"You don't always have to take it all on, either, you know," she said quietly, making a sharp detour in the conversation. Even when she was frustrated and angry with him, even though he'd blocked his emotions from her, the crushing weight of his loneliness hovered at the edges of her awareness. "The weight of the world. The responsibility for everyone else's problems. Sometimes it's okay to let somebody else worry about you."
His eyes darkened, and a glimmer of something almost too powerful to be faced head-on looked out at her from behind that emerald glow. But a bird broke through the trees nearby, and the sound broke through the moment.
He held out his hand to her. "Let's explore, if you like."
She stared at him, afraid that she would be accepting so much more than just his hand.
"It's your choice, Quinn," he said, his eyes shuttered against her--against the possibility of rejection.
In the end, it wasn't a choice at all. She put her hand in his and simply waited, breathing slowly in and out so as not to react, as the electric sense of connection settled into place between them. They could deal with the issue of their attraction later. For once, she simply wanted to be Quinn. Not rebel leader, not forbidden love of an Atlantean high priest--just Quinn.
He said nothing, as if recognizing and granting her wish. They started walking, and she pretended, if only to herself, that they were normal tourists, sightseeing in paradise.
For once--just this once--pretending would be enough.
Chapter 8
Alaric watched Quinn as she walked along the beach, head down, eyes fixed on the sand or on a place he could not see; perhaps her own dark past. He'd long found that the solitude of the island setting was a balm to his own soul. A place where no demands would be placed on him--where no legions of enemies lined up to be battled, defeated, and killed.
They visited him, though, those legions. The faces of everyone he'd ever defeated, in the never-ending battle to protect humanity from its own folly; they haunted him in his sleep and, at times, visited him in his waking hours, as well. The ones he'd lost through his failure to protect fast enough, hard enough, or with sufficient scope--those ghosts accused him, too. A parade of death that had long caused him to believe his future would be a rapidly narrowing tunnel of madness and despair.
But then he'd met Quinn. Strong, courageous, and compassionate. A small human female who dressed like a homeless teen, fought like a hardened battle veteran, and plotted like a master strategist. It was she who should be claiming to be descended from Alexander the Great. None would have the slightest doubt.
Quinn glanced up at him, her brows drawn together in concern. For him. The experience was so novel that it sent another shock wave pounding through his body. Someone worrying about him--the monstrous high priest of terror. The one Atlantean women warned their children about, as if he were the bogeyman of their nightmares. "Be good, or High Priest Alaric will take you away to the temple."
They thought he didn't know. He'd trained himself to ignore it.
They thought he didn't care. He'd forced himself not to.
"What are you thinking about? You have a death grip on my hand," Quinn said, stopping and turning to look up into his face. "It's Ptolemy, isn't it? We should go. As long as he has Poseidon's Pride, everybody is in danger."
Alaric loosened his grip on her hand and then raised it to his lips. "Yes, Ptolemy. And other things, thoughts of little merit. This place has that effect on me, I'm afraid. Too much time and space for darker thoughts to intrude on common sense."
A shadow crossed her face, and she pulled her hand away from him and hugged herself as if cold, in spite of the warmth of sand-reflected sun. "I don't have the centuries of this battle behind me like you do, but believe me, I know about darker thoughts. I sometimes wish I could have been the sweetly ignorant person I pretended to be for my cover identity. It's amazing what a pink dress and a little lipstick can do for a woman's perceived IQ."
He knelt to retrieve a perfectly intact shell, pearly white with creamy brown striations, and shook off the sand before presenting it to her.
"I do not know what this IQ is, but I believe I understand your meaning. Perhaps we should buy Ven a pink dress, so he fools the enemy the next time we go into battle?"
Quinn laughed. "Oh, boy. Can you imagine? No, wait. How about Lord Justice? With that crazy blue hair and the ever-present sword? Actually, though, that might be even scarier."
