Heart of Atlantis

“Look,” he said, pointing.

She looked, and saw the most spectacular sight. Atlantis was rising. The water movement outside the dome, and the way they lifted up and passed first a whale and then a school of lighted fish, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Atlantis was, in fact, actually rising.

A huge cheer rang out, and everyone started hugging and laughing. Quinn was too practical and far too skeptical for that.

“Will the fractured dome survive the pressure changes as it rises, or are we in for a massive continental case of the bends?”

Alaric smiled, and it was a real smile, the one that felt like a gift to her heart.

“I can only guess what this ‘bends’ means, but the Trident’s power is far more than enough to accomplish this ascension. The rest of us can relax now.”

She threw her arms around Alaric and kissed him, right there on the temple steps, in front of the gods and everyone.

“We did it,” she said. “We actually did it!”

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” he said, and his saying so was another gift, the best present ever.

“How long will it take? Do we need to help it along?”

Alaric smiled. “I think you’ve done enough, my fierce one. It will be at least ten hours before we reach the surface. Right now, I suggest we find something to eat and get some rest.”

“And a shower,” she added.

He groaned. “I’m not sure I can take any more of imagining you in the shower.”

She grinned at him. “Who said you have to imagine it?”

They raced each other to his rooms.

Chapter 29

Alaric slammed the door to his rooms shut behind them and sealed them with the most powerful ward he knew how to create. Nobody was getting in that door. He thought about it for a moment and then added soundproofing.

Quinn stripped out of her borrowed shirt and pants on the way to the bathroom and then turned around and smiled at him, standing there in nothing but a few strategically placed scraps of lace. He almost swallowed his tongue.

She bit her lip and then grinned. “Didn’t take me for a girly underwear kind of woman, did you?”

He couldn’t answer her, because his brain and his vocal cords had both quit working. In fact, nothing on his body seemed to be functioning, since he was literally frozen in place, or at least so he thought, until his pants started pressing into his crotch.

Ah.

She bit her lip again. “Are we really going to do this? Remember the Elders.”

“The Elders can go fuck themselves,” he growled, and she started laughing.

“I have given Poseidon my resignation from the office of high priest. If, in fact, giving up my celibacy means that I have given up my magic, I will mourn it for a fraction of a second, and then I will roll over and kiss every inch of your body again.”

She smiled at him but still didn’t move. “What will you do with your life if you can’t be a magical warrior?”

“I’ll raise peacocks and roses in the palace garden,” he said, trying to jest, forcing himself not to move, when every fiber of his being cried out for him to leap across the room. “I’ve always thought I’d look good in one of those floppy hats.”

“I hope that’s all you’ve got that’s floppy,” she said, and then she unfastened her bra and dropped it to the floor, right before she stepped out of her lace bottoms.

Alaric lost all ability to focus on anything else, and he stalked her to the bathroom, stripping off his own clothes as he went.

She stepped into the shower and started adjusting dials, and clouds of steam billowed out into the room.

“This is a wonderful shower, I hope you know that.”

Words. She was making words, when she was naked. And she had that body. And those small, firm breasts. And an ass that made his mouth water. All naked, too.

“Want,” he said. “Need. Now.”

She took his hand and pulled him into the shower with her. “Okay, Tarzan. I want you, too.”

Just before he kissed her, he confessed to a horrible truth. “Quinn, this isn’t going to last long. It has been a really, really long time.”

She smiled and put her arms around him, and all he could do was feel the glory of her body against his. It wasn’t a mirage, or an illusion, or a fantasy created by his lonely mind during a long, dark night. She was really here, in his arms.

Quinn.

His body touched hers, and the feel of her was a miracle and a promise and a blessing. Skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat. He wanted, and he needed, but just for this moment, the simple touch of her silken skin calmed the beast he’d become when he thought he’d lost her.

He stroked her arms, her back, and the smooth curve of her hip, while kissing the softness of her cheek and the graceful length of her neck and pulling her closer to him. Always closer. She put her hands in his hair and pulled his head back from her shoulder so she could kiss him, and he slanted his head to take her mouth. He drove his tongue into her mouth like he wanted to drive his cock into her body, balancing on the edge of losing control, and she gasped, a tiny, hiccupping sound that inflamed him to the point of madness.

Control shattered and restraint vanished. Alaric dropped his head to her perfect, perfect breasts and sucked the rosy tip of one into his mouth. Quinn cried out and he was fiercely glad—fiercely triumphant—this perfect woman wanted him, too, and everything was absolutely and completely right with his world.

He lifted her up and set her lovely ass on the ledge that surrounded the shower, which clearly had been built with her in mind, since it put her at exactly the right height for him to bend down and take her other breast into his mouth in its turn. He had an instant of perfect clarity, where he thought that nothing in his life would ever be better than this, and it lasted until she took his hand and put it between her legs, while still kissing him.

When she moaned, he nearly came right then and there.

“I cannot wait much longer, Quinn.”

Her laugh turned into a gasp as his fingers found the secrets of her body. “Who wants you to?”

* * *

Quinn thought she might help things along, because Alaric was obviously trying to go slow and make everything wonderful for her, but he was naked in the steamy shower with her and all those hard muscles in his shoulders, chest, legs, and everywhere else on his body, glistening with water droplets, were enough to make any woman lose her mind and beg for satisfaction.

Every nerve ending was tingling; her nipples were hot and swollen from his kisses, and her body pulsed with want that was centered between her thighs. Wonder, relief, and triumph combined in a heady mix inside her until she thought her heart might pound its way out of her chest. She loved him—this crazy, courageous warrior. But now, all she needed was for him to be deep inside her that very minute or she might explode, and she was too shy to say that, so she tried some show-and-tell.

He stroked the cleft between her legs and looked at her in wonder. “You’re so hot and wet and slippery,” he said, probably not even realizing he was talking a little dirty, and the combination of sensation and stimulation sent her body rocketing up the arousal zone until she nearly came in his hand.

“Yes,” she said instead, crying out a little as his clever, clever fingers found delightful places. “More.”

He stroked her and she let her head fall, helpless against the pull of sensation. She was swimming through