Risa was aware of the couple leaving, the door closing and locking behind them.
“Why not just tell me what it would have taken to get you off?” she sneered. “What would I have had to do, give you my back so you didn’t have to look at my face?”
Micah tried. In all the years of his life he had never tried to push back the overwhelming anger as much as he tried to push it back now.
He reminded himself that she could be forgiven for her anger, for her snipishness at the mall. She could be forgiven for every damned thing she had said and done in the past two days. She was frightened. She was being put through another kind of hell and it couldn’t be easy for her. But this one. This one he wasn’t quite as willing to let go.
He had to admit, she was stronger than he had expected her to be. She wasn’t cowering; she hadn’t cowered a single time. She was trying to fight; unfortunately, she was fighting the wrong damned things and pissing him off in the process.
“You want to rethink that accusation you just made,” he told her carefully, attempting to push back the anger and draw forward the ice he used to protect himself and others. “You want to rethink it carefully and rephrase it quickly, Risa.”
She glared back at him. “Why should I?”
As she stood there dressed in a baggy silk blouse and loose black pants, her arms crossed over her breasts, her expression flushed and furious, Micah felt his erection flex and throb painfully. What was it about this woman that kept him hard? That kept him ready to fuck her at a moment’s notice? If only he had the excuse of the Whore’s Dust, he thought mockingly.
“Because I’m about five seconds from dragging you into that bedroom and spending the rest of the night showing you just how wrong you are,” he informed her. “I can’t believe you’d spout such idiocy from your mouth. Do you think if I didn’t find you attractive, didn’t ache for you, I would have been hard enough to pound nails?”
“You didn’t come,” she accused him roughly. “I know you didn’t. You couldn’t.”
He pushed his hands over his head, clenched his teeth, and tried to keep his hands off her. If he touched her, he’d never be able to stop.
“Because you didn’t get off,” he pushed between gritted teeth. “Did you think I would take my pleasure of you when you hadn’t taken yours of me? What the fucking hell is in your mind, woman? Have you lost your damned senses? I had to leave the bed to keep from pounding into you when you had obviously grown too tense to climax. I wanted to give us both a second to calm down. Just a moment to find my control. And when I returned, what did I find?”
He stepped closer when he hadn’t meant to. His hands gripped her shoulders and he jerked her closer, staring furiously down at her surprised little face.
“You were gone!” he snarled. “You ran from me, Risa, rather than giving me a chance to help you find the pleasure you were seeking.”
She shook her head, a jerky movement, as she swallowed tightly, her hands pressing against his chest.
“But I did,” she whispered. “I did.”
“You call what you gave me your release?” he bit out furiously. “You fought it. I understood why you fought it, and I understand even more now. The strength of it would have been frightening. You were with a man you did not know. Running was not the answer.”
She pulled away from him and it was all he could do to keep from jerking her back to him. Instead, he let her go. He had to take this slowly. She had already been hurt by one man; he wouldn’t add his name to her pain. He’d plotted out his seduction of her, and he would seduce her. She would come apart in his arms the next time he managed to get his dick inside that hot little pussy, and she would come apart with everything inside her. He’d accept nothing else. But he knew she wasn’t ready for that yet. Fear still held her back. Her own demons held her back.
He watched as she pushed her fingers through her hair, feathering it around her shoulders and face like multi-hued strands of silk. Turning back to her, he watched as her light blue eyes seemed darker, the shadows under her eyes more pronounced. She hadn’t slept in two nights. She had lain on her side of the bed and done no more than doze. She was killing them both and seemed unaware of it.
How did she affect him this way? There was something about the pain in her eyes that made him want to kill. The unsmiling curve of her lips made him hungry to kiss her, to make her smile. The mischievous tilt of her nose made him wonder at the many ways she could make a man insane, if she were to just be herself.
“Running was the only option,” she finally stated proudly.
Pride kept her shoulders straight, her head high, no matter what was thrown at her.
“How can you consider that an option?” he growled back at her. “Running is a coward’s way out, Risa. If there is one thing you have never displayed in the six years you’ve tried to rebuild your life, then it’s cowardice.”
Her smile was mocking, bitter. The pain that filled her eyes, her expression, tore at the heart he thought had already been ripped from him years ago.
“No, Micah,” she whispered, her voice laden with the haunting pain that filled her eyes. “You’re wrong. It took me six years to try to take a lover. Six years to get up the nerve, for that damned Whore’s Dust to make me desperate enough to try. I failed. Evidently I failed more than I thought I had. You see, I thought I had orgasmed.” Bitterness shaped her lips. “I guess I didn’t. And we both know you didn’t. So evidently, I’m a bigger coward than you believed, because I’ll be damned if I can face allowing it to happen again.”
She swung away from him again. She ran from him again. She closed herself
in that bedroom, and it took every ounce of his control not to follow her, not to rip that damned door from its hinges and show her exactly what happened when she ran from her man.
Her man. He was losing his damned mind. Micah Sloane was no more than a man. The man who faced her daily was a dead man. Dead men didn’t claim a woman. Dead men didn’t dream of holding one forever. Dead men didn’t talk, and dead men didn’t dream. Because hell exacted an incredible price for allowing a dead man to walk. And that price might very well be the life of the woman he knew a part of him was already beginning to claim.
He breathed out roughly and reminded himself of his seduction schedule. He wouldn’t think about claiming or loving. He couldn’t. He would think of healing and protecting. That he could do. He could heal her, he could protect her, and he could destroy that last demon intent on taking her life.
He was two days into his campaign to seduce his lovely little lover. Getting her used to his body at night, lying against her, touching her, letting her feel his heat. The couple thing today was inspiration. He remembered his mother mentioning that when a man was seeking a bond with a woman, then he should develop friends who already had that bond, and have outings.