Atlantis Unmasked Read online

“I’m not exactly used to lying around naked with men,” she admitted. “I guess I’m a little nervous.”

  Alexios felt the rage try to build in his nerve endings again. “I have a confession to make, and I am not proud of it. The emotion to which I was referring is jealousy, and it would be much easier for me if you would save any talk of other men until I’m not lying next to you with your taste on my lips.”

  The hot blush rose in her cheeks again, but she nodded. “Okay, I get it. It’s a little hard for me, too, if I start thinking about how many women you’ve been with over the course of all those centuries. Speaking of which, we need to have the safe-sex talk.” She blushed even harder.

  “I can neither catch nor transmit any human illness, and pregnancy is not a concern unless a warrior has made a petition to Poseidon for permission,” he gently assured her.

  “Oh. Well. That’s good. I, um, well, now that we have that out of the way, can we go back to the kissing?” She rolled onto her side facing him and grinned, and he was glad to see her shyness fading and his Grace return. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his lips, and he opened his mouth to her, delighting when her tongue hesitantly swept inside to claim his mouth.

  But the heat of her touch drove the hunger, and hunger drove need, until his cock, which had softened a little while they talked, pulsed urgently with the demand that he be inside her. Inside her hot wetness. Plunging in and out of her in the same rhythm his fingers had earlier known in her body. Fucking her until she came, hard, clamping around his cock.

  He changed the kiss, deepened it, drove his own tongue into her mouth. Angled his head to take even more, raised onto his side, and gently pushed her onto her back so that her body was open to him and he was free to explore it with his hand while he kissed her.

  He cupped each of her breasts and rubbed his thumb back and forth against each hardened nipple, still kissing her, still catching her tiny moans in his mouth. Then his hand moved lower, to her silky belly, and he splayed his fingers there, where his child would grow if he had petitioned Poseidon for such a gift.

  The thought was oddly appealing, and that in itself was a little frightening. Never before had he even considered the idea of fathering a child. But the combination of making love to Grace and, perhaps, seeing Prince Aidan was working on him subconsciously. But just then Grace lifted her hand to his back and gently ran the tips of her short nails down his skin, sending shivers through him. His thoughts shifted from wistful longing to an urgent, driving hunger, and he needed to have her.

  He needed to have her now.

  Grace wanted him to stop thinking. Now. He’d been toying with her long enough, and really, a girl could only take so much. She let her hand drop to that lovely, perfect butt of his and she squeezed. He jerked against her, and she finally, finally moved her hand to the one place she knew would jolt him into action. She ran her fingers down the length of his penis and then closed her hand around it, and he bucked against her and moaned so hard it nearly made her let go.

  Nearly.

  “I need you now,” she said, and then she pulled him over her, all that lovely, long, lean muscle in his legs moving him exactly to where she needed him, nestled in between her own legs, his arms propping him up so that he didn’t rest his weight on her.

  Still treating her as if she were fragile, then.

  “What if I want you to lose control?” she asked huskily. “What if I want to make you crazy?”

  He stared into her eyes, his own going almost completely black, except for that blue-green flame in the center.

  “Also, what does mi amara mean? And why do your eyes get that blue-green flame in the middle?” she blurted out.

  He blinked, then dropped his forehead to hers and sighed, then laughed a little. “Always the unexpected with you, mi amara. My beloved.”

  It was her turn to blink. “Oh. Really?” Her lungs tightened and suddenly it was hard to breathe. “I’m your beloved?”

  “Let me demonstrate,” he whispered, that evil grin back on his beautiful, fallen-angel face. Then he positioned himself so that the head of his penis was pushing directly at her center and, with one quick, hard thrust, he drove so far into her that she gasped and arched up against him.

  “Mine, mi amara,” he said, his face suddenly harshly somber. “You are my beloved, and you are mine, and I will never, ever, let you be harmed again.”

  He started thrusting, slowly and steadily, so that every word was punctuated by the sound and feel of their flesh meeting. His penis was so large, and she was so out of practice, that she felt a wonderful, horrible stretching that shivered on the precipice between ultimate pleasure and an edge of pain. When he drove into her, his chest brushed against the tips of her breasts, and the sensation was almost unbearable in its exquisite sensitivity. She felt the orgasm building, building, swirling through her nerves and veins and skin until she thought she might die if he didn’t make her come soon.

  “Please,” she said again, shamelessly, not caring that she was begging. “Please.”

  He began to thrust harder and faster, his jaw clenched against some inner struggle, and then he shifted his weight to one arm and put his other hand between them and touched, then rubbed her exactly where she needed to feel him touching her. The pressure combined with the force of his body driving into her, and she called out his name, and then she screamed as she fell into the sun.

  Alexios felt every sensation as Grace’s body tightened around his own, as she arched into him, meeting his every thrust with her own passion. When she exploded, her entire body shuddered in wave after wave as she clamped around his cock so hard that his own release burst out of him, and he needed to catch himself on his arms so that he wouldn’t fall forward onto her, crushing her.

