Drake Sisters 06 - Turbulent Sea

so hot, flying so high, he knew she would crash after the performance.
    He had done that. Driven her to the breaking point. To everyone else she looked strong and confident; to him she looked vulnerable and fragile. She wanted the world to think she was just fine - she wanted him to believe it, but he knew her too well.
    He had crushed her with his careless handling. For the first time in his life his training had utterly failed him. Joley was everything he had ever dreamt of - more. She had given him back humanity, taught him to feel, to believe in hope.
    He had been careless for the first time in his life, stealing time for himself, forgetting that his life depended on secrecy.
    And he had been indiscreet, giving her a truth and then pulling back when she accepted it.
    He swore and forced himself to look away from her, to study the audience in the first several rows and then slowly back farther. Her voice played over his skin, a mix of sultry heat and promise that kept his body hard when his chest felt weighed down with sorrow.
    He had absolutely no experience when it came to relationships. None. His instinct, when he realized she was withdrawing, had been to pull her close to him, to force the issue, but he couldn't give her what she needed, and she would have fought him with her last breath. It would have turned into a physical confrontation, and there would have been no winner. So he'd backed off, and now he had no idea what to do to regain her trust.
    He detested this feeling of inadequacy, of indecision. He was a man confident in his abilities, sure of his responses, quick to make judgment calls, and in the most important area of his life, he felt paralyzed by his lack of knowledge.
    His gaze strayed back to Joley. The stage was every bodyguard's worst nightmare. The venue was a bowl with the stage in the center, surrounded by thousands of screaming fans. They had people scanning the crowd, but to find trouble was like looking for a needle in a haystack. And there was going to be trouble. The electric energy of the crowd nearly drowned out the small threads of malevolence he could feel, but he was ultrasensitive to danger and it was there, somewhere in that vast sea of faces.
    'Check the south side,' he said into his radio.
    He didn't like the shows in the huge venues. Joley used a rig shaped like a platform bridge that swung her out over the audience. It put her right in the midst of them, up high; she gyrated and sung on a narrow metal path in the air. And when she performed, she was giving it her all. Lights flashed, the sky rained sparkles, and fire rose from the stage.
    Joley ran and leapt for the platform as it began to

    swing out over the audience.
    'South side. South side,' Ilya hissed. His gut was in hard knots now. 'Get the camera on her. Make certain there's nothing wrong with that platform.' He had inspected it himself. With his belly churning and that heaviness of dread weighing down his chest, he knew the small threads of dangerous energy were gathering fast.
    There were a million tricks one learned as a personal protector, but he realized most of them went out the window when the person you were guarding was your soul. He had to keep forcing his gaze from straying toward her. His heart beat too fast, and he tasted fear in his mouth. If someone wanted her dead, it would be so easy. A gun - hell, in this crowd, whoever shot her could probably tuck the gun into his shirt and walk away.
    He took a deep breath and pushed it all away, falling back on years of cool distance. He forced himself back under rigid control, knowing that if he allowed emotion to rule him, he would lose this battle. He let his senses flair out, uncaring that he would be gathering information it would take his mind months to get rid of.
    The stadium was on its feet as the band swung into one of the favorites. Joley looked like mouthwatering candy as she moved over the bridge. The crowd responded with wild screams and waves, reaching up toward her, thunder filling the bowl as the people stomped feet and clapped hands to the pounding beat.
    As the platform swung to the south, Ilya shut everything out of his mind but the people under her; he was watching intently for something beyond his vision, something that would register in his mind, in his senses, long before his brain would recognize what his eyes were seeing. People dancing. Women on men's shoulders, arms lifted. His heart jerked and he began moving fast.
    'Just under the