Heart of Atlantis

“Children?”

“We of Atlantis are his children,” Alaric said. “Since you are aknasha, you’re clearly descended from Atlantean ancestors, so technically you’re his to protect, too.”

“No thanks,” she said firmly. “I’ve seen what he calls protection. Letting Riley die, branding her, the way he treats you—I don’t want anything to do with any of it.”

“If you accept me, you will have no choice,” he said, taking her shoulders in his hands and turning her to face him. “Even if I were to leave the temple, I could never completely escape Poseidon. Would it be so bad a bargain?”

She shook her head, helpless to know how to answer. Her heart cried out for her to answer no, but her head urged caution.

“I need to kiss you again,” he said.

She backed away, shaking her head. “I can’t. Not now. Please. Just . . . just take me on the tour.”

His face hardened from her rejection, but he nodded and took her hand again, as if he needed to feel her touch. As they left the room and entered a corridor, he gestured to a dull black wooden door.

“Through that door and down those stairs is where I faced the Rite of Oblivion. I eventually survived it and became high priest,” he said with an obviously false nonchalance.

Whatever lurked down those stairs carried bleak and painful memories for him that were so powerful she caught faint traces of the emotions from around the edges of his mental shield. She knew she should ask—they needed honesty and acceptance between them—but she could not.

Would not.

She had her own secrets to keep. And after she’d miscalculated so badly and spent more than a year imprisoned by the vampire she’d targeted, a ritual named for blessed forgetfulness had a certain appeal.

In any event, she had no reserves of strength left. Not enough to face entering a room where something called the Rite of Oblivion took place. Not tonight.

His eyes darkened, and her throat tightened at the realization that she was failing him through her silence. She had to ask at least one question; discover the answer she most needed to know.

“What would have happened if you’d failed the test?”

“I would be dead. You never would have met me. Perhaps an entire set of problems would have been avoided,” he said bleakly.

“Never say that. Never. No matter what happens between us, now or in the future, the world has been a better place for having you in it, Alaric.” Her throat felt raw from allowing the starkly sincere words to escape. Emotion, raw and vulnerable, burned inside her until she had to fight tears yet again. Twice in one night. She was falling apart. Maybe it was better for everyone that her days as a rebel were over.

He pulled her into his arms and rested his cheek on the top of her head. “You honor and humble me with your honesty, mi amara. I can do no other than return it. You must know by now that you are everything in the world to me. Please stay with me tonight. Just for a little while longer. Please.”

And, for all of her defiance earlier, she couldn’t refuse him. Not then, maybe not ever. She’d stay strong and stay out of his bed, but she couldn’t refuse to hold him, even just for a little while.

* * *

As Quinn showered, Alaric paced through his austere suite of rooms, seeing the place with new eyes. With her eyes. Everything was gray and hard-edged and bleak. No softness, no color. It was like a portrait of the inside of his soul. No wonder she’d flinched when she first walked in. He vowed to change everything. He’d add color. Texture. Sensual fabrics. Art on the walls.

Maybe she wanted jewels or baubles or presents. He didn’t think so, but Ven always told them women loved trinkets, and Erin certainly wore enough jewelry. All those rings. But wait, those were tools and symbols of her magic. Did that count?

He stopped dead on the edge of the floor and banged his head against the wall. He, Alaric, high priest to Poseidon, most feared man in Atlantis, had turned into a blithering idiot. All because there was a naked woman in his bathroom.

No, not a naked woman. The naked woman. The perfect woman. The one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

When the door finally opened, he was pretending to read a book, which he promptly dropped on his foot as soon as he saw her. Her short, dark hair was wet and combed back and away from her perfect face, and she was wrapped in his white silk robe. It was far too big for her, even with the sleeves rolled up, but she looked like a fallen angel; all porcelain skin and huge, dark eyes.

He wanted to run.

He wanted to shout.

He wanted to worship at her feet.

“I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed this,” she said nervously. “I washed my clothes out in the sink, so as soon as they dry out—”

“Keep it,” he said hoarsely, fighting hard to keep from leaping across the room and pouncing on her like a lust-crazed youngling. “It looks far better on you than it ever did on me.”

She plucked at a sleeve. “I feel like this is a huge mistake, being here, and wearing this, and—”

“Nothing could be further from the truth. Everything in my life that doesn’t have you in it is a mistake,” he replied with total sincerity. “I am willing to spend eternity telling you that.”

He couldn’t bear being apart from her for one more second, so he slowly crossed the room, giving her time to say no. “I need to touch you, Quinn. I need to taste you and feel your skin against mine. I need to know that this conflagration inside me isn’t only one-sided.”

She lifted her chin defiantly, but she didn’t back away.

She didn’t back away.

He sent a quick prayer of thanks to any and all gods who may have ever existed, simply because she didn’t back away.

“It’s not only one-sided, and you know it,” she said softly, and she may have said something else, at least her beautiful lips formed words, but then he was kissing her and didn’t hear anything but the rush of desire beating underneath his skin.

He devoured her lips and caught her tongue with his and kissed her so deeply he was unsure where he ended and she began. He was clumsy and frantic, and he was afraid that she would reject him for either or both of those things, but she gently touched his face and slowed down the kiss before breaking away and taking a deep breath.

“I’m right here,” she whispered. “You don’t have to make up for hundreds of years in the next five minutes.”

His laughter held the edge of madness. “Do you promise? You won’t disappear? Because I can’t imagine how I’d ever survive if you did.”

She took his face in her hands. “No sex. Not yet, maybe not ever, until we figure this out. But for heaven’s sake, kiss me, already.”

She didn’t need to ask him again. He held her as tightly as he could and kissed her as if the world would end if he ever stopped. The earth could have cracked open and devoured them, and he wouldn’t have cared, because he was finally kissing her. In fact, the room felt like it was shaking underneath his feet from the sheer rush of hunger desperate to be fulfilled. By all the gods, she was his, and he’d be damned to the lowest of the nine hells if he’d ever, ever let her go.

Quinn trembled in his arms, and suddenly his hand was under the silk of the robe and touching the silk of her breast. His body shook with the force of his need, and he feared he’d go off like an untried boy, right there in his pants, simply from the touch of her skin.

“Please touch me,” she moaned. “Oh, this is dangerous, but I don’t even care.”

He didn’t care, either, not about rules or oaths or consequences. His heart raced, and his blood burned like liquid electricity in his veins, and the sound of pounding battered at him until he realized it was actual pounding . . . on the door.

On the godsdamned door.

“Go away, or I will destroy you where you stand,” he roared.