by Lora Leigh
“Ani ohev otach, Risa,” he whispered on a nearly silent breath. I love you, Risa.
He loved her.
She was his heart.
And Micah feared he would never survive when he was forced to walk away from her.
“Micah.” She breathed his name against his chest.
Her hand smoothed down his torso until it lay on his abdomen, inches above the thickly erect cock that rose from between his thighs.
He ached for her; he hungered for her. But as much as he wanted her physically, tonight he simply needed to hold her.
There were things he had never expected to face when he had signed his life away to the Elite Ops. He hadn’t expected to find a woman who touched his soul, just as he hadn’t expected to face the last remaining blood relation he had or to allow her interrogation.
Now he had to face what he was losing, and he admitted the cost was much too high.
“Make it stop.” A whisper of fear in Risa’s voice drew him back to her.
She didn’t scream the words; she didn’t cry out in fear or in pain. The sound was broken instead, a drugged hiss of agony that tore through his soul. “Daddy, please, make it stop.”
Micah tightened his arms around her, desperate to awaken her but knowing that each dream could hold the key to saving her.
He clenched his eyes closed, held her closer to his body, and swore if he ever got his hands on the last living demon that had touched her, then he would kill.
Risa hadn’t dreamed much once Micah had invaded her bed. But as she slipped into the warm soothing tide that came whenever Micah held her, she felt her defenses against those dreams slipping.
She was safe in his arms. She could feel them surrounding her, his presence almost a shield between herself and the pain.
This time, when the dream came, it was as though she were watching herself, rather than being herself within the dreamscape.
She stared at the girl strapped to the gurney. Wild light blue eyes were wide, panicked, as the two male figures stepped to the narrow bed.
She saw Jansen Clay, his blond hair perfectly styled, amused derision on his face as he glanced at the man on the other side of the bed.
Risa couldn’t see his face from where she stood. Only his back. And no matter how badly she wanted to stare at him, to memorize whatever she could of this dream, still her attention was held by the woman who whimpered in distress.
“I don’t know why you don’t just kill her.” Risa flinched at the cold disgust in the other man’s cultured voice. He spoke as though his mouth was pursed and wouldn’t stretch around the words.
“She serves a purpose for the moment.” Jansen shrugged. “Besides, if I kill her, I’ll no longer have access to the trust fund her mother and grandfather left her. She does have an incredible amount of money. It returns to her grandmother if anything happens to her.”
“So kill the grandmother,” the other man ordered callously. “What good is she to you?”
“Matricide?” Jansen mused. “I’m not quite ready to step over that line as of yet.”
Yet he’d had no problem in his attempt to slowly kill off his daughter.
“Matricide would be the least of your crimes, Clay.”
Jansen laughed. “And what of your crimes, my friend? I may have no love for my daughter, but neither have I allowed her to become part of the horrific experimentations you so enjoy with the little girls you buy. Really, one shouldn’t cast stones.”
The other man’s back stiffened. “Science,” he stated. “I’ve made breakthroughs with those girls. They’ve contributed to science. Your victims have only contributed to your own wealth.”
Jansen’s expression was filled with skeptical mockery.
“Spare me the condescension and get on with this little experiment,” Jansen ordered. “I have a party to attend later and I’d prefer not to be too late.”
Large hands reached for her arm. Risa focused on those hands even as she tried to stare up into his face. She whimpered desperately as the girl in the dream tried to fight those beefy hands as they lifted her arm.
“I’ll remember you.” The dream Risa stared into his face. “I’ll remember you.”
He snorted as he laid the needle of the syringe against the vein in her wrist. “You’ll be lucky to remember your own name once we’ve finished this.”
“I’ll remember you.” Risa felt the words coming from her own lips even as she watched her dream self. “Your hands hurt me. They’re too big for surgery. Do you kill your patients?”
The hand paused. The syringe pricked at her flesh as the dream self glared up at him.
“If you do your job right, then she’ll never remember who you are,” Jansen chuckled.