She ran a finger along the edge of the shell before closing her hand around it. "Thank you. This is beautiful."
"A reminder that life is not all blood and death," he said, wishing he believed it.
He could see in her eyes that she did not believe it, either.
"Ours have been."
"So that the lives of others would not," he returned. He found another shell, a broken one, and hurled it far out into the waves. "It has always seemed a fair trade. Until now."
"Until now," she repeated slowly. "Alaric, I can never be what you might want me to be. I have forgotten anything I ever knew about any emotions but rage and pain and vengeance."
"Emotions can be relearned, Quinn. Brennan taught us that."
"Brennan was a warrior under a horrible curse from Poseidon not to feel any emotion until he met his one true love and then she died. How cruel and twisted is that? Your god isn't exactly what I'd call loving and benevolent."
"But Brennan found Tiernan, and she saved him from both the curse and himself. Don't you think we're all looking for exactly that?"
Quinn started walking again. "I don't know. I don't have time to care. I have to find Ptolemy and discover what he wants with me, before one of the many enemies I've made in the past tracks me down to put a final end to my adventures in rebellion."
"I have a bargain to propose," Alaric offered. "We spend the day here, not thinking or talking about enemies, or pretenders, or death. Then tomorrow we can return to our normal lives and kill all the 'bad guys,' as you so eloquently put it, that you might want."
Quinn's eyes were enormous as she weighed his words, and finally she nodded. "I agree. But Alaric, I never wanted to kill anybody. I just so rarely seem to have a choice. When nobody else is there to stand up for what's right . . ."
As her voice trailed off, he finished the sentence for her. ". . . somebody has to do it. Far too often, that somebody has been you, hasn't it?"
Their gazes met in perfect understanding, but Quinn shook her head slightly and looked away. "Let's explore and find out what's beyond these trees, okay?"
So much courage. Too much. His admiration for her increased each time they talked, until he could no longer untangle respect from desire from need--all of it centered on one small human.
One small, sexy human. She headed for the tree line, and Alaric watched her go, forcing his mind and libido off the instant raging want caused by the sight of her tight little ass walking away from him. It was almost funny, this sexual desire. After centuries of celibacy, he'd thought himself immune to it, and then Quinn had hit him with the force of a tsunami.
His mind, always trained to cold logic and objectivity, could now turn in a split second from thought of battle and enemies to considering what he would like to do with her naked body.
She turned to call back to him and he stopped, stunned by the simple curve of her cheek. She didn't possess the classical beauty of the women of his race. She had something more. A purity of spirit and a hidden sensuality that all but begged him to release it.
Just as soon as he figured out how to release his own. Hundreds of years of celibacy. That would be . . . interesting . . . to overcome.
His body tightened to an almost painful hardness as he swept his gaze over Quinn's curves, almost but not quite hidden by the ragged clothes she wore. So. At least certain parts of him had no concerns at all about how to proceed.
He followed her into the trees, smiling his first unqualified smile in many years.
Quinn watched Alaric reach up to pluck a bunch of
bananas, unable to take her eyes off the play of muscles in his lovely chest and arms. He'd removed his shirt, a concession to the heat, and she found herself looking for excuses to touch him.
To put her hands all over that hot, slightly sweaty male skin. He was bronzed a golden tan, which surprised her, considering that she'd always pictured him doing, well, priestly things in Poseidon's temple. Lighting incense or whatever. Her dim memories of attending Catholic mass with a childhood friend seemed to have informed her impression of what Poseidon's high priest would do.
"So, do you conduct services in Atlantean?"
He tossed her a banana. "Do I what?"
"Church services. Do you all get together and sing songs and pray to Poseidon or whatever?"
He looked genuinely perplexed. "What are you talking about? Also, do I seem like the kind of man who gathers with a group to sing?"
She peeled her banana and started laughing. "Not exactly. Unless it was some kind of battle cry. I was just thinking about what exactly it is that you do as high priest to the sea god."
