Vampire in Atlantis

Not his business. He launched himself into the air and flew out of the cavern, soaring through the cool dusk sky to where he knew Serai waited. He could feel her, and he needed to find her. Now. And make her understand that she could never, ever leave him again until she was safe.

Then she could rip his heart out. Not before.

* * *

Oak Creek Canyon

As the sun finally sank beneath the horizon, Serai wrapped her arms around her knees and prepared to face the music.

Or face the vampire, to be exact. Although she liked the expression “face the music.” She’d quite liked “the bee’s knees,” too, but that one had fallen out of use some time ago. She realized her mind was racing around random irrelevant subjects, but she couldn’t help it. She’d spent the past couple of hours trying to contact the Emperor, worrying about what to do next, and feeling like an utter fool over her mistake about Reisen’s hand.

One thing was clear: she was done screaming like a foolish girl. It was time to gear up for battle, as her father used to say, although of course he’d spent time as an actual officer in the king’s guard, so maybe his meaning had been different. She needed to be strong. What other woman on the planet had so much knowledge of life, after all? Even though she hadn’t experienced any of it.

“I can do this,” she said firmly, and the sleeping tiger opened one bright green eye and looked at her.

Before she could explain what she could do, or even draw her next breath, Daniel was there. Just suddenly there, as if he’d dropped out of the sky, which, on reflection, she realized he had. He pulled her into his arms and held her so tightly she couldn’t breathe.

“Never again,” he demanded, his voice rough. “Never leave me again. Never run into danger when I can’t follow you. If something happened to you . . .”

Jack rolled to all four legs and snarled at Daniel, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it, since he scratched his ear with one giant paw and then ambled off, probably to find Quinn.

Serai leaned into Daniel, wanting nothing more than to curl up in his arms and hide from the rest of the world and her duty. She pretended, just for a few moments, that they were an ordinary couple who could afford the time to visit a lovely place and hold each other. Play tourist. Grow old together.

He’d never grow old, though, and she might die any minute, if they didn’t find the Emperor. She reluctantly pulled away from him.

“I’m sorry. About Reisen. I should have trusted you. I’ve been stupid, but that’s over,” she said, squaring her shoulders.

His eyes were perfectly, completely black with some suppressed emotion. Probably disgust. “Never apologize to me. Never. I should have been more careful; I should have—”

“I can feel it,” she interrupted, as another wave of pain struck, biting hard. “I can feel the Emperor. We can track it. It’s not that far away.”

Chapter 10

Daniel took Serai’s hand and headed back to the cave, which also served as the temporary headquarters of Quinn’s rebels. There would be supplies. Gear. Whatever he needed to help Serai find that damn stone and be safe. He swept a glance down her curves, now neatly attired in the same nondescript tan pants and white shirt that many of the others wore, and he couldn’t help but miss the filmy gown. But even in the plain contemporary clothing, with her glorious hair restrained in a simple braid down her back, she was obviously an Atlantean high-born lady. The way she held her head, the electric charge of restrained magic, even her graceful carriage in spite of the chunky hiking boots that now adorned her feet—nobody would mistake her for anything but aristocracy.

And all he wanted to do was remove every stitch of the new clothing and wrap himself around her until every inch of their skin was touching. Hold her. Explore her curves and learn her body. Teach her the ways of a man and a woman together, and discover for himself what it would be like to be with a woman whom his heart desired, not just his body. Even her braid tantalized him, as if begging him to release it and spread her hair out on silken sheets. He remembered fantasizing, so long ago, about her wearing nothing to his bed but the necklace he’d designed for her.

A stupid fantasy. The blacksmith and the beauty, indeed. Only in Hollywood’s version of fairy tales did a story like that work out.

“Daniel,” she murmured. “You’re holding my hand a little too tight.”

He relaxed his grip, feeling like a fool. Or the beast he’d named himself. She deserved better. Once she was safe and back in Atlantis, he was sure Conlan would find someone for her. Someone far more worthy than a vampire with blood on his hands. It was for the best.

So why did the mere thought of it make him want to kill someone?

“I don’t know you anymore,” she said. “It’s neither excuse nor apology, but I don’t know the man you’ve become, and I don’t know what violence you’re capable of doing in a moment’s anger. I had little contact with nightwalkers—my only experience, in fact, was with the master of your smithy and the fact that he didn’t eat me when we were trapped in that hole in the ground.”

“I need to hear it. All of it. What happened that day. Why you left me. Why you agreed to this stasis.” He stopped and wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close to his body in the sweet darkness of newly fallen night. “I know now is not the time, but when this is over and you’re safe, I need to hear it. I need to know.”

She looked up at him and solemnly nodded. “I know. We have much to tell before we can decide . . . many things. Soon.”

Her voice was calm and controlled, but he was a vampire and could hear her heart racing in her chest. Not from fear. He hoped it wasn’t fear. Could he dare believe it might be attraction? Even after all these years? Before he could doubt himself, he claimed what he’d wanted to steal from her since the day she first walked into his shop back in Atlantis. He leaned down and captured her lips with his own, tasting her sweetness. Sinking into her warmth.

And the world shattered.

Heat that surely would melt his flesh from his bones shot through him, and he tightened his arms around her until she could never escape. She kissed him back—at first an innocent brush of her lips and then an ardent and enthusiastic return of his passion. When her tongue hesitantly touched his own, he groaned deep in his throat and was lost. She twined her arms around his neck and tangled her hands in his hair, just as he wanted to do to hers, but he contented himself with wrapping her braid in his fist, another way to hold her, capture her, claim her. She made a tiny sound, a moan or a purr, and his cock hardened to a degree that shamed the rock surrounding them.

He pulled away for an unbearable moment, long enough to tell her, to explain his aggression. “I need you, my beautiful one. By all the gods, I need you.”

She blinked, her eyes enormous in her pale face, and tried to talk, but nothing but a whisper of sound emerged from her perfect lips. Not a protest, surely not, anything but that. Acceptance, agreement, acquiescence; he would brook nothing else.

She tried again. “Jack,” she managed to say.

Jack. Jack? Another man’s name was not what he wanted to hear from his woman. A red haze of fury washed over his vision, and he contemplated how much joy he would gain from ripping the tiger to tiny shreds. Or using his skin for a rug.

“Jack,” she repeated, but this time she was pointing. “He’s calling us, and he’s right there.”

The meaning behind her words finally sank in, and the berserker rage subsided. She didn’t want Jack. Jack was calling them. From right behind Daniel. Serai’s hands, he suddenly realized, were still twined in his hair.

His lips curved in a slow, dangerous smile, and she gasped a little. “If ever a kiss were worth waiting eleven thousand years for, that was it, my lady,” he murmured in her perfect, shell-like ear. “I will make sure it is not nearly so long a period until the next one.”

Even in the dim light from the lanterns, he could see her face flush a hot red, and she pushed against his