Sea Haven 01 - Water Bound

barely knew the man. She rubbed the pad of her thumb over the center of her palm.
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    “Why are you doing that?” Airiana asked.
    Rikki frowned. “What?”
    “You’re rubbing your palm. You’ve never done that before.”
    Airiana was frightening in her observation of detail. Rikki shrugged and turned her palm over, pressing it against her jeans. “No reason. I’m just confused about all this. I want to give Levi a chance.”
    Blythe glanced at the others and then nodded. “We’re with you then.”
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Chapter 10
    LEV opened the window in the bedroom, grateful it slid up silently.
    Whoever was watching Rikki—and how the hell had they found her?—had some kind of psychic power. He’d felt the shift in energy. It hadn’t been particularly powerful, but he noticed the two women who he had determined were the most sensitive to psychic forces had been the only ones really affected. Rikki had been with him all week, holed up in her house, so if this was about her, there had to have been a trail leading to her. And if it was about him ... Well, no one was going to hurt her or the others because of his dubious past.
    He did a rolling somersault, coming up on one knee, allowing a couple of seconds to orient himself in the surrounding terrain. The few minutes he’d managed to stay up he’d spent studying the house and the immediate acreage around it. He’d committed the map of the farm to memory so he was fairly certain he could find his way around, but it was imperative he scout Rikki’s five acres as soon as possible. He needed to know every shrub and tree, every hollow. Where the tall grass was that might conceal someone.
    Everything. Especially if he was going to make his home here.
    That brought him up short. What was he thinking? Living here? With Rikki? Men like him didn’t have homes. They didn’t have loved ones. Those things were liabilities to his kind. He’d been trained to move, to shed his identity fast and assume another one just as quickly. That was life. Trying to be someone was a certain road to death.
    He moved as fast as his pounding head would allow him. Each jolt sent a dagger through his skull. His stomach lurched. He knew his head injury had been worse than he’d first imagined, but it was healing. He was speeding the process along as best he could, and now he needed to be at full operating capacity. He made his way up the terraced flower beds and began working his way over toward the northern side of her property up toward the tree line.
    Sid Kozlov was dead. Did that mean Lev Prakenskii was as well? An image of Rikki’s little frown filled his head. A few times, when he couldn’t 151

    sleep and he just lay there beside her, aching, wishing, he fantasized that she was his. That the world he was in was real. Maybe this was his one chance.
    It was a miracle he’d survived the sinking of the yacht. Another miracle, that although he’d been slammed into the rocks by a powerful wave, he’d lived through it. And Rikki. She was the real miracle, with her quirky ways and her eyes that could see beyond his armor and straight to something he’d thought long gone.
    Damn. He wanted her. He wanted this life. He wanted it to be real.
    Were there second chances? It was possible he’d have to walk away, but before he did, Rikki Sitmore was going to be safe. She would know that she didn’t start fires in her sleep. She would know she hadn’t killed her parents or fiancé, nor had she burned down the homes of her foster parents.
    As he made his way through the trees, he tried to figure out what it was about her that appealed to him so much. Passion. She was passionate about everything she did. Everything she was. Who she was. He was fairly certain she had some form of autism, yet she had carved out a life for herself in spite of all the odds and she made it her own. She was the sea she loved so much, moody, joyful, playful, and at times stormy and wild. He was ice-cold, a passionless floe out in the arctic seas, alone and struggling for survival.
    He had faced death every day of his life and never once had he flinched. He’d seen things that no man should ever have to see. He’d made decisions no man should ever have to make. Some might call him courageous, yet compared to Rikki, he saw himself as a coward. She took hold of life and lived it, in spite of her limitations. She forced herself out of her comfort zone for those she loved, while he stayed in his, behind his wall of