Atlantis Redeemed Page 13

  “I’m the only wild animal you need to worry about, now or ever,” he said in his deep voice, and though she knew he was playing to their expected audience, something in his tone made her wonder just how much of the possessiveness he was demonstrating really was an act.

  The last thing she needed was him thinking he could take over her life. She had a job and a goal to get back to when this mission was done. She was going to expose every single one of the monsters who were behind this horrible plot to enthrall humanity, and she had a feeling Litton and his cronies were only the tip of the iceberg.

  Right on cue, a matching pair of no-neck, muscle-bound thugs stepped in front of them as they sauntered toward the exit.

  “Sorry, sir, but we’re asking guests to remain in the hotel tonight. Just a precaution, you understand,” Tweedle Dumb said.

  “Yeah. Precautions. Don’t want anybody to gobble you up, do ya?” Tweedle Dumber chimed in, leering at her boobs.

  Brennan’s hand shot out and he gripped Dumber by the throat, lifting him so far up in the air that the man’s toes barely scraped the floor. “I am inclined to consider your lascivious actions to be an offense to my lady. What do you say to that?”

  Dumber said nothing, which wasn’t surprising since Brennan was choking him. The man’s face turned a mottled red and he gasped out a few strangled noises while ineffectually trying to pull Brennan’s hand away from his neck.

  His partner went for a gun under his jacket, and Brennan raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think you want to do that?”

  The thug froze, considering his options. Thinking was apparently not in his job description.

  Tiernan put a hand on Brennan’s arm. “Stop. Let him go. I don’t need you to defend my honor, and you’re causing quite a scene.”

  Brennan gave another squeeze, but released the man just as his face turned an interesting shade of deep purple.

  “I’ll kill you,” the man managed to growl between gasping in deep breaths.

  “You can try,” Brennan returned calmly. “Now, if we’re done with this, my date and I are going for a short walk. Detain us further at your own risk, not to mention Dr. Litton might be very unhappy with you if his prize billionaire were to walk out on this whole enterprise.”

  Dumb and Dumber gaped at each other, clearly at a loss to calculate this new variable. Tiernan didn’t wait for them to figure it out, especially when the one with the gun grabbed his radio and toggled it on. She grabbed Brennan by the hand and pulled him toward the glass doors. At first it was like trying to pull a mountain, but finally, the testosterone-driven staring match with the goons apparently over, he followed her. When they were outside, she didn’t stop but dropped his hand and strode rapidly down the sidewalk toward the road, having no idea in what direction they were headed but not really caring. He caught up in seconds and shot a sidelong glance at her as she kept hiking along, still moving at top speed.

  “Are you angry with me?” he finally ventured.

  “Gee, Sherlock, what gave you that idea?” She muttered some of the worst words she knew under her breath. “Just because you endanger the mission and risk blowing our cover all over some stupid guy staring at my boobs? Why would I be angry?”

  “I should apologize for defending your honor?” Brennan viciously kicked a fallen tree limb out of his way. “Let them act like degenerate scum while I do nothing? And then what? Perhaps lie down and have a fit of the vapors while they put their hands on you?”

  She clamped her lips shut to fight the grin threatening to break free, and then stopped and pivoted to face him. “Okay, so many things. First, nobody says ‘fit of the vapors.’ Try to join this century. Second, overreact much? They were leering. They were thugs, with probably five brain cells to share between them, and they were copping a visual feel. Big deal. I get worse every time I walk past a construction site in Boston.”

  He folded his arms across that broad chest of his, which made his muscles tighten and strain the fabric of his shirt, and for a moment she lost track of what she’d been saying. The man was flat-out gorgeous. But then she looked up, and the mutinous expression on his face brought her back to the point, fast.

  “You know, you look like a two-year-old who needs juice and a nap,” she pointed out, but then she came to a startling realization. “In fact, that’s probably what a lot of this is about, isn’t this? Everybody else learns to control their emotions as a child, but you’ve had no opportunity to do that. Or whatever you did learn as a child was wiped out in the past couple of thousand years. So you’re at the ‘I wanna’ and ‘no, no, no’ stage of emotional development.”

