Atlantis Unmasked (14 page)

Ven had been right. Alexios needed the gods to help him, because he was out of his mind to spar with her. He had a terrible feeling that hand-to-hand combat was exactly the wrong way to force himself to quit thinking about Grace, naked.

Grace, in the moonlight up on the parapets. Naked. Gloriously naked, riding him, with her hair unbound and whipping behind her in the night breeze.

Naked.

He shook his head to try to dislodge the thoughts, but she saw him and got the wrong idea. “What's the matter? Did you change your mind?” she taunted. “A little too tired after all, tough guy?”

“I will never be too tired to take you,” he said, the impact of his deliberate dual meaning shimmering in the air between them.

She gasped—a small sound he almost missed—and tightened her grip on the practice sword. A rosy red flush tinted her cheeks, catching him off guard. So the warrior woman was a little shy. The contradiction entranced him, and he wondered if she'd blush for him in his bed.

But she entered the ring, so the time had come to focus. Grace would give him no quarter and he knew her to be a very talented fighter. Although he didn't let it show on the surface, he was a little tired from three hours of sparring. With skill and luck, she could land a very hard blow to his head and to his ego.

But he had other plans for Grace, and though they did not—
could
not—include tasting her lovely body just yet, he had plans to do exactly that in the very near future. He and Alaric just had to talk first. About purification and vows and whether five years was long enough to heal a warrior who'd been so defiled he'd prayed for death.

It was time. It was long
past
time. Please, Poseidon, let it be time. Because for the first time in his existence, he may have found a woman he could not live without.

“Are we going to dance around all night, or are we going to do this thing?” Grace asked, slowly circling toward him, sword at the ready. “Is the big, strong Atlantean afraid I'm going to kick his ass?”

He laughed; he couldn't help it. “I've faced far larger and more powerful foes that you, but I've got to admit none of them had quite your gift for sweet words.”

“Try to keep up, old man. I know we're not in your century or anything, but we call this trash talk.” She grinned, her eyes sparkling. Whatever else may lie between the two of them, Grace really did love the challenge of battle.

He blinked as her words sank in. “Did you just call me
old man
?” He didn't need to fake the outrage. “Old man? I'll show you an old man.”

With that, he quit circling and closed on her, raising his sword and feinting left. She blocked him easily and parried right.

“Too easy,
old man
. You have a tendency to feint left, or didn't anybody tell you that over the past few centuries? Maybe you need just a little more practice before you take me on.” Then, seamlessly executing a pirouette worthy of a ballerina, she whirled round and shot a high kick directly for the left side of his head.

He ducked and sprang at her, catching her around the waist in mid-leap. Before she could react, he pressed a kiss to her neck, breathing deep to take her unique scent into his lungs. She smelled of wildflowers and sea grasses. No delicate rose, she. He kissed her again, smiling at the rapid pulse beating under his lips, and then he jumped back. “This
old man
has tricks you never dreamed of, woman. Watch yourself, because I claim forfeit for every time I manage to get my hands on you.”

She spun around, crouching down into a battle-ready pose, sword held out in front of her. Her color was high, but he didn't know if it were from battle or from his touch. Probably both. This was Grace, after all.

“And what about every time I get my hands on you?” she challenged him.

He smiled and let every single heated thought he'd ever had about her show in his eyes. From the sound of her startled gasp, he figured she'd picked up on his message just fine.

“I thought maybe we could play tennis,” he replied, mocking her earlier words. Then he raised his sword to go after her in earnest. He would give no quarter and make no concession for her sex or for her humanity. Right now, right here, she was his, and he was going to take her in the only way not forbidden to him.

“En garde, my lovely Grace,” he said. Then he charged.

Grace barely had time to take a breath before he was on her. Wooden swords smashing against each other, she and Alexios battled their way around the ring. With that unbelievably muscled body, deep blue eyes, and the golden hair brushing against his shoulders at every step, he looked like a pillaging Viking come to abduct the village maiden.

Lucky village maiden.

At least part of the time, she felt like she almost had him on the defensive, but whenever it happened she'd catch him watching her, holding back laughter. He was toying with her, and it was driving her nuts.

Worse, whatever crazy plan he had—whatever he was trying to accomplish with the constant touching—it was working. She was distracted beyond any coherent thought of strategy and reduced to hacking away at him like a novice.

Lunge and he would parry, then riposte. Feint, and he would block, circle around, and touch her again. Kiss her neck. Touch her hair.

She was breathing harder than she ever had in a real sword fight, and he wasn't even winded. It was him. All him.

He took advantage of her distraction and feinted left again. She blocked him easily but the feint itself had been a trick. He moved faster than her eyes could track and suddenly he was yanking her up against him, her breasts crushed into his chest, his sword falling to the ground as he used his free hand to unfasten her hair. The heavy braid fell out of its twist and he pulled the tie from the end of it.

“Why do you hide this hair?” He asked, his voice low and husky. A bedroom voice. She tried to answer, but her mouth had gone dry and words weren't coming.

He lowered his other hand to her bottom and pulled her even closer until she felt the unmistakable hardness of his erection pressing against her. She felt him doing something to her hair but it barely registered until he pulled the long length of it, freed from its braid, between them and curled it around his hand.