“Do your job right,” Risa whispered as she stood behind him and focused on the hand, on the nipple. “Scars, like tiny lines in your hands. I know your hands. I’ve seen them before. They frighten me. I’ll remember you.”
She watched as her dream self tugged at the hold he had on her arm. The flesh trembled with the effort she exerted.
Yet she couldn’t escape. The syringe bit into her flesh and a second later boiling lava was fed into her veins.
She tried to scream. Risa watched herself. She didn’t feel the pain, but she saw it in the light blue eyes that suddenly rolled back in the dream Risa’s head. Her body jerked against the restraints that held her to the gurney as a strangled scream tore from her lips.
Risa watched herself. She watched as she bucked and heaved against the thin mattress. She couldn’t scream, but her lips parted as she tried. She fought to focus on Jansen. Risa knew she was fighting to beg, to plead with him for mercy.
“Daddy, please,” she wheezed. “Please, Daddy.”
And he laughed at her.
He was her father. He had never been a loving father, or an affectionate one. But until that kidnapping, she hadn’t thought he was truly a monster.
She watched, unaffected as her dream self writhed on the bed, trying to scream, lost in an agony Risa only dimly remembered.
“She’s in more pain than arousal, my good doctor,” Jansen drawled as they stood there forever, their attention going between her and the monitors that electrodes were hooked to. “You still have some adjusting to do, it seems.”
“Her heart is at critical level,” the doctor mused as he tapped her heart monitor. “You should allow me to open her heart, to see the damage it’s causing.”
“Much too messy.” Jansen shook his head.
Risa shook her head as she watched herself buck and struggle against the pain. She wanted to scream, to give voice to the silent agony her dream self was enduring.
“So much pain,” she whispered at the doctor’s back. “Why did you hurt me?”
“Adjusting the drug isn’t going to be as easy as we first assumed,” the doctor commented thoughtfully. “Fuentes’s scientist was rather advanced in the synthetic qualities used to create the Whore’s Dust.”
Jansen stepped back, a scowl on his face as the doctor shook his head. “Too bad she’s so damned ugly, Jansen. You could have at least sold her off. At this point, she’s only a liability to you.”
Risa turned then, her gaze lifting until she could see the back of his head. His hair. Dark mixed with gray. Her vision was suddenly fuzzy; she felt light-headed, so frightened.
Shaking her head, she jerked her gaze back to herself, only to find her eyes locked with her own.
“You know him,” the bound Risa cried out in agony. “You know him. Don’t trust him. You know him.”
She fought to regulate her breathing, her fear. She tried to look at him again and a flash of disorientation assailed her.
“Look at him,” the dream Risa cried out. “You know him. Stop him. Oh God. Please. Please make it stop!”
Risa could hear the screams now. They echoed around her, resounding with torturous pain as she moved slowly around the bed, her hands gripping the metal rails that shook with the force of the d
ream Risa struggling against them. She moved in front of Jansen and lifted her eyes—
“Wake the fuck up, damn you!”
Her eyes jerked open.
She was no longer in the dream. She was struggling against Micah, her own screams still filling her head as she fought him.
She was on her knees facing him. He was kneeling in front of her, a bloody scratch running down his cheek. He was dressed in jeans, his bare chest was damp, a smear of blood on his shoulder, and he wasn’t alone.
Panting, fighting to breathe, Risa stared wildly around the room. There was Jordan and the redhead. Risa couldn’t remember her name. Had anyone introduced them? Jordan and the redhead were watching her as though she were crazed. His eyes were narrowed; the redhead’s green eyes were damp, as though she was on the verge of tears.
“Why are they here?” Risa’s throat was scratchy, her voice rough.
“You were having a nightmare,” Jordan stated as Risa saw Micah’s lips part to answer her.
Micah didn’t appear pleased that Jordan had jumped in. Handsome, hard, cold. Jordan Malone had the ability to frighten her.
