Atlantis Unmasked (32 page)

She collapsed forward a little but he was inhumanly quick and caught her, gently, oh so gently, and made sure she didn't hurt herself, didn't jar her still-healing side. He lifted her onto the bed so carefully, as if she were fragile or delicate or anything but a warrior.

A woman, perhaps. The metamorphosis irrevocably complete.

She sighed with the sheer sated pleasure of it and held her arms out to him when he hesitated. “I'm cold without you,” she said. “Please. I still need you. I think I need you inside me more than I need to breathe. Please, Alexios. Don't leave me alone, yet again. Please.”

Alexios stared down at her, at this woman who was the center of his soul, of his life, and was humbled. “Never. You never have to say ‘please' to me,” he said roughly. “I am yours to command and will be until the end of my years.”

A strangely sad smile crossed her face, and he lowered himself carefully onto the bed next to her, careful not to jostle her injured side. “Tell me. Tell me what else I can do to please you.”

She lowered her lashes, that entrancing blush sweeping across her cheeks again. “I'd rather you told me what I could do to please you. I'm not all that great at this. I mean, of course I've done it before, but it wasn't—I mean—oh, I sound like an idiot.”

He clasped his hands together under his head and forced himself to say nothing while hot rage seared through him. It was ridiculous. It was incomprehensible. Of course she had known other lovers.

And yet the thought of her with another man sent a crushing primal fury swamping through his brain.

“Alexios? Did I say something wrong?”

Her voice was hesitant, and for an instant she reminded him of a shy young dolphin he'd played with as a child. Coming closer, then backing away. Wanting to make contact, but somehow afraid. Grace was like that, and yet she'd gathered all her courage to reach out to him and he was wasting time on useless jealousy.

“I am sorry,
mi amara
. I just felt an emotion heretofore unknown to me through all the years of my existence,” he said, grinning ruefully. “Not that this is a particularly good time for me to remind you of our age difference.”

“Well, you're only as old as you feel, or so they say. Most days, that makes me around five hundred years old. So I guess I'm really too old for you,” she said, shyly returning his smile.

He laughed and then dared to touch her again, tracing the line of her jaw with his fingertip. She shivered and goose bumps rose on her lovely skin. He pulled the thick blankets over them both and something in her face relaxed a little.

“I'm not exactly used to lying around naked with men,” she admitted. “I guess I'm a little nervous.”

Alexios felt the rage try to build in his nerve endings again. “I have a confession to make, and I am not proud of it. The emotion to which I was referring is jealousy, and it would be much easier for me if you would save any talk of other men until I'm not lying next to you with your taste on my lips.”

The hot blush rose in her cheeks again, but she nodded. “Okay, I get it. It's a little hard for me, too, if I start thinking about how many women you've been with over the course of all those centuries. Speaking of which, we need to have the safe-sex talk.” She blushed even harder.

“I can neither catch nor transmit any human illness, and pregnancy is not a concern unless a warrior has made a petition to Poseidon for permission,” he gently assured her.

“Oh. Well. That's good. I, um, well, now that we have that out of the way, can we go back to the kissing?” She rolled onto her side facing him and grinned, and he was glad to see her shyness fading and his Grace return. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his lips, and he opened his mouth to her, delighting when her tongue hesitantly swept inside to claim his mouth.

But the heat of her touch drove the hunger, and hunger drove need, until his cock, which had softened a little while they talked, pulsed urgently with the demand that he be inside her. Inside her hot wetness. Plunging in and out of her in the same rhythm his fingers had earlier known in her body. Fucking her until she came, hard, clamping around his cock.

He changed the kiss, deepened it, drove his own tongue into her mouth. Angled his head to take even more, raised onto his side, and gently pushed her onto her back so that her body was open to him and he was free to explore it with his hand while he kissed her.

He cupped each of her breasts and rubbed his thumb back and forth against each hardened nipple, still kissing her, still catching her tiny moans in his mouth. Then his hand moved lower, to her silky belly, and he splayed his fingers there, where his child would grow if he had petitioned Poseidon for such a gift.

The thought was oddly appealing, and that in itself was a little frightening. Never before had he even considered the idea of fathering a child. But the combination of making love to Grace and, perhaps, seeing Prince Aidan was working on him subconsciously. But just then Grace lifted her hand to his back and gently ran the tips of her short nails down his skin, sending shivers through him. His thoughts shifted from wistful longing to an urgent, driving hunger, and he needed to have her.

He needed to have her now.

Grace wanted him to stop thinking. Now. He'd been toying with her long enough, and really, a girl could only take so much. She let her hand drop to that lovely, perfect butt of his and she squeezed. He jerked against her, and she finally, finally moved her hand to the one place she knew would jolt him into action. She ran her fingers down the length of his penis and then closed her hand around it, and he bucked against her and moaned so hard it nearly made her let go.

Nearly.

“I need you now,” she said, and then she pulled him over her, all that lovely, long, lean muscle in his legs moving him exactly to where she needed him, nestled in between her own legs, his arms propping him up so that he didn't rest his weight on her.

Still treating her as if she were fragile, then.

“What if I want you to lose control?” she asked huskily. “What if I want to make you crazy?”

He stared into her eyes, his own going almost completely black, except for that blue-green flame in the center.

“Also, what does
mi amara
mean? And why do your eyes get that blue-green flame in the middle?” she blurted out.

