Dark Sins and Desert Sands. Stephanie Draven
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“You’re going into someone else’s head, like you just went into mine. Aren’t you?”
Clever girl, Ray thought. But he hadn’t any use for clever girls right now. “Will you shut up, so I can close my eyes?”
“How do you know I’m not just going to take your wallet and walk out the door once you’re asleep?”
“Because I peeked into your memories and I know you’re not a thief,” Ray replied. “Now, look, I’ll pay you another hundred bucks to just shut up and let me close my eyes.”
With the promise of cold hard cash, she went silent and Ray tried not to think about how nervous he really was. When his victims were in the same room, it was easy enough to enter their minds, but he’d blown it today with Layla Bahset. She’d nearly swallowed him up in the sands of her mindscape. Now he knew to be wary.
Flopping onto the hotel bed, Ray took a picture of Layla Bahset from his pocket. It wasn’t a glamorous photo; it was from a directory of mental health professionals, and showed her with her hair swept back and a pair of glasses precariously balanced on the bridge of her nose. Ray just needed the photo to help him focus. To help him remember that she had no power over him now. And if he could channel all his strength, she couldn’t hide from him. He’d have to enter the maze of her mind from afar, with just the memory of her cat-green eyes as his guide. He’d stared into those eyes enough times to remember them—he’d pleaded with her to believe him when he said that they had the wrong guy. It was a thin thread of shared memory with which they were joined, but now, hopefully, he could follow it back to her.
Once, he’d been at her mercy, but tonight Layla’s fate would be in his hands.
She’d taken sleeping pills to calm her nerves, so when Layla was half awakened by the rush of air by her ear, she told herself it was nothing. Just an all-too-vivid dream. Then she heard the sound again. A pant, bestial and strange. A breath not her own. A shadow fell across her, as if the darkness was a physical weight pressing down on her.
She wasn’t alone.
Even though she’d locked the bolts on her door, even though she’d checked every window latch as part of her nightly routine, and set her alarms, someone was here with her. The certainty of it froze her heart in her chest and shot a liquid chill through her veins.
Layla opened her eyes slowly, an eternity passing as she lifted her lids by creeping degrees. It was dark, but the casino lights of the Vegas skyline flashed garish in the night and briefly lit his silhouette in slashes of green and magenta. The stranger stared at her, his breathing heavier now that he knew she was awake. She couldn’t see the whole of him, only sense the strain of bone and sinew beneath his powerful muscles. Layla stifled a groan of terror, all but paralyzed.
He was an enormous man. Or was he something else? His chest was a mass of muscle. There was froth upon his … snout? It was as if she could see lust trembling upon his sleek haunches and it made her acutely aware of her body beneath the Egyptian cotton sheets. The way he stared at her made her feel vulnerable, obscene. Yet there must have been a time when it pleased her to have men admire her body, because a primal and utterly foreign rush of pleasure ran through her blood right alongside the fear. And she felt suddenly quite unlike herself, filled with some carnal delight that a man would seek her out in her own lair, that any man would dare.
Questions to try, answer or die, what am I?
As the little rhyme echoed in her mind, Layla slammed back into herself. The pleasure was gone and she pulled the sheet over her body. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice a low, terrified whisper. “I don’t know you.”
His answer was a snort of taurine rage that echoed through the bedroom. “You’re still so pretty when you lie…. “
Layla hissed, pushing herself up so that her back was against the silken headboard of the bed. “I want answers,” he said, coming closer. “I want my life back. I want justice for what you did to me.”
What had she done to him? Was her eal, or some figment of her imagination, one of her lost memories come hauntingly to life? In desperation, she whispered the only words she could think to utter. “Are you the man from the desert?”
The words fell from her lips before she could stop them, and in response, she thought she saw furious flared nostrils. She thought she heard the thunder of hooves on her floor as he shouted, “You know who I am!”
“I don’t,” Layla said, shaking her head so violently that it dizzied her. “I can’t remember.”
“Then I’ll remember for you,” he said, his weight settling on the bed as he crawled overtop of her. “Let me in. Let me inside you.”
Was he a rapist? She’d be overtaken by his bulk, helpless against his size and strength. Layla shrank back, the sheet bunching up to expose one long bronzed leg all the way to the thigh. She saw the glint of sharp horns, as if he were intent upon goring her. Intent upon slashing through the sheets. Intent upon impaling her. She threw her hands in front of her as a defense, then heard herself scream.
This time, Ray expected the barren landscape of her mind. But there were subtle changes. The pyramid was more prominent, and he saw an entrance made of rotted old wood and iron. Maybe he could charge it—break it open and lay her memories bare. Inside the mindscape he was as strong as a bull. Ray threw himself against the entrance, his massive shoulder rolling into his charge. Wood splintered and he heard the groan of hinges. He charged again, and again, smashing and bashing for what felt like hours. He ached with the effort, his throat parched with thirst, but all at once, the entrance gave way and he found himself standing in the labyrinth of an ancient Egyptian tomb.
He found only one torch burning, and he carried it through the sand-filled passage until he heard a low growl. He didn’t see Layla’s memories. Instead, amidst the glittering gold and carnelian pillars, a lioness appeared and said, “You shouldn’t be here. Men who come near me die. They die. Choking, gasping … “
Shit! It was no lion, it was her. It was Layla Bahset. The same cat-green eyes. This was the way his cool, clinical interrogator envisioned herself in her own mind. Or maybe she was just trying to scare him off. “Don’t threaten me.”
“He’ll hurt me if he finds you here,” she said. “More importantly, he’ll hurt you. He’s watching … “
“Who?” Ray asked. “The guards? The sick bastards who got off on watching me bleed? I’ve already taken care of them. They aren’t ever going to hurt me again, and neither are you.”
“I’m different now,” the lioness said. “I help people now. I heal them.”
“I don’t care what you do,” Ray growled, though that wasn’t strictly true. “I want to know why I was pulled out of my unit in Afghanistan. I want to know why I was arrested. I want a name. I want to know who it was that accused me of treason.”
“My memories are locked away from me in the antechamber,” she said. “And even if I could give you a name, what good would it do?”
What good would it do? The question made crimson fury pass like a taunting veil before his eyes. If he had a name, he could confront his accuser. He could prove his innocence. He wouldn’t have to live as a fugitive anymore. He could be a free man.
“I can’t free you unless you free me,” she said, with a look of anguish. “Save me.”
Had she read his mind now? Ray was getting confused. “How can I save you?”
“Make me feel something,” she said.
He could have blinked only once, but when he did, he no longer saw a lioness on the ground, but a woman on her hands and knees, staring up at him with a needy gaze. Naked. Completely naked. He couldn’t look away, unable to tear his eyes from the way her hair flowed like a dark river over her bare shoulders and the elegantly arched curve of her back.
Layla seemed to luxuriate