She cleaned up okay, but he still couldn’t find it in him to forget how very ugly she had once been.
He had hoped he wouldn’t receive the job to kill her. He remembered, eight years before when she had first been kidnapped, her face had been in the papers. He’d grimaced then. Two years later when Jansen Clay’s death had been announced, he’d had that vague premonition of what was coming.
It was a shame. His employer should have been more picky in his friends and the women he f**ked. If he hadn’t been with Jansen that night to take his pick of the girls, then he wouldn’t have been stuck with only one choice, the Clay girl.
He’d done her, though. He’d pushed her face to the floor of the cargo plane and in front of her father, he’d pushed her skirts to her h*ps and rammed into her.
He’d been furious, he’d told Orion. The girl had been so pumped on Whore’s Dust, his employer had been certain she wouldn’t remember the event. But it appeared she had remembered parts of it, and he had learned she could be remembering more. It wouldn’t do for her to remember who had raped her.
Orion was going to have to kill her. Damn, it would be so much easier to just put a bullet in her brain, but he just couldn’t bring himself to kill her in such a manner. He was proud of each job he took and if he didn’t bleed her, then no one would believe he had been the one to do her.
Pity. But it couldn’t be helped.
She lived alone. That was a pleasant plus. He could slip into her apartment, gag her, and kill her in her own home. He didn’t get to do that very often. He’d definitely have to put her facedown, though. There was just something about that face that he couldn’t tolerate. Those eyes. She would be a particularly interesting test for him. He’d never had to kill a woman who made him as uneasy as this one did.
’€unt
CHAPTER 4
HER GRANDMOTHER had always said she was stubborn, but Risa had never believed her. As she stepped into Micah’s hotel room, she wondered if perhaps her grandmother Abigail wasn’t right. Maybe she was too stubborn.
She had made herself go this far, and now that she had, her body was rioting with nerves. She didn’t know this man. She knew nothing about him.
Well, next to nothing. Morganna, Raven, and Emily had imparted some information. He was thirty-two, born to Israeli immigrants, six two, tough. Their husbands respected him. He was clean as of his latest Navy-regulated blood tests. Morganna had stated that Clint believed he was kind. He was good with animals and children.
Hell, it was more than Risa knew about the men her friends were married to.
“Would you like a drink?” She jerked, startled as his hands touched her shoulders, but only to draw her wrap from the death grip she had on it as it lay over her shoulders.
She let the material slide over her arms as she shook her head.
“No, thank you,” she finally breathed out. She didn’t drink often. It had a curiously heated effect on her. It made her want things, things she didn’t understand, touches she had only read about or seen in movies.
“Are you certain this is what you want, Risa?” he asked then, his warm breath caressing the side of her neck as he bent his head to hers. “It’s not too late to turn back. We can go to the bar and talk. I could drive you home.”
She stiffened in sudden self-consciousness. “If you’d prefer not to.” She moved to turn, to take her wrap, to let him off easy. God, had the lights of the club somehow hidden how plain she truly was?
“Prefer not to? I don’t think so.” His hand moved hers to his leg, pressed her palm against the tight muscle of his thigh.
Risa stared down at her hand, noticing how much larger his was as he held her palm against his muscular leg.
Curiosity overtook her. Curiosity and the electric slide of arousal that seemed to build inside her until she wondered that sparks weren’t reflecting between them.
“I don’t know how.”
A finger pressed against her lips as he halted her words. “There’s nothing either of us needs to know,” he said softly as she continued to stare down at their hands. “Whatever you wish is yours. If you don’t wish, then you have only to say so and I’ll stop. Agreed?”
She licked her lips nervously and lifted her head. Her attention was caught and held by his lips. His lower lip was a touch fuller, more sensual, than the upper lip. On him, it looked good, sexy.
Her lips parted. “Would you kiss me?”
She felt as though she was begging, but she was helpless against the temptation, against the needs rioting through her body.
“I dream of kissing you,” he whispered, his hand curving around her neck, his fingers heated against her flesh as she let herself accept the lie for now.
He couldn’t have dreamed of kissing her, but she liked the sound of it. It soothed something inside her, and heated another part of her.
She watched as his lips lowered, watched as she felt his breath against her, then the heated rough velvet touch of lips against her own.
Risa inhaled roughly at the static surge of sensation that raced across her lips. She jerked back involuntarily, her hands flying to his chest, palms flat as she blinked back at him in surprise.
His lips tilted into a gentle grin.
“Should we try it again?” he asked softly. “Perhaps next time neither of us will be caught off-guard by the pleasure.”
That was pleasure?
His hand tightened on her neck.
“Watch me, just like that,” his dark voice crooned. “Your eyes wide, your gaze dark because I please you. I want very much to please you, Risa.”
He did? Oh God, was this really pleasure? Could she bear much more of it if it was?
“Easy,” he whispered. “Soft and easy.”
Soft and easy. His lips settled against hers as they parted, a whimper of surging hunger escaping her throat as his head tilted, his hand tightening at her neck as her lashes fluttered closed and she let the waves of pleasure wash through her.
His tongue licked at her lips, then slid past them, just a little as he teased the tip of hers. Her lips parted further for him, her tongue reaching out as she trembled in his grasp.
Oh God, what was he doing to her? Her heart was thundering in her chest, but his was racing just as hard beneath her hands. A hard pounding rhythm that sank into her palms and filled her with wonder.
It was incredible. This kiss. His lips were heated and dominant, determined. They mastered hers, led her through a sexy, sultry dance that had her lifting to her tiptoes to get closer, to sink into him, to sate herself against the hunger surging inside her now.