"Gavriil."

Her voice was tentative, as if she wanted to say something but was shy about it. She looked shy, faint color stealing beneath her skin. She put her thumbnail in between her teeth and bit down.

Gavriil gently tugged on her wrist until she released the thumbnail. "There isn't anything you can't talk to me about. It's just us. You and me. Say it."

"I know you're in pain. I can see it. I was told that you'd been stabbed several times and that the wounds were extremely severe."

"It was a long time ago," he said, keeping his tone neutral, not understanding why she was having such a difficult time coming out with whatever she had to say.

"I know. And sometimes when a wound is too old, there's nothing I can do about it, but once in a while, I can do some good."

He tilted his head to one side and studied her face. She was really embarrassed now. Her face was red and she definitely avoided his gaze. He caught her chin, forcing her eyes up to his face.

"Are you telling me you think you can do something to reduce the pain? When every doctor I've gone to says I have to live with it and take drugs to get by?" There was no way he could take drugs or drink. That would get him killed eventually.

She nodded. "I hope I can. I can sometimes feel where the pain is coming from and unblock or redirect the path of the nerve. For you to have this much pain, it has to be more than chronic inflammation."

"Mostly nerve damage," he admitted.

"I really think I could help at least I'd like to try."

"What's making you so nervous?" He didn't let go of her chin or allow her gaze to shift from his.

She touched the tip of her tongue to her lower lip. Her lashes swept down to veil her eyes for a moment, and then he felt her take a breath as if making up her mind.

"I have to see the damage to your body. Put my hands on you. I mean like your bare skin."

She was red from her head to her toes. He was certain if he could see her scalp even that would be red.

"I'm not making a pass at you. I can't do that sort of thing... I just want to help you. I mean..." Her thumbnail came back up toward her mouth.

He caught her hand to prevent the movement. "You're trying to say you're not going to jump me the minute you have me naked on the bed."

He'd never teased anyone, not since his parents had been murdered, but he couldn't possibly help himself. He thought he'd forgotten how it was done, but she was priceless trying to convince him she wasn't attempting to seduce him.

Lexi cleared her throat twice. "Yes. That's exactly what I'm trying to say."

"Why do you think you can't do that sort of thing?" He kept the amusement out of his voice. He could ensure she would be quite pleased to do that sort of thing with him. "I'm very good, just in case you were considering it." He couldn't help teasing.

She stared at him in horror and then burst out laughing. "Very funny. I wasn't wondering."

He was fairly certain that was the strict truth, but she would be now that he'd planted the thought. Sex clearly was a taboo subject, and he couldn't blame her. Her introduction had been a nightmare.

"I'll concede that you're just going to... um... inspect my body for completely altruistic reasons. What do you want me to do?"

"I'll go get the herbs I need and some needles and incense and you can take a shower and get under the sheets. They're clean. I don't sleep on the bed, but I do the laundry every week."

He shook his head. "Do you have any idea how bizarre that is? You wash the sheets once a week but you don't sleep on the bed?"

"My sisters usually come over on Saturday, so it's just simpler not to have to explain. They'd get all worried and want me to go back to the counselor, and I've made as much peace with the situation as I'll ever be able to. I don't want to keep talking about it." Lexi folded back the thick down comforter to reveal bamboo sheets.

Gavriil didn't know what to say. He was going to let her try to work her magic on him, but he knew it wouldn't work. Every doctor he'd gone to and there had been many in various countries had told him there was no hope. His body was too damaged. But still... She'd worked up the courage to tell him she might be able to help even though she was horribly embarrassed that she had to ask him to let her see his body.

"The towels are on the rack. There's soap and shampoo, and I keep extra toothbrushes in the drawer. I'm always losing them," Lexi said.

He raised his eyebrow for an explanation. She flashed a small, enigmatic smile, shrugged and left the room. He took a long, deep breath. This had been the most he'd talked with someone in a very long time. It was the first time he'd spoken with someone he considered "good."

He undressed slowly, stashing weapons around the room and under the pillow. He hung his coat in the closet, ensuring the weapons and ammunition in the loops inside the coat didn't show. He folded his clothes neatly and set them on the floor beside the bed with a gun under his shirt. Another knife and gun were stashed inside his boots, positioned on the other side of the bed.

He measured the distance across the bed, certain he could reach either side with his long arms from the center of the mattress. Before stepping into the shower, he took careful stock of the room, the exits and entrances, the visual from outside from every conceivable spot in the room. He observed everything in the room that could be used as a weapon, including the pen and paper she had on top of her bureau.

