She didn’t quite know how to handle this situation. She had just come on his fingers, had known an explosive release that left her weak and almost sated in his arms. There was an awareness, though, that something was missing. That she had managed once again to cheat not just herself but him also. She just wondered if she would survive knowing what she was cheating herself out of.
“Risa, love, the time that we come together again will arrive soon enough.” He fixed the little latch to her slacks and drew the zipper up before easing the cups of her bra back over her breasts. “Come now.” He lifted her from his lap and set her back on her feet. “Let’s see about getting you into those butt-snugging jeans I bought you, and one of your pretty tops to go over your new lacy panties. I must admit, I’d find great pleasure in that today.”
After the climax he had just given her, balking at that seemed a little childish. Besides, she’d wondered how the jeans and snug tops would look. She’d never worn clothes designed to cover and yet show off her body. She had always been self-conscious, too afraid to want to draw attention to herself, as a teenager. And after the kidnapping and her confinement in the private institution Jansen had placed her in, Risa had been terrified of wearing clothes that would reveal any part of her body.
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.”