Dark Sins and Desert Sands (6 page)

Now she was poised at the edge of her chair in that red dress, nearly on her knees. Those glossy lips of hers were near enough to his cock to kiss it, but his desire was squelched by the humiliation he saw in her eyes. She’d once insisted he was a terrorist; now she apparently believed he was the kind of man who’d force her to trade in sexual favors. He wasn’t sure which assumption was worse.

Tugging his jeans up, he fastened them again.
Deciding it might be easier to control himself if she were at eye level, he said, “Stand up.”

She rose, and he realized she was trembling. She stood there in front of him, hugging herself. He’d taken the calm and composed lady shrink and rattled her to the bone. It didn’t make him feel good about himself. The fact that she didn’t remember what she’d done didn’t make her innocent, but there wasn’t any satisfaction to be had from terrorizing someone who couldn’t appreciate the karmic justice of it. “So, Doc, when I said I wanted you to make things up to me, what did you think I meant?”

“You know what I thought.” Her words were like ice.

“Yeah, well, I’m interested in your
mind
. The information I need to get my life back is locked in that pretty head of yours and you need to tell me what you know. That’s the only way you can make things up to me.”

“I just told you that I have amnesia. But if what you’re saying is true, there has to be a record of what happened in your case somewhere. Maybe you should file a request under the Freedom of Information Act.”

“A FOIA request? That’s your brilliant solution? Sweetheart, I didn’t even get a lawyer, much less a trial. No, the only way to prove my innocence is to find my accuser and you know who that was.”

“I don’t know who gave evidence against you. I don’t remember.”

“Maybe you don’t want to remember,” he snapped.

She shrank away as if she thought he might strike her, or ravish her, or worse. Though it scalded his tongue to comfort her, he found himself saying, “Look,
you don’t have to be afraid that I’m going to…take advantage of you.”

Her green eyes looked haunted and lost. “Maybe I’m afraid I
want
you to.”

What kind of game was she playing with him now? It was like a matador snapping a red cape in front of a wounded bull. Heat seared through his body and tinted his vision with scarlet need. It’d been one thing to meet the alluring lioness in her mindscape, the one who tempted him with her blatant sensuality. But to see the confusion of the buttoned-up woman in front of him was an entirely new kind of torment. One that dizzied him.

“You’re bleeding again,” Layla said softly as Ray swayed on his feet.

He’d obviously used his powers too many times in the past few days. It was all catching up with him. There was never a time when he hadn’t experienced pain and blood in the aftermath, but Layla was harder to control than anyone he’d encountered before. Keeping her here with him was taxing him beyond endurance.

“You should let me go, Ray,” she said softly.

“I didn’t just snatch you off the street for my own reasons, okay? You’re being followed.”

He could see that she didn’t believe him. “Those men that you yanked me away from, they looked like federal agents. Which makes me think they aren’t after me. They’re after you.”

Ray shook his head, hand coming to rest on the back of his neck. His control over her was fraying. “No, Doc. I’m telling you, they were watching
you
.”

“Well, I’m not afraid of government officials.”

“Goddammit, Layla! People with badges aren’t always the good guys. Do you think that with skin like yours, with a last name like yours, that professional courtesy is going to save you if they’ve decided you’re a threat to national security? Did the fact that I fought for my country matter a damn when I was being tortured?”

Suddenly, he was breathing faster. The world seemed to narrow into some dark tunnel, and if she gave any answer to his question, he didn’t hear it.

Layla watched him collapse. He toppled like some felled animal at sacrifice. He fell hard, his head bouncing when it struck the floor, his mouth going lax. Instinctively, Layla rushed to his side, stooping to feel for a pulse. She found one, but he didn’t respond when she said his name.

What was wrong with him? She remembered that he’d suffered a nosebleed the first time she saw him in her office. He was bleeding from the nose again now. Maybe he was suffering from high blood pressure or some far more serious ailment.

She should call an ambulance. No. He’d kidnapped her. She should call the police. But if she did, it was all going to come out. All of it. They’d find out that she’d been hiding her amnesia for two years, and no one would believe her when she told them about the mental powers that Rayhan Stavrakis had exerted over her. They’d think that she’d gone crazy.

Maybe she had.

This was her chance to escape, but she couldn’t just leave him here bleeding on the floor. She pushed on his shoulder, trying to roll him over. He was brawny,
heavy, hard to move. She managed to angle his mouth toward the ground so that he wouldn’t choke on his own tongue but she didn’t know what else to do. She had a doctorate in psychology; she wasn’t a medical doctor.