"Ah. That." He devoured the fruit in three quick bites and tossed the peel into the grass, to become fertilizer for the next generation of plants.
"No. It is not a temple like your churches. As high priest, I am the bearer of Poseidon's most powerful magic, protector of Atlantis, keeper of the scrolls, mentor to the acolytes, and chief counselor to those who need intercession with the gods."
"Chief counselor?" She didn't quite buy that one. "Really?"
He grinned so wickedly that she wondered if her clothes would spontaneously disappear.
"I'm not much of the counselor type. My chief acolyte handles those requests. He says I am more likely to tell them that life is meant to be difficult, and the gods do not reward those who moan and complain."
"So, in other words, the 'suck it up, buttercup' style of priestly counsel," Quinn said, forcing the words out through her laughter. "I can see why he doesn't let you talk to people."
Alaric raised his eyebrows. "I believe you just insulted me. I am perfectly capable of talking to people. I just don't like it."
"Really? I never would have guessed."
"People are annoying," he announced, folding his arms, which did delightful things to the muscles in his arms and chest. Her throat suddenly went dry. She felt like she'd been celibate almost as long as he had, and surely that was the reason her body trembled and her breath caught in her lungs whenever he was nearby. It was a good thing he wasn't allowed to have sex, or they'd either set the island on fire with their passion or set a world record for clumsy fumbling.
"Poor baby," she finally answered him, with an utter lack of sympathy. Then she finished peeling her banana and took a huge bite, closing her eyes in bliss as she chewed and swallowed.
"This is delicious--" She forgot what she was saying when she glanced up and met his gaze. He was staring at her mouth, and his eyes were a blazing emerald green.
"Delicious," he repeated, his voice strained. "Quinn, you tempt me beyond reason. I have spent the past several hours waging a private war against myself to keep from touching you, and I find I am losing the battle."
He took a deep breath. "I need to kiss you now. Will you allow this?" He'd lowered his arms to his sides, and she saw that his hands were clenched into fists.
"I don't think it's a very good idea." She realized her hands were shaking, and she dropped the fruit so she could hide them behind her back. Never show weakness to an enemy.
Or a potential lover.
She considered various responses and finally settled on the simple truth. "If you kiss me, how will we ever stop? I'm not sure I can be strong enough for both of us. Not with you."
His smile sharpened and grew predatory. "Quinn, I don't want to ever stop." He took a step toward her and then another. "I could kiss you for an eternity, and it wouldn't be enough."
She knew from their very few, very brief encounters that he was telling the truth--truth enough for both of them. She was helpless in the face of it.
"Then kiss me already," she said, surrendering to the inevitable.
He flew across the space separating them, and she barely had time to draw in a breath of the deeply scented tropical air before he was on her, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her nearly off her feet.
"I have waited all of my life for you," he said roughly, and the stark honesty in his face humbled her.
"I feel the same way," she whispered, knowing she should deny it. Knowing it was wrong. She'd done such horrible things in the name of the rebellion. Dark and deadly things. Twisted and awful things. She could never deserve Alaric, this warrior priest who'd stepped right out of the pages of mythology and into her heart.
"Stop thinking so hard," he murmured, and then he took her mouth with his, and she found herself incapable of thinking anything at all.
His kisses burned her skin--her mouth, her face, her neck. He kissed her as a dying man might beg for grace or benediction; desperately and without reserve. She felt herself falling, drowning, sinking into an abyss of wanting and feeling and needing, and she realized her arms were twined tightly around his neck and she was pressed against his body so close that not even a breath separated them.
It wasn't close enough.
She sank into a whirlwind of feeling; a storm of longing that made the tornado he'd created in Tokyo seem like nothing more than a soft breeze. Nerves long untouched signaled bright flares to the pleasure center in her brain, until she felt herself incandesce with the sharp, almost painful brilliance of pure desire.