“Do you know that I have fantasized about your hair? More vividly and more sensually than any fantasies I've ever had? Waking dreams of your hair spread on my pillows, these lovely dark waves silhouetted on Atlantean silk. Of long curls falling on my chest while you straddled my naked body. Of burying my hands in it while I take you from behind. Do you have any idea what you're doing to me?”

He bent his head to the curve of her neck and inhaled deeply, and the feel of his breath on her skin was so arousing that her knees weakened and the sword dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers.

“You—I—” But she couldn't think. Couldn't form coherent thoughts in order to speak them. All she could do was moan when he opened his mouth and gently bit down right where her neck curved into her shoulder.

Her arms reached up, almost without her own volition, and twined around his neck. She pressed herself even closer to him until there was nothing between his chest and her hard, aching nipples but the thin cloth of her cotton bra and T-shirt.

Even that was too much. She wanted him naked. She wanted
herself
naked.

She finally gave into the secret desire she'd had since she first saw him walk into the room in St. Louis. She put her hands in all that gorgeous golden hair, and the tactile sensations from the silken mass of waves nearly made her moan. His hair was so many colors that simply calling it gold didn't do it justice. It was champagne and sunlight; gold and bronze and copper. It was lush fantasies of a wild jungle cat who only she could tame.

A wild
Atlantean
only she could tame.

If only it were true.

“You're so beautiful,” she whispered.

He lifted his head and stared down at her, something dark and forbidding in his expression. For once, he made no attempt to hide the viciously scarred left side of his face. “So I have been told, many times, before this damage was done to me. My appearance meant nothing to me then. A way to divest women of their skirts, perhaps.”

His arms tightened around her almost until it hurt, but she said nothing, sensing that he was on the brink of a revelation that she was afraid to hear, but needed to know.

“Then there were those who spoke of beauty to me, but they were talking about pain. My pain. I was captured, Grace,” he confessed, the words rough as though she'd ripped them from his throat. “Captured while trying to save my prince, but he was captured, too. They were Algolagnia, the vampire goddess Anubisa's cult of pain worshippers. They only find beauty and sexual release in their own agony and that of others. For so long—so unbearably long—they tortured and defiled and corrupted me until I, too, almost began to believe that beauty was only found in blood, pain, and despair.”

A wave of mingled sympathy, rage, and something like terror sliced through her. She started to speak, but he shook his head.

A warning or a denial.

“I ask not for your sympathy—I will not accept your pity. I have never spoken in any detail of the eternity I lived during those two years, and I never will. But you need to know that if you continue to tease me, you're baiting a beast the likes of which you have never encountered. I fear something in me was broken and still lies twisted, with jagged edges, inside the boundaries of what I once experienced as desire.”

Grace didn't know what to say. Didn't know what to do. Only knew that she had to say or do something to help dispel the horrible aching loneliness in his eyes.

“I'm tougher than I look,” she said, trying to smile. “Despite how little trouble I've given you here in the practice ring. And I'm very good at fixing broken things. I've never tried with a broken person, though.”

Abruptly, he released her and stepped back. “And so you should not have to, lovely Grace. I will avoid you as much as possible during this assignment. You have my word. Please accept my deepest apologies for this inappropriate display on my part.”

He turned and had begun walking away before she could formulate a response. She wanted to follow him, but she needed to be careful. After all, she didn't know what had happened to him. What was wrong with him. What violence was masked by his undeniably stunning exterior. She'd come to see even the scars as an enhancement, turning classical beauty to rugged. But she needed to be cautious.

She watched him as he walked away from her, his body held rigidly upright, having rejected her before she could reject him. He was protecting her. He was protecting himself.

Her defenses shattered. To hell with cautious. She was going after him.

“Alexios!” She started walking, then running, until she caught up to him. She lifted her hands to cup his face. “Don't. Don't apologize to me. Don't treat me like I'm fragile. Don't run off on me. I think . . . I think there's something between us, and I'm . . . I want to take the time to figure it out. Life is short—”

She broke off, laughing. “Well, okay. Life may not be short for you. But for me, for humans, yes. I learned that brutal lesson ten years ago. Give me a chance to be not just your ally, but . . .”

“But?” he prompted.

She lowered her hands and stepped back, suddenly embarrassed at her own presumption. What was she, a psychologist? How did she think she could offer anything to this man who'd clearly been through so much?

“I'm an idiot,” she mumbled, closing her eyes. “Total idiot.”

“I seriously doubt that, but why would you say it? Grace?” He caught her arm and stared down into her eyes. His own had turned nearly black, with a peculiar blue-green flame in the exact centers of his pupils. She knew that Atlantean eyes were sort of like mood rings, but this blue flame thing was new.

“Grace?”

She blinked, feeling like she'd just nearly hypnotized herself in his gaze. “Maybe, maybe we could take it slow. Find out . . . discover if there's anything between us worth pursuing. I'm not exactly girlfriend material.”

It was his turn to blink, and then a wide grin spread over his face. “Girlfriend material,” he repeated slowly. “Oh, may the gods help me. I can't believe I'm going to have to talk to Alaric about this.”

“What? What does Alaric have to do with it?”

He bent and kissed her forehead, then bowed deeply. “As you say, we will take it slow. Until tomorrow,
mi amara
.”