“I’m all right. Really,” she said. “I’m Just Fine.”
Of course, she was lying. She wasn’t fine. Misha had never seen anyone look like she did, so pale and wide-eyed and terrified—at least, not without being physically injured.
And he knew she wasn’t injured. She wasn’t poisoned either. He had eaten the same sandwich, and there had been nothing wrong with it.
Physically, she was right: she was fine. But emotionally, she was barely staying together.
She no longer held onto the sink though, and her arms weren’t crossed. Her eyes were actually clear—and they hadn’t been at times when he was telling her what happened.
He could see when the memories took her and when she came back. She was back now.
“You remember,” he said.
“You came to my room,” she said, and it took him a minute to understand what she meant.
“In the hospital? Yeah, I did.” And with that, his shoulders relaxed just a bit. If she remembered that, then she remembered him.
“You told me to stay strong, you said you had to leave. You said everything would be better.”
He nodded. It relieved him that she remembered, finally. It was important to him that she remember.
“Was I right?” he asked, and he heard his younger self in that question: vulnerable, worried, caring. When had he stopped caring about things?
She nodded. Then she bit her lower lip. And nodded again.
“Yesterday, I wouldn’t have said so. Yesterday, I would have told you that nothing was better than living with my father.”
“What changed?” he asked.
“I made it up.” Her voice shook. “I made it all up. That’s why I could never tell the therapists what life with my father was really like. Except better. I always said it was better, and then they’d ask how, and I’d shut up. Or leave. Or quit seeing them.”
He smiled just a bit. Now he understood the powerful mind comment. The therapists would use techniques to break her denial, and she would refuse or rebuild.
She was strong, inside and out. He liked that.
He extended a hand. “I’m sorry about what happened. I’m sorry that I was a part of it.”
She looked at his hand, but didn’t take it. Instead, she shook her head. “You’re sorry for killing him?”
“For causing such pain,” he said.
She was still shaking her head. “But you didn’t. You told me it would be better. And it was.”
He kept his hand out for another minute, until he felt really silly doing so. He let his hand drop.
“So the way you left the ship,” he said. “That wasn’t a deliberate setup? You didn’t have that planned from the beginning, did you?”
She tilted her head a little. “What do you mean, the beginning?”
His breath caught. “When you got on the ship.”
“You forget,” she said. “I didn’t know you were on the ship.”
He had forgotten that. “All right, then. From the moment you went into the security office. You didn’t see me as an opportunity? Again?”
He sounded a bit breathless, and he didn’t want to. That breathlessness showed his vulnerability.
“It started out as a setup,” she said, and he froze. He didn’t want it to be a setup. He didn’t want her to decide to hurt him.
“I needed your DNA,” she said.
She had told him this before, about needing his DNA, about trying to find out who he really was. He had mentally dismissed it, because she had been acting so strange, but her story wasn’t changing.
“I gave you a lot of it,” he said just like he had before.
“I really needed to plan better,” she said. “The next time I sleep with someone, I’ll make sure to keep a vial of bodily fluids.”
He started, not liking the idea of her sleeping with anyone else. Then he realized she was joking. Which relieved the part of his brain worried about her emotional state, but threw the rest of him off balance.
Again. Dammit.
She made a slight shrugging gesture, opening her hands as well. Then she turned to the sink and got herself a glass of water. “I wanted to know who you were. Really were. And I didn’t have the capability to figure that out, but I knew ship’s security would have a database that tied into the Guild. Every ship does.”
That was true.
“So…” she wasn’t looking at him anymore. “I went to the security office and made up a story—”
“About touch drops.”
Her shrug got bigger. “No one in security could press charges or do anything, besides you were one of the richest passengers on the ship. They weren’t going to touch you.”
“But they did,” he said. “They interrogated me for hours.”
“Not about the touch drops,” she said, with her back to him. She knew exactly why they had interrogated him. If interrogated was truly the right word. He made it sound more dramatic than it really was.
“No,” he said after a moment, “not about the touch drops. But you left me holding the bag for Testrial.”
She shrugged again. “Killing Testrial was your idea.”
“Rikki,” he said softly.
She shook her head and turned around. “I had just found out who you were,” she said. “I was improvising. I thought you were playing some horrible cat-and-mouse game with me. I had to get off that ship, and fast.”
He understood it. If she thought he had murdered her father, then her actions were not just rational, they were brilliant. She had deliberately delayed Misha, and she had completed an effective escape.
He had to take a deep breath just to calm himself. “If you hadn’t found out about your father, if you had just confirmed that I was a Guild member, then what? What would you have done next?”
She put a hand to her forehead. “I don’t know,” she said. “It seems like years ago.”
He studied her. He wasn’t sure he believed her. “Rikki. You didn’t know who I was. You got my DNA and you gave it to security. Who did you think I was?”
She rubbed her hand over her forehead like it hurt. Then she sighed and looked at him. He was always startled that they were the same height.
“I thought maybe you were tracking me for some other reason. Revenge, or something.”
“For?”
“How do I know what for?” she said. “I’ve done a lot of work for a lot of people, and there are even more people who aren’t happy with me. For all I knew, you were working for Testrial, were angry that I had killed him, and decided to have a little fun before you made me pay.”
His breath caught. “That’s the second time you’ve said that I had sex with you because I wanted to use you before killing or hurting you. Do you really believe what happened between us was that shallow?”
