Spirit Bound - Christine Feehan [3]
Stefan knew he wasn’t much to look at. He was tall, with wide, ax-handle shoulders, a thick muscular chest and large arms with bulging muscles. He didn’t look suave or wealthy, or charming. He looked a brute, not very smart, with longish hair and lots of scruff. Scars webbed his skin and his knuckles were callused and shiny. He had a square jaw and dark blue-green eyes that looked straight into other men’s souls and found them guilty. Stefan exuded raw power through sheer physical strength, and men like Jean-Claude automatically dismissed them as muscle and brawn—never looking beneath that surface to see if there was any intelligence behind the mask of a brute.
In his mind he used his real name, Stefan Prakenskii, as often as possible because, truthfully, he used aliases so often, he was afraid of forgetting who he was. And maybe he had already, long ago, lost his identity. What was he? Who was he? And who really gave a damn anyway? There wasn’t a beautiful woman standing on a beach looking sad, pining away for him—and there never would be. He was successful at his job because he refused to let women, like the one Jean-Claude obsessed over, into his realm of consciousness.
He glanced again at the pictures covering the stained wall. There were hundreds of them. Jean-Claude had the woman under surveillance for a long time. She had changed little over the years the man had spent in prison, but he was right, there was no man ever photographed with her. Stefan cursed under his breath and turned away from the pictures.
The woman would get under anyone’s skin if you stared at her long enough. Really, what else was there to do in a tiny prison cell but notice her lips and eyes and all that long glossy hair? Jean-Claude was feeding his own addiction, growing it into a monster, and Stefan had uncovered that weakness immediately and used it against the man, making him ripe for an escape. He didn’t see other men with her in the photographs, but who could stand thinking about another man touching all that soft skin?
“I will say this for you, Rolex, she’s beautiful. Where the hell did you ever meet a woman like that?” It was time to change tactics.
For the first time, Stefan allowed a little admiration to creep into his voice. Just as he suspected Jean-Claude couldn’t resist the need to talk about his woman or respond to the first sign that a man such as Stefan who only seemed to admire obvious strength, might respect the crime lord at least for his ability to attract a beautiful woman.
“She was an art student, studying in Paris,” Jean-Claude said. “She stood outside the Louvre—all that long hair flying around her face—and she paused to scrape it back away from her face and for just a moment . . .” He trailed off.
Stefan didn’t need him to say it. The crime lord had probably lost his breath just as Stefan had the first time he’d looked at her photograph. She could easily have been a model on the cover of a magazine—yet more. There was something undefined, a quality he couldn’t put his finger on, something innocent and sensual at the same time—mysterious, remote, just out of reach. Something terribly elusive and yet made a man want to reach out and grab her, to hold her for himself alone.
Oh, yeah, the woman definitely had an impact on a man, especially one locked in a cell without a companion. Stefan had endless patience when he was on the job, but seriously, this was a bust. Jean-Claude would make a beeline for the woman and for the microchip he’d stolen from the Russian government—a microchip worth a fortune on the black market. That chip contained information that would set their defense system back fifty years if it got out.
“She any good at painting?” Stefan asked.
Jean-Claude nodded. “She’s good at everything she does.”
Stefan remained silent, waiting for more. He knew it would come. Jean-Claude wouldn’t have said anything at all if he didn’t want to talk.
“She’s already made a name for herself in the art world. Her kaleidoscopes have won international awards. Her paintings are