Atlantis Unmasked Page 25

  She narrowed her eyes. “Bingo. Got it in one.”

  Alexios glanced behind him, but Tiny was gone. Smart man. “So. Breakfast. You and me,” he repeated. Stupidly, in fact. The realization made him laugh.

  She marched up to him and grabbed a fistful of his shirt and yanked him down toward her. “I don’t do that,” she said, slowly and carefully. “I need for you to hear and understand me. I don’t let people in, and I don’t open my heart up. So when I do, I don’t expect to be treated like I’m only using you as some kind of boy toy. Got it? I care about you. You mean something important to me.”

  “Boy toy?” His mind raced with the implications and pure, primal male satisfaction warmed every inch of him. “But what if I want you to use me like that?”

  She made a strange growling noise in her throat that reminded him of the panther shifter who’d claimed that she should be his consort. But before he had time to even think about being jealous, she put her hands on his face, pulled his head down to hers, and kissed him, hard.

  “My beloved, remember? You don’t get to call me that and then back away from me.”

  It finally sank in. She was demanding that he stay with her. That he not run away. She wasn’t trying to escape. She wasn’t telling him “thanks, it’s been fun.” She wanted him. She wanted to keep him.

  He caught her around the waist, carefully putting his hands underneath the bottom edge of her healing injury, and lifted her as high as he could without bumping her head on the stone ceiling of the corridor. Then he slowly and carefully lowered her until her face was level with his, and he kissed her.

  “Perhaps I should not jump to conclusions based on faulty evidence,” he admitted. “However, I am having a hard time believing that I’m good enough for you.”

  “I think,” she said, between kisses, “you should let me spend the next twenty or fifty years convincing you.” But he noticed a quick shadow crossed her face as she said it, and he tucked it away to ask her about later.

  Much later.

  “Breakfast, then?”

  “Breakfast,” she said, smiling.

  Chapter 24

  Daytona Beach, Vonos’s mansion

  “The humans call a room like this a panic room,” Prevacek observed, gesturing to the stark gray walls and steel-reinforced doors of the five-hundred-square-foot room.

  Vonos ignored him, or at least gave the appearance of ignoring him. Prevacek did an excellent job as second-in-command in the Florida region. He was top-notch at security, as well. But he had an unfortunate habit of talking too much.

  Vonos scanned the room in question, then nodded in satisfaction. The renovations had proceeded quickly, after a visit to the contractor’s wife had convinced the recalcitrant human that an estimate of completion date did not mean that the work would be finished two weeks after that date.

  Or even one week.

  Or even one day.

  He smiled, reminiscing about that visit. The woman had been singularly unattractive, her tanned and leathery skin almost too thick for his fangs to penetrate.

  Almost.

  He’d only drained a mere fraction of her blood before her husband “saw the light,” as it were, and moved every one of his crews, available or not, onto Vonos’s renovation project.

  He wasn’t an evil man, Vonos mused. Simply one who preferred order and organization in all things.

  “Of course, we needed a room where no sunlight could possibly enter. Those double default doors were brilliant,” the general rattled on, his Russian accent thickening as it usually did in times of stress, until he sounded almost like a caricature of himself. Not that any ancient Russian mafioso didn’t sound like caricature, given what Hollywood had done to them.

  Addendum. Prevacek talked too much and he was a suck-up. Vonos could never fully trust a man who was either, let alone both. But that worked out fine for him, as he never intended to trust anyone. He had done so before and been betrayed, just like so many others had been betrayed.

  Drakos. The name burned through his mind as if the sunlight had managed to find the inner recesses of his skull.

  “Explain this to me. This theater troupe.” He drummed his fingernails on the slate desktop. He’d ordered the furniture from Pottery Barn, simply because the irony of it amused him. “Why exactly would you order an unscheduled attack, potentially destroying months of my careful planning, merely to go after a group of amateur actors, may I ask?”

  “They were flaunting their disrespect, Primator,” Prevacek said, bowing low. “They were using the fort as a venue, even after we made it clear that the anti-vampire history of the fort was horrific to us.”

  “And you didn’t think that this open display of aggression might provoke closer attention to our experiments with shifter enthrallment than I either wanted or needed at this stage?”

  Prevacek flung himself forward, prostrating himself on the dark gray carpet. Carpet Barn. It fascinated Vonos how the humans had a “barn” for every need, when they were little better than farm animals themselves.

  “Please accept my profuse apologies, my lord,” Prevacek all but wept. “I will never do anything but exactly what you order, again.”

  Vonos silently considered the advantages and disadvantages of simply ripping the vampire’s throat out and then burning his bones. It would be messy, true, but he had people for that. He wasn’t sure the blood would come out of the new carpet, though, and really, he had no time or patience for a new installation before the ball.

  “Oh, get up and get out. Don’t ever do something like this again, do you hear me? Especially considering that the ball is coming up so quickly. We have many important guests arriving, and I want very much to impress them.”