She moaned, or he did, and he lifted her higher in his arms, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed even closer, feeling from the large, hard bulge of his erection that although rules may have stopped him in the past, he certainly wasn't unwilling or unable now.
He wanted her, and the knowledge drove her further and further over the edge, past sense and reason, and into an abyss filled with need and want and hunger.
He pulled back a little and stared down at her, his eyes burning in a face gone stark and hard with desire.
"Quinn, I need you. Now. I need you naked and underneath me or on top of me or however you want, but I need you to be naked. Right. Now."
Chapter 9
Alaric had never been more in danger of losing his sanity than he was right at this moment with this woman he held so tightly in his arms. If she stopped kissing him, he was sure he would die from the loss of her touch. Everything he was and ever had been was centered on the burning waves of need and hunger rushing through him. He wanted Quinn like he'd never wanted any woman before in all the long, lonely centuries of his life.
He needed her. To the nine hells with the repercussions.
"Alaric? Your emotions just changed. What are you thinking about?" Her eyes were dark and dazed, but trying to focus.
"Nothing important," he said firmly and kissed her again.
"No," she said, struggling to put a bit of space between them. "That's not true. What is going on in your brilliant but dark and twisty mind?"
He shook his head and leaned toward her again, but she put a hand up between them and pushed.
"Tell me."
He gave in, knowing she would persevere until he did so. "All of my life, I have been told that the vow of celibacy is the key to my power. The Elders strongly impressed upon me the need to protect myself from the desires of the flesh or the call to softer emotions."
She squeezed his arm and then backed away a step so she could look up into his face as he continued.
He had no choice now. He had to tell her, and there was no way to pretty up the stark truth, so he just said it. "There's a good chance that if I break my vow of celibacy, I'll lose my magic."
The bald statement hung in the air between them for several long moments, and then Quinn backed away from him so fast she stumbled and fell on the ground. He moved to help her, but she shook her head, scrambling backward on all fours.
"Don't touc
h me! How can you possibly say that to me and then try to touch me?" Her voice held a tinge of hysteria, and her eyes were wild. "I can't bear that burden, Alaric. Don't ask me to."
"No, you don't understand. This is only what the Elders told me. Keely, the scientist who has soul-melded with Justice--she's an object reader. She told me that the Elders lied or at least were wrong. That in truth the most powerful high priest in the history of Atlantis was not only not celibate, but he was actually married. Nereus was married to Zelia, and from what Keely said, they were extremely happy and in love."
She kept shaking her head, back and forth, over and over. "Keely said. She's human, right?"
He nodded the affirmative.
"So a human who claims to be picking up psychic woo-woo emanations from objects tells you that, okay, sure, Alaric, it's okay to break your sacred vow, it will all be fine, no worries, and you think that's good enough?"
"Serai confirmed as much," he said, a little desperately.
"Right. And there couldn't be anything wrong with her memory, after eleven thousand years of stasis, right?" Quinn shook her head. "We can't take that chance. Maybe this Nereus never had to swear the same vow you did. Maybe his powers worked differently. Or maybe she's just wrong."
"When you say it in those terms, of course--"
"And what happened to this Nereus? Happy ever after? Many fat babies?"
He paused. This was where the story broke down. "Actually, Zelia died, and Nereus tried to drown the world. He nearly destroyed the dome and everyone in Atlantis with it."
"So he went nuts, is that what you're saying?" Quinn scrambled to her feet and continued backing away from him. "Bat-shit crazy, insane, loony tunes, rubber room material? Nearly destroyed your entire civilization, but hey, let's get naked?" Her voice had risen and she was shaking.
"The two are probably unrelated," he began cautiously. He had no idea how to fix this, but he was desperate to find a way to do so--to fix everything--so that the terror and disbelief he heard in her voice would disappear.
His body, rebelling after so many years of denial, ached with frustration and the desolate certainty that his chances of remaining celibate for the foreseeable future were increasing with every word out of his mouth.