She bit her lip, but nodded. “Hey, no guts, no glory, right? Now, maybe we should focus on the immediate problem?”
“I agree. Now we should figure out a way to get past our unwanted bodyguards and to Lucas’s headquarters to discover what exactly is going on there.”
“Can you do the mist thing again?” She glanced at the window. “That was pretty impressive, by the way. Nobody would ever catch you traveling that way.”
“I could, but I can’t carry you that way. Or, to be precise, although I could carry you while in that form, it would be quite startling to everyone watching to see you floating through midair, being carried by an invisible magic carpet.”
She bit her lip. “You can’t turn me into mist, too, then?”
“No. Only Atlanteans have that ability.”
“I have to admit to being a little relieved. I’m not much for having my molecules rearranged. I’m much more McCoy than Spock in that way, if you get my drift.”
“Actually, I have no idea what—”
“Sorry.
Star Trek
junkie here. Big fan. Loved the remake.” She walked over to the window and peeked out. “It’s settled, then. You go by yourself, via the mist deal, and I stay here and get some rest. Maybe order some room service. When you get back—”
It was his turn to interrupt. “I cannot be separated from you, Tiernan. Not that I would leave you alone, with so much danger, in any case. But I cannot leave you or the terms of the curse will be invoked.”
She smacked her hand on her forehead. “I know that. I
know
that. It’s hard to remember, though, if that makes sense? Like how you keep hitting the light switch in a room every time you walk in even though you know you need to replace the lightbulb?”
Half the time he had no idea what she was talking about, but it in no way detracted from the pure sensual enjoyment of watching her. Watching her mouth move and imagining what she could do to him with those lovely, lush lips . . .
“Brennan?” She waved at him. “You’re doing it again?”
“Doing what?”
“Staring at me like I’m on the menu.”
“Of course not.” But a wave of heat traveled down his body, giving the lie to his words. Considering her Gift, he smiled.
“Perhaps only for dessert.”
Chapter 13
In the elevator on the way to the lobby, Tiernan’s skin tingled every time Brennan even so much as glanced her way. He was taking the idea of embracing his emotions very seriously, or at least taking the idea of embracing
her
very seriously. He wanted her, and he was going after her. The single-minded pursuit should have turned her off, but it didn’t. It had quite the opposite effect. She spent most of her time around him feeling very, very tingly.
“Showtime,” she murmured as the L button lit up and the doors began to open. Brennan’s seductive half smile transformed into an arrogant glare, and he put a possessive arm around her waist.
“This is part of the act, remember, so don’t hold it against me later,” he said quietly into her ear.
Seized by a wicked impulse, she dropped her hand to his sexy, firm butt and squeezed. “Same goes.” Then she threw back her head and pealed a great rich bout of “gosh, I’m a bimbo” laughter and put some wiggle into her hips as they exited the elevator.
“Are you sure you want to go for a walk in these woods in the dark, Sweetie Pie? I mean, there might be wild animals and scary stuff out there,” she said in her best impression of breathless and brainless.
“I’m the only wild animal you need to worry about, now or ever,” he said in his deep voice, and though she knew he was playing to their expected audience, something in his tone made her wonder just how much of the possessiveness he was demonstrating really was an act.
The last thing she needed was him thinking he could take over her life. She had a job and a goal to get back to when this mission was done. She was going to expose every single one of the monsters who were behind this horrible plot to enthrall humanity, and she had a feeling Litton and his cronies were only the tip of the iceberg.
Right on cue, a matching pair of no-neck, muscle-bound thugs stepped in front of them as they sauntered toward the exit.
“Sorry, sir, but we’re asking guests to remain in the hotel tonight. Just a precaution, you understand,” Tweedle Dumb said.
“Yeah. Precautions. Don’t want anybody to gobble you up, do ya?” Tweedle Dumber chimed in, leering at her boobs.
Brennan’s hand shot out and he gripped Dumber by the throat, lifting him so far up in the air that the man’s toes barely scraped the floor. “I am inclined to consider your lascivious actions to be an offense to my lady. What do you say to that?”