  Prevacek shot up off the carpet, not knowing how close he’d been to the true death. “Oh, no, never, my lord, never,” he babbled. “I mean, yes, my lord, of course.”

  As Prevacek scurried out of the room and Vonos returned to his paperwork, another thought occurred to him. “Stop. What happened? What did the panthers report?”

  Prevacek froze, his hand on the door handle, and then slowly turned back around to face Vonos. “That’s somewhat of a problem. They haven’t checked in yet.”

  Chapter 25

  St. Augustine, the beach

  Grace tried to absorb the fact that she was walking along a beach, in the daylight, hand in hand with an Atlantean warrior who claimed to love her.

  It wasn’t working.

  First, the day itself was only a brief respite in her duty. Alaric was due to arrive back at the fort to meet them that evening, but whether he would or not was anybody’s guess. Apparently there was something between he and Quinn so powerfully compelling that he would literally fly to her side whenever she was in danger, whether she called for his help or not. Alexios wouldn’t say much about it, but she didn’t want to pry into her commander’s life—love life?—anyway.

  Whether or not Alaric managed to return, though, she and Alexios had a date with the Fae that couldn’t be broken. Her thoughts turned to Rhys na Garanwyn, and her fingers tightened in Alexios’s as she missed a step, stumbling on the sunlit white sand.

  He shot a questioning glance her way, but she shook her head. They’d been over and over this at breakfast, speaking quietly in a booth in the back corner of the IHOP on the highway.

  Alexios apparently had a fondness for all-you-can-eat pancake days.

  Their waitress, however, had been cheerful through it all. Grace had figured she would have been ready to kick them out after his fifth helping or so, but the grandmotherly woman just smiled and shook her head and said something about her sons, the football players, and their appetites.

  That was when Grace had noticed Alexios handing the woman some folded dollar bills and smiling, just before he asked for a sixth helping, more bacon, and more syrup. A shriek and the sound of dishes falling had been Grace’s first clue that Alexios wasn’t exactly up on American currency.

  The woman had c
ome running through the restaurant back to their table, holding the bills out in front of her. “Oh, honey, you made a big mistake,” she said, laughing boisterously. “These aren’t one-dollar bills, these are hundred-dollar bills. You gave me a thousand dollars!”

  Grace had been impressed with the woman’s honesty, especially when she’d tried to give the money back to Alexios, but he’d simply sat there looking slightly puzzled. “Is it not the custom here to render payment for good service?”

  He’d directed the question at Grace, so she answered for the flustered waitress. “Yes, it is the custom, but the amount you gave her is about one hundred times the cost of your breakfast, so it’s quite out of the range of the normal tip.”

  Alexios had flashed a smile so dazzling that half the women in the restaurant practically swooned. “Well, her service was quite out of the range of normal, as well. This amount is exactly what I wish her to have. However, we should go now.”

  He had taken one final sip of his coffee, wiped his mouth on his napkin, and then stood up and held his hand out to Grace. “We have much to discuss.”

  She’d just stared at him for a moment, then sighed and shook her head. “Ah, yes, the royal decree.” She stood up and retrieved the check that the waitress had left them earlier, and then patted the woman on the arm. “He wants you to have it, with our thanks for your excellent service and your patience while he ate you out of a month’s supply of pancakes.”

  The waitress had stared from the money in her hand, to Alexios, and then back at Grace, who nodded encourag ingly. Then the poor woman had thrown her arms around Alexios and hugged him, saying something about a grandchild who needed braces.

  Alexios had looked absolutely terrified and so Grace, laughing, had extricated him from the situation and gone to the cashier to pay the check. The waitress had marched right up to her, snatched the check out of Grace’s hand, and declared that there was no way they were paying for pancakes—it was on her. By this time, the entire restaurant had been listening in, so a cheer had gone up from everyone. Alexios, though clearly startled, had handled it with aplomb, turning toward the woman and bowing deeply. As they’d left the restaurant, Grace had heard the excited chattering about visiting royalty, and she’d started laughing again.

  “I can’t take you anywhere,” she’d told Alexios, but he’d grinned that sexy grin at her and kissed her right there in front of the IHOP, officially making it one of her favorite restaurants on the planet.

  Now they were walking on the beach, working off some of the thousands of carb calories, hopefully, and she kept sneaking glances at him, just to be sure he wasn’t a figment of her imagination who was about to disappear any minute.

  “What are you thinking?” He didn’t so much ask questions as issue demands, she’d discovered, even though he’d quite sternly explained that he was not of the royal Atlantean house, but only one of Prince Conlan’s elite guard.

  She grinned. He sure had the attitude for royalty.

  He stopped walking and pulled her into his arms again, lifting her feet clear up out of the sand. They couldn’t walk more than a dozen paces without him touching her, holding her, or kissing her, she’d noticed.

  Not that she was complaining.

  “Tell me. Now.”

