"Some people are born with gifts, Rikki. You're one of them. You're bound to water. It answers your call. You play with it, dance with it, call it with song. You're at home in the sea for a reason."
"I'm at home in the sea because I'm a sea urchin diver. I love what I do and it gives me independence. I can't work with other people."
"More likely you're a sea urchin diver because the water called to you. You're gifted with a rare trait. I imagine that your family--your sisters--are gifted as well."
"We chose one another. We aren't of the same blood."
"Elements are usually drawn to one another," he said. "More than likely each of them or at least some of them are bound to an element."
"Are you?" She tilted her chin at him and drew her left hand under the blanket to hold her palm close against her heart. She dared him to lie to her.
"Not in the same way, but yes, I have a few gifts of my own."
"I knew it!" She scowled at him. "I'm not telepathic but I heard your voice. You connected us in some way."
He shook his head. "You did. Under the water. When you saved me."
She opened her mouth and closed it again. She had no idea about elements, gifts or anything else--but she was going to do research. And maybe one of her sisters knew what he was talking about. He was in her home, and in spite of every instinct demanding she throw him out--she couldn't. It wasn't sane or reasonable, yet she couldn't.
Lev smiled at her and drew the pad of his thumb over her lips. "It isn't going to be so bad, Rikki. You'll hardly notice I'm here."
She made a derisive noise in the back of her throat. He was enormous and very male. How could she not notice him? His shoulders took up more space than her furniture. "I'm going to stay in here while you cook breakfast." She didn't want to see her precious dishes or pots and pans get dirty.
"I'll cook everything separately so you can try it."
She wrinkled her nose. "Looking forward to it."
He laughed and ruffled her hair as he got up before taking her coffee cup. She watched him leave and snuggled beneath the blanket, hoping it would help her stay calm.
8
LEV took the pans out carefully, staring out the window while he considered the best course of action. The longer he was in Rikki's company the more he found himself wanting to be with her. She intrigued him. While he was certain others would find her ways off-putting, he found them endearing. Obviously her sensory system was not functioning properly. For a man who had always believed he felt no instinct other than survival, he found he had a protective side. She seemed to bring it out in him.
He was a loner. So was she. Neither felt comfortable in the company of others. Neither liked to be touched, yet he found he liked her hands on him and she didn't seem quite as opposed to his touch either. Never had he trusted anyone enough to actually go to sleep with them, yet he had with her--and so had she. He believed in fate and the sea had brought them together for a reason.
His memory of his past was coming back one small piece at a time, although, truthfully, he didn't remember anything about a yacht or what he might have been doing on it. The good thing was that maybe it didn't matter. He was dead to the outside world. Rikki was the only one who really knew of his existence. He could build a whole new life. Start over again. Be someone else.
First, before anything, he had to buy time with her. That was imperative. His gaze swept the terrain outside the kitchen window. The cover was good as long as no one was on the drive leading to her house, or trying to sneak up on them through the trees. He'd told her the truth when he admitted to having a few gifts of his own. While he cooked a few slices of bacon, he studied the grounds out the kitchen window.
Rikki had obviously set up her house with an eye toward protecting it from fire. The trees were a distance away. The flowers and bushes surrounding the house itself were plants that held water and would burn slowly. She didn't think in terms of guns. Did he think those fires were aimed at her? Of course they were. The investigators had a scapegoat in a young teenage girl who obviously was a social misfit in their eyes.
Rikki had been a target not once, but four times. No one had bothered her in the last four years and that meant one thing to Lev--whoever was trying to kill her didn't know where she was. But they'd be searching for her, and when they found her ... they'd find Lev. She wouldn't be unprotected. He settled on pancakes for breakfast, thinking the texture of eggs might bother her more than the pancakes.
He heard her coming and turned to watch her walk into the room. She flowed, like water, but he could see she was uncomfortable.
