“But it’s Orion you’re after.” She forced the words past her lips. “How would that serve you, Micah? You wouldn’t have the hold card you need to trap him.”
He wouldn’t be here with her any longer. She was pathetic. She wanted him away from her, and yet she didn’t want him gone. The appearance of a lover was a salve at least to her public ego.
“I’ll have my chance at Orion. It’s fated,” he said coldly. “If I could take the risk from you, I would do so. What makes you think I would do otherwise?”
She shook her head. Because he was sleeping with a woman he didn’t truly desire, she thought. Because to catch a killer, he was forced into her bed.
“I haven’t remembered much more.” She heard the sound of her voice, strained, rough. “I remember being held down.” Bile rose in her stomach. “He said…” She inhaled roughly, feeling a cold sweat pop out on her skin. “He said he couldn’t look at me, because I was too ugly.” Her head lowered as she shook her head. “If he had to look at me, he wouldn’t be able to get off. He was angry with Jansen because he wanted the younger girl. Jansen told him I was the only choice, and he laughed. Said he had to pay someone to fuck me after all.”
She pushed back from the table, stumbling from her chair as his expression remained composed, icy. She was shuddering now, thinking about it. It wasn’t a memory; it was like a dream. Like a horrible nightmare she couldn’t escape from whenever she let herself think about it.
“I don’t know who it was,” she cried out, keeping her back to him as she moved into the living room. “I don’t want to know who it was.”
“Because you’re afraid you know him. Your mind knows who it is, and it’s protecting you.” God, his voice. With her back turned, she could hear something in it, something so dark and dangerous in the hard, emotionless tone that she instinctively shied away from it.
“My psychologist, Dr. Brinegar, she tried hypnosis. I asked her to.” She shook her head. “I wanted it over. I wanted whatever was in my head to just go away. But she didn’t get any more answers than I’d already given her.” She turned to him. “Maybe I didn’t see who it was. Maybe this is something else. Retaliation because Jansen is dead. Something else.”
He shook his head as he gazed at her, his eyes deep, deep pools of black savagery.
“Our intel says otherwise, Risa.”
“Maybe your fucking intel is wrong,” she cried out, her arms falling away from her breasts as her fists clenched at her sides.
He rose slowly from his chair. “My intel isn’t wrong, Risa. It’s taken me six years to develop this contact. My intel is very, very accurate. This hit went out because you remembered something in the last three months that you shouldn’t have remembered. Something that makes someone believe you will remember more.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what it is. What could it be?”
“The identity of your rapist,” he stated. “Everything you’ve remembered in the past three months, the little details, what was said, the fact that you could see Jansen as you were raped. The hands that held yours down to the floor of the plane. Emily screaming out at Jansen. It all has to do with the rape. You’re trying to remember your rapist, and he’s been afraid you would remember. He’s watched you, just as the FBI has been watching, hoping you would remember while he’s been terrified you would. He’s covering his ass now.”
For a moment, just for a moment, she was back in that plane. The drone of the engines, the terror that smothered her as she stared at Jansen. The way he laughed, the amusement in his eyes as her body began to burn and she began to cry.
She shook the image away, fought it with everything inside her. She’d been fighting the memories for years and she knew it. She wanted to live in the present; she didn’t want to live in the past. She didn’t want to remember, because she was afraid if she remembered, remembered what it felt like, she would remember how she had begged.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” she choked out desperately. “I won’t talk about this. You can stay here until you find the bastard. Find him and kill him.”
But she knew what he wasn’t saying. Unless they found the identity of his employer, and he always learned who was employing him, then it wouldn’t matter. There were always more killers out there. And the majority of them didn’t mind using a bullet.
She was dead.
Risa turned and stared at the heavy drapes covering her windows. She hated drapes on the windows. The living room was dim, despite the bright winter sunlight outside. The apartment had a shadowy, sinister feel to it, one that seeped inside her and left her shaking with fear.
She was standing there locked in her own thoughts, her own certainties. She was unaware of Micah moving behind her until she felt his palms against her shoulders.
She couldn’t jerk away from him. The feel of him behind her, heated and so strong, his hands against her, his entire maleness just there, feeding whatever the hell that drug did to her.
It had to be the drug, didn’t it? It made her knees weak, made her womb flex and convulse while her vagina ached with emptiness.
Memories of hell were replaced with memories of one night. His kiss. The touch of his lips along her body, on her nipples, between her thighs. The feel of him pressing into her, stretching her, burning her until she’d wondered if she could accommodate the erection impaling her.
“I won’t allow you to be hurt,” he whispered behind her, his breath feathering the top of her hair. “I will give my own life to protect you, Risa. And should that happen, then there are others who will come after me, to ensure you live.”
She shook her head, a tear falling. “Don’t do this, Micah. Don’t say this.”
Because it didn’t mean anything. When it came right down to it, it wasn’t because he loved her, or because his life would suffer without her. It was because Orion had killed Micah’s friends. It was because he was a man who would do whatever it took to protect those he considered his responsibility.
She was his responsibility now.
“Risa, look at me.” His hands eased her around slowly.