Earth Bound by Christine Feehan Page A

dead?” Lexi asked again. “He was very much alive when I left him. I can still hear the horrible things he called me. I need to know the truth.”
    The truth would scare her to death. Gavriil shifted his weight just a little, enough to slide his thigh along hers. He still retained possession of her hand and he continued the lazy, soothing circles, tracing the pattern of the intertwining rings that had sunk beneath her skin right in the middle of her palm.
    â€œHe’s dead, Lexi. I can guarantee you that.” He made it a statement. His eyes met hers, allowed her for one momentto see a brief glimpse of who he was, what he could be, when he wasn’t sitting on the porch swing with her.
    Her eyes went wide with shock. She saw him all right. Again she surprised him. She didn’t flinch or move away, she just continued to look at him with her steady gaze. “Did you kill him?”
    Gavriil shrugged. “He’s dead, isn’t that enough?” It was impossible to look away from her vibrant green eyes. She was earth all right, cool and steady and stubborn. She was beautiful, there was no doubt about it, but he realized it was the brightness in her he was attracted to.
    She continued to look at him without blinking, one eyebrow raised.
    â€œI’m not going to lie to you,” he said, his voice dropping low and harsh. “The rest of the world, maybe, but not you. Be very sure you want an answer before you ask me a question.”
    He was her exact opposite. Their childhoods were somewhat comparable, but she’d gone one way and he another. She had retained compassion and the softer emotions, while he had had every emotion beaten out of him.
    â€œDid you kill him?” she repeated.
    â€œYes.” He wasn’t going to lie to her. He might skirt the truth, he might plot to win her over, but he wasn’t going to lie to her. “I killed him. And no, it didn’t bother me to kill him. He was evil and he would never have stopped coming after you. His legs were broken and we would have had to take him to a hospital, and you would have lost your home and family once again because of a monster. He needed killing.”
    Lexi sighed softly, chewing on her lower lip while she turned over and over in her mind what she was going to say. Gavriil was very lost, but he didn’t know it. He was so much like her, so shrouded in his past, shaped by monsters and then forced to live in a civilized world.
    Truthfully, Gavriil had never lived in a civilized world. He knew nothing about it. He’d never had the chance to stay in one place or forge a relationship with anyone else,including his brothers. There was weariness and pain in every line of his face. He was a big man, solid and muscular, yet he flowed like water over the ground. When he stopped moving, he was utterly still, like a great jungle cat. She thought of him that way. Feral.
    She looked down at her hand in his. There was a connection between them, perhaps because they shared a similar past and understood each other. Instinctively, she knew Gavriil was acting out of character with her. He wasn’t a man to sit on a porch swing and take a woman’s hand so gently. Normally he would have slipped back into the shadows and been long gone.
    He needed help. This was probably his only chance at any kind of a life. She had found peace on the farm and she’d learned how to trust a few people as well as bond with them. She was happy here. Her past hadn’t let go of her, and she knew it wouldn’t, but that hadn’t stopped the magic of the connections the six women had created together.
    She bit her lower lip, and looked down at her hand in his. “Gavriil, you do know that killing is wrong, don’t you? You know it is.”
    He frowned as if thinking over her statement. She wasn’t surprised when he shook his head. “No. I think there are mistakes, people who are twisted and evil and go through