He blinked, then dropped his forehead to hers and sighed, then laughed a little. “Always the unexpected with you,
mi amara
. My beloved.”

It was her turn to blink. “Oh. Really?” Her lungs tightened and suddenly it was hard to breathe. “I'm your beloved?”

“Let me demonstrate,” he whispered, that evil grin back on his beautiful, fallen-angel face. Then he positioned himself so that the head of his penis was pushing directly at her center and, with one quick, hard thrust, he drove so far into her that she gasped and arched up against him.

“Mine,
mi amara
,” he said, his face suddenly harshly somber. “You are my beloved, and you are mine, and I will never, ever, let you be harmed again.”

He started thrusting, slowly and steadily, so that every word was punctuated by the sound and feel of their flesh meeting. His penis was so large, and she was so out of practice, that she felt a wonderful, horrible stretching that shivered on the precipice between ultimate pleasure and an edge of pain. When he drove into her, his chest brushed against the tips of her breasts, and the sensation was almost unbearable in its exquisite sensitivity. She felt the orgasm building, building, swirling through her nerves and veins and skin until she thought she might die if he didn't make her come soon.

“Please,” she said again, shamelessly, not caring that she was begging. “Please.”

He began to thrust harder and faster, his jaw clenched against some inner struggle, and then he shifted his weight to one arm and put his other hand between them and touched, then rubbed her exactly where she needed to feel him touching her. The pressure combined with the force of his body driving into her, and she called out his name, and then she screamed as she fell into the sun.

Alexios felt every sensation as Grace's body tightened around his own, as she arched into him, meeting his every thrust with her own passion. When she exploded, her entire body shuddered in wave after wave as she clamped around his cock so hard that his own release burst out of him, and he needed to catch himself on his arms so that he wouldn't fall forward onto her, crushing her.

He captured her lips with his own and kissed her, swallowing her cries with his mouth, and then she convulsed around him yet again and he soared through mundane reality and into the very fabric of being, and he knew—and was both exalted and terrified by the knowledge—that it was the soul-meld.

Finally complete, finally whole, the darkness of his soul yearned toward her light and the two collided in a shock wave of volcanic proportions, enough to sink Atlantis beneath the sea yet again, enough to lift Alexios from the deepest trench of loneliness and despair.

She was
here
and she was
his
and he would never, ever let her go.

He fell onto his side, pulling her with him, and wrapped his arms and legs around her, his cock still inside her, and he rode the wave of sensation—the purest, most beautiful cloud of hope and light and . . . dare he even think it?

Love.

As he rode the avalanche of light and sound that was the symphony of two souls finding their destiny, he opened his heart and mind and soul and filled them with her light. Filled them with her beauty.

Finally,
finally
knew love.

He would
never
let her go.

It was hours or eons later, time another irrelevancy in the universe they'd built between the two of them, and he felt her body slowly relax as she loosened her grip on his shoulders and her trembling finally slowed and stopped.

“Alexios?” she murmured sleepily, and he kissed her hair and her forehead and her lovely, elegant nose.

“Yes,
mi amara
?”

“Is it always like that for you?”

He laughed, startled as always by the way her mind worked. Then he kissed her gently on the lips. “No, my love, my beautiful Grace. It has never, ever been like that for me before. But it always will be from now on,” he promised.

“Oh,” she mumbled. “I'm not sure I can take it.”

He laughed and drew the blankets around her, and then he held her, content to feel the beating of her heart, for a very long time after she fell asleep.

“Always,” he whispered, a promise and a vow. Then he carefully slipped from her arms so that he didn't disturb her when he left to go join the patrol.

He wasn't about to let his guard down now. Not when he had so very much to protect.

Grace woke, climbing slowly up out of a delicious dream, and immediately turned to find Alexios. But she was alone. Instantly, all of her old fears swamped her with their cold, dank forebodings.

Why would he stay? What could she be to him, after all, but a blip on the long centuries of his life? Maybe the soul-meld had frightened him, and he'd decided to back off.

Maybe—but then she heard footsteps and relief and something deeper and sharper cut into her with an almost physical pain. How had she gotten to the place where his absence caused her such pain?

How would she stand it when he was gone?

But now wasn't the time. For now, she would take Michelle's advice and live in the moment. For all the years that he was gone she would have this treasure trove of memories to horde and cherish.

Alexios came through her doorway, holding mugs of coffee and looking like a man who had been well plea sured the night before. He was all rumpled, sleepy-eyed male satisfaction as he surveyed her from head to toe. She let the blanket fall from one bare shoulder and glanced up at him from beneath her lashes, trying on an unfamiliar seductiveness.

His eyes went hot as his gaze went straight for the bared expanse of skin, and she shrugged her shoulders a little so the blanket fell even further, exposing a precarious amount of her breasts. He smiled, but his knuckles on the mugs turned white.

“If you're trying to make sure I don't let you out of bed today, you're doing a very good job,” he said, his voice husky.

“Who, me?” she said, batting her eyelashes at him. Then she raised her arms and stretched, and the blanket fell into a puddle at her waist. Alexios kicked the door shut behind him, put the mugs down on the table, splashing coffee everywhere, and headed straight for her with an expression like a stalking lion.

She grinned and held her arms out to him, but he sat next to her on the bed, caught her hands in his and pinned them to her sides, pushing her gently back onto the pillows.