Wild Hearts in Atlantis (9 page)

She stared up at him for a long moment, body shuddering in reaction to her desire and the motion of his fingers across the pearl at the junction of her heat. He had a moment to wonder at the secrets hidden deep in the amber of her eyes, before she slowly smiled and lifted her legs to clasp around his back. “I need you, too, my poet warrior. And remember that I’m not the only one surrendering, here.”

He moved his hand to guide the head of his cock against the slick wetness of her opening, and then he put his hands on the bed on either side of her as he bent to kiss her yet again. “Gladly do I surrender, Kat Fiero,” he whispered, and then he threw back his head and roared his possession as he drove into her with one stroke, not stopping until the base of his cock thrust against her pelvis.

She arched up and into his body and screamed, an eerie sound that had as much of panther in it as woman, and then she dug her nails into his back and clung to him, thrusting into him in time with his movements. “Oh, yes, please, now,” she said, more demand than plea.

“Yes,
mi amara
, I am pleased to comply,” he said, voice rough with the effort of forming coherent speech. He drove into her, harder and faster, gone partly mad with hunger and a desperate, terrible passion.

Knowing he would defy Poseidon himself for this woman.

He felt the moment she approached the precipice; her entire body tightened around his own. He thrust, impossibly hardening beyond any limits his body had ever known.

As he drove her up and over the edge into the abyss, she looked into his eyes, into his soul, and uttered a single word. His name.

“Bastien,” she murmured, and he was lost.

The stars that surely had shone upon Atlantis in its glory days exploded behind his eyes and in his blood and—for a moment, a long moment, an incalculable moment—he
felt her inside him as jewels burst in his brain to color his world.

A rift opened in the fabric of his universe, a fissure in his bleak solitude, and she slid in, warm and silken as a summer rain on the ocean waves. Her essence opened itself to him as the unfurling of a bed of sea stars, and it tempered the bleakness of his hardened soul. Hopefulness met grim resolve, compassion met implacable duty. Her kindness entwined itself in the dark, crabbed spaces of his black soul and somehow lighted the path to absolution.

He was lost, and yet she had found him, and he would never, ever be the same.

“What just happened?” Kat lay—okay, she was collapsed, in fact—halfway on top of Bastien with her legs hanging over the edge of the bed. She was trying not to admit to herself that she was entirely freaked out. Basically, this was the first time she’d made love, since a few ineffectual fumblings in college. Oh, yeah, and the sky had exploded in her brain.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Just an unbelievably passionate interlude with a four-hundred-year-old warrior from the lost continent of Atlantis.

Bastien’s voice rumbled in his chest, under her head. “That, my lady, was a passion unmatched in my history.”

He sounded as exhausted as she felt. Kat smiled, fiercely glad of it. “Truly?” She turned to look at him. “There had to be a lot of women in so much history.”

He raised an eyebrow and reached to pull her up so that her head rested on his shoulder and she fit snug against his side, her leg resting on his thigh. “Not nearly as many as you might think. When one is bound by inexorable duty and mission, one loses the taste for dalliance.”

She tried to pull away from him, but his arm tightened around her. “Is that all I am? A dalliance?” She hated the note of uncertainty
in her voice even as she heard the words tumble out, so she tried to laugh it off. “Well, that was a pretty terrific dalliance. That should hold us both for a while, until we find somebody else to dally with, right?”

He sat up abruptly, drawing her to sit beside him. “If that is what you think, you are utterly mistaken,” he said flatly. “There will be no other dalliance,
mi amara
, for either of us. Please do not speak of it again.”

She blinked. “Okay,
that
was unexpected. After your brave words in front of Ethan, are you now suggesting that I surrender my independence to you? And what is
mi amara
?”

“Your surrender, as mine, was not of your independence but of your solitude, I think,” he said, pulling the blanket around her when she shivered at the cool currents of air-conditioned air blowing on her bare skin. He laced his fingers in hers, and she looked down at their joined hands, marveling that she could feel so completely safe and cherished—so
right
—in the arms of a man she barely knew.

And yet…somehow there had been that moment of knowing. That moment when her soul had seemed to wing its way out of her body and twine its way through Bastien’s heart, the same way their fingers were joined together now. She’d known him on a level far deeper than she’d ever known another living soul; known the pain he’d faced, the battles he’d fought, and the black acts he’d been forced to commit on behalf of humanity.

He believed he was damned for it. Damned to the nine hells, whatever that meant. Having caught a glimpse of his despair, she could guess, though.

The mere thought of it terrified her. But before she could find words to tell him why the idea was bad, awful, and just wrong in so many ways, he spoke first.

“I am wrong for you.” His black eyes were filled with pain as his words echoed her thoughts. “I have done so many things, caused so much death and destruction in the name of my mission—in the name of my god—that I can never undo.”

She leaned against him, driven by the despair in his tone to offer comfort instead of rejection. Her heart rebelled at the thought of turning away from him. “What you have done, you have done as part of your duty to protect, haven’t you?”

He nodded, caught her hand in his and kissed her fingertips. “Yes, but all Atlanteans have free will,
mi amara.
It was my choice to serve as a warrior of Poseidon. The sea god marks each of us at our dedication ceremony,” he replied, touching a hand to the strange symbol marked high on the right side of his chest.

