Of course he’d heard her. He was fucking with her again. Her cheeks blazed with embarrassment. She lifted her chin and looked directly at him. “It excites me. Is that what you wanted to hear? I can’t get off the normal way. I can’t get off with a man who is tender and soft. I want hard. I want raw.”
“Very good, Mia. Finally we get to the truth. You chase us because it excites you, makes you feel alive, wild, feral. You observe because you don’t have the courage to embrace your own dark side. Not just yet. But it’s there, stalking the hallways of your mind. Waiting for release.”
He grabbed her wrist and dragged her toward the exit. She struggled to keep up with his long, determined strides. His fingers bruised the delicate flesh of her wrist.
Before he pushed open the exit door, he turned to Mia. His mouth was inches from hers. She could smell the whiskey he’d drunk. The stale odor of sex heightened her senses, ripened her body.
“Deep down, you’re just like me.” Without waiting for an answer, he pushed open the door and pulled Mia into another darkened alley.
As the door slammed shut behind them, Dylan let go of her wrist. He pushed her roughly against the cold, damp metal. Pain lanced through her head, blurred her vision.
He trapped her between his body and the door as he placed a hand on either side of her head. Mia trembled. From fear or arousal, she couldn’t tell. Being like this with him scared and excited her. A heady mix.
Not wanting him to see her arousal, she whispered, “Go ahead, Dylan. Kill me. Rape me. Isn’t that what you brought me here to do? Destroy the good doctor so your secrets are safe?
Do it.
”
All the careful constructs of civility she’d created after escaping her violent teenage years came crashing down. She was stripped bare, laid open. It was one of the reasons she couldn’t come during sex. She needed rough. She needed violence but never trusted anyone enough to hurt her.
He wrapped his palm around her neck and feathered the pulse with his thumb. He was surprisingly gentle. She gasped. Heat shot through her veins. Her pussy throbbed.
She hadn’t expected this.
Intense pools of heat swirled. Would he hurt her? Did she care?
Unable to help herself, she caressed his face. She needed direct contact, to feel him under her fingertips, to smooth the lines of his brow.
He caught her wrist. Startled, she frowned. His heat radiated through her. Her body ignited. She was perplexed at how the slightest touch from him could make her feel as though her blood were on fire.
Her blouse fell open, revealing the bite scar on her chest. Dylan looked down and followed the contours of the scar. She desperately tried to cover it.
“Don’t,” he growled.
“I have to.” Meeting his gaze, she pleaded with him.
He pulled her hand away from the scar. She let her wrist fall and he traced the imperfection with his fingertips. “Beautiful,” he whispered.
She gasped. She always hid her scars from people. She didn’t want to expose her imperfections and incite pity. Or questions. To her, they were hideous. An abomination. A blot on her character as a human being. A reminder she’d been marred by evil, tarred by it. Yet he treated it as a thing of beauty.
Mia bit her lower lip to keep from moaning. Sensation after sensation washed over her. He was so light. Gentle. It made her want to cry out in ecstasy. The fear she felt was gone, replaced by an intense need. To be consumed by him.
The controlling criminal disappeared, replaced by a man who stroked her with reverence. His furrowed brow and soft touch betrayed his emotions. Warmth radiated from him and flowed into her. Fear evaporated as she opened her mind and looked inside Dylan.
It was too easy. She slipped inside his conscious and saw herself from his point of view.
In the grim reality he’d created for himself, she shined.
Lust and admiration bled from every pore. He wanted her on a base level, wanted to break her down and fuck her. He understood need. The need for sex.
But he didn’t want to respect her. He didn’t want to admire her strength and courage. Unable to deal with his attraction, he’d wanted to scare her, to shock her, make her run from him. If she did, he wouldn’t have to deal with feelings that were foreign to him. It made him vulnerable.
Images of herself flashed into her mind. She couldn’t think, only see and feel. In his eyes, she was beautiful. Courageous.
What the hell was happening? Why could she merge her mind with his? The virtual reality’s coding didn’t allow for that. Had their clash compromised the code? She blinked, drew herself back from his mind.
Lust unfurled in her belly. She wet her dry lips as he continued to caress her. “Dylan.”
The feelings he aroused in her were undeniably sexual. She wanted to be understood, to be exposed, to show him the depths of her soul. Including the parts she’d locked down, the parts tainted by evil.
Something shifted. He stepped away from her. “Deal’s off. Goodbye, Dr. Simon.” He walked off into the night, turned a corner and disappeared.
She screamed after him, “Wait. You can’t leave me here! We had a deal. You son of a bitch.”
Her vital signs should be spiking. Ramierez should have pulled her out. When the technicians saw her brain waves weren’t controlling the environment, they should have enabled the failsafe, brought them out with a concoction of meds to drag them back into reality. Something was off. It had been from the beginning. Why was she stuck here?
Mia turned and kicked the metal door. What the fuck was she supposed to do now?
* * * * *
Dylan walked through the streets of his construct. He’d lived on these streets in his youth. Grown up among the squalor and poverty of the unacknowledged underbelly. It was one of the reasons he became a thief. His mother, stripped of her pride and dignity, had begged the Company for help to feed him. When they’d refused, practically laughed in her face, she’d taken to turning tricks in the market for food or coin.
His beautiful mother with the sad eyes and warm, tender embrace. The woman who always made sure he had a hot meal and a kiss at bedtime. She’d died of an STD when he was six and he’d sworn to rain havoc down on those who’d denied her.
Blood thundered through his veins. He needed to breathe. He hadn’t felt anything for years until her. Dr. Mia Simon.
He’d had to get away from her. Now that there was distance between them, he forced his body to relax.