Only when he was certain he knew every inch of the room, including where floorboards creaked, did he enter the bathroom. There was an Asian feeling to the bathroom as well. The shower stall was spacious, as was the tub. He liked that he could see anything coming at him and wondered if Lexi had drawn up the layout of the room with that in mind.

As he allowed the hot water to pour down over him, he faced the door, left slightly open to ensure he would be aware the moment anyone entered the bedroom. His favorite holdout gun, plastic and small, was always inches from his fingers. Three throwing knives were just in reach, laid out on top of the towel.

He realized the shower was one of the places he always felt vulnerable. He often attacked his target in a bathroom. Most people were busy relaxing there, thinking they had complete privacy. Certainly Lexi would feel vulnerable in a shower, probably whenever she was in the bathroom. He knew immediately why she lost her toothbrushes she didn't brush her teeth there. She probably wandered around outside where she could see anything or anyone coming near her home.

Caine had attacked her in the bathroom, in the shower. He wanted her terrorized, afraid of him coming from any direction. He took her safety from her. He'd abducted her from her home and then went back and murdered her family years later. He sent the message that nowhere was safe and no one could keep her safe.

"Gavriil? I'm coming in to lay everything out," Lexi called, warning him.

He considered walking out naked, but after his revelations, and he was certain he was right, he shut off the water, managed a cursory drying and wrapped a towel around his hips. He slipped the gun into the small of his back, tucking it into the towel, and left the throwing knives.

"I'm going to warn you, solnyshko moya, the front of me isn't a pretty sight." He had never given a damn what he looked like. The web of scars was horrendous, and that meant working out to stretch the scar tissue so he could move fast and easy when he needed to. He told himself it still didn't matter, but he hesitated, just for one moment. No one else would have ever noticed, but he did.

He kept his features expressionless and breezed into the room, watching her closely as she turned toward him. Her gaze jumped to his chest and she let out a small gasp. His gut tightened. Immediately she came toward him, her face a mask of concern, her eyes soft. The pads of her fingers went to the raised scars just to the right of his heart.

"The blade nicked your heart. It had to have. How in the world did you survive this? No one could survive such a wound."

He nearly grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand down. Her touch sent streaks of fire racing through his bloodstream. His cock stirred in spite of the rigid control he imposed on himself, and that never happened. Never. Yet now it had happened twice.

She indicated the bed, without seeming to notice he was a man. That didn't do anything for his ego. He'd been afraid of alarming her, and she hadn't even glanced down. Not once. He knew because he didn't take his eyes from her. He'd made up his mind to keep everything between them absolutely platonic, but perversely, when she didn't look at him, he wanted nothing else.

"Woman," he said, exasperated with himself. "You're enough to drive a man to drink."

She blinked and looked up at his face, into his eyes. "I'm sorry. It's just that I'm so shocked that you survived. Get on the bed and just relax. It will take a few minutes."

He shook his head. If someone had told him he'd be lying naked on a bed for a woman to "examine" his old injuries, he would have told them they were insane. He found himself obediently following her instructions, pulling up the sheet and tossing the towel aside, taking time to slide the gun under the other pillow.

He watched her moving around the room, lighting candles and incense, and found her soothing. There was a bowl of herbs on the nightstand. He had a sense of the surreal, a dreamworld that didn't exist, one where his woman enjoyed caring for him.

Lexi returned to the bed, a look of concentration on her face. Her hand brushed back the hair on his forehead, the lightest of gestures, barely there, but it could have been a burning brand pressing her straight through skin and muscle to bone. She was taking him over, and he was just lying there, allowing her to do it.

He forced himself not to react, staying very still while she climbed up on the bed, her gaze on his chest. He was a mass of scars and he'd never really thought about it before. Front and back, there was hardly a place that had normal skin. She knelt close to his body, bending over him.

The first touch of her hands nearly had him coming off the bed in alarm. Her eyes were closed, but her hands lay against his skin lightly, palms down. Every muscle in his body tightened. Every cell responded to her touch. The feel of her skin against his skin took his breath away. He'd felt a woman's hand on his body many times, strokes and caresses meant to inflame him, to arouse him, yet not a single one had ever affected him the way her touch did.

