by Lora Leigh
Risa wrapped her arms around his neck, buried her face in his shoulder, and fought the tears that wanted to fall. She shuddered as the scent of disinfectant disappeared. She could smell Micah now. His scent, warm and male, wrapping around her as he removed her from the room.
The sheet protected her against the chill that would have penetrated the hospital gown. His body heat seeped into her, wrapped around her, and eased the almost mind-numbing horror that threatened her sanity.
There were protests. She could hear the nurses, perhaps a doctor.
“She’ll be looked after,” Micah snarled to someone. “You are no longer required, Doctor.”
She heard the swish of the door, felt the cool night air as it bit into the thin covering, then, seconds later, more warmth as Micah bent and moved into a car.
Her arms tightened around him.
“It’s okay,” he whispered against the top of her hair. “Jordan had a limo standing by. You’re safe. Trust me, Risa. It’s okay.”
It was okay. Her mind was still groggy; the sedative she had been given made it so hard to think. She knew it was a sedative; she remembered it from the clinic. Strangely, she remembered the doctor arguing with her father over his choice of drug.
“Same thing,” she whispered against Micah’s shoulder. “The sedative. The same thing Jansen ordered at the clinic.”
He stiffened against her. “Are you certain?”
She nodded. “I know how it feels.”
She knew because the doctor at the asylum had always put her on another sedative after her father left. One that didn’t cloud her mind so much, one that allowed her to retain memories, impressions of what was going on.
“I’ll get on that, Micah,” Jordan said. “We’ll know exactly what the sedative was within twelve hours. It takes a while to complete those tests on the blood.”
She shook her head. She knew the name of the drug. It was on the tip of her tongue. She remembered Jansen talking about it once.
“We have her records from the clinic as well as the hospital she was taken to after her rescue from there.” Micah’s voice drifted through her mind. “It should be in there.”
“The drug they found in her system after her rescue from the clinic isn’t the same,” Jordan stated. “I already questioned the doctor tonight concerning that. The drug that was found in her system from the clinic was milder.”
“Not always.” Risa had to force the words past her lips, but it was getting easier to think, easier to make sense of what was going on around her, though she was still groggy. She would be groggy for a while.
“What do you mean, ‘Not always’?” Micah asked.
She breathed in, out, tried to force her mind to clear enough to tell him.
“The doctor.” Her voice was halting, a little slurred. “When Jansen wasn’t scheduled in. He changed the sedative. The other, it would damage me, he said. He didn’t want to damage me. Jansen didn’t care.”
She was still locked in that in-between place. Not really here, not really there.
“You had halperidol in your system when you were taken from the clinic,” Micah said.
Risa nodded. “GHB before Jansen’s visits.” She frowned; why hadn’t she remembered that before? “He injected me with GHB.” She knew what GHB was. “The doctor called it GHB. Said he could kill me with it.”
She heard their voices in her head, insidious whispers she couldn’t escape. Jansen’s laughter, the doctor’s concern. And she heard the other man. Snide, his voice imperious but with an underlying accent.
“Don’t take me back, Micah,” she whispered, feeling the grogginess becoming darkness. “Don’t let them touch me.”
“I have you, Risa.” His arms tightened further around her. “I have you.”
She drifted off into that never-never land, aware of the tension that had invaded Micah’s body. She would ask him about it later, she told herself. If she remembered.
Jordan stared at that girl in Micah’s arms, aware of the way the agent held her, the possessiveness in his hold and in his eyes.
“Ariela Abijah was given GHB,” Jordan said, watching Micah, knowing the tender spot he was pressing. Ariela had been Micah’s mother, a woman of rare strength in Jordan’s eyes. He’d met her once, just once, and she had impressed him when it was hard for anyone to do so.
“Orion always uses GHB,” Micah said, his voice bleak. “It’s easy to find, impossible to trace.”
“She knows the difference.” He nodded to Risa. “The doctor suspected it might be GHB from his initial tests.”
“She came out of it early.” Micah smoothed his hand down her arm as Jordan watched.
Hell, another perfect agent shot in the fucking heart, he thought. His Elite Operational Unit was going to hell in a handbasket. First Noah, now Micah? God help them all if John or Travis decided to bite the love bullet.
“How do you know she came out of it early?” Jordan questioned Micah.
“She drifted off again,” he stated. “She would have never done that if she wasn’t still under the influence of the drug. She would have fought it. I’d say six-to eight-hour dosage is what she was given. The tests on her blood should come back with that answer. That means he’s most likely got a hole outside of Atlanta somewhere, perhaps further. The SUV had tinted windows. He could have dumped her in the back and gone for at least four hours before he had to get her secured. He has this planned down to the last second, from kidnapping to death. He’d be living close now that he can’t depend on the bugs he had in the apartment. He took a chance today. He’s being pushed to finish this and he’s making mistakes.”
“Then he’ll make more before it’s over with,” Jordan decided with a nod. “He’ll be pissed now. We’ll get a plan together and get started on it.”
He watched Micah closely. The other man didn’t nod, he didn’t agree. That was a damned bad sign. It meant that at any moment Risa Clay could end up on the missing persons list and only one man would know where to find her. The man who had claimed her.