  She threw up her arms and started walking again. “Great. I needed stealth for undercover work and I get Rambo with a definite need for a time-out chair.”

  He clamped a hand on her arm and pulled her around, none too gently, to face him. “Oh, no. You cannot make proclamations like that and then just walk away from me.”

  She got right back in his face. Nobody was going to tell her what she could or couldn’t do, ancient warrior or not. “Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, you’re going the wrong way.”

  She glanced around, feeling a little foolish. “Oh.”

  “And for another, I need to kiss you right now,” he said, pulling her against her body. “Do you have any complaints about that?”

  “I’m sure I’ll think of—”

  He kissed her, just a quick press of his lips to hers, cutting off whatever she’d been about to say. “You’ll think of what?”

  Tiernan sighed, then put her arms around his neck. “Nothing. But you’re so getting juice and a nap after this, mister.”

  He laughed and circled her waist with his strong arms. “May I have a cookie with that?”

  When she opened her mouth to reply, he took swift advantage with a searing, deep kiss. The forest floor melted away from under her feet. Nothing remained but a swirling tornado of emotion, and she and Brennan stood in the middle, clinging to each other as a drowning sailor clings to a piece of driftwood.

  His tongue swept into her mouth and claimed it—claimed her—for his own, and he pulled her so tightly against his body that she couldn’t miss the hard bulge of his erection pulsing against her exactly where she needed him. She moaned, or maybe he did, and she tunneled her fingers through the silky long waves of his hair and pulled his face even closer to deepen the kiss.

  He ravaged her mouth, kissing her with such intensity and skill that she believed her bones were turning to liquid silver in his arms. She was helpless to do anything but cling to him and tighten her hold, devouring him as if the kiss itself were the only thing keeping her from shattering into pieces and flying off into the storm of passion.

  She pulled back a little, trying to catch her breath and regain a little balance, but he kissed his way down the side of her neck and then oh-so-gently kissed the exact spot where the vampire had bitten her earlier.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered, as he gently cupped her breast with one large, elegant hand.

  “I am torturing myself,” he said, breathing hard, “since there is no way I will allow myself to take you against the side of one of these trees, even though everything in me screams to do nothing else. I am having fantasies of lifting this sweater and covering your lush, ripe breasts with my hands and covering your lush, ripe nipples with my mouth. Then I want to kneel before you and peel these jeans down to your ankles and lick the sweetness from your lush, ripe body until you come in my mouth.”

  She was breathing pretty hard herself by the time he was done painting that visual picture. “That’s a lot of lush and ripe,” she whispered.

  “I need you, Tiernan. Two thousand years of need,” he growled. He lifted her completely off the ground, and she instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her over to one of the trees he’d just mentioned, more than a dozen yards away from the road and deep in the night shadows cast by the other trees. Even the moonlight di
dn’t penetrate to where they stood. “Let me do this. Just for a few short minutes. Let me give you pleasure.”

  He stopped when they reached the tree, and ever so gently, he pressed her back against the cold bark. “Please, please, please,” he mumbled against her mouth before taking her lips in another searing, passionate kiss.

  Exquisite waves of ecstasy sizzled through her body just from the touch of his mouth on hers, and she knew she should remember all the reasons why this was a bad idea, but all she could think of was yes, and—after all—two thousand years of need, and so she said it.

  “How can a girl resist that? Yes, yes, yes,” she whispered, urgent, needing his hands on her. Needing his mouth on her.

  He roared out a sound of triumph or possession or maybe it was just an Atlantean lovemaking thing, but she didn’t care because seconds later he was lifting her sweater and pushing her bra cups to the side, and before the first chill could even spark goose bumps on her skin, his hot mouth covered one nipple and his hot hand covered the other. He made a humming sound against her breast and it tingled, but before she could react he put his lips around her nipple and sucked so hard she cried out.