She wasn't trying to be sensual. Her lashes were long and dark against her fair skin. Her face was a mask of concentration, not sensuality, yet his body reacted naturally to her touch, coming alive under the pads of her fingers and the stroke of her palms. His heart beat too fast. His breath came in ragged, labored gasps. If she looked at him, she'd see his features carved with harsh sensuality, when she felt none of that terrible arousal threatening to consume him.

He tried to breathe away the sensation. It was absurd how much pleasure her touch generated when she wasn't trying to arouse him. It was illogical and irrational how much he wanted her when such things were completely foreign to his nature. He was always logical, unemotional and detached. She turned his well-ordered world upside down.

The energy Lexi generated was so intense heat flashed through his entire body as her palms and fingers slipped over his chest. She stopped in places and the most adorable little frown would appear, then smooth out when she found whatever she was looking for and she would continue on.

Her hands moved over the heavy muscles of his chest, covering each of the three stab wounds there with the ridges of scars and then began to move lower. Gavriil gritted his teeth. This was worse than the training when he'd been a boy and they'd sent women to arouse him, doing all sorts of things to his body. He'd been beaten if he reacted or didn't react depending on what he was told to do. The lesson had been all about control and discipline, and he had that or did, until Lexi.

There was no controlling his body's reaction when her hands slid lower over the defined muscles of his abdomen and the four stab wounds surrounded by scar tissue. If her eyes hadn't been closed and her concentration hadn't been so complete, she would have run screaming from the room.

His cock raged at him, hard and thick and long, coming alive and making urgent, savage demands. He swore between his teeth, his breath hissing out. That part of his anatomy had become a separate entity, and was totally out of control. His hips moved subtly, beneath the sheet, trying to ease the painful ache between his legs.

"Shush, I'm almost done," she whispered, without opening her eyes. "I think I've got this. I'll have to do a small bit of work at a time, but the worst damage is around your heart."

She moved her hands back up to the largest area of scar tissue. "He must have stabbed you and twisted the knife as he brought it out of you."

He remembered that moment. The blade going into his body, the pain and near paralysis that had almost cost him his life. He had such control of his body, of his heart and lungs, that he'd nearly shut them down to keep from bleeding out. He couldn't actually repair his heart himself, but he'd managed to shore it up until he got to a hospital.

Lexi opened her eyes. "I'm going to try to open up the pathways that have been broken. Just try to relax. I'll just work on this one, right near your heart. The first session probably won't make a huge difference, but you should feel it."

She worked the acupuncture needles like a pro. He'd been in China several times over the years and had done his own studies there. He recognized good work when he saw and felt it. "Where did you learn this?"

For a few minutes he didn't think she'd answer him. She placed the needles carefully. He felt the burn of each one sizzling along a nerve ending that had dead-ended long ago, leaving him with so much damage the pain never stopped. Right then, it seemed, the fire burned hot right through the blockage.

"There was a woman in the compound, a doctor from China. Her American husband had become part of the cult and she couldn't leave. She tried to help me. We spent a great deal of time together. She taught me what she knew about herbs and healing. I knew how to read of course, we had to read the bible every day, but math and other subjects weren't considered important for someone like me..."

"What does that mean, someone like you?"

Again there was silence. She flicked at another needle. He felt a splash of something wet on his chest and his gaze jumped from the needle to her face.

"Lexi, don't. Don't cry. He's not worth your tears. Whatever he told you, whatever he called you, none of that is true."

"I know. I do know. It's just a little close right now." She forced her head up and gave him a watery smile. "You'll need to rest. The needles will make you sleepy. I'll be back in about forty minutes to remove them. Don't shoot me."

"I wouldn't consider it. Strangling is so much more personal."

That got a real smile out of her.

"While you're drifting off to sleep, please think about staying here. Your brothers have found peace here. I did too. I think you would, Gavriil, if you gave it a chance. None of us here would have chosen what happened to us, but we can change our futures. We can choose how we want to live and with whom."

"Sweetheart, no one's going to give me the chance to stay here. I'll be lucky if I get half an hour's rest, and I can't say as I blame them."

She turned abruptly and came back to the bed. "What do you mean?"

"Do you really think your sisters and my brothers are going to leave you with the wolf? They think of you as a little lamb, and they know what I am. Right at this moment, they're deciding how best to handle throwing me out without hurting my feelings or getting hurt." He gave a small, humorless laugh. "They really should have said their piece before they left me alone with you."

