Dark Sins and Desert Sands (10 page)

Dim light filtered through the high bathroom window, chasing away the shadows between them. The scent of salve and soap now mixed with a more earthy musk of desire. Layla shuddered as he touched the forbidden place at her core, not knowing if she should push his hand away or not. The intimidating bulge of his erection pressed against her belly, bringing with it an unfamiliar sensation, both sickly and sweet. Was this
arousal?
How could it hover so close to the edge of pleasure and pain? She needed something. She needed, wanted, ached. Those were words she never used, words that hadn’t applied to her before now. But in his arms, wearing little more than her bra and panties, the steadiness of his hands on her waist emboldened her. She felt the brazen urge to stroke him. She wanted to grab for his zipper. She’d done it before, but now her fingers faltered.

He encouraged her with his eyes, and whispered, “My scars aren’t contagious, you know.”

She glanced up from beneath her lashes. “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I
can’t.
” Something was stopping her. She couldn’t lift her own hand to do it. She didn’t know if it was fear or shame or something else. All she knew was that whatever force it was that had made her sleep through the past two years of her life still had her in its thrall. Maybe she was still dreaming. Maybe Ray could wake her. “You need to
make
me do it, Ray. Make me touch you.”

He looked at her as if she’d suggested he strangle her. “No way.”

“You’ve already used your powers to make me do things I
didn’t
want to do,” she argued. “Why can’t you use them to make me do things I
want
to do?”

“Layla.” He said her name like a warning. Like she was putting him to some kind of test. “This is different.”

She was so afraid it was all going to slip away. If she didn’t seize this one moment of pure heat and passion, she might never have another one. “Help me, Ray. Please
make
me touch you.”

She couldn’t have asked him again if he’d refused. She was too vulnerable. But he didn’t refuse. He lifted his dark eyes to hers and she felt the penetration as keenly as if he’d grasped her with both hands. Her world slid off its axis, but this time she opened her mind to him and fell into his control as if gravity had drawn her there. She was floating, disoriented, not in possession of herself. He had her now….

“Touch me,” Ray said. A hoarse, terse command.

She’d never be able to describe the way it felt that first time—to feel his sexual mastery over her as she unzipped him. She was free of all fear she might do
anything wrong. She’d felt the bulging rigid line beneath his clothes, but it was different to touch his bare erection, and she was startled by its size. Her fingertips didn’t come close to meeting her thumb as they wrapped around his girth. He was hot and hard, pulsing in her palm as her hand moved.

It would never have occurred to her that a man would want such a firm grip, such a rough jerking motion, but that’s how he must have wanted it as she worked her closed fist over his shaft. And it thrilled her. She had no control over the way she touched him, no control over her own hands, and yet, she felt completely free. The absurdity of it made her sputter with laughter and unexpected joy.

“Is that okay?” he asked, startled by her response. It was so much more than okay. It was the most erotic thing Layla had ever known, and she thought her knees might buckle from the sheer pleasure of it.

“Layla.” He said her name again, a harsh whisper, but she’d never heard her own name sound so beautiful before. She could see in his eyes that he wanted her, desired her. She hadn’t realized how powerful it would make her feel. It made no sense that she was so completely under his control, and yet, felt like…like some kind of object of worship. She hadn’t known that a man could make her feel like something he
must
have. Like something he might die without.

While she stroked him, his fingers searched for the center of her, swirling beneath her underwear in a way that made her squirm. It was all too much. “I need…”

“To come?” he asked, fingers still dancing over her most sensitive spot.

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Layla said raggedly. “I don’t even know what it would feel like.”

“You’ve never had an orgasm?” he asked, as if he’d misunderstood.

It wasn’t that men hadn’t tried. It wasn’t even that she hadn’t tried to do it herself. It’s just that she
couldn’t
. How could she explain that to him? His gaze intensified and something started building inside her. She realized that he was doing it. He was trying to make her come with his mind. In the past, she’d shut down, shut off. But Ray didn’t let her. “You’re going to come for
me
though, aren’t you?”

This couldn’t be happening, but it was. The heat of it boiled up inside her. It wasn’t something she could do for herself, but it was a gift he was giving her. He forced her to feel the pleasure, to open herself up to it, and she gasped. Just then, sexual intensity blossomed, bursting open in vivid color. She never closed her eyes, not even when her head lolled back from the orgasmic pleasure. It was so powerful as it rolled over her, that she lost all threads of self-restraint. A startled cry escaped her lips, then deepened into a moan as her body tensed and released in waves.