  He captured her lips with his own and kissed her, swallowing her cries with his mouth, and then she convulsed around him yet again and he soared through mundane reality and into the very fabric of being, and he knew—and was both exalted and terrified by the knowledge—that it was the soul-meld.

  Finally complete, finally whole, the darkness of his soul yearned toward her light and the two collided in a shock wave of volcanic proportions, enough to sink Atlantis beneath the sea yet again, enough to lift Alexios from the deepest trench of loneliness and despair.

  She was here and she was his and he would never, ever let her go.

  He fell onto his side, pulling her with him, and wrapped his arms and legs around her, his cock still inside her, and he rode the wave of sensation—the purest, most beautiful cloud of hope and light and . . . dare he even think it?

  Love.

  As he rode the avalanche of light and sound that was the symphony of two souls finding their destiny, he opened his heart and mind and soul and filled them with her light. Filled them with her beauty.

  Finally, finally knew love.

  He would never let her go.

  It was hours or eons later, time another irrelevancy in the universe they’d built between the two of them, and he felt her body slowly relax as she loosened her grip on his shoulders and her trembling finally slowed and stopped.

  “Alexios?” she murmured sleepily, and he kissed her hair and her forehead and her lovely, elegant nose.

  “Yes, mi amara?”

  “Is it always like that for you?”

  He laughed, startled as always by the way her mind worked. Then he kissed her gently on the lips. “No, my love, my beautiful Grace. It has never, ever been like that for me before. But it always will be from now on,” he promised.

  “Oh,” she mumbled. “I’m not sure I can take it.”

  He laughed and drew the blankets around her, and then he held her, content to feel the beating of her heart, for a very long time after she fell asleep.

  “Always,” he whispered, a promise and a vow. Then he carefully slipped from her arms so that he didn’t disturb her when he left to go join the patrol.

  He wasn’t about to let his guard down now. Not when he had
so very much to protect.

  Chapter 23

  Grace woke, climbing slowly up out of a delicious dream, and immediately turned to find Alexios. But she was alone. Instantly, all of her old fears swamped her with their cold, dank forebodings.

  Why would he stay? What could she be to him, after all, but a blip on the long centuries of his life? Maybe the soul-meld had frightened him, and he’d decided to back off.

  Maybe—but then she heard footsteps and relief and something deeper and sharper cut into her with an almost physical pain. How had she gotten to the place where his absence caused her such pain?

  How would she stand it when he was gone?

  But now wasn’t the time. For now, she would take Michelle’s advice and live in the moment. For all the years that he was gone she would have this treasure trove of memories to horde and cherish.

  Alexios came through her doorway, holding mugs of coffee and looking like a man who had been well plea sured the night before. He was all rumpled, sleepy-eyed male satisfaction as he surveyed her from head to toe. She let the blanket fall from one bare shoulder and glanced up at him from beneath her lashes, trying on an unfamiliar seductiveness.

  His eyes went hot as his gaze went straight for the bared expanse of skin, and she shrugged her shoulders a little so the blanket fell even further, exposing a precarious amount of her breasts. He smiled, but his knuckles on the mugs turned white.

  “If you’re trying to make sure I don’t let you out of bed today, you’re doing a very good job,” he said, his voice husky.

  “Who, me?” she said, batting her eyelashes at him. Then she raised her arms and stretched, and the blanket fell into a puddle at her waist. Alexios kicked the door shut behind him, put the mugs down on the table, splashing coffee everywhere, and headed straight for her with an expression like a stalking lion.

  She grinned and held her arms out to him, but he sat next to her on the bed, caught her hands in his and pinned them to her sides, pushing her gently back onto the pillows.

  “Your breasts are so beautiful,” he said, staring at them so intently that heat flushed through the skin of her chest and up to her face. “I can’t look at them without needing to touch them and taste them.”

  And then he proceeded to do just that, drawing her nipple into his mouth and gently sucking on it, the pressure just enough to make her moan with frustrated longing as her hips bucked restlessly underneath the blanket.

  Then, still holding her hands, he released her breast and lay his head on her chest, right over her heart. The tenderness of the gesture took her breath away for a second, and her heart stuttered and skipped a beat or two.

  “I could listen to your heartbeat forever, do you realize that?” he asked her, his voice a quiet rumble, his breath warm against her skin.

  “Forever is a long time,” she said, suddenly chilled by the impossibility of his statement. “I’m cold. May I have the blanket, please?”

  He sat up instantly, tucking the blanket up and around her shoulders, a look of concern on his beautiful face. She tentatively lifted her hand to touch the scarred left side, hesitant at first. Afraid she’d offend him. He flinched a little, but then held still under her touch.

