Atlantis Unmasked Read online

  She wanted him, too. Now. She lifted her face to him and slowly, seductively, licked her lips. He stared at her mouth, his breath suddenly rasping.

  “Grace, I don’t know about this. What are you doing—”

  “I’d be doing you, if you’d shut up and kiss me,” she said, not understanding why he wouldn’t just take what she was offering. He was a man and he’d claimed her as his woman the night before. All she needed now was for him to get naked.

  The thrumming sound built up in her veins and in her nerve endings, swirling through her body and spilling over her skin until she felt it would drive her mad. She pressed her hips closer to Alexios until she felt his erection right where she needed to, except for the layers of fabric between them. She rolled her hips against him, and he groaned, a deep, guttural sound.

  She smiled a private little smile and bit his neck exactly at the curve where it met his shoulder, and his body bucked against her and then he lifted her up and off the floor. She immediately wrapped her legs around his waist and held on tight while he turned and practically ran through the courtyard to her quarters. When nobody could see them, he stopped and leaned against the wall, still holding her and breathing hard.

  She tried to kiss him but he moved his head to the side. “Poseidon’s balls, Grace, what has gotten into you? You wouldn’t even hold my hand twenty minutes ago, and now you’re ready to fuck me in front of an audience. Not that I mind,” he added, his eyes hot. “But I think something must be wrong. This is out of character for you.”

  Why was he talking? So many words. “I don’t need all these words, Alexios. Blah, blah, character, blah. Either you want me or you don’t. Make up your mind. Either fuck me, or put me down so I can find somebody who will,” she said, just before she licked her way up the side of his neck.

  His hands clenched so tightly on her ass that she was sure she was going to have bruises. “Ooh, yeah. Tighter. I think I like it rough. I don’t really know what that means, but I might like it,” she said, suddenly possessed by a wild urge to giggle. She hadn’t giggled since she was twelve years old. She started bouncing up and down on him, rhythmically bumping against his erection right where she needed to feel pressure. “Oh, yeah, that feels good. Let’s try it naked.”

  He looked up at the ceiling and spewed out a stream of Atlantean that sounded like a cross between a prayer and a curse. Then he looked down at her. “If you had any idea what a hero I am being right at this exact moment,” he gritted out. “Obviously, something in the alpha’s call is affecting you. Is there any reason why a descendant of Diana would be affected by an alpha panther?”

  She looked at him for several seconds, considering, and then she started giggling again. “Ooh, kitty cat! Maybe Ethan will want to fuck!”

  Her brain felt like it had been marinated in the finest champagne, and the bubbles were frothing their way through her body from head to toes and all the delicious parts in between. She’d never been much for drinking, after what had happened to Robbie, but she’d been drunk once or twice, and it hadn’t felt anywhere near this good.

  “What was in that coffee?” She giggled again. “That was one heck of a creamer.”

  Alexios was swearing again, though, and not interested in her coffee questions. It was too bad that he was such a fuddy-duddy, because she was suddenly, desperately interested in what was behind the zipper of his pants.

  “Alexios?”

  “No,” he said from between clenched jaws. “Ethan does not want to fuck. And even if he did, I’d have to rip his heart out. Slowly. Right now we’re going to walk far away from the nice kitty and his apparently hallucinogenic alpha call, okay?”

  Still carrying her, he headed for the open door and the sunlit courtyard.

  “Kitty!” she squealed. “What a funny word! Kitty, kitty, kitty! Ooh, how about pussy? That’s a good word, too. My pussy is hot and wet for you. Wanna fuck now?”

  “Heroic,” Alexios snapped. “He. Ro. Ic. Beyond all measure of what a man should ever have to endure. I certainly hope whoever keeps a tally of this kind of thing is seeing how many karmic points I’m racking up here.”

  A peal of laughter escaped Grace’s lips. “Uh-oh. You said rack! Rack means boobs. Do you want to see my boobs?” She squirmed in his arms, trying to raise her shirt, but he wasn’t cooperating. She squinted up at him, frustrated and perplexed.

  “Why don’t you want to see my boobs? All men want to see boobs. Is there something wrong with you? Do Atlanteans not like boobs? Oh, goddess!” She slapped a hand over her mouth and then smacked herself in the forehead, which made her start laughing again. “I’m sorry. You’re gay, aren’t you? I didn’t know. I mean, you kissed me and you said those things, but maybe you’re bi, like Michelle?”

  She leaned closer and peered into his eyes, then lowered her voice to a confidential whisper. “Is this one of your man phases? I could probably set you up with Tiny.”

  Alexios was grinding his jaws together so fiercely that it was a wonder he didn’t shatter his teeth. He put her down, hard, and her feet hit the grass with a thump, which struck her as hysterically funny. She got the giggles again and collapsed down onto the ground and started rolling around in the brittle winter grass. “Hey, I’ve never done it in grass,” she finally managed to say. “Why don’t you take your pants off and come down here?”

  Before he could say anything, though, another feeling raced through her. A decidedly un-fun feeling. She abruptly sat up and unzipped her jacket, then threw it onto the ground. “Too hot,” she muttered, suddenly flushed and a little nauseous.