Her knees buckled beneath her, her entire body shaking with the intensity of it.

She slumped against him. “You okay?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, and honestly she didn’t. She was like some teenager experiencing everything for the first time.

The water was still running in the sink. Their bodies were still tightly pressed together, and Ray braced himself to steady her. Her hair had all come down around her face, framing it in disheveled wisps, and
Ray realized that he’d
made
her come. He’d made her do it. The exhilaration of controlling her like this, the thrill of having this kind of power swirled together with his arousal in a way that made him fear he was going to take it too far. That he could do this to her, that he could do
anything
to her, was almost as exciting as knowing that she wanted him to.

Staring into her eyes like this, he could force her thighs open without having to touch her and he wanted her so much that he didn’t trust himself. If this was going to happen, it had to be the old-fashioned way. He took her by the shoulders and turned her around so that he couldn’t look into her eyes, then placed her hands flat on the countertop. The break in mental connection was abrupt and painful, something that he eased by rubbing his erection between her thighs, and against her pantied ass. She arched back for him in clear invitation. She even rubbed against him, like an affectionate cat.

She was ready for him and he didn’t have to make her do this. She wanted him. With that heady thought, he pulled her cotton underwear to the side, brushing the shadowy curve of her belly with both hands. She smelled so good, and when the dark curls between her legs came into view, he felt drunk with need. Intoxicated. He pressed between her thighs, slicking himself in her wetness before attempting to push inside.

And that’s when she went cold.

I watch you, I mock you

And you just stare.

Break me into pieces—

Now many of us are there.

L
ayla wished she hadn’t looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t even recognize the woman she saw there bent forward over the sink, arching her back like some animal in heat. Her pupils were so dilated that her eyes were nearly black. Her hair was tousled and her body was shaking with the aftermath of orgasm. She was wild and hungry, like a stranger who’d waited in the desert a thousand years for someone to happen by and solve her riddle. But who was that in the reflection? Certainly no one she’d ever seen before. “I look…”

“Sexy,” Ray said, his body still positioned to mount her.

“I look like a slut,” Layla said, shame choking her like a mouthful of sand.

Ray paused, his hand still warm on the small of her back. “No—”

“Yes I do,” she snapped, straightening up and hugging herself, her bare arms no substitute for the protection of clothing. A maelstrom of self-loathing swirled in her mind.
Slut. Whore. Tramp.
“I look like a half-naked prostitute and I’m behaving like one, too, so it’s really no wonder that you’d treat me this way.”

Ray blanched. He started to say something, but Layla didn’t hear it. She pushed past him into the bedroom looking for something, anything to wear. He followed, lumbering after her as if he couldn’t quite get the blood back into his brain. When he finally spoke, he said, “Layla, what the hell is going on?”

She shrugged, sitting on the edge of the motel bed, pulling the quilt around her body. The memories were coming back now. All the men she’d questioned. All the things she’d done. “I remembered something.” That shook him out of his sluggishness. He was at her side in two steps, crouching in front of her. “I remembered
you,
” she said, biting her lower lip. “I remember questioning you, day after day. I remember all the confessions you signed saying that you’d worked for the enemy.”

His expression darkened, both hands rubbing the stubble of his face. “They were lies, Layla. I’d have signed anything to get out of that hole.”

“So I
was
an interrogator just like you said. I asked you questions. I tried to earn your trust. I tried to get close to you and find your vulnerabilities. You wanted to know my real name and I almost told you. I knew
you were developing feelings for me…” She watched him swallow, his pride too strong to allow him to admit it. “And I
used
that.”

“Why?” he asked, his expression pained. “Why did you do that?”

Layla lifted her chin. “To help the U.S. government break you before another soldier or civilian died.”

Ray slammed his hand against the bedside table. “I was innocent, damn you!”

Her accusation obviously infuriated him, instantly and powerfully. He looked like he could tear the whole room apart, like he could kill her, but when he reached for her, he just took her face in his hands. “Layla, you need to listen to me. I didn’t do anything but risk my life for my country. Someone told you otherwise, and I need to know
who
. What was the evidence against me?”

“I don’t know,” Layla said. “I don’t remember.”

Fury burned higher and hotter in his eyes. “I need you to remember. I’ll
make
you remember.”

In her half-naked humiliation, she felt angry and defiant. “Oh? How are you going to manage that?”

“I have an idea or two,” he said with a dark laugh. “Every time I get your pulse racing, you seem to remember something else. The first time I touched you, you whispered my name. I kissed you, and you remembered your ex. I bent you over a sink, and now you remember questioning me. What happens if I throw you down on this bed and give you what you really need?”

