Sea Haven 01 - Water Bound

She hadn’t thrown him out yet. “Don’t let them know I’m here.”
    “My sisters?” She gave him that little frown he had already begun looking for. “I don’t lie to my sisters.”
    “I’m not asking you to lie. Are they going to ask if you have a man in your house?”
    She toed at an imaginary speck on the hardwood floor. “No.”
    “Then we don’t have a problem, do we? I should be out of here soon.”
    “You can’t even walk by yourself.” She held up her hand to stop him from talking. “I’ll think about it.” She continued to look at him through the thick veil of her lashes. “Are you going to explain?”
    “Explain what? I can’t remember my own name.”
    “Why I heard your voice in my head. And don’t tell me it didn’t happen. I may be strange, but I don’t hear voices.”
    Her eyes went as black and shiny as obsidian. He was fascinated by that. The storm warnings.
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    “It was your voice. You said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ You didn’t say it out loud. It was in my head.”
    He couldn’t look away from her gaze. He wanted to wake up to those eyes every morning. See them the last thing before he slept. Take them with him into his dreams. No one should have eyes like that. “I might be telepathic.” He shrugged. “I don’t have an explanation.”
    She should have accused him of being crazy but she didn’t. “I know some people have extraordinary gifts. There’s a family in the village . . .”
    She broke off as if she were giving him classified information.
    Something stirred in his memory, but he couldn’t pin it down. The glimpse eluded him before he could catch and hold it to him. Frustrated, he studied her face. He liked looking at her. She had angles.
    “I don’t know about extraordinary gifts—I was trying to come up with a plausible explanation. Are you telepathic?”
    “No! Absolutely not.” She rubbed her palm as if it were hurting her.
    He held out his hand. “Let me see.”
    She cradled her hand protectively against her. “I don’t think so.” She pushed back her hair. “Look, it’s really late. Why don’t you go back to sleep. You shouldn’t be sitting up anyway. We can sort all this out later.”
    He kept his hand out. “Let me look.”
    “Has anyone ever told you that you’re pushy?”
    He felt amusement welling up again. His head hurt like a son of a bitch, but he was ready to smile. “I can’t remember much, so I’m going to say no.”
    “Given your personality, that’s most likely a lie,” she pointed out and stepped closer to the bed, her reluctance showing in the slow offer of her hand.
    His fingers closed around her wrist and he drew her toward him with a steady, firm pressure. Each time the pads of his fingers touched her skin, he felt absorbed—connected to her—as if he was sinking deeper into her. He was almost desperate to join their bodies together. The feeling she gave him from just touching, skin to skin, was exquisite. She delighted him. Intrigued him. Made his body ache in wonderful ways. It was a new experience and one, at first, he didn’t want, but now that he was beginning to reason again, he could enjoy every moment, every breathtaking sensation.
    He rubbed the pad of his thumb over the center of her palm, tracing the two joined circles, although he couldn’t see them. His brain mapped positions and recorded them for him. Every instinct, every memory of her was exact. He knew precisely where those circles had sunk beneath the skin of her palm. He pushed healing warmth at her. He’d learned to heal his own body from minor injuries when he was a child, using the energy around him.
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    He surrounded her hand with the energy he drew on and pushed it into her palm.
    “Does that feel better?”
    There was silence. He looked up and met her gaze. She wasn’t looking at her palm; instead, her eyes were glued to his face. He felt the now-familiar jolt in the vicinity of his heart when he locked gazes with her.
    “You can do things other people can’t,” she whispered, sounding slightly awed. “My hand was aching and it doesn’t now.”
    “I’m glad. After all you’ve done for me, I haven’t shown much in the way of appreciation.” He retained possession of her hand, stroking his thumb back and forth, blatantly trying to mesmerize her. He didn’t want her leaving him, not with his heart pounding and his head so damned confused.
    Sometimes, like now, he thought she belonged to him.
    “Lexi can