Sea Haven 02 - Spirit Bound

her ear, nuzzling the fall of black silk aside. “Are you going to show me your home?”
    She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Maybe later. I don’t trust myself right now.” She lifted her chin, her gaze finding his. “I know you don’t understand. I’m saying one thing and doing another, but you’re so . . .” She trailed off.
    Sinfully tempting.
    He heard her thought clearly in his mind. His left palm itched and he pressed it hard into her side, against her soft skin, against the temptation of that very sexy gold chain.
    “Then you owe me a tractor ride.”
    Her eyes cleared, smiling at him. “I do, don’t I?”
    “I thought about it last night,” he admitted, his hand slipping from the nape of her neck to slide down her arm, taking possession of her hand. “I could really be making a mistake. If I make a complete fool of myself and drive the thing into a tree, are you going to laugh at me?”
    “Not only will I laugh,” she admitted, “I will take a picture and send it to all of my sisters. They’ll do a bit of laughing as well.”
    His heart jumped. The memory was dim, but her threat conjured up one of his few childhood memories, the laughter of his brothers filling their small apartment. For one wonderful moment he could almost smell his mother’s perfume. Instantly the soles of his feet burned and throbbed with pain driving the remembrance to the back of his mind, replacing it with a little boy sobbing for his mother and brothers while a grim-faced man with cold eyes slammed a board over and over into the soles of his feet and ordered him to stop, to never mention them or think of them again—that they were dead to him. He shoved the memory away hard, slamming that door in his mind.
    Judith made a single sound of alarm, her dark eyes leaping to meet his. She should have stepped away from him. His hands automatically went to her neck, fingers settling around her throat with so much deceptive gentleness. Anyone knowing personal information about his childhood was a risk to him. The training ingrained in him was strong and his first reaction was self-preservation. They stood in silence, her eyes on his. She didn’t fight him. She didn’t even move while her pulse beat hard beneath the threat of his fingers. She waited under the strength of his hands, her dark eyes trusting. Sympathetic even.
    “Damn it, Judith. Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation? Even a little bit?”
    “What happened to you?” Judith pressed a hand to her heart, at the same time shifting her weight as if her feet suddenly hurt. “Tell me, Thomas. Your feet—you’re in pain.”
    He had to be much more careful with her. She felt what others were feeling, just as her emotions could affect everyone she came into contact with—especially him.
    He shook his head. “It was a long time ago. I don’t know why I thought of that.”
    “Your mother’s laughter? Brothers?”
    “Long gone.”
    “You were adopted then? And then you lost that mother as well to an illness?”
    The compassion in her tugged at him. It was a legitimate conclusion. His family dead and a little boy adopted out. He never stepped out of character, never stopped protecting Stefan Prakenskii, yet he’d opened Pandora’s box the minute he was in her company. He forced himself to shrug while he shored up his defenses.
    “What happened when you were a boy? This happened in Russia? Your mother is Russian? Were you in an orphanage and someone abused the children?”
    That he could answer fairly honestly. “Something like that. It was a long time ago, Judith, and if you don’t mind, I prefer not to think about it.”
    He stroked caresses over her very vulnerable neck and cursed himself for being such a monster. She was bright and shiny and thought herself dark and too dangerous to allow her emotions free rein, but she didn’t really know what a true monster was.
    Judith went up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his mouth. “Let’s go drive the tractor.”
    His fingers tangled with hers, held on. The shocks just kept coming. Men like him thought in terms of weapons. One never tied up any weapon and his hands were lethal. This was the second time he’d done the impossible and worse, he didn’t care. He wanted the contact with her.
    He let her tug, taking him with her. She rocked him, rocked everything he had ever believed, turning things completely around. She moved like the wind, a fluid, graceful breath of air at his