Christmas in Atlantis Read online

  He reached out instinctively, and a warm, slender hand clasped his. He knew that voice.

  Lyric.

  Another voice, this one slightly deeper but still female, spoke next. "He took a hell of a hit, Lyric. But it's almost as if he's healing right in front of my eyes. If I hadn't seen it, I never would've believed it, and I would insist that you go to the hospital head trauma unit. But he’s gone from a major injury to a mild concussion in the space of the last ten minutes."

  "Well, the way he fought with the EMTs to not get in that ambulance made it pretty clear that he wasn't in any major trouble. Nobody who was at death's door would have had that much energy," the silvery voice said, still sounding concerned, but with an edge of laughter.

  Dare started to sink again, then, and after that only snatches of sentences made it through to his conscious mind.

  "... watch him."

  " Thank you. I'll ..."

  Then the voices faded to unintelligible sounds in the background, and he let himself go back under, inexplicably reassured that the owner of that silvery voice would keep him safe.

  "Dare? I need you to wake up. Can you look at me?

  Lyric. He opened his eyes. Even shadowed by the light of the lamp behind her, he knew her face.

  A cloud of riotous curls surrounded her face and touched her shoulders, and her eyes looked dark in the shadows, but he knew from six years of looking into them were beautiful copper, a color as rare and precious as the armband that contained the magic of his spirit bond with Seranth. He started to raise his hand to touch the band, but the movement made him wince.

  "Dr. Miller told me not to let you sleep too long. She wanted me to keep checking your eyes, but of course we know I can't do that. Can you hold still for a moment while I take a picture to send to the doctor?"

  Before he could answer, a light flashed in his eyes, making him flinch. But he realized immediately that he had already improved a great deal, because the light was far less painful than the last time. All credit to superior Atlantean healing powers, of course.

  Maybe, though, some credit went to the woman seated at his side. He was too tired to pursue the thought…

  The next time Dare woke up, the room was swimming around him. Waves of sensation buffeted him from all sides, but unlike his dive into the ocean, this was a gentler current. He felt like the shore might be in sight. He opened his eyes and realized he was in a bed. In a room.

  A room on land; not his berth on Luna.

  Lyric.

  He remembered calling her name in his mind. The portal—it must have worked. The room was rimmed with shadow; lit only by a bedside lamp on a small wooden table. He glanced around, curious about this place. Her private sanctuary that perhaps held her secrets as much as the mystery in her copper eyes. In six years of knowing her, he’d never once seen her bedroom.

  He laughed a little at the thought. The men and women he caroused with regularly at dockside bars would never believe it. Captain Dare of the Luna – celibate. Perhaps celibate wasn’t the word. It had been six years since he met her, and he was a man. But the encounters he’d had with other women since then had been brief and unsatisfactory. For some reason he couldn't understand, after the first time he’d met Lyric, the vision of her eyes, her face, and her curls and even the sound of her voice seemed never to have been far from his mind.

  His thinking was still muddled. That crack on the head had been no joke. At least his crew…wait. His crew. What had happened to his crew? He tried to reach out on the Atlantean mental pathway to reach someone – anyone – who might have heard what had happened to his ship and crew. None on board were Atlantean, so he had no way to reach them directly.

  His brain flinched from the attempt, though, and he heard nothing in return. Perhaps he was too far away or too injured. He’d try again as soon as his head quit pounding quite so much.

  And the unicorns – Bingley and Jane. By Poseidon, he hoped they had survived. If he'd caused the world to lose two such magnificent creatures, he’d never forgive himself.

  If he ever told her about it, Lyric probably wouldn't forgive him, either.

  Lyric. His mind kept wandering off from the most important question. Where was she? He tried to sit up but fell back against the pillows, weaker than he'd realized.

  "Lyric," he croaked out of his damaged throat. "Water."

  Just then, whether in response to his raspy call or not, Lyric appeared in the doorway with a bottle of water in one hand and that infernal camera device in the other.

  "Water," he repeated, holding out a hand.

  She stopped in the doorway staring at him, eyes wide. A smile like the sun rising over the horizon on a calm day at sea spread across her face.

  "You're awake. You're talking," she said unnecessarily. He already knew both of those things.

  “Water.”

  She rushed over, uncapping the bottle of water as she came. "Here you go. But just sips, please. Dr. Miller said to give you a little at a time so you didn't bring it all right back up." He tried to raise his head, but before he could put any real effort into it her hand slid under his neck and supported him so he could drink.

  Dare closed his eyes at the sheer bliss of the cool water sliding down his throat and her cool hand on his head. He tried to be a gentlemen and not notice how close her delightfully round breasts were to his face, but gave it up as a lost cause.

  After all, he wasn’t a gentleman – he was a pirate.

  "How are you feeling? I should take another picture of your eyes for –"

  "No," he said firmly. "I have definitely had enough of that damn flashing light in my eyes." He winced at the thought. “I'm fine. Superior Atlantean healing."

  Lyric sat down in a chair that was pulled up next to the bed. She must've been sitting there next to him for hours, because every memory of the night that was coming back to him contained the image of her face.

