Fire Bound (Sea Haven Sisters)(46)

Then she was seeing past the roles, into Casimir, where he hid that last little piece of himself. He was loyal to a fault. He’d chosen her. His angel. He thought of her that way. His angel of justice. A sword honed for a good cause. He considered himself the darkest devil, a demon forged in the fires of hell. He had that fire burning in him, never to be put out. She shook her head at the way he looked at both of them.



Still, for all that, he wanted no other woman. There was only the real woman – Giacinta Abbracciabene – in his mind. In his soul. Somehow, she had crawled in where no one else had ever been. She’d slipped past his guard and was firmly entrenched. She was his choice. He gave her his heart completely. Utterly. Absolutely. His loyalty to his brothers ran deep, a choice he’d made long ago, but his loyalty to her was all encompassing. There was no way to deny it. He couldn’t fake that.

Lissa didn’t understand the connection between them. Why he would want her. Why she would be his choice so completely. How he knew and accepted the fact. But she couldn’t deny the connection, nor could she deny the way she felt about him. Maybe it all happened too fast, but she didn’t care. She’d wanted him before the mess she was in, now she wanted him even more. Someone in her life had to be real. He saw her. He thought her extraordinary. He accepted the real Giacinta.



He’d made himself completely vulnerable to her so she refused to do less. She gave him – her. Everything she was. He was her choice. She had made that decision when she gave him her body. This was different. This was more. She made the choice to give him her heart and soul. Her loyalty. All of it. No matter how little time they had, or how much, she wouldn’t take that back.

She let him see her childhood. Luigi had been cold at first, unable to even kiss her or comfort her, but she’d put that down to the awkwardness of a man who didn’t have children or a family. His affection came over time, slow and distant, occasional hugs, with Lissa always initiating contact. She had thought she was teaching him how to show affection.



She gave him everything. The terrible loneliness. The guilt that she couldn’t find all those who had participated in killing her family. The love she had for her chosen sisters. The fear when Luigi sent her away to the United States. The careful planning of each target and her reaction after. Casimir walked away coolly, the job done. She spent hours throwing up in the bathroom. Still, her determination to bring the killers to justice was every bit as strong as his resolve to do his job to the best of his ability – and stay alive.

She gave him how she felt about him. The chemistry. The exhilaration of feeling such an attraction to him. Of having him recognize and see her. The emotions burning inside of her, fiery hot, passionate, blazing with hunger for him. Just him. Fear that it wasn’t real. Fear that like everyone else in her life, he would disappear. Fear that her sisters would find out who she was and think her a monster.



Casimir closed his eyes and let himself relax for the first time since he’d realized her uncle had to be behind the killing of her family. Lissa accepted him as he was. The real Casimir Prakenskii with his unredeemable sins. She saw into him and still had that fiery craving for him. His woman. She would take the bad with the good.

He lifted her palm to his mouth and kissed the faded mark very gently. He was a man forged in hell. There shouldn’t have been gentleness or tenderness. The fire in him alone should have precluded those emotions, yet with Lissa, they were his first emotions. He was already an addict when it came to her. The craving for getting as close to her as possible, for her taste, for her body. It was all there, but wrapped up in his deeper emotions.



She leaned into him, still holding his palm, her thumb pressed there. Her long lashes fluttered. He loved her lashes. Thick. Red gold. Feathery and turned up, surrounding deep blue, very vibrant eyes. Her hair fell around her like a curtain of fire. “Thank you for being here. I would never have suspected him and in the end, he would have killed me. You saved me.” In more ways than one.

He heard the echo of her thought just as if she’d spoken aloud to him. He was very aware of the legacy in his family, the ability to talk to each other telepathically once they were connected by that psychic thread. He hadn’t realized just how intimate that would be, her voice whispering in his mind, touching him inside, driving away every vestige of loneliness.



That soft whisper brought his body to life, his cock stirring hungrily. He lifted her off his lap and tucked her under the covers. She was exhausted mentally, emotionally and physically. “You need sleep, golubushka.”