Atlantis Redeemed (21 page)

He turned immediately, but something in the tense way he held his shoulders told her plainer than any words could how very difficult all this was for him. She’d felt the sheer, primal force of his fierce arousal, both in the forest, earlier, and on the bed just moments before. But he’d held back, both times.

He’d
held back. She hadn’t. She’d been sort of a shameless hussy.

She grinned at the outdated phrase and the notion of it fitting her, of all people, as she made quick work of stripping out of her clothes and quickly stepping into the shower. She resisted the automatic moan of pure, hedonistic delight when the wonderfully powerful spray hit her body from all directions.

All
directions. Her eyes widened when she turned a little to lift her hair off of her neck and one stream of water happened to strike very sensitive flesh. Oh, boy, this shower could be a lonely single girl’s best friend. Her gaze immediately went to Brennan, because it wasn’t a pulsating shower jet she wanted between her legs.

It was him. All of him. Every hard, hot inch that she’d felt between her thighs when he’d captured her on that giant, soft, made-for-wild-passionate-nights bed. A hot blush rose from her breasts and swept up her neck and face to her hairline, and she silently offered a thank-you that he wasn’t watching her right then.

But when he turned around to see her because of the curse, and caught her staring at him like a lust-struck idiot . . . She hurriedly reached for the intriguing glass bottles on the shelf. Shampoo and soap. That’s what she needed.

That’s all she needed.

Brennan tried his best, he really did; he’d be prepared to argue before the highest Atlantean court his case that he’d given it his best efforts to keep from looking at her as long as he could. However, when the sound of bath oils being uncorked came to his ears, at the same time that the edges of his grasp of Tiernan’s reality grew hazy in his mind, he was forced to turn around and catch a single glimpse of her.

It was almost a hardship, really. His conscience scoffed.

His breath dried in his mouth and all of the air in the room vanished, replaced with longing, need, and desire. She was turned slightly away from him, so that she didn’t see him watching her, and as he stood, entranced, she raised her arms to wash her lovely dark hair. He inhaled sharply as the iridescent mass of bubbles formed and then sluiced away in the multiple streams of the shower, leaving her hair and body glistening, covered with drops of water.

He’d never been jealous of drops of water before.

He wanted to lick each one of them off her body, one at a time.

His body was shaking with need, and his cock strained against his pants so hard it hurt him. He was aroused beyond anything he’d ever known, just from the sight of the curve of her back and hip, down to her firm, round ass. He caught a glimpse of the silken shadow between her legs as she turned, and he was suddenly urgently, fiercely sure that he’d never wanted anything in his life as much as he wanted to go to her, stripping his own clothes off as he went, and plunge his cock into her so deeply that she’d cry out his name.

Instead, he turned around. Turned away.

All heroic sacrifices did not involve weapons and battle and death. Some were about a beautiful human woman standing in a shower.

Several minutes later, during which he’d taken only two quick glances when he felt the curse snaking around the edges of his mind, she finally called his name.

“Brennan? I’m done and wrapped up in these wonderful towels. I don’t know how to turn off the shower, or if you wanted to—”

“Oh, by the gods, how I want to,” he growled, then he turned and pounced on her, yanked her off her feet, and kissed her, fast, furious, almost bruising. “But I won’t.” He released her and, tearing at his clothes, stepped into the shower, throwing shirt and pants and boots against the far wall with, at least in the case of the boots, satisfying thunks.

She sighed loudly, and he heard it even over the roar of the shower and the pounding of so much blood in his skull. “I’m too tired right now, or we’d have a little chat. Do you have spare clothes?”

He pointed to the cabinet under his sink, then squeezed his eyes shut, so he wasn’t tempted to see her bend over. The towel was long, but, still . . .

“I have several sets of sparring clothes under there. They’ll be too big, but they’re soft enough to sleep in.”

“Thank you.”

When he was forced to open his eyes to see her, for fear of the results of the curse, she was dressed in a soft gray sparring outfit, and the sight of her wearing his clothes sent a spear of fierce possession thundering through him.

She was his, and he would keep her safe, even if it had to be in spite of herself.

He had no choice.

“I’ll just lean here, okay?” she called out, leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes. Every line of her body drooped with exhaustion and he hurried his bathing so he could put her to bed.

His bed.

She would be in his bed, and he would have to somehow, by all the gods, refrain from touching her.

He caught the groan before it escaped, and with a quick glance at her, still resting against the wall, he turned so that his back was to her, in case she should look up. With a fierce, practiced stroke, he pumped his cock once, then twice, in a painfully necessary attempt to take some of the edge off his need before he had to share a bed with her.

Even as seed spurted from his body and was instantly washed away by the force of the shower stream, he knew it was futile. No mere physical release would ever keep him from wanting her.

He was hers, and he was cursed, and any future they might have together was doomed. He made a sound of pure despair, deep in his throat, and shut down the shower.

Maybe sleep would make it better. He didn’t see how it could make it any worse.

 

 

 

 

Tiernan stared at Brennan, who was lying on the other side of the bed from her, as relaxed and at ease as, oh, a slab of marble—if marble could radiate misery. She was feeling a little tense herself, after the glimpses she’d snuck of his naked body in that shower. The man was pure, muscled, hard-bodied, delicious goodness, which was entirely unfair.

“Worse,” he muttered, his eyes clenched shut. “Oh, gods, of course it will be worse. I can’t see you when I sleep.”

“You can’t see me now.”

He opened one eye and glared at her.

