Atlantis Unmasked (35 page)

Alexios couldn't believe he was blathering on about anything and everything, but the reward of Grace's lovely smile seemed to be a prize worth doing almost anything for. The sunlight on her hair made it glow, and as they walked along the beach, he could almost forget about war and battles and scheming vampire primators with evil plans. He could almost forget about the danger Grace would be in if he couldn't convince her to leave before that evening's meeting with the Fae.

“There's something . . . I really need to know,” she ventured after they'd been walking in silence for nearly ten minutes. “About your long lives and, well, you said the prince had married a human woman.” Her lovely cheeks turned pink. “What will happen when she ages and he doesn't?”

He considered how much to tell her of what he knew and what was simply speculation, but finally decided that he wouldn't put barriers around trust. He either believed in her or he didn't, and the realization that he trusted her with his life itself forced him to stop and pull her into his arms, yet again.

When he could finally manage to lift his head from her long, drugging kisses, he was so hard he wanted to throw her down right there on the sand and strip her bare.

Her side. Hurting. Right.

He laughed, and she raised an eyebrow at him.

“Nothing. I just seem to revert to a sort of caveman, pre-language thinking style around you,” he said, smiling like a besotted fool.

Of course, he was starting to feel like a besotted fool, which meant that if an attack came at them now, he would be worthless. He deliberately put his hands under his jacket and on the hilts of his daggers and moved a step away from her and started walking, this time back in the direction of the car.

“The aging thing?” she prompted.

“Right. The aging thing.” He searched for the words. Decided on the simplest. “We don't know. The truth is that living in Atlantis causes the longevity, and it always has. In fact, it was part of the cause of the ancient jealousies and attempts to conquer the Seven Isles. Something in our drinking water, which all comes from magically sourced wells, is apparently the cause.”

“Really? Like a real-life fountain of youth?” She looked skeptical, and he didn't exactly blame her. Magic wasn't easy to explain.

“The elders, who now have to worry about these things for the first time in millennia, are predicting that human life spans will extend to several times normal and continue to expand as long as the humans reside in Atlantis,” he said, shrugging. “The histories bear out that at least some of this is true, but a great deal of it is a leap of faith on Riley's part, and of course Erin and Keely, now.”

“Keely?”

He smiled and described some of the interesting pairings that had occurred over the course of the past year, after more than eleven thousand years of belief that Atlantean-human mating was forbidden.

“Poseidon gave his blessing,” he concluded. “Told Riley she'd make a great mother for the heir, so it was hard for anybody to argue with that, although I guess there are factions that would like to try.”

Grace nodded. “Some people hate change, especially to sacred traditions. When the Catholic Church decided to stop saying Mass in Latin, you would have thought that Satan had woken up and decided to eat the pope for breakfast, according to my aunt.”

“I don't know very much about your Christian faith, although I am willing to learn, if you would agree to learn about my beliefs,” he said, his steps slowing as he realized the enormity of what he was proposing.

Apparently she realized it, too. She slowed to a stop and turned to face him, her lovely dark eyes huge. “I would be honored to learn about your beliefs, Alexios. But that's a pretty large leap of faith. I have to tell you that the idea of growing old and frail and . . . and
wrinkled
. . . while you stay like
this
”—she waved a hand at him—“well, it's pretty tough for me to wrap my mind around.”

Then she bit her lip and turned away from him. “Not that you asked me to grow old, or not old, with you anyway. Just, you know, hypothetically.”

“Hypothetically,” he repeated, drawing her into his arms until she stood with her back pressed to his chest, both of them facing the ocean. It would be easier not to see her face if she refused. “Hypothetically I would like to ask you to grow old or not old with me for the rest of my life.”

She gasped but he didn't allow her to speak before he continued. “However, not so hypothetically, all my caveman brain can think and feel around you is ‘mine, mine, mine.' So it is possible that I'm never going to let you escape, whatever your answer.”

She said nothing, just leaned against him, silent, for nearly an eternity. Finally, she spoke, and her words, though typical Grace, blunt and lacking in poetry, were like bells in his ears. “I wasn't going anywhere for the next century or so, anyway.”

He had no choice, then. He had to kiss her again. Which he proceeded to do, thoroughly, until the evil contraption in her pocket started its buzzing noise again.

Grace smiled up at him, her lips swollen from his kisses, as she answered the phone. As she listened, the smile faded from her face, and her expression darkened. When she finally closed the phone, he already knew it was bad.

“That was Jack. They were caught in a trap. Prevacek set it. Quinn got hurt, and it was bad. Alaric arrived just after Quinn went down, and he pretty much went completely insane, killing everyone in sight, including a couple of civilians who just happened to be out in the swamp trying to poach gators, evidently. Jack said it was worse than anything he's ever seen,” she said, her voice grim. “Alexios, Alaric nearly killed Jack, too.”

