Water Bound (9 page)

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Authors: Christine Feehan

BOOK: Water Bound
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His teeth chattered. “Just for a little while, until I can figure out what’s going on. I don’t even know my own name for certain.”
What choice did she have? She hadn’t done a single thing right yet. But how was she going to manage having someone in her home? Her sanctuary? She didn’t even know if it was dangerous, but she guessed it probably was. If she was starting fires, she was starting them in her sleep when she was under stress. Having this stranger in her home would definitely be stressful.
“I don’t know what to do.” For the first time, she was really beginning to be afraid. “Maybe I could just get you warm. You can wait for Blythe in my house.”
“Who’s Blythe?”
“My sister. Sort of. It’s complicated.”
She drove to her house, watching the drive, looking for tire tracks. “Stay here,” she ordered as she parked her truck and jumped out. She hesitated with the door open. “If you lay one hand on me when I come back, you’d better make certain you kill me, because you won’t live through it if you don’t.”
Lev watched her mouth compress into a line of warning. He thought she looked more like temptation than danger. She fascinated him. She hadn’t screamed, not once. She hadn’t reacted in any of the ways a woman alone with a killer should have acted. “Take off your glasses.”
She stepped back. “Why?”
“I want to see your eyes.”
“You really are crazy.” She started to turn away from him.
“Rikki.”
It was the first time he’d called her by name and her shoulders stiffened. She turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder.
“I need to see your eyes. Your eyes . . . ground me.”
Her tongue moistened her bottom lip. She frowned, but her hand went up to the frames, her fingers curling there for a heart-stopping moment while she decided whether or not to indulge him. He found his breath remained trapped in his lungs. She whipped off the glasses and he could breathe again. He found himself there, in the bottomless depths of her eyes. The very deepest sea had come alive and looked back at him. Found him. Saved him. Something broken in his head righted itself. He took a deep breath and nodded.
She pushed her glasses back on her nose and walked away from him. He didn’t take his eyes from her as she searched the ground surrounding her house. She was looking for something, and she was meticulous about her inspection. She had a small porch on the front of her house, and like her boat and truck, it was immaculate. She crouched down and peered at the dirt near a hose. The hose was wound around a cylinder very neatly and there was obviously a lot of hose, but he couldn’t detect a single kink it in it.
She disappeared around the corner of the house and he shoved the door open immediately, his heart contracting until it hurt. For a moment he was afraid of it stopping. It had hurt like that right before it had stopped. He remembered the moment vividly. He’d been drowning in her eyes, controlling the pain, so connected he was part of her, living and breathing, and then she’d looked down toward the murky depths, breaking the contact. At once the pain had struck, violent and brutal—his chest tightened until he thought he might explode, and then he was sinking into blackness. Emptiness. A void, cold and dark and merciless.
He didn’t like losing sight of her, not when she was his salvation—and that made no sense to him. Nothing made sense. He tried a few cautious steps and had to grip the door. The ground tilted and his stomach lurched.
“What are you doing? Didn’t I tell you to wait?”
Again he had that strange reaction to her waspish tone, and he wanted to smile. He couldn’t shake his head because it might explode, and if he answered, he might vomit. He kept his teeth tight and reached blindly for her. She stepped up to him and took his weight. They both nearly toppled to the ground before he managed to steady himself, using her like a crutch. Her breath hissed out of her, and he hoped he hadn’t hurt her. She wrapped her arm tight around his waist, muttering to herself as she walked him toward her door.
Again he had the impulse to laugh, which was insane when every step made him sicker. The ground rolled and little rockets exploded behind his eyes. She began to tremble and slow, as if she was reluctant, as they gained the porch.
“Maybe you should sit outside in the chair there and rest,” she suggested.
“I have to lie down.” He really did. And it was going to have to be soon.
He heard her grind her teeth. She propped him against her and unlocked her door, shoved it open and took him inside. He felt her shudder and attempted to ease his weight from her, but his legs turned to rubber. She kept him upright with surprising strength.
“A few more steps and you’ll be in the bedroom. I’m going to lay you down and try to get your wet clothes off.”
She sounded dispassionate, as if he wasn’t a man at all. She didn’t seem embarrassed by the thought of removing his clothes, but then she was a diver and he knew they often had to strip with other divers around them. He didn’t mind that she wasn’t embarrassed, but it vaguely bothered him that she didn’t see him as a man. With his head pounding so hard and his chest so tight, he wasn’t certain of anything, so he dismissed the notion as idiotic.
The moment he stretched out on the bed, he closed his eyes and let her work. She found his knife in one boot and his holdout gun in the other. There was another knife strapped to his leg. Another gun in his belt. A third one in a harness. Another knife and three small daggers in loops at his belt. She didn’t say a word but her breathing changed. She inhaled several times quite sharply. That made him want to smile too. She found his throwing stars and the two throwing knives, but she missed the garrotes sewn into his clothing.
“What are you? Some kind of assassin?”
He didn’t answer. She was tugging his clothing off of him, and he knew the instant she saw him as a man. Her hands stilled and she made a single sound, a low note he couldn’t quite interpret. He opened his eyes and caught her looking, her eyes enormous and beautiful, the lashes fanning the sweep of her high cheekbone. She looked up at him and he felt a physical jolt.
She cleared her throat and tugged on his jeans. “Lift up.”
It was more difficult than he thought it would be. His energy was gone and his body felt like lead. He couldn’t control the continual shaking. She tossed aside his clothes and wrapped blankets around him, enclosing him in a warm cocoon. He found it interesting that she didn’t say a word about the numerous scars on his body.
