Spirit Bound (10 page)

He was aware of people moving up the walkway to their right, from the direction of the tower. He might be able to use the small crowd as a shield, work his way around to get behind Ivanov. If he could, he would track Ivanov back to his lair and kill him. The disposal of his body would be easy enough and that would give him time to find his brother without fear of exposing him to an exterminator.

Right now, the most imperative thing in his world was to protect Judith. He kept his body between the sniper and Judith. His mind demanded to know what the hell he was doing, but his body remained firmly in place.

He doubted if Ivanov would take the shot even if he had it. It was too soon. The assassin wanted Lev. His brother had disappeared here, presumed dead, and Petr Ivanov wasn’t buying it. His plan was to kill both Prakenskii brothers, not just Stefan. So he wouldn’t shoot, but just in case, Stefan’s sense of self-preservation should have forced him to move. It was impossible to though, and the terrible itch on the back of his neck grew.

Damn the woman. What in the hell was taking so long? “Do you need help?” he offered politely, staying in the role of Thomas Vincent.

“The lock seems to be stuck.”

Judith glanced over her shoulder at him, and his heart nearly stopped. There was something incredibly alluring about her face with that fall of silky hair across it. Her gaze drifted over him and for a moment time seemed to stand still. He wasn’t the only one tasting passion in his mouth, it was there, in her eyes. He had caught glimpses of fire in her earlier paintings and he hadn’t been wrong. No matter how cool and controlled she acted, the fire was there seething beneath the surface, ready for the right man to bring out.

He pulled back from his thoughts very sharply. What right man? He was nobody’s right man. He lived in another world, far from this one, and he had no right thinking a woman like Judith Henderson could be his. Not even in his imagination—yet he didn’t move, not an inch.

“Let me try.” He didn’t wait for her to step aside, but reached around her with both arms, trapping her between the door and his body, careful to keep her hidden from Ivanov’s scope while he took the key from her hand.

His fingers brushed hers. A jolt blazed through his body, the force of it shaking him. She was more frightening than any enemy he’d ever stalked and killed. She moved him when nothing ever had. A captive in the circle of his arms, she went very still, but he felt every breath she took. Heat rushed through his veins and settled like a fireball in his groin. He had used sex as an effective weapon, a perfect tool, extracting information, controlling his body, allowing an erection when needed, sustaining it for as long as it took, but he couldn’t remember a time when his body responded to a woman in the way it was doing now, almost as if it had a mind of its own.

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 smoldering fire buried deep. The fire and something else—lethal power that reached out for the matching dangerous power in him.

She was afraid—for him. She was afraid of herself. And that told him so much more than anything she might have admitted aloud. She held great power and was unused to wielding it. So what was it? What could she fear?

“We’ll be okay, Judith,” he assured, the compulsion to be that man for her, the one man she could tell the truth to without fear. He needed to be the man to free her from that clawing fear she held so tight inside of her. He’d never had the need to protect anyone or save anyone. What was it about her that got to him?

She shook and ducked her head, but not before he caught the sudden terror in her eyes. She looked away only a moment and then she was back, but he had already seen the real Judith.

Her shoulders straightened, her chin went up, and her eyes met his courageously. “I’m not a good woman, Thomas. Whatever this thing is between us, you have to know it can’t go anywhere. It
won’t
go anywhere. You seem like a decent man. I’ll work with you if you really are interested in purchasing the gallery, and I’m willing to show you around, but you have to know that’s all it can ever be.”

He was fiercely attracted to her physically. Drawn to her psychic power—whatever that was—but now something else crept in and made being in her company all the more dangerous. And all the more necessary. Admiration. Respect. And he was drowning in the need to be a better man. The kind of hero who rode on white horses and rescued beautiful women with sorrow-filled eyes.

Sadly, Stefan Prakenskii was no such man. He was the kind of man who deceived women, targeted them, used them as tools of his trade and cast them aside without much thought. He didn’t even reside in the same world a woman like Judith lived in. She might think she wasn’t a good woman, but she’d shown her vulnerability to him and a man like Stefan leapt at that opening. Took it and used it.

He didn’t worry that Petr Ivanov would show undue interest in Judith, because he would believe Stefan was cementing his cover story by using a woman. Women were such easy targets, so vulnerable to a man preying on them—a man such as Stefan. He could read his quarry, every expression, the body language, and he was practiced and smooth at knowing exactly the right thing to say. Ivanov would expect him to use a local woman to insert himself into village life.

