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He ran his hand over his face, and for a second Risa saw the weariness that marked his expression. He must not have slept last night, she thought, then felt perversely glad. Because she hadn’t slept last night, either.
“Risa, we need to come to an understanding to make this work,” he warned her, his dark eyes flashing with frustration.
“We have an understanding,” she assured him. “I understand you have to stay here to catch a killer. There’s a spare bedroom and bathroom; make yourself at home. I’ll try to stay out of your way as much as possible.”
Something dark and dangerous flashed in his eyes. His expression became emotionless, cold. For a moment fear skated down her spine; then her shoulders straightened. It wasn’t as though he could kill her for talking back to him. And God, she was tired of putting her head down and simply trying not to antagonize fate.
Fate had slapped her so damned hard already that she was still reeling.
“Look.” She lifted her hand as he started to speak. “Last night was a mistake, and I apologize for dragging you into my problems. I…” She swallowed tightly. “Sometimes, you just need to be touched, you know? I shouldn’t have chosen you. I should have walked away and just picked up a damned drunk stranger or something.”
She wondered if Micah could have fucked her drunk. She hated that he hadn’t found any pleasure with her. It sliced into her with a sharper pain than her own inability to find the satisfaction she had needed. It wasn’t his fault. He’d been dragged into this. He had probably felt that he had to go through with taking her because of this operation he was on. He appeared willing to do anything to catch Orion. Even fuck her.
“You amaze me.” His voice was cold; his eyes were like pits of black ice.
“Yeah, I amaze myself sometimes.” She held back the tears, the need to cry. She held back the need to curl into his arms and find some hint of comfort. She was tired, shaky, and terrified. And in her entire life she had never known a place as secure as she had felt when he had held her the night before.
“What else do we need to talk about?”
“Your inability to climax.”
She flinched at the statement. Humiliation curled in the pit of her stomach.
She shrugged. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have waited on your doctor’s report,” he said. “If I had known the Whore’s Dust was still in your system, then I would have known what to do.”
She crossed her arms over her breasts and stared away from him. Heat seared her face, her neck. She didn’t want to talk about this. She couldn’t bear to talk about this.
“Risa, the effect of the Whore’s Dust is frightening. We’ve been gathering reports for years on the men and women who survived the initial wave of that drug. You were given enough that it attached to the pleasure receptors in your brain. It leaves the body slowly, very slowly. To understand what’s going on when it kicks in, you need to understand the effects of it.”
No. She didn’t want to know. She swallowed convulsively, remembering last night all too well as the need for touch built inside her again.
“After the initial injection, it doesn’t make you want sex so much as it makes the need for sex stronger. It makes the sensations stronger.”
“I can’t talk about this.” She came to her feet as hysteria threatened to break through the fragile control holding it back.
“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 a
gain, pressing into her, stretching her, burning her. She wanted him to fuck 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 the 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.