  "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought my problems to your doorstep. I didn't have–" He stopped just short of admitting there hadn't been anywhere else he'd rather go. The admission seemed at once too much and yet not enough. It'd taken him five minutes to become fascinated with this woman and then he’d spent the next five years—no, six, now--fighting his attraction. She was human. She was an artist. She was a self-professed homebody.

  The last thing she needed in her life was a pirate of poor reputation and worse deeds.

  "I'm glad you did. Here, drink a little more. Are you hungry? No, you're probably not hungry. Dr. Wilson said the head injury would make you nauseous for a while. But when you're ready, I can make you some soup. I have half a roasted chicken I could put in with some carrots, and maybe I could find some onion and a little –" She broke off, looking flustered. "I'm sorry I'm babbling. I've been, I have to admit, worried sick about you. I wanted you to go to the emergency room, but you quite strenuously refused."

  When she said it, he remembered something. A chaotic moment of battling someone who was trying to hold him down. Suddenly alarmed, he looked up at her.

  "I didn't hurt you, did I? Or anybody else?"

  She shook her head. "No. You were quite gentle with me. And it's not like the EMTs don't have experience dealing with unruly patients. They were quite competent at restraining you in order to secure vitals. Between the three of them," she added ruefully

  “Luckily, my neighbor Dr. Miller, Penny, was walking her Goldendoodle, so she came in to have a look. She said she'd be glad to keep an eye out for you if I was definitely sure that I wasn't going to send you to the ER in restraints."

  Dare scowled. "I have no good experience with restraints. It is well for them that they stopped when they did. Even half-conscious, I could well have hurt someone."

  Lyric smiled. "Yeah, we kinda got that,” she said dryly. "Superior Atlantean strength, huh?"

  He took another long drink of water but then could feel himself slipping back under. He was so tired. So very tired, as if he hadn't slept in weeks instead of onl
y days. The trip had been a rough one, and he’d only caught catnaps in his cabin a few times. He felt like he could sleep for a week.

  But only if he could stay here.

  His breath caught in his chest. "I can stay, can't I? Just until I feel better? I would not wish to be a burden upon you, but –"

  She rested a slender hand on his forehead, and he closed his eyes in relief at her cool touch. Sudden waves of heat began to wash over him, and his mind went hazy.

  “Of course you can stay, Dare. Don't worry about anything. I'll take care of you, and what I don't – or can't – do, Meredith or Dr. Miller will help me with."

  Every muscle in his body relaxed at her promise. "So tired," he mumbled. "So very tired."

  "Sleep, then. Sleep, and I’ll watch over you."

  He drifted off on currents of tropically warm water and the surprised realization that she was singing to him.

  "So beautiful." Had he said it or merely thought it? He wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem to matter.

  She touched his face and spoke again, so softly that he almost didn’t hear. "Oh, Dare. I was just thinking the same thing about you."

  4

  There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

  Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

  -- The Gift of the Magi, O. Henry (1917)

  Lyric didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Emotions were bubbling up inside of her – so many emotions that she didn't know how to handle it. Couldn't recognize them; couldn't identify them. Didn't know how to cope.

  She'd been terrified when he'd arrived feeling so icy cold, like he was near death, and that fear hadn’t quite subsided over the hours she’d spent watching over him. She still didn't know what had happened. He’d raved and ranted about a storm, Poseidon, and unicorns of all things. She chalked it up to the head injury. No doubt he would tell her the true story when he was feeling a little better. In the meantime, she'd sit right back in the chair where she'd already spent hours listening to him breathe, holding his hand while he slept, and sending prayers that he would survive and be okay.

  Even asleep, he was such a presence in her small bedroom. He felt larger than life and almost electric. Even unconscious, he radiated an energy that called to her; sent a frisson of tingling energy down her spine and lifted the hairs on the back of her neck in awareness.

  Awareness of him.

  He was sleeping again, and the time she hoped it was restful. He felt warm, but maybe that was just the aftereffect of being wounded? The "superior" Atlantean healing at work raising his metabolism? She didn’t know, and it wasn’t like she could Google it.

  But he was resting this time, not tossing and turning and muttering as he’d been doing before.

  Lyric was so tempted to touch him. To finally touch more than just his face. To reach out with her fingertips and measure the breath of his shoulders, the muscles in his arms and chest, and even to stroke his hair. When she lifted his head to drink, she'd been able to run her fingers through the thick waves of his hair, which was something she'd been longing to do for a long time.

  "Dare? Dare, are you awake? Would you mind if I touch you?"

  He didn't answer, so she decided to take that as permission, in spite of the fact that she’d deliberately whispered. Which was completely and entirely wicked of her, but she couldn't resist the temptation.

  And she was tired of trying.

  She reached out with both hands, tentatively at first and then less so. Her fingers shaped the edges of him – the edges of a man. He was all hard muscle. Strength and sinew wrapped around his shoulders, arms, and chest like armbands. There was no give to him – no yielding.

  Who could live with such a hard man? Who would want to? She already knew the answer to the latter but was still unsure about the former. He stirred a little in his sleep and then turned his head into her palm as if he were enjoying the feel of her fingers stroking his hair.