  A lot nauseous.

  “Oopsie,” she mumbled, and then she leaned over and was violently sick onto the grass. She kept retching until it felt like everything she’d eaten in the past three days had been purged, and then finally it was over. She pushed up and away from the stinking mess on the ground and, wobbling a little, turned to look for Alexios. He was standing right next to her, holding a wet cloth, and he didn’t look good, either.

  Guess Atlanteans were sympathy pukers.

  She took the cloth and wiped her mouth. “Thank you,” she mumbled. “I don’t know why I’m suddenly so sick. I felt fine when I woke up other than a little soreness—”

  She stopped dead as a look of total incredulity swept across his face.

  “Are you kidding?” He took a step back, and then another. “Are you telling me that you don’t know what happened in the past ten minutes?”

  She started to say of course she knew, but then she realized there was an odd gray fuzziness around her recent memory. Something about the prisoner and Ethan, and champagne bubbles—in her brain? That couldn’t be right—and then she was here on the ground being sick.

  Alexios closed his eyes and ranted under his breath for a full minute. Then he pierced her with a heated stare and folded his arms across his chest. “Nothing? Nothing about begging me to fuck you in the corridor? Nothing about asking me if I’m gay or bisexual—I’m not, by the way, and I damn well deserve a medal for resisting you—and asking if I wanted you to set me up with Tiny?”

  She felt the heat rising into her face. He had to be making that up. And yet—Oh. Goddess. The memories started to filter back.

  She wanted to be sick again.

  Chapter 20

  Alexios tried to keep an eye on Grace, after her bouts of craziness and vomiting, but she was making it damn difficult. She wouldn’t meet his eye, for one thing, and after she’d come back from washing her face and brushing her teeth, she kept lurking around the corners of rooms as if she couldn’t stand for anyone else to see her, either. She was acting humiliated and defeated, and it was starting to piss him off.

  Bastien and Kat kept their distance, though. They were having a very intense discussion in low, heated voices, and Alexios figured he was better off not knowing what that was about.

  Women.

  Although, to be fair, he blamed this one entirely on Ethan. So of course the alpha chose that moment to
walk out into the courtyard, a very subdued Eddie trailing behind him. Ethan gestured to Eddie to move to the center of the loose circle the five of them made.

  “Tell them,” Ethan commanded. “Tell them what you told me.”

  Eddie mumbled something unintelligible.

  “Speak up,” Ethan’s voice sliced across the distance between himself and the prisoner. “We know about the enthrallment. Tell the rest.”

  Eddie nodded and started again. “It was Prevacek. Vonos’s head guy here in Florida. He runs the mansion. Security, mostly, calls himself a fixer. He’s a vamp, but people say he has special powers that most vampires don’t. I’ve never seen none of that myself. Or maybe I have, if this enthrall thing you’re telling me is true.” He snuck a glance at Grace. “I sure wouldn’t have hurt a human on my own part.”

  She looked supremely unconvinced, but remained silent.

  “What about Vonos?” Eddie had all of Alexios’s attention. He needed a lead on the Vampire’s Bane, and maybe the shifter knew something about it. “Have you seen him? Have you been in his mansion? Tell us what you know.”

  Eddie’s gaze went to Ethan, who gave him the go-ahead gesture with his hand. “It’s Prevacek,” he repeated. “He’s the one who’s been ordering the raids. He thought this was a theater group, and it pissed him off—”

  His eyes went first to Kat and then to Grace. “Begging your pardon, ma’am.”

  “Really? You’re going to beg my pardon for bad language after you tried to rip my chest open last night?” Grace didn’t bother to disguise her hostility.

  The man’s face flushed a dull brick red. “I’m so sorry for that. We were just supposed to scare you. I don’t—I don’t remember anything about a fight. Or hurting you. I’m so sorry, ma’am.”

  “Right,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t remember anything about—” Her voice trailed off, and she glanced at Alexios then looked back down at the ground. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Just tell us what you have to say.”

  Eddie looked at Ethan again, who nodded. “Well, Prevacek found out that your theater group was operating in the fort after they’d found the proof that vamps had been massacred here by the Spaniards. He was powerful angry. Wanted us to mess you up a little. Well,” he said hastily, backing away from Grace, “not you, personally, but your stuff. Your battle reenactor gear or your props or whatever.”

  “Why would he do that?” Bastien asked. “Why would vampires care about a theater troupe? It’s especially ironic, since vampires once performed to great renown in theaters across Europe.”

  Eddie shrugged. “I don’t know. We think it was sort of a symbolic thing, you know? Prevacek planned to offer it up to Vonos like, hey, I’m loyal and all.”

  “I would suggest,” Alexios said, “that we don’t bother asking this one about motivations. Vonos is one of the craftiest and most brilliant generals and politicians of vampire kind. He’s sure to surround himself with top-notch people, both vampires and human minions. Asking this one to speculate on their motivations is like asking a mouse to tell you what the hawk was thinking.”