She turned her eyes back to Micah. “Can they leave now?”
She wanted Jordan out of her bedroom. She didn’t like strangers staring at her as though they were dissecting her and whatever she might have said or dreamed.
She was too shaken by what she had dreamed this time, the way she had dreamed it. For the first time she hadn’t relived those nightmarish memories; she had merely observed them.
“You saw the man that came to the clinic with your father,” Micah said, his own voice rough. “What did you see, Risa?”
Her gaze moved back to Jordan. He was still dressed in perfectly pressed black slacks and a gray, starched cotton shirt. Did the man ever have a wrinkle anywhere on him?
“I saw me.” She shook her head as she pulled away from the warmth of Micah’s hands and struggled to sit on the bed, her feet flat on the floor, her back to the others. “Tell them to leave, Micah. I’m not in the mood for company at three o’clock in the morning. For God’s sake.” She turned her head and glared at Jordan. “Don’t you ever sleep?”
A heavy black brow arched with a hint of mockery. “I just replace my batteries when they run down,” he remarked laconically. “It’s more efficient.”
She snorted at that, shaking her head as Micah moved from the bed.
“Tehya, get Jordan the hell out of here,” Micah ordered her roughly. “And next time he wants to barge in, do me a favor and chain him to the bed or something.”
“He would have to be in the bed first,” Tehya commented. “I think he’s frightened I’ll join him.”
Risa could only shake her head at the teasing going on behind her. She inhaled slowly and closed her eyes. She could almost see him, the man who had raped her, the one who had accompanied her father to the clinic and pumped her with that drug.
She knew him. Her dream self had screamed that knowledge at her. She knew him.
She knew his hands.
Those hands flashed through her head. They were large, dark. They looked rough, but the palms were baby-soft. So soft, it was creepy.
She shuddered at the remembered feel of them, holding her wrists to the floor of the plane as he raped her. Strange, she remembered the feel of his hands more than she remembered what he had done to her.
“Risa?”
She opened her eyes to see Micah kneeling in front of her, his expression concerned despite the glow of anger in his eyes.
“They’re gone.” He pushed her hair back from her face, looping one thick strand behind an ear. “Jordan called while you were dreaming. He heard your scream.”
“He was being nosy.” She shook her head. “What? Does he think you won’t tell him anything I remember in my dreams?”
His lips quirked. “He’s an impatient prick.”
She almost laughed, because that was just about the truth.
“Risa.” He cupped her cheek with his palm. “If I could wipe away the nightmares, then I would. If I could save you this pain, this fear, then I would take it all away.”
He would. She saw it in his face, in his eyes.
“It will be over soon,” she whispered, and regretted that it would be. She would live with the fear, she thought, the danger to herself, if it would mean holding Micah to her just a little bit longer.
“It’s almost over.” One hand threaded through her hair as the other tightened at her waist. “You’ll be safe soon.”
She would be alone soon.
Her hands lifted from her lap to his shoulders, her fists uncurling so her fingers could grip the hard muscle, feel the warmth and power beneath his skin.
“Why are you in jeans?” she asked breathlessly. “You were naked when you got in the bed.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “I pulled them on when I heard Jordan and Tehya enter the apartment. Couldn’t let them see my bare ass, darling. Tehya’s frisky. She would have patted it.”
Risa wanted to smile at his teasing. “I’d break her hand,” she promised.
“I knew I could trust you to help me hold on to my dignity.” His eyes smiled. She loved that. The way they lit up with amusement, with warmth.
She loved him. Loved being with him, touching him, the way he held and protected her.
“Thank you for keeping me safe.” She stared back at him, watching his dark eyes as they seemed to darken further. The pupils blended into the irises as her hands stroked over his shoulders. “Keep me warm tonight, Micah.”
Her hands lowered to the band of his jeans, where she pulled the snap free, then gripped the zipper and eased it over the erection swelling beneath the denim.
“Are you cold?” His voice was a rough whisper through the room.