"I was reading the newspaper article again," she greeted. "The bodyguard was identified as Sid Kozlov. Does that sound at all familiar to you?"
He wanted to smile when she studiously avoided looking at the bacon and pancakes. Instead, she went straight to the door and opened it and then began pacing around the table as if her nervous energy was so overwhelming she couldn't stand still. Damn, he found her adorable. How could anyone not see her struggle to overcome whatever sensory problems she had? He couldn't help but admire her for the life she'd created for herself.
"Yes." He had promised himself that he would tell her the truth as much as he could. "It's one of about ten names I recognize."
She sent him her small frown and rubbed the bridge of her nose as she continued to circle the table. "Are you telling me you have ten names?"
He nodded. "That I can remember." He gave a casual shrug. "Who knows how many more I have."
"So Lev is one of those ten names?"
"Yes." His voice was curt, short and clipped.
She hadn't taken her gaze off of him, but she still couldn't tell if she was annoying him. She didn't pick up social cues as easily as other people. "I don't like it when people interrogate me, so anytime you think I'm doing that, it's okay not to answer me."
"Is that what you do when you don't like a question? You simply don't answer?"
She shrugged.
"So if I ask you a direct question, will you answer me?" Because he had all sorts of questions he wanted to ask her. Especially about the men in her life. There was no evidence that she was dating, and he'd looked. He could only stay up twenty minutes at a time, but those twenty minutes had been used wisely. He knew quite a lot about his elusive little sea urchin diver. And he was already building a new identity for himself.
A slow smile curved that soft, unbelievable mouth. He found himself captured. Spellbound. And he thought her frown adorable, but now he was holding his breath, waiting for that full effect. Her dark eyes, so black they reminded him of shining obsidian, sparkled like gems. Her small white teeth flashed at him all too briefly, and his body went into instant predator mode. He felt the jolt slam deeply and painfully into his groin. He was hard and full instantly. Out of control.
Control was his life. Discipline was everything to him. He stood in the kitchen, unable to move or breathe properly with his pancakes burning and his heart pounding. He had come alive, his body, his soul, there in the water. No, there in her eyes. Those dark, dark eyes.
"Um, Lev."
He stared into her eyes knowing his reaction to her wasn't ever going to go away. He could dismiss it if it was physical attraction, but throughout his entire life, he had controlled physical attraction.
She pushed past him, crowding close. Ordinarily he would never allow anyone into his personal space, but his space seemed to be her space. He felt the spatula taken from his hand, but he didn't move, caught in the shock and wonder of that perfect moment. He was real. He was human. He felt. He looked down at the top of her head. She had given him something he never thought he would ever have.
"Lev, sit down."
He felt her hand on his arm and she led him to a chair. He sank into it slowly. She wet a cloth and gently dabbed his forehead. He hardly felt her wiping the sweat from him. He inhaled her, that fragrance that was woman and yet uniquely hers.
"You overdid it. You can't be up this long.
I'll figure out how to do this and bring you breakfast. Can you make it back to the bed?"
He loved the sound of her voice. She talked just a little differently, with little inflection. Her tone was low, almost husky. Sometimes when he concentrated on the notes and not the words, it sounded like music to him.
She crouched in front of him, worry in her eyes. "Lev, should I call a doctor?"
He framed her face in his hands and let himself fall into her eyes. He wanted to live there. She reached up and touched his face. He realized it was wet. What the hell? Feeling was shocking. Wonderful. Terrible. He leaned down and took possession of that perfect mouth. Warm. Soft. Incredibly generous.
He felt her startle, go still, and he moved one hand to her thick, wild hair, burying his fingers deep in silk to hold her to him, to anchor himself right there. Her lips trembled beneath his, and he slid his tongue along that soft seam and demanded entrance. For several heartbeats he thought she might not comply, but he was patient, his mouth coaxing. She opened her mouth to him and he took possession without hesitating, sweeping inside to claim what was his.
