living room and into the bedroom before closing and locking the door behind her.
She moved through the bedroom and into the bathroom and closed the door there.
She looked different.
She stared into the full-length mirror.
She didn’t see the ugly duckling.
She didn’t see the woman enraged by Whore’s Dust or the desperate child who used to sit in front of her bedroom window and dream of a SEAL to rescue her.
She saw a young woman. She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t beautiful.
She wiped at her tears, but they refused to stop falling. She was a little plain maybe, but Micah didn’t need to put a bag over her face to fuck her.
He just needed to lie to her.
Her mascara was running, though. And the tip of her nose was red.
She reached out, touched the mirror that had followed her through her childhood into adulthood. The same mirror on its heavy dark stand.
She reached out, gripped a bottle from the cabinet, and with an enraged cry, threw it into the mirror.
She watched it shatter. Glass rained around her as she heard the bedroom door crash. A second later the bathroom door slammed into the wall behind it.
“There.” She turned on him.
Shaking in rage, the tears falling from her eyes, she faced him. “There’s your damned mirror. There’s your ugly duckling. I need you just about as much as I need that fucking mirror.”
Her fists slammed into his chest as she began to sob. She struck out at him. There was nothing else to strike out at. All the pain and rage of six years rose inside her until she was screaming with it, her head buried in his chest as he picked her up, holding her close to him, and carried her to the easy chair that sat in the corner of her bedroom.
He held her. One hand against her head to hold her screams against his heart. The other wrapped around her upper body as he tucked her close to his chest and rocked her gently.
She couldn’t hold it in. She couldn’t fight it. She’d fought for six years. She hadn’t cried; she hadn’t lost control. She had made certain she wasn’t the crybaby Jansen Clay had accused her of being over and over that night.
“Risa, baby.” Micah’s hand stroked down her back. “I have you, love. Right here against my heart. I have you, Risa.”
She felt his he
art beating against her cheek, strong and sure, a heavy throb that had soothed her the only night she had allowed herself to sleep against him.
Into his chest she poured eight years of rage, grief, and pain. She poured the child she had been against his chest, and the woman who didn’t know how to be free. She held on to him with desperate hands, and she let herself be weak.
She let herself accept.
Friends would lie.
Sometimes, there was going to be pity.
She couldn’t always be strong.
And one day soon, Micah would leave.
She never saw the tears Micah shed as she sobbed against him. And she never saw the pain that burned in his soul for the woman he couldn’t have. The woman who was strong enough to cry, and strong enough to survive.
CHAPTER 19
SHE SHOULD HAVE slept the night and the morning away. By the time Micah stripped the beautiful silk dress from her and tucked her beneath the blankets, she was exhausted from her weeping.
She was aware of him undressing, and when he slid naked into the bed, she couldn’t help but curl against him.
“My mother once told me that when a woman sheds tears, the angels bring her strength,” he whispered into the darkness as he held Risa against him. “You’re not weak, Risa. And I have never pitied you. Not even once. I have always been in awe of your courage and your tenacity to survive.”
“I’ve hidden,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Yes, you hid.” He sighed. “From yourself. From the beauty that shines from inside you and fills the gentle curves of your face. You’ve hidden from a past that no one can blame you for not wanting to remember. And you’ve hidden from yourself, Risa. But you didn’t hide from life, and you didn’t hide from the knowledge of events you wanted to forget. You’ve always handled that with grace.”
“I’m tired.” She let her eyes close. “I just want to forget for a little while, Micah.”
His hand smoothed down her back before he tucked the sheet and comforter closer to her neck.
“Sleep, love. I’ll be right here.”