“I’m very cold.” She lifted against him to brush his lips with hers. “And I’m very needy.”
“Needy, are you?” he asked as the hem of her shirt was pulled up, his hands gripping the cloth and easing it over her arms as she lifted them.
Her breathing was ragged now, rough.
“How would you take me, if you could take me however you liked?” she asked him then.
“Slow and easy,” he answered her without delay. “I’d lay you down and spend hours, days, years, learning your passion.”
A sob caught in her throat. She wanted years. She wanted the rest of her life spent in his arms, in his bed.
She lifted her hips as his hands tugged at the waist of her cotton sleep pants. He pulled them, along with her panties, over her hips and down her legs. As he tossed the material away, he rose to his feet and removed his jeans, revealing the hard, fully erect flesh her body was so eager for.
She couldn’t deny herself the needs rushing through her. She knew, sensed with every fiber of her being, that soon Micah would walk out of her life. She had so precious little time to store the memories she needed to carry inside her.
“I love touching you, tasting you,” she sighed as she smoothed her hands up his hard thighs.
“I love your touch,” he groaned. But the sound could have been caused by the sensation of her hand stroking down his cock.
It was heavy, thick. The broad head was tapered at the tip and broad at the flared base before it curved into the shaft. The flesh was dark, with thick veins pulsing beneath. As she stroked him, a pearly bead of semen formed at the tip, drawing her mouth.
“Ah, Risa. Sweet, sweet Risa,” he crooned in that desert-rough voice of his as her tongue licked over him. “Sweet love. How will I ever survive without this?”
How would she survive without it?
Her lips followed her tongue, covered the heated cock head and drew it into her mouth. He tasted like summer in the middle of winter. Addictive. Powerful.
Her tongue flickered over the underside as she sucked him in, loving the feel and the taste of him in her mouth. She hungered for him. It was a hunger she could only associate to Micah. Not to a drug. Not to anything unnatural
. Needing Micah was as natural as the land needing rain, or flowers needing sunshine. It was imperative. It was the key to survival.
Drawing back, she surveyed the slick wetness she had left on the tip, laved over it again with her tongue, and gloried in the hard groan that echoed from his chest.
“I’m wet.” She lifted her head and stared up at him, aroused past the point of sanity. “I need you inside me.”
“Hell.” He knelt in front of the bed again.
The position was perfect. His hips were aligned with hers as he pushed her thighs apart. His cock pressed against the swollen bare folds of her pussy. The head of it had more of her juices flowing, her muscles convulsing in anticipation.
Risa watched, eyes wide, fighting to breathe, fascinated by the sight of that thick crest parting her folds and nudging against the entrance to her body.
For one incredibly insane moment she wished she weren’t on birth control. She wished for things she couldn’t have. She wanted his child. A part of him that couldn’t be taken from her.
“Slow and easy?” His rough voice distracted her. “Or fast and hard? Which do you want, baby?”
His hands framed her breasts, lifting them to allow his mouth to stroke over them. Fire erupted in her nipples and streaked to her belly. Her breath caught at the pleasure, at the incredible need surging through her.
“Fast and hard. This time,” she panted.
His lips quirked, an almost-smile that charmed her, that warmed her.
“Slow and easy next time?” He pressed in, the width of him stretching her opening, sending flares of liquid heat to streak through her veins.
“Oh God yes,” she cried out, leaning back on her elbows because she didn’t have the strength to sit up and she wanted to watch. She wanted to see him take her. “Next time, slow and easy.”
He paused, the heavy head alone lodged inside her as she felt her inner muscles suckling at it, trying to draw it farther inside her.
“Fast and hard?” he asked again.
She lifted her head, licked her lips, and said, “Fast and hard, Micah. Fuck me like you’ll never fuck me again.”
CHAPTER 22
MICAH PAUSED as Risa allowed the words to pass her lips. His eyes narrowed. “Naughty baby,” he crooned with a sensual little grin.