Atlantis Unmasked Page 9

  “If I assure you that I cannot, may I have some of that coffee? It was a late night last night, and my head is not yet recovered.”

  The blush burned through her cheeks again, so she quickly turned away to find a clean mug. This first encounter was not going at all as planned. She was supposed to be smooth, capable, and in command, and she couldn’t even manage to give the poor man a cup of coffee.

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “No, thank you.”

  She handed him the mug and their fingers touched as he took it. A shock jolted through her at the contact, and her startled gaze flew up to meet his, but he showed no sign that he’d felt it. Probably just static electricity, not a sign of “someday my prince will come back from wherever he’d run away to” nonsense.

  Not that she believed in princes.

  “Why were you up so late?”

  He did a quick scan of the area, empty except for the two of them, then leaned forward. “The prince was born.”

  Chapter 7

  Grace did a peculiar double take at his words. “The prince. Of course the prince was born,” she muttered, almost to herself, briefly closing her very expressive eyes.

  He ruthlessly stole those moments to drink in the sight of her, from the rich chestnut hair glowing in the sunlight, to the high cheekbones that reminded him of the Native American peoples of the Midwestern states, to her rich golden skin. Just seeing her again, seeing the lovely curves that perfectly balanced her long, lean body, was like a balm to his ravaged nerves.

  It terrified him.

  He’d been wrong to tell Ven he could handle working closely with Grace. There was nothing about this situation that he was going to be able to handle.

  She finally opened her eyes. “Is everybody okay? I felt . . .”

  “I’ll be fine,” he snapped.

  “Well, I’m glad,” she said, tilting her head and drawing those lovely dark brows together in puzzlement. “But I meant the baby and his mother. Are they well?”

  He ground his teeth together at his own stupidity. Ven would be laughing his ass off if he were here to witness this conversation. One sight of her exotically beautiful face and Alexios’s mind had turned into sautéed jellyfish. Which almost made sense after the bolt of electricity that had damn near sizzled his insides just from the touch of her fingers on the coffee mug. The exact same electricity that had turned him into a lightning rod when he’d kissed her.

  He thought he’d done a good job of hiding that reaction, though. Maybe.

  “They are well. Riley, very recently wed to High Prince Conlan, had a difficult pregnancy, but both are well. Prince Aidan has an extremely large head, but they tell us that is normal with newborns.”

  She laughed, and the sound rang in his ears like Atlantean shell chimes. Liquid, melodious, and so rich in tone that he wanted to instantly become a funnier man so he could make her laugh all the time.

  He was in seriously deep trouble.

  “Yes, it’s very normal. Poor Riley,” she said, grinning. “Because of course you came out and told her this, right?”

  “No, I did not. However, Brennan may have pointed it out.”

  “I don’t think I’ve met Brennan. What’s he like, other than clearly clueless about babies?”

  A sharp, entirely irrational stab of denial plunged into his gut at the idea of her meeting Brennan. Beautiful Grace and Brennan of the unscarred face. “He has no sense of humor. You wouldn’t like him one bit,” he said firmly.

  “Oh, I don’t know. So far I like all of you Atlanteans very much. Handy to have around in a pinch. Quinn said—” She broke off and formed a perfect O with her lips, which gave Alexios a mental image that led to a very uncomfortable moment of tightness in his previously loosely fitting jeans.

  He wrenched his gaze away from her luscious lips and forced himself to think of calm, non-sexy things. Turnips. Concrete. Greenhouse gases.

  “I just made the connection. Quinn’s Riley?”

  “What? Oh. Yes, Quinn’s sister, Riley. I am sure Quinn will be sad to have missed the birth.”

  “That’s too bad, but Jack did tell me she was gone—” She snapped her fingers. “Jack. Right. Jack. The Fae.”

  Alexios tried to follow the convoluted path of her conversation, but wasn’t having much luck. “I beg your pardon? What about Jack and the Fae?”

  “Rhys na Garanwyn. The Fae. The meeting. Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “Rhys na Garanwyn, High Prince of the High House, Seelie Court, surprised me when I was swimming last night. He demanded a meeting with you exactly a week from last night.”

  Alexios’s lungs suddenly struggled to take in air. “Why? Why did he come after you? Did he hurt you?” He grasped her arms and offered his precise opinion of skulking Fae lordlings in vivid, virulent Atlantean gutter slang.

  “Did. He. Touch. You?”

  She shook her head, eyebrows drawing together. “No. He magicked my bow out of my car to show off that he could touch it, and he watched me get dressed, but he didn’t touch me.”

  His fingers tightened convulsively, images of the Fae drooling over her lovely nude body flashing through his mind. “You were naked?”

  “No, I wasn’t naked,” she snapped, yanking her arms out of his grip. “What is it with men and naked? Jack asked me the same thing, for Pete’s sake.”

  Alexios clenched his fists around the hilts of his daggers and imagined himself slowly skinning a certain tiger. He sucked in a deep breath. “Jack? Jack was here, too? Asking about your nakedness? And who is this Pete?”

