Drake Sisters 06 - Turbulent Sea

needing more. The slow buildup was nearly worse than the wild, passionate tango he played for her.
    His mouth moved against hers. A soft enticement. 'Do you know what I believe love is? It's the same. It's total surrender - giving yourself to your partner, putting their needs and desires above your own and trusting them…' He nuzzled her throat. "Trusting that person, Joley, to do the same for you. Isn't that what we're doing here? Tell me, lubvo moya, because that's what I thought we were doing - loving one another.'
    His voice was pure sin, whispering over her body, sliding past every fear, every guard, and wrapping her heart in warmth. She wanted desperately to believe him, but…
    'Tell me you do not feel love in my touch, Joley,' he continued and bent to brush her throat with his mouth. 'Tell me this doesn't feel like love to you.'
    He pulled back, almost leaving her body, and she wanted to sob for his return. When he surged deep in a fast, hard stroke, he took her breath, sent her stomach flipping and the heated muscles in her sheath melting into a pool of need.
    'You don't know me, Ilya. How can you love me?'
    The small, forlorn note in her voice tore at his heart. 'I've been in your mind every night for nearly a year. We've talked for hours, all night sometimes. I know everything I need to know about you to know I love you. And I can learn the rest, because I'm going to have a lifetime for learning.'
    His mouth settled on her, a long, slow, almost lazy kiss, while his body began a rhythm similar to his stroking tongue. He kissed her thoroughly, with all the tenderness a man as rough as Ilya could manage. When he lifted his head, he braced himself over her.
    'Put your arms around me, Joley. Want me as much as I want you.'

    Her body clenched around his, tightened and gripped, holding him to her as her stomach muscles bunched and her breasts ached. 'You know I want you.'
    He shook his head. 'Not sex, Joley. Want me. The man. Your man. Want to spend your life with me, want to be my best friend, my lover, my everything. Put your arms around me and give yourself to me.'
    She stared up into his blue eyes. The pupils were wide and dark with a need that tugged at her beyond anything she'd ever known. What did she know about him? She'd lived around Jonas too long not to recognize the signs of a man with a code. She'd spent too much time in Ilya's mind, piecing together all the memories and seeing glimpses of colors behind the darkness of his aura. He had to be working undercover, and that kind of a life molded and shaped men into something altogether different.
    She searched his eyes for a long time, looking for truth. 'How do I know what's real about you and what isn't?'
    'I can't answer that, Joley.'
    She moistened her lips and tried to be strong, when everything in her ached to hold him close, to comfort him. 'You have to give me something, Ilya. You're asking me to trust you with more than just me. I love my family. Several are in law enforcement. I would be trusting you with their lives as well. I need more than my body's absolute trust in you.'
    He was silent a long time, his body still, but locked with hers. 'Joley, you've been around Jonas long enough to suspect what I do. I've spent my entire life training for or living undercover.'
    'If you lived that long undercover as a hit man, as someone who runs in violent circles, how do you know who you are?' The thought was terrifying, because when she looked at his aura and listened to the strands of his song, there was more blood and death, more darkness than light, and it was so blended, so mixed together, she couldn't tell what the truth was and what the lie was.
    He sighed and pressed his forehead to hers. 'Do I know what's real and what isn't? Not anymore. I live the way I have to in order to survive every minute of every day. Do I do abhorrent things? Yes. Do they bother me? No, not anymore. The lines blurred a long time ago. You are the only thing real in my life - the only thing for absolute certain.
    You. If you don't save me, I'm lost. I've known that from the moment I heard your voice. I didn't realize I was drowning in the blood until your voice came over the radio and everything in me went to pieces.'
    If you don't save me, I'm lost . She heard the echo of those words in her mind. His voice was low, unemotional, but so soft the sound stroked over her skin and wrapped her heart in velvet. There was a plea - yet it was the stark truth. Ilya wasn't making