  “Brennan, Brennan, oh, God, yes.” She tightened her fingers in his hair, and he took it for the encouragement it was, apparently, because he began rhythmically sucking that nipple and flicking it with periodic swipes of his tongue. She squirmed against him, the hot, liquid desire pooling between her thighs, opening and readying her for him. She wanted, she needed, and oh, yes, he pushed the big, hard bulge of his erection against her and began pressing against her in the same rhythm that his mouth used on her.

  A flash fire of sensation raced through her veins, and she was so close to coming, just from his mouth on her breast. So close, oh, how could she be so aroused so fast, and then he bit down gently on her nipple and his fingers pinched her other nipple, hard, at the same time, and she cried out.

  The heat, oh, the heat, the sheer driving, pounding force of her need was climbing through her and demanding more and more. More of the incredible sensation.

  More of him.

  Tiernan was nearly crazed with the wanting, it was so powerful. Never, ever had she felt anything even close to this before. Desperate, she pulled at his head until he released her nipple with a wet, sucking pop that she felt all the way down to her toes.

  He looked up at her and his eyes were glowing emerald flames. “Tell me,” he demanded. “Tell me what you want.”

  “I want you,” was all she could manage. “I want you now, I need you, oh, please oh, please.”

  He carefully released her, until her feet were on the ground again, and she had to lean back against the tree to hold herself up since her wobbly knees were not cooperating. Then he stared at her, his gaze sweeping from her flushed face and swollen lips to her breasts that were still bare, her hard nipples so swollen that every breath of the cold wind touching them built her arousal even further. He gently pulled her sweater down.

  “So you don’t get a chill,” he said tenderly, and she was bewildered, trying to make sense of his words. Was he stopping?

  “What? What? But I thought we—”

  “Oh, we definitely are,” he said, grinning wolfishly, and even in the dark she could see the gleam of his teeth. He dropped to his knees on the leaves at her feet and in seconds had stripped her jeans and panties down to her ankles. Before she could take a breath, or think, or move, he caught her hips in his hands and put his mouth on her.

  At the first touch of his hot, clever, skillful tongue on her clitoris, she cried out again, and then she couldn’t scream, couldn’t even catch her breath as he licked her and sucked her and swirled his tongue around her until she was almost crying with pleasure.

  “Please, please, please, please,” she begged, repeating the word until it was meaningless sound, just a wordless plea, and then it didn’t matter, she couldn’t talk, because he put his fingers inside her and drove them in and out, in and out, and began sucking with the same rhythm and pressure he’d used on her nipple. Mere seconds later, the pressure and pleasure and passion rocketed through her body and exploded out the top of her head and she screamed again, calling out his name, as the most powerful orgasm she’d ever had in her life took her up and over and into the universe.

  She lost consciousness or at least went fuzzy for a few seconds, and when she blinked her way back, he was cradling her in his arms, gently kissing her forehead. She flushed when she realized her pants were hanging down around her ankles, and her bra was still unfastened under her sweater.

  “I—” She had to stop for a calming breath. “I have no words for how amazing that was. But I need to get dressed.”

  He laughed. “I am very happy to have pleased you so well,” he said, and there was plenty of smug male satisfaction in his voice.

  She had to grin. After all, he deserved to feel satisfied. Wow. “The scent of wilderness is going to be an aphrodisiac to me for the rest of my life,” she said, laughing a little herself.

  He kissed her again and bent to retrieve her pants and underwear before she could do it, stopping midway to kiss her stomach. When he’d pulled her pants halfway up, he paused and swiped his tongue across her in a last long, savoring lick. She gasped and clutched the tree behind her as the burst of sensation flashed through her sensitized skin yet again.

  “I needed one final taste of you to sustain me until the moment I can do this again, more properly and thoroughly,” he said, smiling up at her.