“I understand. I don’t know what it is between us, Judith,” he said, his left palm itching until he couldn’t help but run it down his thigh before he made a fool of himself and cupped her breasts right through all that tempting red silk. Even with her declaration—or maybe because of it—he had an urgent desire to lean that scant few inches that separated them to taste her mouth.

“I don’t expect anything to happen, but I won’t believe that you’re not a good woman. I have a sixth sense about these things.” That might be something Thomas Vincent would say. Stefan Prakenskii would have taken what he wanted—and he wanted Judith. The wanting was turning into something very dangerous.

Abruptly he dropped his arm and stepped back. He refused to be ensnared. Whatever small part that was left of his humanity was not going to be stripped from him. He forced himself back into the role of bashful Thomas, knowing that man was far safer for both of them.

Judith Henderson was forcing him to evaluate his life, to reassess what he wanted. He’d been all over the world and on some level, without realizing, he’d been searching for something to give meaning to life. He was a machine residing in the shadows and now, looking at her, he realized there was a glimmer of hope still left in him. His trainers hadn’t quite stamped out every bit of him. There was that tiny spark left. A glowing ember, no more, but it was there, hidden from sight, but still valiantly smoldering.

“I’ll walk you to your car.” It was necessary to establish that Thomas Vincent was a man who would walk a woman to a car, or to her front door, looking out for her safety. That would allow Stefan to give her some protection against Ivanov, and, if he were honest with himself, spend a little more time in her company.

“It isn’t necessary, although it’s kind of you. Sea Haven isn’t exactly a high crime area.”

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he affirmed, uncaring if he sounded like Stefan instead of Thomas. She wasn’t walking down the street with a bullet just seconds from striking her. “Where is it?”

“I’m parked just down the street a few stores down to the left.”

Of course she’d parked there. The tower where Ivanov was holed up was in that same direction. Stefan sent up a silent prayer to a God he had no faith or trust in, that he was judging the situation accurately and Ivanov wouldn’t pull the trigger and kill him right then. He walked beside Judith, his eyes, out of habit, moving restlessly over the rooftops and delving into the all the little courtyards tucked into the sides of the buildings, leading to more intriguing shops.

He was careful to keep his hands free as he moved along the street. Every few seconds his eyes tracked backed to the tower and the surrounding rooftops. It was a habit and if Ivanov was watching him closely through the nightscope, he would expect that behavior.

A wooden bench sat just back from the buildings in a small courtyard leading to more shops. A homeless man sat hunched against the building, ignoring the bench. He simply watched the ocean as it sprayed white foam high into the air, crashing against the cliffs.

The small crowd of wine tasters seemed to be congregated around the door of a shop several businesses down, all talking at once and laughing, drowning out any real chance of catching sounds that would help him locate Ivanov’s exact position. There was no doubt in his mind now; his body’s radar confirmed to him that he was being tracked with a weapon. The enemy was out there and watching him.

He turned his head toward Judith, bending slightly down, smiling, listening to her even as he noted every possible cover between where they were and her car. Self-preservation was automatic to him, so ingrained in him, he would always know every license plate in his general vicinity, buildings and landscape, the natural flow of his surroundings. He was a chameleon, blending in, a snake shedding one skin and growing another easily—a shadow with no substance.

They were approaching the homeless man. The man had one hand inside his jacket where he easily could be concealing a weapon. Stefan allowed his gaze to sweep the man, noting every detail. He had seen him around the village every day for the last two weeks as he’d scouted the place, and had spoken to him many times. The street people often were aware of any stranger in town and cultivating a good relationship often proved useful. Impersonating one of the homeless was an easy enough cover as well. Ivanov might certainly use such a cover, which was why Stefan had acquainted himself with every homeless person in the small village.

He kept to the far side of the street, something he ordinarily would never have done. Each step was a single heartbeat. He was on high alert now. If he was wrong about Ivanov being in the tower, or on a rooftop, impersonating the homeless would get him close to his target. His knife was up his sleeve and he could make the throw before Ivanov could get off a shot. The homeless man smelled the same and looked the same, but a pro would be able to pull that off.

“Just a moment, Thomas.” Judith touched his arm as they approached the small courtyard.