Spirit Bound - Christine Feehan [37]
She turned her head and her gaze collided with his. A vise squeezed his heart hard at that look of longing he saw in her eyes. He wasn’t alone feeling the strength and intensity of the pull.
“It’s because we both have gifts,” Judith whispered. “I’ve heard that can happen. The gifts complement each other or something.”
She was courageous, he had to hand her that. There was no pretense. Judith might not show herself to the world, but she was honest with him when it mattered and he admired that. She could have remained silent.
He did the worst possible thing. He tied up his other hand by sliding it over the top of hers. He couldn’t resist feeling her soft skin, couldn’t resist the connection. For the first time in his life he wanted someone of his own to hold on to. Someone to see him. Someone to make him real and not the insubstantial shadow he knew he was. Not someone—Judith.
“You make it hard to breathe,” she admitted, turning her head away from him to look at the ocean crashing along the cliffs.
“I thought you were doing that to me,” Stefan said and moved his body more protectively in place to keep Ivanov from seeing her face too clearly if the scope was trained on her. That, too, was strictly the truth, not Thomas, but Stefan, his lungs burning for air.
Touching her was a miracle. Her skin seemed to melt into his. Ivanov would read nothing more into his gestures than a cementing of his cover, but Stefan didn’t want the exterminator to get a good visual of her face. For the first time in his life, he felt genuinely protective of a woman.
“Has this ever happened to you before?” Stefan asked. Everything inside him stilled, waited for the answer. He knew Jean-Claude. He’d spent a couple of months locked up with that man and knew his obsession with Judith. He didn’t want her to have responded to the man with the driving intensity he felt between them.
She shook her head. “Never. I don’t have relationships. Once. But not like this. I was very young and . . . stupid. This is too fast, too encompassing and I don’t trust it. You shouldn’t either. We’re going to be adults about this.” Her eyes met his again. “Right?”
If Ivanov hadn’t been watching them, he would have taken matters into his own hands and Thomas Vincent and his cover could be damned. She would have been up against the side of the nearest building, away from prying eyes, his mouth taking hers, his body hard and hot and unashamed with true desire. The real damn thing. Was that adult enough for her?
She inhaled sharply at the flare of heat in his eyes. He knew she could see that smoldering fire he couldn’t hide from her.
“Right?” she whispered again.
He wanted to reassure her, but she’d been courageous enough to be honest with him and he could do no less. “I’ll try for you, Judith, but in all honesty, I’ve never had this feeling for any woman.”
She might believe it of Thomas, but not of Stefan. There was no Stefan. He wasn’t real, that man who seduced women out of their secrets and left their lives in ruins. No matter that the women were spies, or working for criminals, there was nothing easier for him, and yet now, he had no idea what to do with her.
He wanted to run away with her and never look back at his past, shed the assassin and become her hero, the man who would fill her nights and days with nothing but happiness. Who the hell was he kidding? He didn’t know what happiness was until he’d walked down a dark street with a woman who was virtually a stranger.
“I can be that man,” he said aloud. The words slipped out before he could stop them.
For a moment her eyes went liquid. “I know you can,” she whispered. “But I can’t be that woman, Thomas. I want to be, but I can’t.”
He heard the regret,