She smiled. That reaction was the last one he expected, because it was a genuine smile with love softening her eyes. "Aren't they wonderful? All of them? See, Gavriil, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It doesn't matter how the world around me might be falling apart or whether or not I'm having a bad day, they care. They always care. It's nice to have that, and you need it."

He wasn't sure what he needed. He only knew that when he was away from her, he had no feelings. He felt no emotion. He had no idea why the Prakenskii connection had worked on a woman like her, or why when he was in her company, he was a better person, a human rather than a machine. Yet with her, his emotions seemed to be out of control and nearly overwhelming.

"Stay here. Stay with me, in this house. If you need to be alone, I can make do somewhere else." She looked around her bedroom. "They built me a house because they love me and they felt I needed a home." She indicated the window, the farm beyond it. "That's home. That and everyone who lives here on this farm."

"Lexi, you have no idea what you're offering." Was she insane? Did she not see him? Could she really be so blind that even when he told her what he'd done, she didn't understand who and what he was?

"Of course I do. When you look at me, Gavriil, what do you see? A child?"

Hell no, he didn't see a child, he almost wished he did. They wouldn't be having this conversation and she'd be safe. "I see a beautiful woman with compassion in her heart, too much maybe."

She smiled, and this time it was all for him. When she smiled like that he was fairly certain she could shatter him if this thing between them went much further.

"I knew you saw more than the rest of the world." She seemed very pleased that he could see into her when he was appalled that she could see him so clearly.

"It was in your eyes when you looked at me. I know I'm broken. I know that. But that's all they see. They don't see that I'm happy. I'm okay with being broken. I have severe panic attacks and I hate them, but every day I get up and I go to work and I deal with whatever comes my way."

"You're the youngest, naturally they'd be protective. You're all protective of Rikki because she's different."

"We're protective of one another for various reasons, even the men. But I'm not nearly as fragile as everyone thinks I am. I choose not to go into town, not because I can't, I just don't enjoy it. If necessary, I go. The point here is, no one can say who stays in my home and who goes. I choose to allow you to stay. I want you to at least give yourself a chance, even if it's just for a day, to experience something different. You don't have to worry about going to sleep. I'll sit on the porch and watch over things until you wake up."

Good God, she was actually offering to guard him. Gavriil felt as if she was bringing him to his knees. What in the hell was he supposed to do with a woman like Lexi? He didn't have softer emotions. She needed care. He was going to stay because he had to stay, not because it was the right thing. He could offer her protection. No one would ever harm her with him around. That much he could give her.

"I'll stay for a little while whether or not the others like it. Caine felt the need to confess his sins before he died. He admitted to me that there are several cult members who were aware that you were here, on the farm."

She went rigid, flinging her hand out to catch the doorframe for support. "We have children here. Airiana's four children. Their parents were murdered so they could be used as sex slaves. One sister, Nicia's twin, was killed. Nicia and Benito were both..." she broke off.

"They'll be safe. Look at me, Lexi. See who I am." He waited until her eyes met his. He let her see the cold-blooded killer in him. She didn't move, didn't run. She looked at him as if he was an angel, not a devil. "I give you my word I won't let anything happen to you or those children. I don't give my word lightly. No one will get through me to any of you."

She looked into his eyes for a long time and the tension slowly eased out of her. She nodded her head. "Go to sleep for a little while, Gavriil. I'll be just outside on the porch. No one will get past me to you."

He heard the honesty and determination in her voice and wanted to weep.

4.

"Tell me why you're so upset, Levi," Rikki demanded. She pushed a hand through her thick, sun-kissed dark blond hair, clearly agitated.

"I don't know what you mean," Levi hedged. Since they'd been together he'd never once deceived his wife, and yet his older brother had been on the property a few hours and he was already dodging her question.

Rikki shot him a look, the one that said he'd better answer truthfully. She might be autistic, but she was highly intelligent and she knew her husband very well. He would never have invited someone to their home without first talking it over with her and certainly not to spend the night.

"You didn't want Gavriil staying with Lexi. I need to know why," Rikki insisted. "I don't like that you're keeping something from me, especially when I can plainly see that you're worried about Lexi."

Levi glanced at Thomas. Judith sat beside him on the railing. Thomas folded his arms across his chest. He looked formidable. That wasn't going to help them now. It was too late. Gavriil had made that abundantly clear.

"I don't know how to explain it" Levi admitted. "Gavriil's my brother."

"So are Thomas and Max, but you didn't have this kind of reaction with them," Judith pointed out.