Dumber said nothing, which wasn’t surprising since Brennan was choking him. The man’s face turned a mottled red and he gasped out a few strangled noises while ineffectually trying to pull Brennan’s hand away from his neck.
His partner went for a gun under his jacket, and Brennan raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think you want to do that?”
The thug froze, considering his options. Thinking was apparently not in his job description.
Tiernan put a hand on Brennan’s arm. “Stop. Let him go. I don’t need you to defend my honor, and you’re causing quite a scene.”
Brennan gave another squeeze, but released the man just as his face turned an interesting shade of deep purple.
“I’ll kill you,” the man managed to growl between gasping in deep breaths.
“You can try,” Brennan returned calmly. “Now, if we’re done with this, my date and I are going for a short walk. Detain us further at your own risk, not to mention Dr. Litton might be very unhappy with you if his prize billionaire were to walk out on this whole enterprise.”
Dumb and Dumber gaped at each other, clearly at a loss to calculate this new variable. Tiernan didn’t wait for them to figure it out, especially when the one with the gun grabbed his radio and toggled it on. She grabbed Brennan by the hand and pulled him toward the glass doors. At first it was like trying to pull a mountain, but finally, the testosterone-driven staring match with the goons apparently over, he followed her. When they were outside, she didn’t stop but dropped his hand and strode rapidly down the sidewalk toward the road, having no idea in what direction they were headed but not really caring. He caught up in seconds and shot a sidelong glance at her as she kept hiking along, still moving at top speed.
“Are you angry with me?” he finally ventured.
“Gee, Sherlock, what gave you that idea?” She muttered some of the worst words she knew under her breath. “Just because you endanger the mission and risk blowing our cover all over some stupid guy staring at my boobs? Why would I be
angry
?”
“I should apologize for defending your honor?” Brennan viciously kicked a fallen tree limb out of his way. “Let them act like degenerate scum while I do nothing? And then what? Perhaps lie down and have a fit of the vapors while they put their hands on you?”
She clamped her lips shut to fight the grin threatening to break free, and then stopped and pivoted to face him. “Okay, so many things. First, nobody says ‘fit of the vapors.’ Try to join this century. Second, overreact much? They were leering. They were thugs, with probably five brain cells to share between them, and they were copping a visual feel. Big deal. I get worse every time I walk past a construction site in Boston.”
He folded his arms across that broad chest of his, which made his muscles tighten and strain the fabric of his shirt, and for a moment she lost track of what she’d been saying. The man was flat-out gorgeous. But then she looked up, and the mutinous expression on his face brought her back to the point, fast.
“You know, you look like a two-year-old who needs juice and a nap,” she pointed out, but then she came to a startling realization. “In fact, that’s probably what a lot of this is about, isn’t this? Everybody else learns to control their emotions as a child, but you’ve had no opportunity to do that. Or whatever you did learn as a child was wiped out in the past couple of thousand years. So you’re at the ‘I wanna’ and ‘no, no, no’ stage of emotional development.”
She threw up her arms and started walking again. “Great. I needed stealth for undercover work and I get Rambo with a definite need for a time-out chair.”
He clamped a hand on her arm and pulled her around, none too gently, to face him. “Oh, no. You cannot make proclamations like that and then just walk away from me.”
She got right back in his face. Nobody was going to tell her what she could or couldn’t do, ancient warrior or not. “Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, you’re going the wrong way.”
She glanced around, feeling a little foolish. “Oh.”
“And for another, I need to kiss you right now,” he said, pulling her against her body. “Do you have any complaints about that?”
“I’m sure I’ll think of—”
He kissed her, just a quick press of his lips to hers, cutting off whatever she’d been about to say. “You’ll think of what?”
Tiernan sighed, then put her arms around his neck. “Nothing. But you’re so getting juice and a nap after this, mister.”
He laughed and circled her waist with his strong arms. “May I have a cookie with that?”
