Spirit Bound - Christine Feehan [31]
The strange and very unique phenomenon was both shocking and exhilarating. He’d never been on a roller coaster, but he felt almost as if he was on one now—thrown this way and that, off balance, all over the place, nearly incapable of breathing. His lungs felt starved for air. He was aware of everything about her, strands of her hair, the length of her lashes, her parted lips, the rise and fall of her breasts even as he pushed the key into the dead bolt and wiggled repeatedly to get the lock to fall into place.
“I have to tell you, Judith,” he confessed, half Stefan and half Thomas, “it’s getting harder and harder to breathe.”
He expected her to push him away. Anything to save herself—or him. Maybe she didn’t realize the danger she was in and it had nothing whatsoever to do with a sniper’s bullet.
“I noticed that. My lungs are burning too.”
He groaned. Her honesty was going to kill him. He wasn’t an honest man. He didn’t even know now if he was deliberately manipulating her, which he was entirely capable of. He had no idea who he was anymore. Judith seemed so out of his league, everything that he was not and could never be. She was genuine. Soft. Compassionate. He could see it so easily in her.
He was all hard edges and shadows. He had no idea of the kind of world she lived in. His was violent and ugly. There was no laughter and no honesty. The lock clicked with a hard thud and he had no reason to keep her caged. But he didn’t move his body away from hers as he handed the key back.
“I’m not good with women.” That was a blatant lie. He manipulated women without trying. Thomas Vincent might not be good with women, but Stefan used sex as a weapon, seducing a woman into giving him anything he wanted. Everything he wanted. He had been trained and had complete control of his body—until Judith.
He certainly shouldn’t be having trouble controlling a massive—and painful—hard-on just because he was inhaling her unique scent deep into his lungs. Or touching all that silky hair.
“I’m not all that good with men either,” she confided.
His gaze captured hers and held her there. In the intimacy of the night, Stefan felt as if the world had turned upside down. There was more power in Sea Haven than he realized—or more power in this woman. He had come prepared for warfare, but not for this slow seduction of every one of his senses. He didn’t feel. He wasn’t permitted to feel and yet, with his body a breath from Judith’s, he was more alive than he’d ever been.
He pushed the key into her hand and checked the door before slowly, almost reluctantly straightening. He couldn’t quite move away from her, and never once did he take his gaze from hers. Stefan placed one hand carefully above and to the side of her head, leaning that inch or two closer until her breasts were a heartbeat from his chest.
“Never in my life, has this ever happened to me.” She couldn’t fail to hear the honesty in his voice. It was the stark truth. “I don’t even know what the hell is happening.” That was definitely Stefan Prakenskii and he winced. It was an accusation. A snarl. A demand for the truth—worse, stepping out of his role as bashful Thomas.
Was she an agent, just so damned good that he had no chance against her? Had she duped Jean-Claude just as easily? He’d witnessed Jean-Claude’s obsession with her firsthand and yet he still found himself caught in the snare.
She reached up, hand trembling, her fingers nearly brushing his face before she stopped herself. “I don’t know what’s happening, Thomas. Whatever it is, it can’t happen. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Her statement was as honest as his. She thought herself the one in the shadows. She was hiding behind that sweet demeanor, holding the real Judith still, frozen, a prisoner behind a wall she refused to take down. She was afraid of herself, of who she really was. He saw her, where he knew others would never conceive of the