When she turned away, he caught her hand. He waited until she looked back at him. “I need my weapons. Just in case.”
“You won’t shoot me. Or stab me. Or throw one of those thingies at me.”
“No.”
She snorted. “How would you know? You don’t know what you’re doing half the time.”
“Still.”
She sighed and began stacking weapons on the bed beside the pillow. “Fine. But I’ll be royally pissed if you try to kill me again. It’s getting old.”
He frowned as he watched her pick up his clothes and the wet blanket she’d taken off her boat. She didn’t have an ounce of self-preservation. He was a stranger. She had marks from his fingers on her neck. He’d put a knife to her throat. Still, she’d given him back his weapons and turned her back on him as if it were all of little consequence to her. She wasn’t afraid of
him
, although he had a nagging feeling she was afraid of something—maybe not fear exactly, but she was worried or anxious.
He watched her through narrowed, half-closed eyes, keeping his breathing regulated so that she dismissed him to take his clothes to the laundry room. He heard her but couldn’t see her as she started up the washing machine. Then she was back, meticulously wiping up her hardwood floor until it gleamed. She must have warmed some blankets because she stripped off his blanket and tucked two more around him, still muttering to herself under her breath.
He really was far gone and confused, because he was beginning to find that habit rather adorable. As long as he remained focused on her, he didn’t think about pain or what the hell had happened to him. Or who wanted him dead. Or who he was supposed to kill. He didn’t want her out of his sight. She moved with a quiet efficiency that reminded him of the way water flowed. She paid attention to detail, and he noticed that she inspected the windows in the room. Once she ran her finger along the ledge and muttered a little to herself.
She left the room and returned with a cup of water. He could see stream rising as she bent over him. “If you drink this, it will help warm you up. I’ve got to clean up the wound on your head. You’re still bleeding and it’s a mess.” She slid her arm under him and helped to half lift him, enabling him to take a few small sips of the warm water before she laid him back down.
“Thank you.”
She regarded him with her enormous black eyes. “You’re a mess. You really should be in the hospital.”
He had the feeling she wanted him in the hospital, not because she thought he might die but because she wanted him out of her house—out of her bed.
“I can’t.”
She frowned at him and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “You’re pretty damned stubborn, aren’t you?”
He thought that was evident and not worth answering, so he just let himself disappear into her eyes. She had beautiful eyes. He loved how liquid and soft they were. She started to move away and he caught her arm. “Don’t go.”
“I don’t like people touching me.”
He should have let go of her, but instead he rubbed the pads of his fingers up and down her bare arm. Her shirt was still half buttoned, and he was tempted to stroke her flat belly just to know the texture of her.
“I don’t like it either,” he said. And it was true. Funny. He’d never admitted that to anyone. It didn’t particularly matter, he did what had to be done, but he didn’t like it—maybe not in the same way she meant. His was a matter of personal space, a natural avoidance of closeness with others. But Rikki . . . He studied her face. “I don’t think my touch bothers you that much.”
She blinked. She rarely blinked, but he’d struck home. She compressed her lips and then narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re pretty arrogant for a man who can’t move with a pile of weapons sitting next to him.”
“You have such a penchant for violence.”
She looked outraged. “
I
do? You’re the one being hostile. I’m Mother Teresa here. And I don’t like sick people.”
“Do you like anyone?” Amusement was creeping in again. He was beginning to like the feeling. “Anything?”
“Not particularly.” She snatched her arm away from him as if just remembering he was touching her and she was supposed to be protesting. “And you especially.”
She rubbed at her arm as she stalked away from the bed toward the bathroom. The rubbing turned gentler, almost a caress, or maybe that was just in his mind. Figuring her out was fast becoming an obsession, but perhaps it was because as long as he was concentrating on her, he didn’t have to look at himself—and he didn’t bear close scrutiny. Not now, not when he felt exposed and vulnerable.
She returned, this time with a warm washcloth and a small, very tidy emergency kit. “This might hurt. Lexi might do a better job. Do you want me to wait for her? She’s good with people, especially people in pain. It’s sort of her thing, helping them.”
“You do it. We’ve come this far and I’m used to you now. I wouldn’t want to accidently attack Lexi.”
Her expression changed, her dark eyes going stormy. “You keep your hands off of her. I would have no problem sticking your own knife right through your heart if you touched her.”
So she had a protective streak. Another Achilles’ heel. He’d been beginning to think she was cut off from everyone. But there it was. The storm. The promise. And she was dead serious. He liked that. He didn’t want a saint. He was no saint and one would never be able to live with . . . What the
hell
was he thinking? He really had taken a blow to the head.
The warm cloth moved over his head. She wasn’t rough, but he wouldn’t call her gentle either. Evidently she wasn’t the soothing type, but she took care of the wound with the same efficiency she did everything. She was meticulously detailed, taking her time to close the gaping laceration with butterfly strips. She removed every trace of blood from his face and neck before she was through. He heard her washing her hands and all the equipment she used before she returned to him.
“I’ll let you sleep.” There was uneasiness in her voice.
“Don’t go yet.” Because he didn’t dare go to sleep. He might really kill her if he woke up disoriented. He needed to be able to figure out what the hell was going on. He wanted to breathe her in, feel her inside and out, until he could identify her anywhere, anytime. He was almost there, a few more minutes and she’d be inside of him. He just needed . . .
something
. It was there in his mind, that elusive something. A few more minutes . . .
She gave him that little frown he was becoming familiar with. The moment she made that face, his heart contracted. God, she had some kind of hold on him, as if she had stolen a part of him there under the sea.

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