Ex-fucking-Mossad-agent. Bastards. He’d never met a harder, more cunning agent than those the Mossad produced. Problem was with such men, once they lost their minds to a woman, then they were worse than lions protecting a cub. You took your life in your hands if you dared to endanger that woman.
Micah had that look. Noah had that look when his Sabella, or Bella, as most knew her. Yeah, that was the problem with hard-core black agents. They were only black until some damned female came around and decided to light up their friggin’ lives.
Jordan pushed his fingers through his hair and started considering alternatives to each plan that he knew faced them. He’d have to make certain Risa wasn’t just protected but had a damned bulletproof bubble around her; otherwise Micah would fight him.
He could enforce any plan he wanted to use. It would be simple enough to have Micah jerked off the unit during this op and replaced.
He rejected that idea quickly enough. He could jerk the agent off the case, but as Micah had warned him, he’d turn rogue. Risa would disappear and with her would go one of the best damned agents to be found on the face of the earth. Nope, that one wouldn’t work at all.
“She remembered the wreck,” Jordan suddenly pointed out as the thought tripped in his brain. “GHB affects memory and perception. She shouldn’t have remembered.”
“She shouldn’t have remembered her rape or the fact that her own father gave her to the bastard that hurt her.” Micah cursed. “She remembered it. That was the reason why he had her placed in the private asylum. He was there when she first awoke, she remembered, and he kept her drugged and out of the way so she couldn’t reveal what he was.”
“Damned strange,” Jordan pointed out. “Even Emily Stanton didn’t remember exactly what had happened until after Jansen kidnapped her again. It took a catalyst, and full memory still hasn’t returned. According to the psychologist, Risa’s memories are amazingly intact.”
“Intact enoug
h that someone wants to die by striking out at her,” Micah stated, his voice harder, colder, than before and savage enough that it pierced the fog that still wrapped around Risa’s head.
She could hear them. She could feel Micah’s tension, hear the murder in his voice when he spoke of the doctor her father had brought to the clinic with him. The doctor hadn’t liked coming. He’d been angry. Her father had laughed at him, because he’d forced him to come, to inject her with what he called his creation. But the creation hadn’t worked as they’d wanted it to somehow. It had been painful. And each time Jansen arrived, Risa had tried to fight to get from the bed, to get away from them.
She knows me. The voice crackled in her head. She can identify me.
She’d looked at him. Looked straight at him. But her vision was foggy; her mind was drugged, slow. Who was he? If she knew him, she should recognize his voice; she should know him if she saw him again.
“I know him,” she whispered against Micah’s chest.
Silence filled her head then.
“I can identify him.” She felt Micah’s arms tighten around her. “His hands are so soft. Like a baby. Such large hands, big and scarred. But his palms are so soft….” She felt as though she was drifting away and fought to rise back to consciousness. Whatever she knew, Micah needed to know; she understood that. “But I can’t see his face,” she sighed. “I’m so sleepy, I can’t see his face….” Her voice trailed away.
Micah wanted to curse. He laid his forehead against hers and clenched his eyes closed for a long moment before he touched his lips to her forehead.
Strength. He could hear the strength in her voice. She was trapped somewhere between memory and reality, and she was fighting to remember both. He knew the effects of the drug, knew that the rare few whom it didn’t totally work on were tormented by the distant quality of their memories.
She was strong enough to fight it, just as she had been strong enough to fight Orion when he’d attempted to take her. Strong enough that when she had awakened in the clinic, she had held on to her control, fought back her hysteria, and remained coherent.
“I want him dead,” Micah whispered against her brow before lifting his head to stare back at Jordan. “I’ll kill that bastard that helped Jansen Clay myself.”
“To kill him, you have to identify him,” Jordan pointed out, infuriating him. “We have to take Orion alive if we’re going to identify anyone, Micah. You know that.”
His lips thinned as he lifted Risa closer and watched the lights of the city as they headed back to her apartment rather than the hotel he would have preferred. John had checked the apartment; it was bug-free. The team was watching the corridor that led to her home, and two men were stationed in her room. Nik was still working on the surveillance tapes from the parking garage and trying to figure out how Orion had gotten past their defenses on the car.
They were close; Micah could feel it. Orion had made his first mistake. They now had his DNA and they had more of Risa’s memories than ever before.
Almost there, Micah thought, stroking his hand down her back. They would have Orion, and when they had him, they would have his employer. Just a little longer, then Risa would be safe.
And when she was safe, he would walk out of her life and leave her to the future she deserved. One where she could name her dreams and go after them. Where she would know no more fear, no more danger.
She would be safe.
He would ensure she was always protected and he would start, he thought, by attempting to get her out of this game immediately. At this point he could have her sent to a safe house. There was always the chance that if Orion didn’t see her coming or going from the apartment, he would suspect she was hiding inside and make a move for her when he thought Micah was away. Moving her to a safe house would ensure that her life, her dreams, survived.
But a woman couldn’t have dreams with a dead man, he reminded himself. And Micah Sloane was no more than a borrowed name for a man who had died years ago.
David Abijah no longer existed. He had signed away his soul for vengeance. He had lost the right to dream.
