Water Bound (22 page)

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Authors: Christine Feehan

BOOK: Water Bound
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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 another 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.
She reached across the table, cut his pancakes and lifted a bite to his mouth. He opened automatically, thinking it the most intimate thing he’d ever done in his life. His gaze didn’t leave hers as he chewed and swallowed. A slow smile welled up. Happiness. So this was what it felt like. He’d never known kindness or caring. He’d never known love. Maybe love was a woman feeding him pancakes. Maybe it was someone sitting across from him sipping orange juice just to please him.
“It seems I’m a good cook after all.”
She grinned at him and a curious fluttering in the vicinity of his belly startled him. He took the fork from her, his fingers brushing hers. The contact gave him intense satisfaction. For the first time in his existence, he knew he was drowning and he wasn’t thinking about survival. His head, his heart, hell, everything he was, rushed to take the plunge. What, after all, did he have to lose?
“You think it’s safe to risk it?”
Her soft words startled him and for a moment, he misunderstood, certain she was reading his thoughts. Her eyes held amusement and a bit of a mischievous glint. Her face might not be expressive, but he could read it all, there in her eyes.
“I think you should,” he agreed and settled back in his chair to watch her take her first bite of pancakes. Who would have thought something so simple could bring such pleasure? He’d made each pancake quite thin in the hopes the texture would bother her less.
She put a thin spread of peanut butter over one. Her knife made lazy little swirls that weren’t quite as lazy as he first thought. Each circular wave was exact, creating a pattern. The top of the pancake began to look like the surface of the ocean. Her entire attention was on the peanut butter as she drew waves swelling, cresting and rolling over. Each stroke was deliberate and seemed to absorb her completely. He found himself nearly as mesmerized as she was.
“That’s a beautiful drawing, Rikki.” He kept his voice low. “Do you paint?”
She startled, raised her lashes and blinked several times before she focused on him. “What?” She frowned, processing his question. “Why would you think I paint?”
He indicated the top of her pancake. “That’s a beautiful picture of the sea and it’s in peanut butter. If you can do that with a knife, you must be good with a brush.”
Her frown deepened and she turned the dish around and around, studying the decorated top from all angles. “I never noticed. It isn’t art.”
“It was very precise,” he commented and forked another bite of pancake.
“I suppose it is. I count.” She looked at him, obviously expecting him to find her revelation disturbing. “In my head, I count.”
She actually muttered to herself, half aloud, mostly under her breath, but he didn’t point that out to her. He liked the little talks she seemed to have with herself, especially when she was annoyed with him.
“It’s the ocean.” He ate more. His body needed fuel, and he downed a piece of bacon.
“It is, isn’t it?” She smiled at the design. “I can’t draw. This, apparently, is a secret skill.” Her eyes changed and a little frown came back. “When I lived in foster homes or at the state home, whenever they forced me to eat something, I weighed the punishment for not eating it and if I didn’t want to pay the price, I counted to focus my attention on what I was thinking and not on how the food felt in my mouth.”
A stabbing pain pierced his chest in the vicinity of his heart. He reached across the table to still her hand as she raised her fork. “You don’t have to eat the pancake, Rikki.”
She shrugged. “I know that.” She looked around her home with satisfaction. “Not here and not on my boat, but Blythe says I should always try to expand my comfort zone. It’s hard to do when I’m alone. I just fall into a routine. When I’m with one of my sisters, eating at their houses or going somewhere with them, it’s easier to make myself try new things.”
There was just a hint—a note—of Blythe’s voice in her tone. He knew it was unintentional, that she’d taken on a bit of the woman who she so admired.
He sent her a smile as she put the pancake in her mouth and watched her face. It was silly, really, but he actually felt privileged that she included him with her sisters, trying something new for him. “How is it you’ve never eaten pancakes before?”
She chewed thoughtfully, made a face and delicately spit the pancake into a napkin. “I probably did when I was a child,” she admitted. “I got stubborn as I got older. I didn’t like anyone telling me what to do and after a while I just refused to do anything. I got so I liked making people uncomfortable before they trashed me. I figured it was going to happen anyway, so why not? Especially the police. I dealt with them quite a lot when I was younger.”
“Didn’t anyone recognize that maybe you needed help?”
She blinked. Drew swirls in her peanut butter. Her gaze locked with his. “No one ever asks me questions like that.”
“I’m interested.”
She sighed. “Lev, everyone believed I murdered people by setting houses on fire. I was strange and that just added to their conviction that I was the guilty one. Maybe I even acted guilty. It occurred to me that I was setting the fires in my sleep.”
Lev watched her push away the plate and cross to the breadbox. She looked over her shoulder at him as she extracted a piece of bread. “Why in the world would someone eat those things when they could put peanut butter on bread?”
He waited until she sank back into her chair, drawing her knees up, feet tucked up where no one could see while she spread peanut butter on the slice of bread. He wasn’t going to get drawn into another discussion on the merits of peanut butter, not when she was giving him pieces of her childhood.
“You were thirteen when the first fire broke out?” He prompted. “Do you remember much about that night?”
She jumped up and paced across the floor with a quick, restless movement. She poured herself a cup of coffee before she turned and regarded him from what she must have considered a safe distance. There were shadows in her eyes and her mouth trembled. “I remember everything about that night.” She took a small sip of coffee and turned to stare out the window. “My mother told me I could read in bed. I couldn’t sleep much and she or my dad stayed up with me as a rule, but if they’d gotten a book I wanted that day, they’d often let me read. I loved reading.” She turned around, leaning back against the sink. “They’d given me the complete works of Sherlock Holmes the week before and I was anxious to start it. I’d wanted it for so long, and when we’d gone to the bookstore to get it, there was a terrible wreck on the freeway. A huge pileup. Both my parents were injured and taken to the hospital. I’d been so scared, afraid I’d lose them. I didn’t read a word. I sort of made this pact with God, you know—let my parents live and I’ll be so good. The kind of thing kids do.”
He watched her drink her coffee to steady herself. Her hands trembled slightly. He doubted if anyone else would have noticed that small sign. He wanted to put his arms around her and hold her but he knew she wouldn’t allow it. She was holding herself together by a thread and one touch would shatter her.
She sent him a small humorless smile over the coffee mug. “I was already so strange, you know. I couldn’t do things like other children. I was clumsy and never quite got their social cues so school was extremely difficult. My parents were my safety zone so you can imagine how frightened I was. My dad was able to leave that night, but my mom couldn’t. So my idea was that I wouldn’t read my book until she was home.”
“Was Sherlock Holmes worth the wait?” He kept his gaze locked on her, observing—
absorbing
—her reaction. He knew he’d been trained for interrogation, for gathering information, and he automatically had fallen into the examination mode. In the back of his head he recognized—as he usually did—that this information was important and he needed to file it carefully for future reference.

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