Her gaze met his. Her eyes looked bruised. “You came in here with a weapon, poised and ready to shoot. You obviously thought I wanted to harm you somehow. Did you think the sex was sincere when you woke up in my bed after being drugged?”
He hadn’t. He had thought that she had used him. He had been convinced of it. And that was where his anger really rested. In the belief that she had used him.
Because he was careful with sex. He knew it was the most potent weapon humans had with each other. More deadly than guns or knives or poisons. Sex could taint everything.
And clearly it had here.
Neither of them had trusted each other. Both of them had felt used.
“No,” he said. “I thought you used me. I thought you were laughing at me.”
She nodded. “So we felt the same way about each other.”
Her mouth was open slightly, her lips moist. His heart was pounding. He wanted to touch her. Not comfort her, not hold her close. He wanted to show her how very sincere he could be.
Her gaze flicked down to his mouth, then back to his eyes. Suddenly, he was aroused. He couldn’t remember ever getting aroused that fast.
Except when he had danced with her in the lounge. Except when he had kissed her the first time. Except when he brushed against her when he decided to help with Testrial.
“It was sincere,” he said, his voice husky. “At least for me.”
She blinked. He could actually see her think. Maybe she was wondering if she should be honest. But her expression didn’t seem calculating.
Instead, it seemed even more vulnerable than it had.
“It was for me too,” she said.
He took one step—or was it two—and he slid his arms around her. She leaned into him, her hands finding the back of his neck, pulling his face toward hers.
The kiss was bruising, tasting of water and marinara and her. So much like her that he wondered how he could have gone without her for so long. He actually craved her. He held her tight, unable to tell where her lips started and his ended, his tongue finding hers, his entire body on fire.
He wanted her, and he wanted her now. He thought he had remembered how it felt to hold her, to want her, to make love to her, but he hadn’t remembered. What he felt was two hundred times more powerful than his strongest memory.
He grabbed her shirt, and hiked it up, slipping his hands underneath it. His fingers found skin, and then her bare breasts. He pulled the shirt over those breasts, and crouched enough to taste them.
Her hands found his shirt, unbuttoning it, forcing it open. She grabbed his chin and lifted his face up, so that she could press her damp breasts against his chest, her skin against his, igniting him. It took all his control to keep kissing her as he tried to get her pants off.
She reached for his, and then she froze.
Her entire body became rigid.
“Stop,” she said against his mouth. “Stop.”
He stopped. It was one of the hardest things he had ever done, but he stopped.
She reached into the waistband of his pants and removed his laser pistol. She took one step back and held the pistol between her thumb and forefinger.
“Are we done with these?” she asked, her voice calm. She wasn’t that scared woman any longer. There was no trembling anywhere.
He would have thought she was unaffected by him if it weren’t for two things: her swollen lips and the fact that her nipples were so hard they looked like little bullets—metal bullets. The old-fashioned kind.
The nipples drove him crazy. He had to look away, just to maintain his concentration on what she had said.
“It’s probably wise to disarm first,” he said. “All weapons.”
She nodded, then set his laser pistol on the counter. She put hers beside his.
He pulled off his boots, removed his knife, and set it on the counter behind him. She took something the size of her thumb out of the pocket of her pants, and set that near the weapons on the counter beside her.
He didn’t even know what kind of weapon that was.
“Any more weapons?” he asked her as if it had been his idea to remove them. Or at least, that was what he had been trying for. In actuality, he sounded a bit desperate, or at least like a man in a hurry.
Maybe because he was a man in a hurry. He wanted her like he had never wanted a woman before.
“You want me to check?” she asked.
“I’ll check,” he said and grabbed the waistband on her pants, sliding them down. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath them either, and the sight of her naked—or nearly naked, with the pants pooled at her ankles and the shirt still hiked above her large breasts, inflamed him.
He cupped his hands over her buttocks, pulling her close, and as he did, she tugged her shirt all the way off, making her breasts bob free.
He caught one of them between his lips, the other with his left hand, his right still against her rear. He pulled her close so that she could feel how hard he was.
She stuffed her hands in his pants, her fingers finding him. His breath caught, because if he breathed, he would have come right into her palm.
She grinned at him, seeing that, and not wanting to let it go. She undid his pants. They slipped to his knees, trapping his legs. She straddled him, and then slid onto him, wet and warm and ready.
He moaned again, put his hands on her waist, and used them to raise her up and down just enough to create incredible friction. She buried her face in his neck, kissing him, then—suddenly—she arched, a flush running up her entire torso from her chest to her neck to her face.
It made her even more beautiful.
He could feel her pulse against him as she came. He would have joined her, but if he did, he might drop her. Instead, he gritted his teeth, holding her in place with his hands. He couldn’t move—his pants were wrapped around his legs—and it was a testament to his strength that his knees didn’t buckle as sensation covered him.
Her orgasm continued, her eyes wild, her breasts in his face. He leaned forward and feasted, until finally, spent and sweat-covered, she kissed him.
And kissed him. And kissed him.
And he couldn’t wait any longer.
“Rikki, we need to—”
But he wasn’t quite sure what they needed to do. He had had a thought, it was gone, and it was his turn to come. He did, hard, as if he hadn’t had an orgasm in years. She wrapped herself even tighter around him—arms, legs, and then he realized she was coming too. Again, and that made him even crazier.