CHAPTER 13
SHE WAS GOING to die of arousal.
Risa stared up at the ceiling as she brought herself awake, aware that her fingers were pushing beneath the loose band of her pajama bottoms, in the process of searching for her own satisfaction as she fought to pull herself out of the explicit, rousing dream that had filled her head while she slept.
She turned her head slowly, biting her lip as she made out the outline of Micah sleeping beside her. He lay on his back, one arm thrown over his head, the sheet pushed to his waist.
His breathing deep and even, he was clearly asleep. His hard abs and chest lifted rhythmically, his breathing heavy and deep. The darkness loved his body. It shadowed it, washed over it, and made him appear even larger, sexier, than he already was.
She wanted to touch him. Her hands trembled with the need, her fingers shaking as she curled them against her stomach to restrain the need.
She was worse than a nymphomaniac, she charged herself in an attempt to shame herself from watching him while he slept.
Her libido was cheering the accusation. God, she couldn’t remember ever being so damned turned on. Not even the night she had humiliated herself in his bed had she been this hot.
She was going to get out of bed and change her panties if she didn’t do something.
Think about something else. Something completely non-sexy. She couldn’t think of a damned thing outside the need to touch him.
Root canal. Deeply rooted survival instincts kicked in with that one. But hell, she had never had a root canal; how was that supposed to help?
She turned slowly on her side, inching around until she stared more easily at his gorgeous body. And it was gorgeous. All hard muscle and male grace. She wanted to flow over him and lick every inch of his body.
She was so demented, perverted, she told herself as she reached out, wondering if just a little touch would wake him up. Just to feel his flesh. The warmth of it against her palm.
She kept it safe. After all, she didn’t want to feel as though she were molesting him in his sleep. But dammit, he was in her bed. This was her bed, and he was pretending to be her lover.
Her pussy clenched violently at the thought of Micah as her lover. The memory of the night he had actually taken her slammed into her mind, and she almost moaned at the need that raced through her.
Her trembling fingers touched his abs, against the narrow band of hair that ran below the sheet. It was silky, warm. The flesh beneath seemed to flex, and her gaze jerked to his face.
His eyes were still closed. His breathing was still slow and easy. She didn’t have the nerve to check his heartbeat, to see if it was slow and easy or thundering, as she knew it did when he was aroused.
Or did she?
Her fingers were moving, sliding up his chest, her heart in her throat as the hard, heavy beat echoed against her palm before she ever reached her chest.
Her eyes closed for a long second. When she opened them, her gaze slid from her hand, down his stomach, to the tenting of the sheet that covered his thighs. She could see his cock, hard and heavy beneath the light material, stretching along his lower stomach and sending a pulse of pure lust burning through her veins.
He was awake. She knew he was; she could feel it. Every muscle in his body was tighter now. Lifting her gaze, she looked up to his face again and saw the glitter of his black eyes through the narrowed veil of his lashes.
He didn’t say a word. She watched as he swallowed, his lips parting to breathe.
God, she wanted. Just one more time. He tortured her by sleeping in her bed with him. Some nights he rolled against her; most nights he was touching her. Was she supposed to resist? Was she supposed to be a stone-cold robot that didn’t ache? That didn’t need?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, suddenly embarrassed, ashamed of the needs that rode her so fiercely that she would touch
him in his sleep.
Her hand moved to lift away from him, only to find itself caught between his body and his hand. She stared at his hand as it covered hers, watched wide-eyed as he used his hand to push hers down, along his stomach. She swallowed tightly, almost whimpering as the sheet drew away from his thighs and he was curling her fingers around the thick, heavy shaft of his cock.
She moaned then. The sound that left her throat shocked her at the hunger in it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered again, even as her fingers curled around the pulsing flesh. “Oh God, Micah. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how.” Her breath hitched as she fought back a sob.
“Nothing you need to know.” His voice was rough, hard. “My body is yours, Risa. Know only that. However you wish to touch it, wherever. Whatever you need, you have only to ask, love, and I’ll provide it.”
She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream with frustration as she fought to breathe. A part of her wanted to demand that he just fuck her and get it over with, to drive the need out of her so she could think again. Another part of her didn’t want to rush a single moment. She wanted the memory. She wanted everything.
Her hand stroked down the shaft, watching the thick crested cock head as it throbbed and glistened with moisture. Heavy veins pulsed beneath the flesh as it flexed in her grip, erect and powerful.
“I wish I knew,” she whispered painfully. “Knew what to do.”
“What do you want to do?” His voice was low, a part of the darkness, a part of the shadows that loved his body. “Tell me, and I’ll help you. I’ll guide you through whatever you want of me.”
“Anything?”
“Anything, Risa.” His voice sounded thicker, filled with lust and hunger. “There’s no shame between us, baby. Only pleasure. Only the pleasure you want.”
Only the pleasure she wanted. As though still locked within her dream, she let the sensuality, the sexuality, of the moment wash over her.
She rose, moved the sheet back, and moved from the bed. Feeling his gaze on her, she pulled off the long shirt she wore to bed, then shimmied out of the pajama bottoms and panties she had put on after her shower.