“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 f**k 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 ke cainthe 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 f**k 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.
< kh="ht=font size="3">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.