But Nate Jaffe was.

Layla fumbled for her cell phone in her purse and dialed. After five rings it went to voice mail. Why wouldn’t he pick up? Okay, he was obviously still smarting from their breakup. She’d just have to go get him. Nate’s apartment wasn’t far from here and her captor didn’t look like he was going to regain consciousness anytime soon, so Layla bolted for the door. If there really were other men out there following her, then she’d just have to risk it.

A barren woman with skin cracked and dry, still enchants men though none know why.

T
hough Seth was a desert god, he hated the Mojave. Not just because it was a New World desert, far and remote from his own Egyptian home. He also hated the Mojave because as a war god, he believed that a desert should
devour
. A desert should
destroy
.

A desert shouldn’t give birth to a neon monstrosity like Las Vegas.

The city was like no proper desert metropolis of old. It had no citadel; it sent no chariots into the sands to conquer. It didn’t join with the sand and sun and powerful ring of mountains. Instead the Vegas architecture was a blend of archaic myth with modern excess—an adult fantasy-scape at the very edge of reality, where magic blurred with the mundane. With its garish lights
and glitter, the city beckoned visitors and residents to worship the myriad relics of man’s gloried past. It became a fertile oasis for washed-up immortals. And why not? Where else but Vegas could deities walk comfortably amongst the mortals without fear of discovery? Here a primitive goddess of dancing could easily take on the guise of a showgirl. Where else but Vegas could a trickster god hide in plain sight, running a casino? Where else could a god of revelry gorge himself in an actual bacchanalia, but at Caesar’s Palace?

This is what made Las Vegas the singular, perfect refuge for the old immortals.

Except for Seth. He’d never make his home here. He still had his pride. He had his powers too—some of them anyway—and there were still wars for him to feed upon. He still enjoyed the look in the eyes of men as he parched their tongues and stole the breath from them, leaving them to gasp, choking on their dry mortality.

Crouching by the road where it met the desert, the once mighty war god let sand slip through his hands. It felt like the hair of the woman who belonged to him. It felt like the silken sheets she used to lay upon in their cold, cold bed. He had only come here for Layla, and she had already betrayed him. Again.

Layla knocked on Nate Jaffe’s door. He didn’t answer. She rang the bell. She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to talk to her right now, but this wasn’t about her. “Nate!”

She rang the bell again and knocked at the same time. Then Layla remembered that he kept an extra key under the mat. She’d never used it when they were
together, but while Rayhan Stavrakis lay bleeding, now wasn’t the time to worry about emotional boundaries. What’s more, the door wasn’t even locked….

The apartment was dark and Layla felt foolish. Ridiculous. Maybe he wasn’t home.

A sliver of light cut across the floor from under his bedroom door. “Nate, I’m really sorry about tonight, about storming into your apartment, about everything, but—”

Her words cut off as she swung open the bedroom door and saw the swaying shadow pass over her feet. A moment later, she realized that she was staring at a dead body.

This time Layla did call the police.

Now she sat in Nate Jaffe’s kitchen wrapped in a blanket because she couldn’t stop shivering. Yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off the bedroom but forensics were on-site. They’d offered to call a grief counselor, but Layla asked them to call Isabel instead. Her assistant was the closest thing that she had to an actual friend.

While she waited, the police officer sat beside her, a notebook in hand. “Dr. Bahset, can you tell us why you let yourself into the apartment tonight?”

“I already told you,” Layla whispered.

“Ma’am, you said that a guy with mind control powers abducted you, then passed out, and you were coming to get him help. Is that really the story you’re sticking with?”

“Dude, she’s in shock,” one of the younger officers said.

Fine
. Let them think she was in shock. She probably
was. But that didn’t mean Ray Stavrakis didn’t need help. She’d already let one man die tonight. She wasn’t going to sit idly by while another suffered. “You have to listen to me,” Layla insisted. “Send paramedics to room 513 at the Golden Calf. You’ll find an unconscious man, bleeding from the nose.”

“We already sent an ambulance over there,” the officer said, slapping his notebook shut in frustration. “There’s nobody in that room and it’s registered to an elderly gentleman.”

Layla put her face in her hands. Maybe she’d imagined everything. Maybe she’d had a complete breakdown. That was the joke about mental health professionals, wasn’t it? That they were the
real
crazies of society.