  Grace’s face contorted into a strange grimace, her lips flattening and then twitching, and finally she started to laugh. “There is no Pete. And Jack is an old friend, nothing more, not that it’s any of your business. There was no nakedness. Sit down and relax, and I’ll tell you all about the Fae. And Pete.”

  He scowled at her but subsided and leaned against the wall while she recounted the tale of her meeting with the Fae.

  “This Rhys na Garanwyn is very persistent, and in oddly connected circles of association,” he mused when she’d concluded. “First Lucas, and then you. Both connected to me, in some way.”

  She raised her chin. “No. Not both connected to you. I have no connection with you other than this training assignment.”

  He bit back the instant denial and studied her face. Heat swept through her cheeks in a rosy flush, and a tiny bud of contentment unfurled somewhere deep inside his chest.

  He stepped on it. Hard.

  She wasn’t for him. Shouldn’t be for him. No matter how much he wanted her. There were so many reasons why he should stay far, far away from her.

  He’d always hated reason.

  He smiled and lifted a hand to touch her cheek with a single finger; was rewarded when she visibly fought herself to keep from reacting to his touch.

  “We need to talk about it,” he said. “That kiss. My reasons for leaving, which I thought at the time were valid, but perhaps—”

  “What kiss?” She coolly cut him off, eyes narrowed. “I don’t seem to recall—”

  “Grace!” The shout interrupted whatever Grace had been about to say. She turned toward the stairs and the man who had called for her. “Grace, is that him? We going to introduce him to these guys now, so we can get them settled in and find some lunch?”

  She turned her head while she put her mug back on the table, and Alexios was captivated by the lovely long line of her neck for an instant before he forced himself to snap the hells out of it and move so that she was no longer in his direct line of sight. Maybe he could spend the next few weeks wearing an eye patch. Or two.

  “Yes, we’ll be right up,” she called, then glanced at Alexios. “Is that okay with you? I’d like for you to at least say hi, get any first impressions, then you and I can go get some lunch and discuss plans while Sam takes care of the newbies.”

  “No!” he said, way too loudly, apparently, considering the way she was looking at him. He didn’t trus
t himself to be alone with her just yet. “I mean, yes, let’s meet them and we’ll all have lunch together. One often gets a truer opinion of a man at his leisure than when he knows himself to be studied.”

  She considered that for a second. Nodded. “Makes sense. Except it’s at his or her leisure.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She grinned. “You have to quit doing that. Begging my pardon. Or it’s going to be a long few weeks. And I said ‘her’ because there are five women in the new group.”

  With that, she bounded up the stairs to meet Sam, who Alexios already didn’t like. The man looked shifty. And clearly he was far too old for Grace, so what was she doing hugging him, no matter that it was brief? And what kind of animal was that unnaturally wrinkly pile of fur loping its way down the stairs?

  The animal ambled across the grass toward Alexios, who narrowed his eyes. “I was not begging. I am an elite Atlantean warrior, one of the best of the best. I serve the sea god himself, and I do not beg,” he told it. Correction. Him.

  He barked sharply and then sat down and looked up at Alexios, with his mouth open, tongue hanging out in a doggie grin. Forget Ven. Even the dog was laughing at him.

  Grace called down to him. “Alexios, are you coming?”

  He gave the dog’s ears a quick scratch and then headed up the stairs, telling himself to focus on his center. Calm down and immediately cease reacting to the woman in such a way. He needed to meet with the Fae, find the diamond, and spend a few weeks assisting Grace with training. How bad could it be?

  The fort, three days later, late afternoon

  Alexios paced restlessly through the rooms and grounds of the fort, nodding curtly to the scattered groups of humans who were practicing with various weapons. After years of serving as a tourist attraction to camera-laden visitors and their ice-cream-dripping younglings, the old fort was back to its original use as a first defense against enemies. Of course, the Spaniards who’d built the fort had probably never anticipated that, nearly three hundred forty years later, the enemies would be rogue shape-shifters and vampires. Or, considering the Spanish vamp-killer history that had pissed the vampires off enough to order the fort closed to tourists, maybe they would have.

  But they probably wouldn’t have guessed that an Atlantean warrior would be the one doing the training.

  Or that said Atlantean warrior would be failing, miserably.

  His foot itched to smash a kick into the coquina walls, but the fragile shell-and-sand limestone was too delicate to take the abuse. Unlike Grace. Who was neither fragile nor delicate, but an enormous pain in his ass. Three days with her had been three days of unrelenting agony. Everywhere he turned, she was there, a living, breathing reminder of what he couldn’t have. Couldn’t touch.

  Couldn’t claim.

  Even sweaty and dirty from training, she was so sexy she made his teeth hurt from the constant jaw clenching he had to do to keep from yanking her up into his arms and taking her mouth with his own. Worse, she was smart, funny, and generous. Everything he ever would have wanted in a woman—if he’d ever wanted a woman. In that way. That for-a-lifetime kind of way.