  “Okay, that’s taking the demanding thing a little far,” she pointed out. “Don’t forget I can still skewer you with one of my arrows at a hundred yards. Just because I’m putty in your hands in bed—”

  He kissed her, effectively making her forget where she’d been going with that thought. “Putty in my hands? I like it. Let’s go back to bed now.” He kissed a path down the side of her neck and suddenly her breath was a little ragged.

  “No, we can’t. We need to plan what we’re going to do tonight, and anyway, Tiny and his men are still there. Also, my side hurts a little,” she admitted. “I guess I’m not super-woman after all. I’m healing fast but I still may have . . . exerted myself too much.”

  Remorse swept over his face. “It is my fault. I pushed you when you should have been resting. I knew I wasn’t fit for—”

  “Stop. Right now,” she ordered him. “I wanted you. I wanted exactly what we did together. I still want you now, but I think a little rest first will make me a more active participant next time.”

  She tried to project calm assurance but the betraying hot flush climbed into her cheeks. Just not used to discussing sex in broad daylight. Okay, not used to discussing sex at all. She blushed again as the elderly couple walking toward them smiled knowingly.

  But once the couple had moved on, she’d kissed Alexios, putting all the feeling she wasn’t quite ready to express into it. When she stepped back, she wasn’t the only one whose breathing was ragged. She cast about for a topic of conversation that didn’t involve sex or kissing.

  “So, tell me about Atlantis.”

  They started walking again, threading their way through driftwood shaped in fantastical patterns that had washed up on the shore.

  “What do you want to know?” He ran a hand down her arm, smiling like a little boy on Christmas morning, and she smiled back at him, caught up in his obvious joy.

  “Everything! But let’s start simple. Where do you live? How long have you been one of the prince’s guard—the Seven, you called it? What is that tattoo you have on your arm? Where, exactly, is Atlantis? How is it that none of our oceanographers or submarines have found it? Are you ever planning to rise?” She finally stopped for air and realized he was laughing quietly. “What?”

  “You call that starting simple?” He shook his head. “Okay, let’s see what I can do with that. I live in the warrior’s wing of the palace, although I have a home ready for me to move into should I so choose. It has been simpler to stay in the palace, although that will not always be the case.” He cast a long, measuring glance at her, and she shivered, hugging the hope to her chest that he might be picturing her in his house someday.

  “I have trained to be a warrior in the royal guard since I was a youngling, and I was honored to be selected to serve in Prince Conlan’s elite guard almost right out of the academy. He broke tradition a little and chose guards based on the potential he saw in us, rather than on long years of dedicated service.”

  “Makes for a very loyal team,” Grace said, thinking back to her first meeting with Quinn, and how the commander had given so much responsibility to a teenager. Grace had walked away from the meeting knowing she would do anything for Quinn, and she still felt that way.

  “The tattoo is Poseidon’s mark and he honors us with it when we have successfully completed our training to be a Warrior of Poseidon. Poseidon’s Trident bisects the circle representing all the peoples of the world. The triangle is a symbol of the pyramid of knowledge. All of Poseidon’s warriors bear this mark as testimony to our oath to serve Poseidon and protect humanity.”

  “Is it something you can share?”

  He glanced at her, clearly startled. “Is what something I can share?”

  “The oath. I’d like to hear it, if it’s not too private.”

  He stopped, still holding her hand, and considered that for a minute. “You know, I’ve never been asked that. I don’t see any reason why I couldn’t share it with you; we first swear the oath in front of our academy mates, trainers, and a wide audience of family and friends. Plus, of course, you know about Atlantis itself, which is a far greater secret than the words of an ancient oath.”

  She tilted her head and said nothing, waiting for him to decide, loath to push him but really, really wanting to hear it.

  He took a deep breath and, releasing her hand, stood at what she thought of as a kind of parade rest. “We will wait. And watch. And protect. And serve as first warning on the eve of humanity’s destruction. Then, and only then, Atlantis will rise. For we are the Warriors of Poseidon, and the mark of the Trident we bear serves as witness to our sacred duty to safeguard mankind.”

  When he finished, it was as if the words hung, sacred and
pure, in the salty sea air between them. Grace finally remembered to breathe, and she took his hand again. “Thank you. For sharing that with me, and for all of your years of living that promise.”

  He slowly shook his head. “Expect the unexpected,” he murmured. “You know, I think this is the first time any human has thanked me like that.”

  She smiled even as the chill raced down her neck at the words “any human.” Just when she felt closer to him than ever, he said something that highlighted the vast gulf between them.

  Live in the present, she berated herself. You can worry later.

  Alexios couldn’t believe he was blathering on about anything and everything, but the reward of Grace’s lovely smile seemed to be a prize worth doing almost anything for. The sunlight on her hair made it glow, and as they walked along the beach, he could almost forget about war and battles and scheming vampire primators with evil plans. He could almost forget about the danger Grace would be in if he couldn’t convince her to leave before that evening’s meeting with the Fae.