  “Is it so repulsive to you? My face?” He lowered his eyelids, but not before she’d seen the flash of pain darken his eyes to a stormy green.

  The words themselves took a moment longer to penetrate, perhaps because they were so much the opposite of what she’d been thinking. “Are you—what? How can you even ask me that? You are the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in my life, and a flaw only makes beauty more poignant.”

  She leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss on his scarred face, and he seemed to stop breathing. “Did you know that some master artisans purposely put a flaw in their art so that God will not be offended by perfection?”

  He laughed, and the sound was bitter. “That’s a pretty story, but the analogy rings false. There is a huge difference between an artist deliberately pulling a thread in a tapestry and Anubisa calling Hellfire to burn my face.”

  His muscles tensed, and she could tell he was on the verge of pulling away from her. It was a constant dance between them, pushing and pulling, moving apart and coming together. A strange waltz between two hopeful but almost unwilling participants.

  “Tell me about it. What is Hellfire?” The question was blunt, but she didn’t know any other way to ask it. She sat up in bed, pulling the blankets around her.

  “It’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s fire channeled from the lowest of the nine hells, and Anubisa, as goddess of Chaos and Night, is mistress over it. She can channel it to her purpose or for her unholy pleasure.”

  He shrugged and then jumped up to pace the floor. “Evidently one day ruining my face happened to be her pleasure.”

  Grace didn’t even know she was crying until she tasted the hot tears as they ran down her face and touched her lips. She scrubbed at her face but never took her eyes off him. “How could you stand it? How could you be so incredibly brave as to survive?”

  He whirled around and glared at her. “Don’t you mean to ask why I was such a coward that I didn’t take my own life to escape? I tried. Believe me, I tried. But there was always someone there watching me. Keeping me from inflicting any pain on myself.” He stopped pacing and laughed bitterly. “Evidently only they were allowed to cause me pain.”

  The memory of the flames from her vision—the whips and torture—burned through her mind like a brand. She shook her head back and forth, denying the vision. Denying his words.

  “No, that’s not what I meant to ask at all. I know you’re not a coward. I’ve seen your amazing courage. It was much braver to survive that horror than to take the easy way out.” She hung her head, ashamed to look at him. “Trust me, I know. And my reasons for wanting to take that final way out are pathetically unimportant compared to what you endured.”

  She watched as his boots walked into her field of vision. But he didn’t touch her. Simply stood there for a long moment. Then he finally spoke, and ice and pain mingled in his voice. “Strange, then, that we found each other. That I finally found the one reason—the one person—who could save me from an eternity of wanting to take that final step, and she wants nothing more permanent of me than a brief moment of physical comfort. Believe me, the torture of that knowledge is more than anything Anubisa and her minions could have done to me.”

  Before she could recover from her shock at his words, he was gone, the door slamming shut behind him.

  She sat in the bed, stunned, clutching the sheets to her chest as the enormity of what he had said sank in. He thought she was the one not wanting any permanent commitments with him. He thought she was the one who only wanted a physical relationship.

  She threw off the blankets and jumped up to get dressed. This was one misconception she was going to clear up immediately. She had given herself to him, finally daring to take a risk, body, heart, and soul. She wasn’t going to back down now, even if she had to beat some sense into an Atlantean warrior.

  Alexios stormed through the fort, almost wishing that someone would attack. He needed someone to hit. Maybe Tiny would be up for a little sparring.

  But then he heard it. Her voice, behind him. And she didn’t sound happy.

  “Alexios, slow down right now or I’m going to get my bow.” Her sharp command rang through the stone corridor, and he found his steps slowing in spite of himself.

  He turned, folding his arms across his chest, and glared at her as she approached. Trying not to feel his heart thumping painfully. Trying not to notice how unbelievably beautiful she was with sleep-tousled hair and the rosy pink flush of anger riding high in her cheekbones.

  “Oh, save it, buster,” she snapped. “You can’t go from having your mouth on my boob one minute to storming off the next.”

  He blinked, taken aback. Sometimes he forgot how direct women could be in this century.

  “I’d have to agree with that one,
partner,” Tiny said from somewhere behind Alexios, adding a layer of joy to his day. “Sorry about overhearing, by the way. I was just on my way out for some breakfast. I can bring you some back, if you like, Alexios. You must be hungry after patrolling with us all night. Oh, and you, too, Grace, of course,” he added hastily.

  The flush in Grace’s cheeks burned even hotter, but she responded politely enough. “Thank you, Tiny, but Alexios and I are going out to breakfast by ourselves.”

  “We are?”

  She jammed her hands on her hips and gave him back a glare as good as any he’d ever given. “Yes. We are. If you don’t have any more stupid objections or stupid opinions, like your stupid idea that I’m stupid enough to want you only for a stupid roll in the sack.”

  By the third “stupid,” he was grinning. “I’m guessing what you’re really trying to say is that I’m stupid.”