“Looks like suicide,” someone said, coming out of Nate Jaffe’s bedroom, and Layla swallowed the anguished sound in her throat. That he was dead was horrifying enough, but that he might have killed himself was unspeakably so.

She’d seen him hanging there in his closet at the end of a rope, his eyes bulging and his face discolored. She’d never be able to shake the image of his arms so limp at his sides, gently swaying with the rest of his body. If she could have burst into tears at the memory of it, she would have. Grief and guilt lashed violently against her insides, but no tears would come.

She hadn’t loved Nate Jaffe, but he’d been good to her. He’d been gentle and patient. What’s more, he’d been a good therapist. He counseled people who were unwell and made them whole again. And yet, no one had helped him. She certainly hadn’t. She hadn’t seen a single clue that he was capable of this. What kind of
therapist did that make her? What kind of
person
did that make her?

“We just want to know what kind of frame of mind he was in,” the police officer was saying. “Did you quarrel at dinner?”

Layla groaned, not even wanting to speak the words. “We ended our relationship.”

And he’d seemed hurt, yes. But enough to take his own life?

Sitting in the passenger seat of Isabel’s car, Layla watched the city skyline pass by in a neon blur. For two years now, she’d perfected the ruse that she was a competent psychologist. The cold truth was that she was a fraud. How could she help patients when she hadn’t even been able to help the man who shared her bed? When she couldn’t even help herself?

Fingering the sixpence coin at the end of its chain, Layla took a deep breath. “Isabel, I have something to tell you, and it’s important. It’s just really hard for me to say.”

“
¿Por qué?
What could you say that would shock
me?
”

Oh, after tonight, Layla could imagine a thing or two that would surprise even Isabel. But the words of her confession stalled on her tongue. Isabel was the only friend she had and Layla was fairly certain they wouldn’t be friends anymore once she told the truth. Nonetheless, the truth was what Isabel deserved. “Isabel, I don’t have any memories of my life before I came to Las Vegas. I woke up in a car in the desert with this coin in my hand…”

Isabel gave it a glance, then her eyes went back to the road.

“I also had my wallet, a checkbook and a few boxes of my belongings. The diplomas and certificates I found told me that I was a psychologist, and as it turned out, I had enough money in the bank to open a practice, but I don’t know who I am.”

“You just don’t know who you
were,
” Isabel said quietly, without any show of surprise. “There’s a difference.”

Layla felt herself blink. “You knew?”

“Do you think you could’ve pretended without me?” Isabel asked.

“But why? Why would you help me to pretend that everything was fine?”

“What harm were you doing to anyone?”

Layla squeezed her eyes shut. She felt certain that the life she’d led here in Vegas was a better one than she’d been living before, but now her past was coming back to haunt her. “The stranger who came to the office the other day. He’s a man from my past. He’s stalking me. He’s left threatening messages in the office, and tonight he grabbed me off the street and…” Did she dare tell Isabel what she’d told the police about Ray’s abilities to control her? They hadn’t believed her and she couldn’t bear to hear Isabel laugh at her. “The point is, I’m no good to my patients like this. I need to find them new therapists and make sure that they’re cared for. Then I have to close down the practice.”

Isabel looked dismayed.

Layla rushed to add, “I realize this puts you in a bad spot, but I’ll have a generous severance package for you and a glowing recommendation.” After all, Layla
had money—lots of it—and she’d make sure that Isabel wasn’t out of a job for long.

“But you love what you do, no? It’s your calling. You were becoming your own woman.”

Becoming
was a strange word. One that felt as wet and salty and unfinished as the tears Layla couldn’t cry. Maybe Isabel was right, but she couldn’t go on like this.

“You were like a butterfly just coming out of her cocoon,” Isabel continued. “You were just starting to find yourself….”

Maybe so, but Rayhan Stavrakis had found her first. Now everything had changed. “Isabel, I just need a few days to get everything in order. I’m going to attend Dr. Jaffe’s funeral. Then I think I’ll need to check myself into a facility for evaluation, and maybe I can get my memories back.”

“Lo siento,”
Isabel said softly. “I’m sorry. If that’s what you need to do, I’ll help you, but be sure you
want
to remember…”

That night, Layla was afraid to sleep. Afraid that she’d dream of the way she’d found Nate’s body hanging in his closet. Even more afraid that Ray would enter her mind, and that this time, he’d leave more than her headboard in shreds.