“Your fierce glare does not scare me, oh, black-eyed one,” she said, grinning in spite of her exhaustion. “You’re pretty used to barking orders and people falling in line, aren’t you?”

His other eye popped open. Now both of them glared at her, in all their long-lashed, color-changing gorgeousness. “I am not. I am accustomed to working with bullheaded warriors with more guts than brains. I wonder why I am surprised by anything about you, now that you mention it,” he said, his voice nearly a growl. “You could be related to Christophe. Or Ven, for that matter.”

She laughed out loud as the purity of his truth rang through her veins like champagne filtered through her blood. “Wow. That was purely true, not even a shade of deception about it. Do your friends know you think so highly of them? Bullheaded with more guts than brains, I believe you said?”

“Believe me, I have said this to them in far more colorful language,” he said dryly, and she started laughing again, an edge of wildness in it.

He narrowed his eyes at the sound and then he sighed, his face relaxing, and held out his hand. “You are tired beyond the endurance levels of your body and mind. Please rest.”

Slowly, cautiously, she reached over and twined her fingers in his. At the touch of his warm, strong hand, realization dawned. “Oh, Brennan, I didn’t think,” she whispered. “When we’re asleep, of course you won’t be able to see me. Do you think—I mean, will the curse—”

His expression grew even more grim. “I have no way to know the answer to that, but my expectation is that, yes, closing my eyes in sleep will activate the curse and I will forget you.”

Pain sliced through her at his words, emphasizing the truth she’d been trying to hide, even from herself. “I don’t want you to forget me,” she whispered. “I know this isn’t about me, and this is so hard for you, and our mission is far more important than my stupid feelings, but, oh, Brennan.”

She stopped and scrubbed tears from her eyes before they could slide down her cheeks to the silken pillowcase. “I don’t want you to forget me.”

He froze, going so still that for a moment she thought he hadn’t heard her, and then his hand tightened on hers and he pulled her slowly, inexorably, across the wide expanse of bed until she was nestled against his side. His chest was bare, so her face rested on smooth, warm skin that covered rock-hard muscle, but he’d pulled on a pair of the soft sparring pants, probably for her sake.

She wished he hadn’t.

“I could never forget you completely,” he murmured against her hair. “No matter the curse, no matter how powerful the god who commanded it. You are the lost part of my soul, Tiernan Butler, and I only wish for years and years and years to prove it to you.”

She stiffened a little in his arms, and he pulled her a little closer into the heat of his body, but she shook her head. “I don’t want your feelings to be the result of a god’s curse. I want to have time to get to know you, to explore these feelings between us. If you forget me every time you go to sleep, it’s going to be very tough. Maybe impossible.”

He raised a hand and stroked her hair back from her forehead, then kissed her there. “You said feelings between us, did you not?”

“Yes, but—”

“Did a god curse you to care about me?”

She knew where he was going, but answered him honestly. “No, of course not.”

“And yet you admit you have feelings for me, even a little?”

“More than a little,” she admitted. “It’s kind of crazy, but there it is.”

“Kindly grant me the right to the same feelings, then, leaving out whatever a god may have encouraged,” he said, his voice gone deep and husky, resonating in very private places in her body.

“I want you to kiss me, Brennan, but we don’t seem to be able to stop at kissing, and I’m so tired, and so afraid of the curse kicking in when we’re asleep, and so worried that everything I’ve worked for is falling apart around my ears.”

“Just let me hold you. I’ll stay awake as long as I can, which will be no hardship with you in my arms,” he said, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face.

“Huh. Lucky you,” she muttered darkly, wondering if she had the energy to go for a very cold shower. “Also, that was a lie.”

He laughed and leaned over to kiss her nose. “Yes, it was a lie, my beautiful truth teller. Holding you is, in fact, very
hard
.”

She laughed in spite of herself. “Very, very hard?”

He caught her hand and pressed it against his erection and then released it so quickly that she was caught off guard, with her hand hovering uncertainly above his very impressive and, definitely, very hard penis.

“It’s a constant state since I met you,” he confessed, looking pained at the admission.

A little niggle of guilt scratched at her. After all, in the forest it had been all about her. Shouldn’t she reciprocate?

“Talk to me,” he commanded, surprising her yet again. “Tell me about growing up with your Gift. Just for a little while, until you fall asleep.” He turned to her, his pain and worry naked on his face. “Please?”

That
please
got to her in a way that commands never would have.

“It was hard,” she began, then laughed a little at the unintentional use of the word. “No, let’s go with ‘difficult,’ okay?”

“Difficult. I can see how that would be so. Were there never any compensations?” He twined his fingers through hers and rested their joined hands on his hard abdomen.

“Never? No, I can’t say never,” she said, forcing herself to sift through long-buried memories. “I saved a boy from being falsely accused of stealing a teacher’s purse once. His family was really poor so everyone thought he’d taken it for the money. He was telling the truth, and I asked a few questions of a few of the other students, pretty impressed with my mad Nancy Drew skills, and found out that the principal’s son actually stole it. Acting out to get attention from Daddy, who was kind of a jerk, I think.”

“Were you pleased? To be able to help?”

Her smile faded as the rest of the memory surfaced. “I was. For a while. The boy who’d been falsely accused even gave me my first kiss.”

Brennan growled, the sound and vibration of it startling beneath their joined hands. “I don’t need to hear about you kissing anyone else.”

She laughed. “We were twelve. This is not exactly a threat to your manhood, so calm down, wild thing.”