Sex was a practiced art to him. Each move calculated. His brain always worked while he performed, his body seducing his prey with ease, noting each response of his target. But in one moment, everything had changed. She swept him into a tidal wave of pure sensation, and he willingly let go and let her take him with her. Electricity charged through his bloodstream, snapping and crackling, sparks going off everywhere.
The rush was hot, spreading through his body like a fire. She was a water element and he expected cool, but there was nothing cool about the heat encompassing every part of him. More than that, there was the feeling. He didn't know another way to describe it. To him, it would always be "the feeling." His heart nearly exploded in his chest. His belly tightened and his brain dissolved. He found a miracle in her soft mouth and he never wanted to leave that secret haven.
He tasted passion. He tasted emotion. He tasted a world he'd never imagined, one he could never enter. It was right there in front of him, suddenly open to him. Unexpected. Exciting. Scary. He knew he could never walk away, not when he'd lose this dream before it had ever had a chance to blossom. He reached for it, raced to it, embraced his only chance with everything in him.
Lev lost himself there, kissing her over and over, exchanging breath, drowning, knowing he was drowning and uncaring. She'd saved him before and she was saving him now. He would never be the same and he didn't want to be. Her hands found his chest and fluttered there. She felt slight, fragile, warm and soft, and so feminine, yet he knew a core of steel ran through her.
He lifted his head, breathing deep, drawing air into his burning lungs as he rested his forehead against hers. How did a man tell a woman she moved him? Changed him? Took wrong and made it right? How did he tell her she was a miracle? He didn't. He just held her to him, with the strength in his fingers. His body was trembling, allowing feeling to sweep inside and take hold.
"Lev, it will be all right," she whispered, comforting him.
She thought something was wrong--not that being with her was the most right thing in the world. An incredible gift he wasn't passing up. He couldn't lift his head yet, the emotion was too strong, too overwhelming. So he just pressed his forehead against hers and kept his thoughts contained so she wouldn't accidently connect with him and decide to run. He was going to have to be careful, very careful. His woman--and there was satisfaction in thinking in those terms--was skittish at best.
She represented hope. Belief. Trust. And he had lost those things before he'd ever had a chance to know them.
"Come on, I'll help you back to bed." She slipped her arm around him.
He shook his head and straightened, knowing she wouldn't talk about kissing him. She simply ignored the things she didn't want to talk about, but he could see arousal in her eyes, hear it in her breathing. He knew the signs and she'd been just as affected physically as he had been, but her emotions ... She hid them well and she wasn't meeting his eyes.
"Look at me."
She drew back, flinching, dropping her arms. "Don't say that to me."
She tried to get up, but he caught her arms and held her. He could see she was annoyed by his strength, but she stilled under the shackles of his fingers and turned her dark eyes on him, and they were filled with fury.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "Sometimes I need to look into your eyes."
She clenched her teeth and he could tell she was still seething.
"Why can't I ask you to look at me?"
He felt the wave of fierce anger well up and rush through her. The black in her eyes sparkled.
"What do you think I heard growing up a million times? I was in foster homes and a state-run facility. I don't look at people. I can't tell you why, but I just don't. I can't tell you how many times I got my face slapped for not doing something I couldn't do or didn't understand how to do it. I trained myself to look at a person's nose, so I appeared to be looking into their eyes and then, apparently, I was inappropriately staring." She jerked back away from him and stood up. "This is my house. I can look anywhere I damn well want."
He stood up too, his speed catching her off guard. He tugged her off balance so she fell against him, her eyes spitting fire. He killed coldly, professionally; it was always a job to him and nothing more, simply exterminating where there was a need. But that soft hiss of her memory--I got my face slapped--built an instant rage so deep, so extraordinary, he was shaken at the depth of his ability to feel.
"You don't understand, lyubimaya, I love the way you look at me. I need it the way others need to breathe."
