Atlantis Betrayed

Why lease a car when you could enthrall a human into giving it to you?

She made sure not to leave her fingerprints anywhere, slammed the door shut, and returned to Sean and Christophe. “Nothing.”

“In either of these two, either,” Christophe reported.

Sean shook his head, strain showing clearly on his face. “Not this one, either.”

“Now. We leave now,” Christophe said.

“I’m driving,” Fiona announced. “Sean, you rest in the back.”

Sean tried to protest, but Christophe opened the door to the backseat and pointed, and Sean half climbed, half fell into the car, the reaction from the battle finally hitting him. Christophe closed the door and turned to Fiona.

“I still need to go to those pubs and find out what in the hells is going on,” Christophe said.

“Not without me.”

“It’s not like I will allow you to drive home unaccompanied, either. Not after that attack.” He tilted her chin up with his finger and kissed her.

“I’m not a fan of the word ‘allow,’ but I’ll admit the more the merrier,” she said.

“Please, then. Please get in your vehicle now and drive home as quickly as you can, in a straight line.”

She opened the door and paused. “Wait. Where are you going to be?”

He pointed up, then leapt into the air and, right in front of her eyes, transformed into a sparkling cloud of mist that soared into the air over the car and hovered there.

Please drive now, she heard in her head, and she didn’t have any energy left to debate the possibility or impossibility of telepathic conversation. She just slanted her body into the car, turned the key in the ignition, and drove.

Chapter 21

Campbell Manor

Christophe waited, watching her every minute, but the shaking didn’t start for a while. First, she’d seen Sean safely into Hopkins’s care. Declan was sleeping, but she’d gone to his room and checked on him even after Hopkins reassured her. Denal sat in a chair by Declan’s window, daggers resting on his lap. He rose when they entered the room, but Christophe had already communicated with him so he knew there was no threat.

She leaned over and kissed her brother’s forehead, smoothing a strand of hair away, and Christophe was struck by the realization that she must have done the same so many times as the boy grew up. Declan didn’t wake, but he smiled in his sleep.

Fiona raised a hand to Declan but didn’t speak; she just turned and left the room. Christophe followed her, desiring with every fiber of his being that he could protect her from what came next, but helpless to understand how. If only Conlan were here, or Bastien. They were so much better with women and emotion.

He had never so desperately wished he knew how to comfort another.

She made it to her room and then to the shower, peeling her clothes and wig off along the way and letting them fall to the floor in a trail of discarded disguise. Moving robotically, stumbling as she walked, Fiona turned the water on to full heat and then climbed into the billowing steam in her glass-enclosed shower.

That’s when the shaking finally began.

Full-body shudders wracked her body as she leaned against the wall, and the glass trembled with the force of her pain. Christophe stripped out of his own clothes in an instant and entered the shower, pulling her into his arms.

“Shh, mi amara. Shh. It’s over now. Let it out, let it all out, but it’s over now. It’s all over. Shh. I’m right here for you.” He smoothed her hair away from her face, over and over, as she sobbed as if her heart were shattering in her chest.

“He could have died. He could have died. Did I rescue him from his murderous father only to kill him myself? He’s only twenty-two years old, Christophe, and he could have died.” A fresh wave of grief and reaction took her, and he could do nothing but hold her, rocking back and forth, until it subsided a little and she could listen to him.

Listen to reason.

“You can’t take the blame for that attack. They said they wanted me to stop asking about Vanquish. They didn’t even know who you were, in that wig and makeup. Me. Not you. It is I who bear the blame.”

She lifted her face to him, her eyes reddened with pain and fury. “No. No. Let’s put the blame where it belongs. On those bastards who stole the sword, and murdered the guards. On those vampires who attacked us.”

“I’m wondering if they’re the same.”

“If they already have the sword, why would they care about us?”

“It might have been misdirection. But we don’t need to worry about this now. Now you should rest.”

“No,” she said again. “Now I want you inside me. I want to feel something other than horror and fear and rage.” She lifted her arms and put them around his neck. “Make me feel, Christophe.”

And so he did. He lifted her in his arms and joined his body to hers, taking her there in the steaming heat. He directed the channels of water to swirl around her and caress her even as he held her and murmured nonsense words into her ear and thrust steadily home. She cried a little as she held him and kissed him, and the shudders of reaction gently, gradually, turned to trembling of a different sort entirely.

Their joining was not about passion and possession but a declaration of need; the simple need to experience warmth and light. To face their own mortality without doing so alone. He’d wanted sex after battle before, on many occasions. It was a purely chemical reaction to the adrenaline charge of a fight.

This was utterly, completely, different. This was seeking comfort and the welcome of home. He was fiercely proud to be the one she needed, and as if in reaction to the thought, the barrier between her soul and his began to open, surrounding them with heat and light. Her soul danced around her, a shifting dream of blues. But the lovely colors were darkened; tinged with black shadows and the somber gray of grief. It caught him off guard and he ceased to move within her.

She lifted her head from his shoulder, her eyes dazed and unfocused, and he decided to delay the choice. The time wasn’t right—he’d once thought the time would never be right—for the soul-meld. He used every ounce of focus and discipline he’d ever learned to shut the doorway to his soul. To keep her own at bay.

The icy chill of loss swept through him, and he wondered if the miraculous gift of the soul-meld, once offered and rejected, would ever be offered again. But Fiona lifted her lips to his and he sought refuge in her warmth and her passion, and he achieved his release as she cried out her own climax. When he finally released her, they quickly finished their shower, dried in huge towels, and he carried her to bed, pulling her into his arms and tucking the coverlets around them.

He closed his eyes and concentrated, setting magical wards around the room so none could enter it without his admittance, and then he kissed her.

“Rest now, beautiful one. Tomorrow we will figure this all out.” He kissed her again, and then, wrapped around her warm, still-trembling body, he watched her for a very long time, until she fell into a troubled sleep. When her steady breathing finally told him she’d succumbed to her exhaustion, he lay there, content simply to hold her, until dawn brushed its golden fingers against her windows. Then, at last, he, too, fell asleep.

* * *

Fiona woke up enveloped in warmth and the sensation of perfect safety for the first time since she’d taken up the role of the Scarlet Ninja. She blinked, disoriented by the large, muscular arm resting across her naked breasts, and then memory flooded back and her face and other, more intimate, parts of her warmed. Christophe. The shower. The way she’d practically begged him to make love to her.

Well. They were beyond petty embarrassments now. She was not a girl on a blind date. She was a grown woman. He was most definitely all man. Together, they’d battled vampires and survived. Anyway, he’d been more than willing.

“The thoughts running through your mind must be fascinating, if the expressions crossing your face in such