  “If you’re any more thorough, I’ll pass out.”

  He laughed again and then pulled her jeans up over her hips, leaving the fastening to her. Since she was looking down, she noticed the huge bulge in his pants, which was even more pronounced than it had been earlier, and a trace of guilt surfaced.

  “You didn’t, um . . . We didn’t do anything for you,” she whispered, feeling her cheeks flaming.

  “Now isn’t the time, but trust me when I say you can have no idea of how much you did for me.” His voice was incredibly deep and husky, and it resonated through her, making her shiver in anticipation of what exactly “more properly and thoroughly” might involve.

  She finished arranging her clothes and glanced up at him, fascinated by the way his eyes were glowing with magic, or power, or maybe Atlanteans got glowy eyes when they were turned on. “Maybe later, we could get to know each other more? See where this might take us when we’re not hiding from evil scientists and power-hungry vamps?”

  He pulled her close for a quick hug, then froze, his body against her going ramrod straight.

  “Brennan—”

  “Shh,” he whispered in her ear. “I believe we’re about to have company, and it’s nobody good.”

  Chapter 14

  Brennan heard the leaves rustling, but it was their only warning before the vamps were on top of them, flowing out of the trees like dark ribbons of liquid night. There were only three, but they were armed with daggers, which was unusual for vamps. Generally they counted wholly on their preternatural strength and their fangs.

  This wasn’t a good development.

  “Stay behind me,” he ordered Tiernan, who responded with her usual meek submission.

  “Like hell.” She bent and grabbed a small fallen tree branch and snapped it in half. “Two stakes for the price of one, what do you think about that, boys?”

  The vampires arranged themselves in a three-point semicircle around them, and one of them bowed deeply before speaking. “You mistake our intent, Miss Baum. We’re part of the security force for the conference, and we merely wish to be sure you make it safely back to the hotel. There were vicious animal attacks near here tonight.”

  “We’re wounded that you would so quickly assume we intend you any harm,” said another, fake innocence oozing from his oily tone. “Just because we’re vampires doesn’t make us bad people. You, as a reporter, should know that.”

  “It’s not the vampire part that bothers us,” Brennan said. “It�
��s the security guard part. We are not at all in the mood for a second unpleasant encounter with overzealous security.”

  “Exactly,” Tiernan added, flashing a big smile. “Some of my best friends are vampires.”

  The vamp farthest away from them made a strange gurgling sound, and it took a moment for Brennan to realize that it was laughter. “Some of our best friends are humans, little snack.”

  “Just a guess, but I don’t think calling a human ‘little snack’ is usually going to win you points, buddy,” Tiernan said, pointing one of her newly made stakes at him. “You wouldn’t like it if I called you ‘bloodsucker,’ would you?”

  The vamp who’d bowed to them earlier hissed in a breath. “You know, this is not going as smoothly as I’d hoped, and now I’m bored. Either come with us now or we will take action you will not enjoy, I promise you.”

  Brennan unsheathed his daggers and snarled at them, dark urges to stab and cut and kill swarming through him. “There isn’t much about you that I enjoy so far, so I don’t see that we’d be any worse off. We’re not going anywhere with you.”

  “Perhaps not willingly,” the vampire countered. He slashed his hand in a signal to his friends and all three of them started forward.

  Brennan was ready for them. He shoved Tiernan behind him so that her back was against the tree, a more defensible position. Then, daggers whirling, he faced the three. “These have silver tips. Is that an injury you are prepared to suffer for whatever they’re paying you?”

  The leader hissed but froze in place. Silver wounds did not heal easily for vampires and could even be fatal. Not something your average human billionaire businessman might be expected to know, but Brennan wasn’t too concerned about protecting his cover story at that particular moment.

  “We heard about the animal attacks,” Tiernan said. “We promise to come back soon. We just wanted a little alone time.” She laughed, and it was light and flirtatious—almost a giggle. Brennan clenched his jaw tight to keep his mouth from falling open.