She’d burrowed under his skin. The beautiful psychologist with a dark side.
He’d believed he could control her, break her down by showing her images from his past. He’d played her game, bought into her secret desires.
He’d thought her “darkness” revolved around her own past. He’d underestimated her. Her dark desires ran deep. She’d actually wanted him to kill her.
In his experience, people usually begged for life when confronted with death.
Not her. She’d embraced it.
Maybe the VR made her bold. He remembered the look in her eyes. The determination, the courage.
Fascinating.
Dylan ducked into a gambling den. He found the bustling atmosphere calming.
He retraced her scars with his mind. The angry red mass of puckered skin. Her badges of courage.
It had started out as a game. A challenge to break down the brilliant doctor. Somewhere that changed. She intrigued him. He admired her spirit. He’d seen something inside her that reminded him of himself.
They’d both been tainted by blood. Both irrevocably changed by the darkness of their youth. Yet looking into her eyes, he’d seen something he’d thought lost—a vulnerability. A certain type of innocence despite the darkness. A desire to be known. To be loved.
Something shifted inside him. Softened.
He couldn’t afford to have her under his skin. He couldn’t afford to feel anything. Especially not for her. She could destroy him. Feelings made you sloppy, weak. If he let her into his cold heart, she would change him, burn away the need for revenge. His conscious would rear its ugly head and he’d lose his edge.
Images of her wandering the VR alone bombarded his mind. “Fuck.”
She couldn’t pull herself out, not while he was still in control. He had to go back.
Pushing past a crowd of gamblers, he focused his thoughts. Her fear permeated his senses. What trouble had she gotten into? Technically, this world was his construct. Until he allowed Mia into his head, she shouldn’t be able to project her past into this reality.
Unless something had gone wrong and they were sharing a consciousness.
“Shit.” He broke into a run. He needed to find her. Fast.
* * * * *
Trapped in a maze of alleyways and grim backstreets, Mia began to panic. Not only had Dylan abandoned her, he’d left her in his virtual creation. She had no idea where she was going.
Occasionally other people were in the alleys with her. People she recognized from her past. On those occasions, she looked straight ahead. Was her unconscious somehow subtly changing Dylan’s reality?
For the most part, she was alone in her thoughts. Alone with thoughts of Dylan Benjamin. A criminal mastermind. The man who stirred feelings in her she’d thought were dead.
After the way he’d caressed her with such gentleness, did she believe he was capable of such destruction? Could she believe him capable of killing women? A thief, yes. A psychopathic murderer who toyed with his victims? No.
She sighed. Dylan was an enigma. One she feared and desired. One she would never get to unravel now.
She turned into yet another alley and stopped. This time she wasn’t alone.
The rain cleared, leaving a cloudless night. Bathed in moonlight a few feet away were two men. In between them, being pushed from one to another, was a woman. Her terror was evident from her whimpers.
One of the men tore her shirt, the other her skirt. The woman screamed, pleaded for them to stop.
The men laughed. A high-pitched drunken cackle that made Mia sick to her stomach.
Mia froze as they forced to woman to her knees. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t run. Couldn’t help the frightened woman. She’d been here before—in the real world. Surely this couldn’t be happening again? The computer program must have snatched this from her mind and imprinted it on this reality.
Shit.
Adrenaline coursed around her veins. She took a step back.
One of the men turned his head in her direction. He saw Mia and flashed a lewd smile. “Well, looky what we have here.”
Mia willed herself to move. She refused to let this play out the same way again.
She wasn’t fast enough. The man gripped her arm and pulled her toward him. He pressed her body into his. His cock bit into her thigh. He had a mass of coarse, greasy blond hair.
His hands roamed roughly over her body. “You like to watch, little lady? Turns you on, does it? Wish you could have a piece of the action?”
As he breathed on her with putrid breath, Mia wanted to gag.
“Well, you can watch first, sweetheart. Then it’s your turn.” He whirled her in his arms so they both faced the other man and the frightened girl. He held Mia in a bodylock. His arousal dug into her ass. He breathed heavily into her ear, whispering lewd comments, rubbing his crotch against her.
Bile rose in her throat.
No. No. No.
It was happening exactly as it had all those years ago. She kept it hidden, locked away. She never thought about it, never allowed herself. And here it was playing out the same way as before.
She had to stop it. She had to do something. Hatred boiled in her heart. Mustering all her strength, Mia clawed at the man’s arms. She drew blood. The man screamed and loosened his grip.
She whirled around and slammed her fist against his jaw. She heard a crack. Pain lanced through her knuckles but she didn’t care. After running over to the woman, Mia pulled at the other man.
“Get off her, you fuck.” Fury blinded her. Pure rage spurred her on, unleashing an animalistic need to hurt these men. She’d been a powerless teenager the first time, but not now.
Someone grabbed her from behind and flung her to the ground. The impact made her gasp.
Before she had time to recover, the man with putrid breath was on top her, knife against her heart. “If you move, bitch, I’ll pierce your heart like a fucking balloon.”
Frightened, Mia froze.
“Eddie, I don’t think this is a good idea.” The other man stood over them, holding the trembling woman by the arm.
Eddie didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. “Leave. Now. I’ll handle this.”
Exactly what he’d said the first time.
“But Eddie…” The other man looked scared.
Eddie’s head snapped in his direction. “I said
leave
!”
He took the girl, left, leaving Mia alone with Eddie.
He licked her cheek. “Scream for me.” He ripped her blouse.
Revulsion washed over her in waves.
He chuckled. “I see someone already had a taste of you, little lady.” He ran his fingers over her scars. “How about I add one? Huh? A little reminder of me?”