Sea Haven 02 - Spirit Bound

around his neck, burying her face in his neck. “I’ve got you, Judith,” he murmured, raining kisses over her face as he raced out of the room. “ Ya tebyA lyublyU . In case you didn’t understand me, I love you. I love you with all my heart.”
    “I can’t believe you came for me.”
    “Always, Judith. I wasn’t lying when I told you that you’re everything to me. I meant every word.” He turned his head to look into the dark room with the strange flickering purple lights, a little diminished now. “I have to get him out of there.”
    She clutched his arm. “Don’t go back in there, Stefan. It’s too dangerous.”
    “We can’t leave him in there. I’ll bring him out. My defenses are strong. I’ll get him, angel, and nothing will prevent me coming back to you.”
    Judith reluctantly allowed him to step away from her. She slid down the wall, pressing trembling fingers to her mouth. She believed him. There was nothing evil inside of Stefan for those dark emotions to devour. His life had been shaped by the circumstances of his childhood, but he had not been born, nor had he developed, twisted.
    He came running out of the room, carrying Jean-Claude over his shoulder. He deposited him gently on the floor beside Judith, removing his gun with that sleight of hand so familiar to her. Jean-Claude’s hair was streaked white, his eyes sunken and his skin wrinkled and mottled with dark spots. His eyes appeared vacant, staring straight ahead, pupils dilated in a kind of horror. Judith passed her hand in front of Jean-Claude’s face. He didn’t blink.
    Stefan squeezed her hand and raced back into the studio to rip down the curtains and throw open the French doors.
    “Don’t! What if . . .”
    He shook his head. “The emotions have nearly completely spun themselves out. I’m going to air out the room. There’s nothing we can do for him right now. He’ll need a doctor and I’m not certain that will do much good.”
    “The microchip is in the first cell I did for the kaleidoscope. Don’t look in there, just grab that first cell and we can open it. I thought my brother had put it there. It’s been floating in heavy mineral oil this entire time. I doubt you’ll be able to get much off of it after five years in oil.” She frowned. “But I suppose it might be possible, although not the best odds.”
    She knelt up beside Jean-Claude and wiped at the saliva dribbling down his chin.
    “I don’t have to get the information off it, just return it to Russia,” Stefan said. He pocketed the cell after he’d opened up the room. “As long as no other country can steal the information, I don’t care whether it’s destroyed or not.” He helped her all the way to her feet.
    Judith sagged against him, rubbing her face over his steadily beating heart. “Thanks for coming back for me even when I was angry with you and told you to go.”
    He wrapped his arm around her and dropped a kiss on her upturned face. “Next time, angel, there’s no breathing room for you when we have an argument. We’re making a rule right now that you stay in my sight at all times until it’s resolved.”
    Very gently he picked up Jean-Claude as if he weighed no more than a child. “We’ll have to call an ambulance. We’ll have to say we found him wandering in the yard. He’s unrecognizable so if you say you don’t know who he is, it will make sense. They’ll identify him through his fingerprints and take him to a hospital.”
    “Stefan.” Judith held her breath until he looked down at her.
    She drank him in, a tall Russian, with blue-green eyes and scars. He was so gentle with Jean-Claude it turned her heart over. Hers. She gave him a shaky smile. “I love you.”
    His smile reached his eyes. “I know that better than you do.”

21
     
    “YOU’RE certain you want to do this?” Judith whispered to Stefan. She tightened her fingers around his and glanced over her shoulders at her sisters and Lev. “You don’t have to do this for me. The civil ceremony we had together is enough. I don’t mind being Mrs. Thomas Vincent. I’ll keep my name Henderson for my work, because my name’s established, but seriously, you don’t have to take such a chance just to prove something to me.”
    Stefan settled his arm around her shoulders. “I have always wanted to give you my name and this is a way for us to be married as Stefan Prakenskii and Judith Henderson. It is legal in the eyes of both our countries, although as I don’t