Drake Sisters 06 - Turbulent Sea

with dark curls huddled beneath a table. Terror consumed him, spread through her and left her close to tears. The memory was gone almost immediately.
    To cover her reaction, Joley took a long drink of water, keeping her gaze above his head. What did she really know about him? Absolutely nothing. She had judged him mainly on rumors and his looks. She stole a quick glance.
    His shoulders were wide, his chest thick and muscular. Dark hair made his blue eyes all the more startling. There was an innate toughness about him, and etched into his face were lines of hard experience. More than all that, danger clung to his aura, a dark, moody color and scent that felt violent and frightening, and where she might be able to ignore everything else, she couldn't ignore what her senses told her. He might be a bodyguard, but he was much, much more.
    That danger drew her like a magnet and yet repelled her at the same time.
    'Do you have siblings?'
    He shrugged his broad shoulders, a mere ripple of muscle, the movement casual, his gaze hot. 'I have six brothers, but I didn't grow up with them. I've never been able to find them.' And he had abundant resources all over the world -
    which meant they were dead - or they didn't want to be found.

    'How sad for you - and for them. My family is everything to me. I can't imagine what it must be like to know you have someone but not be able to be with them.'
    'As I don't know them, it doesn't much matter.'
    She blinked. It made sense, but he wasn't telling the entire truth. He stayed close to her mind, sliding in and out at will and leaving behind impressions. He had wanted a family, and her family made the yearning all the more sharp.
    She didn't want to feel sympathy for him, or to picture him as a little boy with a mop of curls, scared and hungry. It made her all the more vulnerable to him.
    'Why did you come here tonight?'
    'You haven't been sleeping.' He kept his gaze fixed on her.
    She had thought his gaze cold, but the piercing blue had turned into something altogether different - glittering, hungry, almost like a very cunning animal waiting to leap and devour prey. She shivered and willed her blood not to surge so hotly in her veins. 'You stopped talking to me.'
    'Is that why you can't sleep?'
    'I wasn't sleeping when you were talking to me,' she pointed out. 'And I'm too exhausted to have a battle of wits with you. What do you want?'
    'I'm going to lie down with you and get you to sleep.'
    She nearly snorted water out her nose. 'Are you crazy? I'm not getting in a bed with you. We wouldn't be sleeping.'
    'One of us has discipline.'
    'Really?' Her eyebrow shot up, and deliberately she slid her gaze over his body in a long, slow perusal. Her tongue touched her bottom lip while her fingers instinctively stroked the mark - his mark - on her hand.
    He moved. It was a subtle shift, but there was no doubt in her mind he was easing the sudden tightness of his jeans.
    She could see the thick evidence in the front of his lap that the stroke over the mark affected more than just her. Dark lust glittered in his eyes, and the hunger grew ravenous.
    'You're playing with fire,' he said softly. 'I came here to help you sleep, not for anything else. Don't force the issue before you're ready.'
    She had learned a few things about Ilya from their brief encounters, and he rarely wasted words. He wouldn't warn her again. The perverse part of her wanted to see him out of control and reap the benefits of it, but the intelligent think-of-the-consequences part of her held her in check. She dropped her hand and rubbed her palm on her thigh in a reflex action, hoping to soothe the burning. 'I'm not ready,' she admitted. 'You scare me.' 'I'm always going to scare you. That isn't the issue.'
    She shook her head. 'I have more than one.'
    'I know. It won't be so bad, belonging to me. You'll always be safe.'
    'Will I?' She doubted it. 'It's been my experience that extreme macho men are usually jealous, possessive, tend to hit women and cheat on them.'
    'I've discovered I can be jealous, and there's no doubt that what belongs to me stays with me, but men who hit women and cheat have no honor, no code. They aren't men, and you should know the difference.'
    The low, caressing note in his voice wrapped around her like a velvet blanket. He would take her apart, and when he put her back together, the most important pieces of who she was wouldn't be hers anymore. Ilya would own her.
    'What about bossy?' He would rule her