  Which was crazy. Anyway, she had really annoying quirks that drove him nuts. Like when she was planning strategy or trying to figure out mundane budget issues, she had a habit of chewing on her lower lip and toying with the end of her braid that drove him nuts.

  Okay, honesty. Nearly drove him insane with blind lust.

  He wanted to play with her hair. He wanted to chew on her lips. Taste her. Bite her. Sink his teeth into her.

  Sink his cock into her . . .

  “Alexios!”

  As if his churning thoughts had called her name, Grace’s voice cut through the muted conversations of the rebels like an electric eel through algae. Somehow, after he discreetly adjusted the fit of his pants for the hundredth time in three days and turned around, she was suddenly only a few paces behind him. The late afternoon sunlight shone on the deep red highlights in her rich dark brown hair, almost mesmerizing him for a moment.

  Then she had to go and ruin it.

  “Alexios, we need to talk.”

  He scowled, every muscle in his body tightening in reaction to the musical sound of her voice. He didn’t want to talk to Grace. He wanted to take her up on the amused speculation in her whiskey-dark eyes. He wanted to unstrap the knives from her thighs, the guns from her hips, and the bow and its quiver of deadly silver-tipped arrows from her back, strip her bare, and put his mouth on every inch of her honeyed skin.

  All of it decidedly without talking.

  Too bad it would be a cold day in the nine hells before he’d ever tell her that.

  Or would it? By Poseidon’s balls, his mind was getting a cramp from constantly changing.

  “Alexios?” She planted her fists on those lovely curved hips and his mouth went dry, fantasies of what her curves would look like naked conveniently overriding reality. The reality where she stood there, either amused or annoyed or a little of both, her luscious lips pressed tight and her dark brows drawing together in what he’d come to think of as her “time to make Alexios’s life a living misery” expression.

  If it weren’t for centuries of loyalty to his high prince, Alexios would be on a fast portal back to Atlantis. Unfortunately, his present mission was clear: help train this faction of the rebels and find out anything he could about what Vonos had done with the Vampire’s Bane.

  He’d been having damned little success learning anything about Vonos or the jewel, though, since Grace had scheduled every minute of every day for him and he was finding it impossible to tell her no.

  Grace stalked up to him, the only human in the entire fort who wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated by him. She was all long, lean lines, but with rounded curves exactly where a woman ought to be rounded, and just watching her walk made his mouth go dry.

  “Third time’s a charm, my friend. Earth to Atlantean?”

  He folded his arms across his chest and glared down at her. Ancient vampires and alpha shape-shifters alike had quailed before the force of that glare.

  Grace glared right back and then, unexpectedly, flashed a grin. “Yeah, yeah, you’re scary. I’m quivering in my boots. Now can we talk?”

  “I’d like to see you quivering,” he growled, then closed his eyes in disbelief as the unintended double entendre struck him. Sex. He had sex on the brain, and it was turning him into a babbling idiot. Of course she’d instantly pick up on it.

  Sure enough, she started laughing, and the husky sound of her chuckle tightened something deep in his belly. Only sheer force of will kept his cock from jumping to attention. By all the gods, if he didn’t get away from this woman soon, he was going to break every one of the sacred vows he’d made during the rites of purification. Joyfully.

  “Honey, you can see me quivering anytime. Just let me know. Sex is a healthy physical outlet for two consenting adults,” she said, the amusement clear in her voice. “Or we could spar, or play tennis, which usually works far better for alleviating tension.”

  His eyelids shot open. “Alleviating tension? Are you kidding me?”

  She shrugged. “In my experience, there’s not much to recommend one over the other. Although at least sparring is useful. Now if we’re done with the small talk, we need to discuss strategy. Also, some of the men would like to know if you’ll spar against them. None of them have anywhere near your experience or talent with hand-to-hand fighting, and for close quarters it’s essential.”

  His mind was still back on what she’d said. Tennis and sex. Not much to recommend one over the other. If he had her alone for a single hour, he’d show her . . . He clenched his jaw against the sensual images flooding his brain.

  “Right. Sparring. Now,” he gritted out, stripping out of his jacket and shirt as he headed for the center of the courtyard. “Any of them. All of them. Tell them to bring it on. I’ve got some tension to alleviate.”

  Grace knew a little about predators.
She’d been training, studying, and fighting for ten long years, ever since she’d surrendered her dream of Olympic gold. She’d faced vampires and all shapes and sizes of shifters, from wolf to panther to bear. She’d even fought alongside Jack, whose ferocity in tiger form was truly stupendous.

  But she’d never seen anything like Alexios.

  If a poem could dance off the pages of a book and wield daggers and a sword, the sight of it might come close to describing Alexios in motion. His every step was calculated grace and elegance; never a misstep or wasted movement. He’d spent the first hour sparring against every single new recruit they had, leaving them all gasping for breath, battered and bruised, and lost in admiration.