Her stare was so intense. She'd managed with her direct stare to break through the wall his trainers had erected in his brain. She'd penetrated deep with her intensity, finding him beneath the layers and layers of armor. He never thought he'd ever be capable of feeling such intimacy with anyone and knew he wouldn't with anyone else.
He growled the declaration at her, allowing fierce desire to show in his eyes as he bent his head toward her. She didn't move away, going still in that way she had, as if she were making up her mind whether to fight or flee, but she stood under his hands, her face upturned, her gorgeous eyes watching intently as he lowered his head slowly to hers. He felt the small tremor run through her body just before his mouth claimed hers.
She opened her mouth to his and at once he was swept into her secret world of sensation. She kissed the way she dove, with complete and utter focus, with absolute passion--she gave herself to him and took everything he offered. The world vanished. Every disturbing memory in his mind vanished, leaving only Rikki with her sweet fantasy mouth and her soft body. He disappeared into her, the amazing heat and fire her cool body could produce. Tidal waves of sensation broke over him until he felt shaken by his growing need of her.
He lifted his head, brushing the top of her silky hair with several kisses. "I didn't mean to trigger bad memories, Rikki. God knows I have enough of those for both of us."
Her gaze drifted over his face and he had to really resist the need to read her thoughts. A small, brief smile curved her mouth and she shrugged her shoulders. "I don't think you're any better of a cook than I am. You've burned breakfast."
He whipped around to look at the stove. She'd removed the pans, saving what was left of the scorched pancakes and bacon. It took a few minutes to orient himself again, to put the food on the plates and set them in the middle of the table. She sank back into a chair, obviously uneasy.
Rikki cleared her throat. "I've never actually used these dishes before. My sisters gave them to me when we finished building the house." She touched the edge of one of the plates almost reverently.
Realization slammed home. No one had ever given her presents before. These plates represented family and love to her. He touched the same plate, just as reverently. "Then this is a special occasion. Our first time eating from beautiful dishes together. I'll never forget this memory, not even if I take anot
her bump on the head."
He poured a small glass of orange juice for both of them and put one pancake on her plate and a stack on his. He lifted his glass, waiting until her fingers slowly--almost reluctantly--curled around her glass.
"Here's to many more firsts and many more great memories."
Rikki clinked her glass against his and took a cautious sip of the juice, watching him the entire time. Her expression changed as she tasted it. "This isn't anything like I remember."
"Good or bad different?" He encouraged, studying her face.
He loved to look at her. There was no guile there. She didn't look at him, but into the glass, as if studying each tiny drop as though fascinated beyond belief. She swirled her glass and her eyes widened as she watched the juice moving before she took another sip.
He found the way her lips touched the glass just as fascinating as she found the orange juice. He had an unreasonable urge to reach out and stroke back her sweater so he could see her throat move as she swallowed.
"Good different," she said and turned her head to smile at him.
Her smile hit him like a punch. His belly tightened into hard knots. He indicated her pancake. "Since you helped, if it isn't any good, I'm blaming it on you."
Her smile widened, and her eyes lit up, sparkling at him. "I see how you are." She studied the pancake without touching it, looking at it from all angles.
He couldn't take his eyes from her, even as hungry as he was. Food wasn't nearly what he needed anymore. He needed her. He was broken. Shattered. He was wide open, and somehow, she had done it with her penetrating gaze. She'd stripped him of his past and the monster he'd become, and she'd given him life and a purpose beyond use as a weapon. She'd managed to slip past his guard and open him up, and now, when he was at his most vulnerable and should have been terrified and fighting for his survival, he felt at his safest--here--with her.
It was as if he'd melted into her space somehow and become part of this. He looked around at the neat kitchen, the cherry cupboards obviously crafted by a master wood-worker. She'd done this--carved out a safe haven for herself in a world that didn't understand different. There, under the water where solace waited, he'd found himself trapped in her eyes. She'd never once looked at his past as if it mattered. And to her, whatever he'd done before that moment didn't exist.