Sea Haven 01 - Water Bound

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.”
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    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 54

    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