She traced its outline with her fingers. “What does it mean?”

“It offers testimony to my vow to protect mankind. The circle represents all the peoples of the world. Intersecting it is the pyramid of knowledge deeded to them by the ancients. The silhouette of Poseidon’s Trident bisects them both.”

He smiled crookedly. “Even one good only for his strength has the opportunity to serve well in Poseidon’s service.”

“Why do you do that? Why do you discount your intelligence?” she asked, brows drawing together. “Your strength is not all that you are. Somehow, I have seen inside you to the fierce intelligence you don’t admit even to yourself. You plan and question and plot strategy with the best of them, don’t you?”

“But—”

She cut him off, nodding sagely. “Oh. Your prince isn’t very smart, though, is he?”

“What? Prince Conlan is a brilliant leader. His—”

“Really?” she said, tilting her head. “So Prince Brilliant chose you as liaison, huh? Guess he must have known what he was doing.”

He gently tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “You are also very wise, are you not? Fierce in your defense of one as unworthy as me. Had my heart not been captured to your will before, you would have just won it.”

She trembled, unable to breathe. “Your heart?”

“From the day of my vow until this night, I have never found reason to question my loyalty to my duty. But looking at you, holding you in my arms…”

“And
mi amara
?”

“Means my beloved.”

Heat rushed through her at the words and at the expression on his face—that of stark possession mingled with fierce longing. “Shh,” she said, laughing a little, trying to pretend her universe hadn’t just turned upside down. “There is no need to question anything right now. We never question loyalty on an empty stomach, right?”

He blinked, then shouted with laughter. Something chained in her heart broke free at the sound of his unfettered joy. “Ah, yes, my little cat. I am indeed hungry. But it is not for the food we purchased.”

In an instant, he had her on her back and underneath him as he grinned joyously down at her. “I’m of a mind to sample my dessert first this night.”

It was a long, long time before she was able to form another lucid thought.

Bastien watched Kat as she lay sleeping and wondered why Poseidon had seen fit to bless him with this woman. He could never deserve her.

No, but the gods do not give only what we deserve. It is the nature of their caprice. And perhaps she is not for me.

Everything in him rebelled at the thought. Perhaps she was not meant for him, but that did not mean he would ever give her up. If Prince Conlan could break with eleven thousand years of tradition and marry a human, surely he—not royal by a single cell of his makeup—could make his own choice, as well?

If she will have me, I will be hers.

As he stared down at her, the emotion welling inside him forced the words up from his heart. From his soul. Words that he spoke in his native tongue, ancient Atlantean, as if to underscore his vow:

She stirred in her sleep, but didn’t waken. Simply uttering the words had freed something in his heart and stirred his body to urgency again. He leaned over her, tempted to wake her and join with her once more, but decided to let her rest. To put her needs ahead of his own.

Oh, boy. Next I’ll be taking out the garbage and shopping for curtains.

Grinning, not nearly as bothered by the thought as he should have been, his thoughts turned to something nearly as important as love—food.

He rose silently from the bed, intent on stealing into the kitchen and preparing a feast for her while she slept. She had mentioned a hunger other than the one they had sated so well together. Let her learn that he had other skills than death and justice.

He was a fantastic cook. And what was the old saying? The way to a shape-shifter’s heart was through her belly?

Laughing softly, he drew on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from his bag and headed for the kitchen. Humming to himself, enjoying the peaceful and contented aftermath of his body’s fierce spending in hers, he reached in a cupboard for a pan and nearly missed the quiet call of Justice’s voice in his mind.
Bastien? You brick-headed ox, are you in there?

He accessed the mental pathway that only Atlanteans knew, save for Riley and her sister, and reached out to his fellow warrior.
I am. Do you have something to report?

We’re on your front step. You’re going to want to hear this.

He strode to the front door and opened it to find Justice and Denal waiting for him. The dangerous cast to Justice’s expression sent ice racing up Bastien’s spine. “What is it?”

Denal looked him up and down and whistled quietly. “Ho, boy. What have you been up to? Or should I say
who
have you been up to?”

Bastien never changed expression, but lifted the youngling
into the air by means of a hand around his throat. “Perhaps you will refrain from any further disparaging remark about Lady Kat,” he said, mild voice at odds with his actions.

Denal nodded slightly as his face turned red, and Bastien lowered him to the ground. Justice’s eyes narrowed. “Why does this smell like trouble, my friend? She is a shape-shifter and well you know it.”

Bastien inclined his head. “There are few things I seem to know anymore, but one of them is that Kat is my destined mate. How I resolve the conflict that brings is between me and Poseidon.”

Justice laughed, not unkindly. “Oh, Bastien. You have depths none of us dreamed of. And I’m guessing Alaric and Conlan will have a few things to say about it.”

Bastien shook his head. “We will discuss this later, if at all. What news do you bring?”

“It’s Organos,” Denal said, rubbing his throat and looking warily at Bastien. “His so-called alliance with Ethan is a lie, just as Alaric said. He plans to use vamp mind control to bring all the shape-shifters on the East Coast under his thrall.”