“Don’t,” she said, putting her hand on his chest.

He grabbed it and twisted it just to the edge of pain. “You know I can do it. In fact, you
want
me to do it. All that crap you said in there about how you looked like a
slut, that’s just an excuse. You’re just scared, and maybe you should be, because let me tell you something, I’ve done worse things to unlock people’s memories than get them off.”

The coarseness of his language seemed to physically scrape her skin. All the bravado went out of her, and she was left only with her vulnerability. “You don’t understand,” she whispered. “I’m not like this. I’m not this person who…who…has sex in a stranger’s motel room.”

“We’re not strangers,” Ray said. “And it’s pretty clear to me you don’t know who the hell you really are. You think you’re some demure little rabbit, but do you want to know what I saw inside your mind?”

Layla inhaled sharply. “What?”

“I saw a lioness.”

“A lioness?” It sounded wrong in every way. She wasn’t anything like a lioness. Layla was wary and restrained, not wild and free. She was a creature of order and logic, not instinct. It’s true that when she’d defended herself in the stairwell she’d felt like a fierce predator, but she hadn’t known that part of herself. She also didn’t know the part of herself that wanted this man. She was a stranger to the part of herself that quivered and ached for him.

“Then make me remember, if you think you can,” she said. “Do it.”

He pressed her down onto the mattress with a kiss that left her breathless. Her bra and panties, and the skirt bunched at her waist offered little barrier between his body and her own. Even so, she let him remove her clothes, and then his own. She squeezed her eyes shut,
but her thighs parted for him anyway, and her back arched as he positioned himself. She wanted to say that it was all his doing, that he was controlling her, but it had gone well beyond that now. She wanted to give in to this before grief and fear and wisdom and sadness chased it all away.

She was mesmerized by the scars on his body and by her own need to touch him, soothe him, as if her fingers could erase the burn marks and the slashes of pale flesh across his muscular back. His erection pressed between her legs and it suddenly seemed impossible that he would fit inside her. Ray was a big man in every sense of the word, and she gasped as he tried to slide forward into her. The pressure built and it wasn’t altogether pleasurable. Resting his weight on his elbows, he readjusted, probing her wetness. He was stretching her and she squeezed her eyes shut against the discomfort.

“Am I hurting you?” he whispered.

“No,” she lied. But then, biting her lip, she whispered, “A little, but don’t stop.”

Layla wouldn’t have wanted him to stop even if she were in agony. She wanted to give him her body, as if it could heal what had been done to him. As if it could somehow make up for what had been done to
her
. Ray slowly sank down until he was within her.

Then he groaned. She loved the sounds he made, the way he looked at her in amazement. He was the burning center of her now and she struggled to adjust to his thickness. She didn’t have her memories, but she knew that she’d never been stretched so far. Her insides throbbed as if her heart had somehow fallen between her legs. If he’d started thrusting, if he’d moved
at all, she would’ve screamed. But he didn’t move. He stilled, gritting his teeth as if he were the one in pain, and maybe he was.

His shoulders shook from the effort and that’s when she realized he was waiting for some signal from her. She gave it to him by lifting her hips. Another groan, and he was withdrawing, leaving a stinging emptiness behind that she found more unbearable than anything. “No, please,” she whimpered, rocking up against him. “More.”

“Careful what you wish for,” he said through gritted teeth, but he wasn’t too much of a gentleman to accommodate her. He hoisted one of her knees over his hip, then started the slow and steady pistoning motion. She reeled as if he’d breached some barrier, and she supposed he had, because sex had never felt like this before. Heat spread through her belly and the tension in her thighs eased. This wasn’t the kind of sensation that a woman like her should’ve wanted. But she did want it, and it changed her.

He was so big that he left no room inside her for doubts or self-consciousness, no room for second thoughts or self-control. There was only room inside her for this.

He rocked her, heedless of the rickety headboard that banged against the wall with each thrust. It was so good now, so thrilling, that her skin tingled. Before he’d seemed like too much, but now she wasn’t sure she could get enough as her body coiled and coiled with so much pleasure she thought it might kill her.

“Come,” he whispered, nudging some fleshy spot near her womb that made her cry out. She wrapped her legs tighter around his waist, desperate for it.
Sweat-damp dark hair fell over his face as their eyes locked and he took control of her mind so gently it was like a kiss upon her forehead. He pushed her over that edge, right into orgasm.