Grace pushed the uneaten sandwich away from her, too sick with worry and dread to eat. Alaric was due to return any minute, if he still planned to come at all. Alexios had assured her that Alaric would be there to assist in the meeting with the Fae, but the Alaric that he knew and the Alaric Jack had told Grace about could almost have been two different men. Whatever was going on between him and Quinn, or whatever else the cause might be, Alaric had turned from a somewhat scary ally to a potential enemy.

Jack had said that Alaric had healed Quinn and then Jack, and Alaric had been apologetic about injuring the tiger shifter, but it sounded like a matter of “too little, too late” to Grace.

Alexios had refused to allow her to tell Tiny any of it, citing the need for Atlantean secrets to remain so, and she had stared at him in disbelief and voiced her heated disagreement with the plan.

“Are you kidding me? Tiny and his men are our first line of defense if your crazy priest has gone over the edge,” she'd argued.

But he'd shaken his head. “You have no idea of the scope of Alaric's powers. Imagine if I unleashed my full strength and skills against these humans.” He'd waited until she'd nodded, reluctantly seeing his point. But then he'd gone on. “Now add in the most powerful Atlantean magic in the history of the Seven Isles. Tiny and his men would be brutally killed if they tried to oppose Alaric, and they deserve better.”

It had been the end of the discussion. Telling Tiny that he was free to leave, because she and Alexios were themselves getting ready to go, and letting him see her toss her duffel bags in the Jeep had been the only way to convince the big man that it was okay to leave her alone and unguarded, except for Alexios.

“You take care of yourself, little gal,” he'd said.

She'd thanked him and stood on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek and then watched with some amusement as his face had flushed red under his beard. Alexios had been somewhat less sanguine about it, but managed to refrain from challenging Tiny to a duel or something equally archaic.

It would be a lot to get used to, spending her life with a four-hundred-year-old warrior. If she ever had the opportunity, that was. For now, all she could focus on was the meeting with the Fae. She cleared her dishes and then went back to the more important task at hand: oiling her bow and sharpening the steel and silver tips of her arrows.

“Diana, guide my hand, should I need to use your bow,” she whispered and for an instant almost believed she saw the play of moonlight on the feathered fletching of her arrows.

Just for an instant.

Grace heard his footsteps. Heard him stop in the doorway. Felt the intensity of his gaze before she even raised her head. She pretended she hadn't, though. Hadn't heard him. Hadn't felt him.

Didn't want him.

She busied herself with polishing the edge of her gleaming bow again, as if she couldn't already almost see her reflection in the wood. Maybe he would go away for a while, and she could take time to process. To deliberate on the new information and decide what to do with it.

Fountain of youth. Stay in Atlantis or grow old.

Stay with him for the rest of his life—with a man who baldly admitted he might not be able to let her go. What kind of control over her own life and destiny would she have to surrender in order to enter his world?

Was it worth it? Could it ever be worth it, no matter what her heart was telling her? Had good sex—okay,
great
sex—made her think love when the real
L
word in her mind should be lust?

Alexios cleared his throat. “Deep thoughts or avoidance?” he asked, the tone of his voice low and grim. “Are you having second thoughts so soon?”

Grace finally looked up at him. “More like third or fourth thoughts,” she admitted. “This . . . whatever this is between us, it's too intense. Too . . . big. I worry that it could swallow me whole. Drown me.”

He nodded and offered up a tight smile. “I see. But you are a world-class swimmer, are you not? So drowning is not such a big concern.”

“If only that were true. But I'm not—I don't know how to be part of a relationship. I've always thought it would be too confining. I don't need a man to tell me what to do.” She closed her eyes and blew out a sigh. “I'm not explaining this very well.”

Suddenly, he was standing behind her and drawing her back into his arms. “You're explaining it perfectly,” he said, after dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “But, Grace, with all due respect to your concerns, can you imagine any man trying to tell
you
what to do?”

He started laughing and she had to smile. He had a point. Better yet, he'd made the point, and he sounded pretty darn happy about it.

He twirled her around on the bar-stool-style seat and caught the sides of her face in his hands. “Grace, do you think that I could ever be happy with a meek woman who was content to stay home and bake Atlantean spice cookies?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. I just don't know you well enough. Also, what are Atlantean spice cookies? Are they good?”

He tilted his head, closed his eyes, and sighed, then he gave her a rueful smile. “They are, actually, excellent. My favorite. Maybe you could still be a tough warrior
and
learn to bake them?”

She laughed and lightly punched his arm. “Nice. Very nice. How about
you
still be a warrior and learn to bake them?”

“How about we both learn to make them and I can lick spices off your naked body?” he said, flashing that wicked grin.

Then he bent his head to kiss her and she sank into the heat of it, the lovely welcoming warmth that felt like home and soon changed to something sharper. Longing became hunger; hunger became need. She lifted her hand to his face, but he yanked his head back and caught her wrist in his hand. The muscles in his shoulders tightened under her other hand, and his eyes darkened to black in seconds.