Heart of Atlantis

Alaric didn’t know what to expect, given the location and security, but it turned out to be an artist’s studio. Finished and unfinished paintings and sculptures filled the enormous space. The tools of an artist’s trade littered every flat surface, paints and brushes crowding mallets, knives, chisels, and tools he did not recognize.

Quinn walked over to a large canvas propped against the far wall, near a bank of enormous windows, as the door automatically swung shut behind them and a metallic click announced that the security system was again engaged.

“This is amazing,” she said, her voice hushed. “Almost makes me believe in hope again.”

Alaric had no time for art, especially now. His first impulse was to blast a hole in the painting so his woman would turn around and look at him, instead of at a lifeless bit of canvas and paint. He took a steadying breath and shook his head.

Bad enough to be insane. He wouldn’t add childish to his list of flaws.

He walked over to join her, and she reached for his hand. The gesture went a long way toward calming the beast that had been raging inside him since he’d watched her be taken.

It was a deceptively simple canvas. A child and an old woman sitting companionably on a park bench, feeding the birds. But the details shone through to provide a spectacular sort of wonder to the mundane scene.

“The puppy chewing on her shoe. I don’t know why, I’m not really a puppies and kittens kind of girl, but there’s a hopefulness there, that a woman so old would get a puppy and believe she’d live to see it grow into a dog,” Quinn said softly, her face pale and strained with the weight of the horrors she kept imprisoned in her mind.

“You’re going to have to tell me,” he said gently, when what he wanted to do was rage and storm and break things. “What happened with Ptolemy, and what happened with that vampire? I need to know, and I think, even more than that, you need to tell it.”

She inhaled deeply, blew it out, and then finally turned to face him. “That’s just it. Nothing happened. I mean, plenty happened—he made me kill someone, Alaric. He made me kill the secretary-general of the United Nations on live TV.”

Tears shimmered in her lovely dark eyes, but she impatiently scrubbed them away with the back of her hands. “This dress—I need to get out of it. Now. Let me go take a long hot shower and find some of Lauren’s clothes, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

She ran up the metal spiral staircase as if she couldn’t bear to wear the offending garment a moment longer, and Alaric followed right behind her, because the last thing he planned to do for the foreseeable future was let her out of his sight. He slowed, however, as he realized that the shower itself posed a problem, because the gods themselves knew he had no idea where he’d get the control to keep from following her in.

By the time he reached the top of the stairs, the dress was wadded up in a metal trash receptacle and he could hear the sound of running water from behind a closed door. He scanned the high-ceilinged, clearly feminine room for obvious dangers, sent his magic searching for any that weren’t obvious, and then settled down on the floor in front of the door to wait for her, energy spheres in hand against any possible threat.

He finally took a moment to try to communicate again with Christophe and Atlantis, as much as a means of distracting himself from the image of Quinn’s wet, soapy, naked body as anything else.

We are well, but I don’t know for how long. Conlan is losing his mind, since we don’t know where the portal took the women and children, and it won’t answer our call. We cannot evacuate anyone. But the magic is holding, and somehow Serai realized what was happening, from wherever in the world she and Daniel are, and she’s reinforcing our magic, too. Between that and what you did, we are holding strong for now, but you need to find that gem and get it back here.

Alaric told him some of what had been happening, but left out anything to do with Quinn. There was no need for sharing that information. Or the news of the tsunami he’d almost used to destroy the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Poseidon helped shore up our defenses, Christophe. He said he’s locked in a battle with the gods of other pantheons to determine the fate of the world, but we don’t have time to worry about that until the current crisis is resolved.

Well, fix it, Christophe returned. That’s what you do, right? I’m just here temporarily, so don’t get any ideas about leaving the priesthood to me. No how, no way.

Alaric cut off the conversation without responding. He had no patience with Christophe’s carefree ways. Not now, when every fiber of his being was demanding he cut ties to his own responsibilities and flee with Quinn before anything worse could happen. Or perhaps his lack of patience was a mask for an emotion far darker—a manifestation of his own bitter envy.

He could never do it—doom his people to extinction without even trying to save them. Not even for Quinn. But it was surprising how enticing the idea was to him; he, who hadn’t been tempted to swerve in his duty even once in so many centuries, suddenly wished fervently to throw it all over and live a simple life with the woman he could finally admit he loved.

Tempting brought him back to thoughts of Quinn in the shower, and his pants suddenly no longer fit properly. Yes, the body knew what it wanted to do, and the parts definitely worked, so there were two concerns alleviated about the possibility of ending hundreds of years of celibacy. The sound of the running water stopped, and he groaned at the lovely mental image of Quinn drying off her body. Driven by a primal hunger that was far older than Atlantis itself, he climbed to his feet, shoved his dagger in its sheath, and put his hand on the doorknob.

There were some things a man—even a warrior—should not have to endure.

* * *

Quinn dressed in an old pair of jeans and a sweater of Lauren’s and opened the door to find Alaric on the other side, hand on the doorknob, an expression of such intent hunger on his face that she almost backed up a step.

“I cannot bear to be apart from you a moment longer,” he said, his voice rough.

She nodded, feeling the exact same way, but suddenly apprehensive about what would happen next. None of their problems had gone away; Alaric was still bound to a terrible promise to a cruel god. And yet here they were in another bedroom, and she had the feeling there would be no malfunctioning Trident to save them this time.

She wrapped her arms around his waist, leaned her head against his muscular chest, and stood there, content to feel his arms around her. Content with the silence.

“I never get this,” she finally said. “To allow myself to depend on someone else’s strength. I had Jack, of course, but we didn’t lean on each other like this.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Alaric said, a tinge of a growl in his voice.

“I’ve been in charge for so long I’ve forgotten how to let someone else be strong, just for a moment’s respite. A break in the action.” She wanted to do what she’d never done before—surrender. To Alaric’s strength and protection. A purely feminine impulse that was so shocking to her, she who’d lived her life as a fighter. He made her want to love and protect and be cherished in return.

Forbidden longings teased the surface of her skin, and something hard and cold in her heart unfurled like one of the fantastical Atlantean flowers. It was too much, too quick, and her emotions threatened to sweep her under like a bit of driftwood caught in a storm-tossed ocean.

That her mind presented her with metaphors of the sea made her smile, press her face into his shirt, and breathe deeply of the scent of sea and salt and sun that was so uniquely Alaric.

“And yet you are so quick to defend me and so fierce about it,” Alaric murmured, stroking her back. “The warriors and I fight together, but never in all the years of my existence has someone tried to protect me the way you have. I do not deserve it, and I am humbled by it.”

She pressed even closer to him and suddenly noticed the very hard bulge pressing against her abdomen. Her cheeks flamed hot, and she tried to move back, but he tightened his arms.

“No. Not yet. I cannot bear to let you go until I can truly believe you are safe.”

He lifted her into his arms and moved to the bed, where he sat carefully on the edge with her in his lap and told her everything that had happened with Poseidon and also what Christophe had reported.

She gave him a reproachful look when he told her about the tsunami, but she didn’t say a word. Perhaps she was beyond words. He needed to know, though. She owed him that.

“Now it’s your turn. I want to know everything, Quinn. Can you bear to tell it?”