She bucked beneath him as he took possession of her muscles, and made them all release at once into a climax that left her raw and screaming. If it’d only been the one time, perhaps she’d have been able to retain some semblance of decorum. But he did it to her again, and again, until her cries sounded like sobs and she lost all sense of time and place. Her nails raked his back. Her teeth sank into his shoulder as if she really were the lioness he saw inside her.

When he finally found his own release, he gave a shuddering moan, flooding her. She felt the warmth of him settle, like rain on a fertile plain. She gasped again as if something quickened inside her, her newfound discovery of pleasure like the gasp of a newborn infant.

Then they collapsed together, in a tangle of panting, sweaty flesh.

“I’m sorry,” Layla said, twining her fingers in the hair on his chest, marveling at its texture. “For scratching…”

“Don’t apologize,” Ray said, still breathing hard. “There’s a lot of stuff you should be sorry about, but not this. Maybe I need to get you declawed but—” Then he saw her expression and went serious. “To see a woman like you do that was damned sexy.”

“Seth didn’t like it.” Layla hadn’t meant to say it, and she bit her lip once the words were out. She knew that the mere mention of another lover could send a
man into a rage, and Ray seemed like a man with more anger than he knew what to do with.

She expected him to lash out, but he just rolled over onto his side so that he could look at her. He brushed the hair out of her eyes. “You’re already remembering more.”

Layla nodded. “Not the specifics, but impressions. Nothing useful to you.”

“Okay.” His frustration was plain. “So tell me what else you remember about your asshole ex-husband, then.”

“He used to call me names.”
Whore, slut, tramp
. She could hear them still. Given that she was in bed with a man she barely knew, it was hard not to think those words about herself now and let them stain her cheeks with shame.

Ray’s expression soured. “I’ll never get why women marry guys like that in the first place.”

“I loved him.” It clearly wasn’t the answer Ray had been expecting. Certainly it wasn’t the answer Layla had been expecting either. She’d thought herself incapable of any emotion as strong as love. Now a sharp pain stabbed her chest at the realization that she’d felt love before. That maybe she could feel it again and that it might hurt her just as badly. “He broke my heart.”

“What’d he do? Cheat on you?”

Layla let out a little laugh. As if being betrayed in such a banal way could have possibly caused this much damage. She didn’t know how Seth had broken her heart; she only knew that he’d shattered it like glass on a cement floor. Now with so many jagged edges, she was afraid she’d slice open anyone who tried to pick up the pieces. Maybe that’s what had happened
to Nate Jaffe, and why she couldn’t cry over his death. Maybe that’s what would happen to Ray if he came to care for her.

“He didn’t want me,” Layla said.

“Bullshit.” He looked completely bewildered, as if he couldn’t comprehend that any man might not want her. His fingers closed protectively around her arm and her body felt as marked by his lovemaking as his was marked by torture. Maybe it was this moment that she started to fall in love with him.

“There were things I wanted that Seth couldn’t give me,” Layla tried to explain.

“Like an orgasm?” Ray asked, and she wasn’t sure if he was joking.

“I don’t know. I only know that everything I did, I did to please him. He owns Scorpion Group and he has multibillion-dollar contracts with the government. If I wanted to be a part of his life, I had to be a part of that. So I learned how to use every weapon I could get my hands on. I learned to move in his world. I helped catch bad guys. I helped ensure the war effort went well. Seth liked that. He appreciated my competence, but the more I made myself into what he said I wanted, the more bored he seemed to be. Like the thrill of the chase was gone, and then he only seemed to want me if someone else did. But if someone did want me…he’d become so jealous.
Murderously
jealous, Ray.”

“I told you before, I’m not scared of him. But let me ask you something. Did you go with other guys just to piss him off? To get his attention?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that why you’re in bed with me now?”

She all but hissed with indignation, but didn’t he
have every right to question her motives? Ray had no reason to trust her, and even less reason to trust whatever it was between them. “I wanted you, and you have no idea how foreign a thing that is to me. To want something and take it for myself, without his permission…”

Ray’s eyebrow arched at the way she phrased that. “He sounds like the kind of abusive asshole who would have eventually killed you.”

“He can do worse than that, Ray,” she said. “He
did
do worse than that. When I was with Seth, I thought I knew who I was. I told myself that I was doing good things to help the war effort and make the world a better place, but obviously I was wrong.”

He glanced away. It was still there in the room between them. They’d each seen the monster in one another. “Layla, I used to imagine what it would be like if you believed me. If you believed in my innocence. I used to imagine that you’d
beg
for my forgiveness.”