Spirit Bound - Christine Feehan [123]
He felt like an attorney trying, at the last hour, to save a man’s life.
Judith glanced at him over her shoulder, a completely natural look he found sexy. His body stirred in spite of his rigid control. He wasn’t going to bring sex into this. She needed to want him because they fit, not just because their chemistry together was explosive—although . . .
“Don’t,” she warned him softly, but without much conviction.
He filed that information away to pull out later if he was losing the battle. She was more than susceptible to seduction and that was one thing he was damned good at. He gave her a wan smile. “I’m fighting for us, Judith. You have to give me something.”
She filled her teakettle with water and set it on the burner. “Your life has been so different, Thomas. I can’t even imagine the places you’ve been and the situations you’ve been in. I live quietly here. This is a small town; a village really. We’re a strange little collection of people, very tolerant of one another, but quirky. It’s peaceful here. Not much in the way of action. We don’t even have a police force, just the sheriff if anyone’s in trouble. Death here is from old age or the sea. Abalone divers, that sort of thing. How would a man like you find anything interesting here?”
He took his time, instinctively knowing she wanted him to be thoughtful. He didn’t need to be. “I’ve never had a life, not a real life with a family and truthfully, I can’t be around people for long periods of time. I’ve lived outside civilization. I don’t know the rules and I’m not polite. I can fit in when I need to, but I’m never me, I’m someone else, playing a role, anything to achieve my goal. I need peace, I need a place where I can live out my days in freedom, and Sea Haven seems perfect. Thomas Vincent would love to have an art gallery and a wife who paints and makes amazing kaleidoscopes.”
Judith kept her back to him, busying her hands by filling the teapot’s little screened container with loose-leaf tea. “What about Stefan Prakenskii? I’m more interested in him and what he wants.” She turned then to face him, leaning back against the counter, studying his face, locking her gaze with his. “What does Stefan want?”
“I want you, Judith. I want to live with you and love you. I want to be everything you need.”
He cupped the side of her face, unable to keep from touching her, his thumb brushing back and forth over all that smooth, soft skin he couldn’t resist. She was so beautiful to him. Her bone structure, her exotic eyes, her mouth, that small, straight nose and her intriguing dimples, yet it was what was inside of her, spilling out, that brought him a kind of joy singing through his veins.
“I can be good at this one thing, radost’ moya, making you happy. Keeping you safe. Loving you. I can do that.”
When she started to speak he shook his head, laying his fingers across her lips.
“But you have to be sure. There’s no going back. You have to know what kind of man I’ve been, what I’ve done, Judith. You have to realize that you’re nothing like me. All those dark places inside of you are normal, people are supposed to have them. I am those dark shadows, the embodiment of them. Can you live with a man who is scarred inside and out? People like me don’t recover. We have certain things ingrained in us, and we can’t change. You have to be able to love the real me.”
The teakettle began to whistle and Judith spun around to pour the hot water into the teapot. Stefan didn’t step back to give her more room, instead, stood close to her, inhaling her fragrance and willing her to understand him. He knew himself, knew he was a hard man, honed in the fires of hell and probably dwelled there most of the time, lost in the ranks of the damned, but he saw the way out. Right here. Now. In spite of Ivanov hunting him. In spite of Sorbacov panicking because a journalist had begun digging for information regarding a rumor that orphans