  He mumbled something. A name. Seranth. A twinge of something that felt a lot like jealousy curled up from her throat, but then subsided. He’d told her about Seranth and explained their bond. Seranth was a sea spirit; a water elemental, and they worked in tandem to sail his ship, the Luna, across the seas. Seranth was part of him. She was also part of the ship itself and part of the sea and sky. He’d said he couldn't describe it any more clearly than that, but that had been enough. She’d told him she thought she understood, at least a little.

  She herself had felt the presence of a guardian angel in her life ever since the night of the car crash that took her parents. An Angel who had been with her ever since. It was different, but a little bit the same. Angel and spirit. Christian and pagan. He came from a time before Christ, and she lived in Christ's grace. But she knew –hoped – that what was between could transcend differences and bridge barriers. She prayed that he would recover, and then she would admit her feelings. She would invite him to stay with her for Christmas and celebrate the holidays with her family and friends.

  Maybe he'd even invite her to Atlantis sometime.

  He stirred beneath her fingertips, and she realized she'd been stroking his hair for several minutes without even realizing what she was doing. She felt his forehead again with the back of her hand out of habit, not at all expecting the blazing heat in his skin. She snatched her hand away, shocked. He should be glowing at that temperature. She had to call Penny. Something was seriously wrong—surely this couldn’t just be his metabolism.

  It had to be fever, or maybe something worse. Please God let it not be something worse.

  She started to rise to retrieve her phone from the kitchen, but his hand shot out and grasped her wrist with unbreakable strength.

  "Don't leave me," he demanded. For demand it was. Sick or no, he wasn’t asking; he was telling. This was the voice of a sea captain in complete control.

  "I need to call the doctor, Dare. I need to –"

  He yanked on her arm, so she fell forward onto the bed and partially on top of him. Before she could move, he curved one of those strong arms around her and held tight.

  "No. Stay with me. I need you. Please."

  This time, his voice was less of a demand and more of a seduction. Silken tones from his damaged throat – honey over whiskey. Playful, but implacable.

  "I need you to hold me, Lyric. Beautiful Lyric. Six long years of wanting to hold you, and it only took almost dying,” he murmured into her hair.

  She froze, unable to believe what he was saying. Unable to believe that he was saying the exact things she herself had felt for so long.

  Oh, oh, oh, oh. He smelled like salt and sea and sky and man. Delicious, unbelievably sexy man. She closed her eyes, snuggled into the curve of his arms, and took a deep, happy breath.

  But then she shook her head and told herself to snap out of it.

  "Dare. I can't – we need to – you’re burning up. I have to call the doctor. You probably have an infection from where your head was sliced open. I don't really know how ‘superior Atlantean healing powers’ work on infection, so I'm gonna propose we go with good old-fashioned human antibiotics."

  "I'm fine,” he muttered into her hair. "Don't need anything but you."

  She inhaled sharply, but whether she was gasping from shock, surprise, or a massive case of untimely lust, she didn’t know. What she was feeling wasn’t important, though, no matter how much she’d wanted to hear exactly that from him. What mattered was that she needed to get him some medicine.

  "Okay. You need to let me go. Now,” she said, injecting a firm tone into her voice. It was the voice she used with young art stu
dents. No nonsense. In charge. They always snapped to attention immediately.

  Teacher voice had absolutely zero effect on Dare.

  His response instead was to tighten his arms around her and start kissing her neck. An electric sensation shot straight from his lips to every erotic part of her body, and she really thought she might either melt or go up in flames.

  “Dare! Listen--"

  He gently bit her earlobe.

  "Ohhhhh," she moaned, before she could help it. "No. Dare! Not now. I need to get you some antibiotics."

  He pulled his head away from her neck, and she took a moment to sincerely regret it. Before she could say anything else, though, he put his hand on her butt.

  This time it was he who moaned. Or groaned. A sound from deep in his throat that rumbled in his chest beneath her cheek, and made her want to rip his shirt off with her teeth. “Oh, Lyric. Oh, Lyric.”

  “I—what?”

  "You have the nicest, roundest ass I've ever seen," he told her with all evidence of true appreciation.

  She blinked.

  "Thanks a lot,” she said somewhat tartly. “Just what every woman wants to hear. Any other compliments you want to throw my way?"

  "So hot. So lush. So delicious. I bet you’ll be so wet for me. So, so wet and hot." His voice was a rasp of sex and seduction that was slowly driving her completely insane, and the heat was building between her thighs as if his words had been a premonition.

  "I’ve wanted to get my hands on your ass for years. And your breasts. Oh, your breasts. I think poets could write songs to your breasts. I need you, Lyric. Let me put my mouth on you."

  Lyric went boneless; every synapse she had shot fireworks through her nerve cells--through her veins--even through her bones. She'd never been so indescribably, overwhelmingly, incandescently turned on in her life.

  Naturally, her freaking conscience decided to speak up and tell her that she was in imminent danger of hooking up with an Atlantean who was addled by injury and fever. Not exactly the best way to start off a relationship.