Sea Haven 02 - Spirit Bound

come face-to-face with the man who had your brother killed yet. You haven’t had the tool in your hands to do the things you want to do to him. There is no judgment or damnation for thinking about making someone suffer and die. That comes after you carry out your actual revenge. You may not go through with it when the time comes.”
    She didn’t flinch. “I’ll go through with it.” There was steel in her tone this time.
    She wasn’t going to back down, not even to make him want her. She wouldn’t lie to him, or drag him down with her. She’d lived in her own hell too long to allow anyone else to join her. The isolation and lie of her life was difficult enough without the weight of another terrible sin, dragging someone else down into the abyss with her.
    “Until that time, Judith, don’t be so hard on yourself. Everyone, at sometime in their life, thinks of revenge. I certainly have done so.”
    Looking into those cool, aquamarine eyes, she believed him. She found herself shivering. Thomas Vincent wasn’t just the innocent businessman she thought him. Whatever he’d done during his time in the service hadn’t been easy and he had a hard core of strength that went with his physical appearance.
    She shook her head, confused. She wanted this man with everything in her. She had confessed to the counselor and to her sisters that she was the cause of her brother’s vicious murder. She had not admitted her part in the death of the innocent policeman. She knew her sisters felt responsible for the violent deaths in their families, but the fact was, unlike the rest of them, she was responsible.
    Not one other person knew until Thomas. He hadn’t turned away from her and he hadn’t been harmed when, once again, she’d lost control of her emotions. There was such amazing freedom in the knowledge that she could talk to him without hiding part of herself. She didn’t have to lie to him. He knew the worst of her and he still stood there looking at her with that very dangerous and compelling hunger.
    She was going to lose herself in this man. If she let him any closer, if she let him another inch into her life, he would become her world. There was no one else for her and she had stepped into the age-old lure of sexual attraction. She was sinking so fast now he had faced the worst in her and had stayed, she was afraid there was no way to save either of them. He might think he could really make a man suffer before he killed him, but in truth, whatever he’d done in service to his country had been a different situation altogether. She could never ask such a terrible thing of him and she doubted, if it came right down to it, that he would be able to do such a thing. It went against nature.
    Stefan watched Judith carefully. He was adept at reading body language. He’d learned in a hard school and knew every nuance of the human expression. She was trying to find a way to gracefully retreat. She accepted that he thought he might understand her need for revenge, but he would never follow through. Interrogation techniques often were called torture by some. Certainly Judith would think so. That too, had been learned in a hard school. He knew all about interrogation and the consequences of not getting information required.
    She wasn’t expecting anything from him that he hadn’t done throughout his lifetime, although, he was certain she would never actually go through with it. She might be able to kill Jean-Claude quick and clean, and only then, he was certain, if she wasn’t thinking clearly. But Judith was incapable of torture. She might dream of it, even plan it, but she was totally without the killer instinct.
    “You aren’t going to run away from me, Judith,” he said, meaning it. He’d emerged partially from the shadows and something incredible was in his sites. “I know you’re scared, angel, but we can do this. Give it a little time. Show me around your house. Eat the lunch I fixed for us. We’ll pick this up at another time.”
    His thumb brushed over her pulse, felt it jump and then began to beat more steadily. She blinked up at him before some of the tension drained out of her. Her tongue touched her lower lip, drawing his complete attention.
    “You called me ‘my fallen angel’ in three different languages.”
    He flashed a small grin. “That’s called showing off.”
    Which was true, but even more, he wanted to call her an endearment in his own language and it was better to throw her off by