  Tiny, who’d been keeping a lookout on the roof, headed down the stairs, talking into his phone. “Sam’s here,” he said, his eyes going from Grace to Alexios. Whatever he saw didn’t make him happy, if the scowl was anything to judge by.

  She nodded. “Thank you, Tiny. Thank you so much. And please thank your men for me. Will you take this . . . Eddie . . . with you outside for a little while, so we can talk?”

  Tiny smiled at her, obviously besotted like every other damn man who got anywhere near her. It gave Alexios a cramp in his gut.

  Or maybe that was gas.

  Certainly couldn’t be the way his balls had swollen into melons and then shriveled back into walnuts all in the course of the past hour.

  After Tiny left the courtyard with Eddie, Alexios decided the time had come to put it all out on the table. He rounded on Ethan. “What in the nine hells did you do to her?”

  “Do to whom, water boy? And you might want to watch that tone with me,” Ethan said, narrowing his eyes.

  “Alexios, leave it alone,” Grace ordered sharply.

  “I’ll be godsdamned if I will. Whatever he did with that alpha dominance thing affected you badly,” he shot back at her. Then, doomed to honesty by some freak of genetics, he shrugged. “Okay, it wasn’t all bad, at least for me. But it made you drunk, and then it made you sick. I want to make sure that this can’t randomly happen to you anytime you find yourself near an alpha shifter.”

  “And this is your business because?” Grace left the question hanging in the air, but her voice made the threat plain.

  Well, wasn’t that just too freaking bad. “Everything you do is my business. Get used to it,” he snapped.

  Ethan studied Grace for a moment, then turned to Kat, ignoring Grace’s sputtered protests. “Is it true? What happened?”

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Alexios was very close to the edge of seriously pissed off.

  “No, I’m not calling you a liar, you idiot,” Ethan snapped. “It’s just that Kat is a little more qualified to describe exactly what reaction Grace had.”

  “I’m standing right here,” Grace said, clenching her hands into fists.

  “They get like this,” Bastien said to her. “Don’t take it personally. I’d never survive if I did.”

  Kat swung her head around to stare at Bastien, her long tawny hair flying in the sunshine. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  “I think you know,” Bastien replied calmly. “If I weren’t so secure in my manhood, all this shifter ritual and hierarchy and alpha miertus might make me feel a little threatened.”

  Alexios whistled. “Did you really just say ‘secure in my manhood’? Oh, boy. Wait till I tell Justice. You will never live that down.”

  “I don’t think you have room to talk,” Kat pointed out. “ ‘Blah, blah, character, blah’?”

  Grace flushed a dark red and started to say something, but Kat cut her off. “Shifters have hearing that’s far superior to that of humans,” she said, not unkindly. “It’s true,” she said, this time to Ethan. “She was as drunk on the alpha call as cubs at their first Change.”

  Grace made a strange strangled sound and then blew out a deep breath. “Stop right there,” she said carefully. “I am a descendant of Diana. If you think for one moment—”

  Alexios was watching Grace, so at first he didn’t understand why she stopped speaking in midsentence. Then he followed her startled gaze. Ethan had dropped down and was kneeling, head bowed, facing Grace.

  “What in the—”

  “The panther was Diana’s special animal and consort,” Ethan said, raising his head to stare at Grace reverently. “Our pride has been waiting for more than a century to find another descendant of Diana to honor.”

  “Freaking Poseidon’s freaking balls. Here we freaking go again,” Alexios muttered. Then he crossed the lawn until he stood between Ethan and Grace, facing the shifter.

  “You,” he said, pointing at Ethan’s fat head. “You are marrying Bastien’s sister. You have no right to talk about consorts and honoring with my . . . with Grace. Got it?”

  Ethan got a strange look on his face and scrambled to his feet. “No, no, it’s not like that. Strictly an honorary consort kind of thing.”

  Bastien shook his head as he stepped closer. “No, I don’t think my sister is going to go along with the consort concept, honorary or not. I think I might have to kill you. Nothing personal, you understand.”

  “You can try,” Ethan said amiably. “Good luck with that.”

  Just then, Sam walked into the courtyard with his dog and stopped, staring at the three men. “What in the blazing blue hell is going on around here?”

  Alexios was inexplicably glad to see the grumpy old man’s face. But Grace needed to feel that she was in charge. She should fill Sam in on current events. He turned to ask her to do that, but she was gone.
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  Kat was gone, too.

  Just . . . gone.

  Alexios whirled around, frantically scanning the courtyard, but Sam hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, rocked back on his heels, and started laughing. “If you could see the look on your face, boy. She and that lovely ranger woman walked by me a couple of minutes ago. Said something about a pissing match going on out here.”

  Alexios sighed. He should be used to it by now. As long as he expected the unexpected, he could at least pretend to understand her. “And the injured?”

  “Well, we’ve got two fairly badly wounded who are staying with the doc until their families can come get them, two who are primed and ready to get revenge, and the rest are inside packing up their duffels as fast as they can, so they can get the hell out of here.”