When she opened her mouth to reply, he took swift advantage with a searing, deep kiss. The forest floor melted away from under her feet. Nothing remained but a swirling tornado of emotion, and she and Brennan stood in the middle, clinging to each other as a drowning sailor clings to a piece of driftwood.
His tongue swept into her mouth and claimed it—claimed
her
—for his own, and he pulled her so tightly against his body that she couldn’t miss the hard bulge of his erection pulsing against her exactly where she needed him. She moaned, or maybe he did, and she tunneled her fingers through the silky long waves of his hair and pulled his face even closer to deepen the kiss.
He ravaged her mouth, kissing her with such intensity and skill that she believed her bones were turning to liquid silver in his arms. She was helpless to do anything but cling to him and tighten her hold, devouring him as if the kiss itself were the only thing keeping her from shattering into pieces and flying off into the storm of passion.
She pulled back a little, trying to catch her breath and regain a little balance, but he kissed his way down the side of her neck and then oh-so-gently kissed the exact spot where the vampire had bitten her earlier.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, as he gently cupped her breast with one large, elegant hand.
“I am torturing myself,” he said, breathing hard, “since there is no way I will allow myself to take you against the side of one of these trees, even though everything in me screams to do nothing else. I am having fantasies of lifting this sweater and covering your lush, ripe breasts with my hands and covering your lush, ripe nipples with my mouth. Then I want to kneel before you and peel these jeans down to your ankles and lick the sweetness from your lush, ripe body until you come in my mouth.”
She was breathing pretty hard herself by the time he was done painting that visual picture. “That’s a lot of lush and ripe,” she whispered.
“I need you, Tiernan. Two thousand years of need,” he growled. He lifted her completely off the ground, and she instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her over to one of the trees he’d just mentioned, more than a dozen yards away from the road and deep in the night shadows cast by the other trees. Even the moonlight didn’t penetrate to where they stood. “Let me do this. Just for a few short minutes. Let me give you pleasure.”
He stopped when they reached the tree, and ever so gently, he pressed her back against the cold bark. “Please, please, please,” he mumbled against her mouth before taking her lips in another searing, passionate kiss.
Exquisite waves of ecstasy sizzled through her body just from the touch of his mouth on hers, and she knew she should remember all the reasons why this was a bad idea, but all she could think of was
yes
, and—after all—
two thousand years of need
, and so she said it.
“How can a girl resist that? Yes, yes, yes,” she whispered, urgent, needing his hands on her. Needing his mouth on her.
He roared out a sound of triumph or possession or maybe it was just an Atlantean lovemaking thing, but she didn’t care because seconds later he was lifting her sweater and pushing her bra cups to the side, and before the first chill could even spark goose bumps on her skin, his hot mouth covered one nipple and his hot hand covered the other. He made a humming sound against her breast and it tingled, but before she could react he put his lips around her nipple and sucked so hard she cried out.
“Brennan, Brennan, oh, God, yes.” She tightened her fingers in his hair, and he took it for the encouragement it was, apparently, because he began rhythmically sucking that nipple and flicking it with periodic swipes of his tongue. She squirmed against him, the hot, liquid desire pooling between her thighs, opening and readying her for him. She wanted, she needed, and oh, yes, he pushed the big, hard bulge of his erection against her and began pressing against her in the same rhythm that his mouth used on her.
A flash fire of sensation raced through her veins, and she was so close to coming, just from his mouth on her breast. So close, oh, how could she be so aroused so fast, and then he bit down gently on her nipple and his fingers pinched her other nipple, hard, at the same time, and she cried out.
The heat, oh, the heat, the sheer driving, pounding force of her need was climbing through her and demanding more and more. More of the incredible sensation.
More of
him
.
Tiernan was nearly crazed with the wanting, it was so powerful. Never, ever had she felt anything even close to this before. Desperate, she pulled at his head until he released her nipple with a wet, sucking pop that she felt all the way down to her toes.