by Alyssa Day
He had finally found the one woman he truly wanted to protect.
Would it matter?
Frustrated with himself, Alexios dove toward the surface of the water and returned to his body just in time to slice through the top of the wave. The water was icy; the shock of it left him breathless. He rolled over and over in the water, its cold embrace cooling the burning need that had been building and building in him since that morning.
Grace. Seeing her wild side, even though it was artificially induced, had triggered something in him that he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t repress. Couldn’t deny.
He wanted to bring that side of her to the surface again. Wanted to see the playful, happy, and carefree Grace. She’d lived the past ten years of her life crushed under the weight of the oath of vengeance she’d sworn to her dead brother.
He wanted to show her that life could be different. Better . But of all the men she’d ever known, he was probably the most singularly unqualified for the task.
What did he know of happiness? He knew camaraderie. He knew the satisfaction of a battle well fought. But happiness? He’d thought all possibility of it gone forever after what he’d endured as a prisoner.
But then came Grace, offering grace. Offering warmth and light and a chance at home. The only question he needed to ask himself was a simple one. Why was he still here, wasting time in this frigid water, when he could be with her?
He struck out for the surface and the shore, eager to get back to her. Sam, Tiny, and the rest of the men were standing guard all night. Sam had specifically told Alexios that he had no need to take a shift.
“I think you and Grace have things to work out,” Sam had said. Yet another conquest who’d fallen hard for a woman who was completely unaware of her own beauty and generosity of spirit.
Once at the surface, Alexios folded his hands together, lifted his face to the stars, and offered up a heartfelt plea. “I don’t have any fancy light tricks or priestly magic, Poseidon. But I do have an earnest desire to move forward with my life. Please accept that I’m now ending the vows of celibacy I took during the purification rituals. If there were truly any dark desires left in me from that horrible time, they would have shown themselves when Grace was vulnerable this morning. Instead, I showed what I still maintain to have been damn near heroic qualities.”
He started laughing, suddenly feeling more buoyant than the waves themselves. “I’ve never wanted to be a hero before now. I’m guessing that the desire means something in and of itself. The answer is in me, grasshopper,” he said, grinning like a fool.
And suddenly he knew. A kind of peace washed through him. Peace and anticipation—neither were emotions he’d experienced for so many long, long years.
Unwilling to take the time even to return to shore and retrieve his clothes, Alexios soared up through the air in his mist form and arrowed his way over to the fort and down the corridor to Grace’s room. He transformed as he landed gently on his feet, scanning the room. She wasn’t there.
Which was probably a good thing, considering he’d just shown up in her room stark naked.
“Well, that’s one way to make an entrance,” she said from behind him, her voice full of warmth and laughter, and he snatched the blanket from her bed to cover himself.
Then he turned around to face his future.
Grace was a little dazed from the sheer glory of walking into her room and finding a perfect Atlantean backside mooning her. When he turned around, clutching her plaid blanket to his middle, she tried not to laugh. Fought really hard against it.
Lost the fight.
She laughed so hard tears came to her eyes. “You know, I had a really rocking seduction scene planned, but this works, too.”
He smiled sheepishly at first, but the smile faded as something hot and predatory moved into his eyes. “Seduction? Rocking seduction? Oh, Grace, I am most definitely at your disposal tonight.”
“I can see that. I can see a lot,” she said, still laughing a little, but mostly trying not to hyperventilate at the sight of all that muscled chest, shoulders, and arms. Naked. Those long, muscled legs. Also naked.
Her heart started racing, and she hoped the jacked-up Atlantean senses didn’t include hearing heartbeats. “Quite a lot,” she continued. “Wandering around naked, were you? Wonder what Tiny thought of that?”
He took a step toward her. Stalking her. “Undoubtedly he would have reacted as you are doing now, but I did not travel in a form that could be seen.”
“And your clothes?”
“I left them on the beach. You, yourself, are wearing far too many.” He took another step toward her. “Perhaps you would care to remove that jacket.”
Laughter and breath both whooshed out of her as she realized he was really here. They were really going to do this. Act on the attraction that had been building between them for so long.
“Stop thinking so hard,” he said. “This is a simple choice, Grace. Either ask me to leave or remove your clothes. All of your clothes. We are going to resolve this between us, once and for all, and outside of the sparring ring.” He flashed a wicked smile at her that sent her pulse racing. “And I hate tennis.”
She reacted to his challenge with one of her own, pushing the door shut behind her, then turning to push a chair in front of it. There were no locks on any of the doors here. She’d never needed or wanted one before now.
Suddenly he was behind her, crowding her. Startled, she fell forward a little, bent over the chair, and caught herself with the flat of her hands on the wooden door, then winced as the gash in her side ached from the movement. As was typical of her, her body had begun the healing process in record time while she slept, but it had been a very bad wound. It was still bad. Just because it was sealed shut instead of gaping open, the matter of maybe a week’s healing in anyone else, didn’t mean that it didn’t still hurt.
He pressed against her so closely that the heat of his body was touching her, leaning into her, all along her back from shoulders to feet.
She didn’t feel any blanket, either.
Her breath sped up, but she didn’t try to get away. Simply turned her head and gazed at him over her shoulder. “Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, but this is a little tough on my side.”
Instantly he was pulling her back, gently lifting her, swearing—at himself, she guessed—under his breath. “I am so sorry, mi amara. I am a fool. Of course my timing is horrendous. You are injured, and—”
She leaned into his hard, hot chest and shut him up the best way she could think of—she kissed him. His lips were firm and yet soft. Warm. His mouth tasted like spice and heat, and she wanted more and more. She threaded the fingers of her left hand through that glorious mass of his hair and pulled his head down farther so even his breath became part of her.
“Yes,” she said, finally releasing his lips, pleased to discover that she wasn’t the only one breathing hard. “I was injured, but I’m much better now. I have pretty good healing abilities. I was coming to get you, you know.”
He released her and she sank down on her bed. He stepped back as if touching her burned him. “I can only apologize again, mi amara. I wasn’t thinking, only lusting like a black-hearted . . .” His litany of apologies and self-recrimination trailed off as he seemed to finally remember that he was standing there buck naked.
She let her gaze travel from his head down to his very enticing chest, down to his flat abdomen and the silky-looking trail of hair that arrowed down to his . . . oh. My. The man was built. And if his truly impressive erection was any indication, he really, really wanted her. She took a deep breath and then, very deliberately, licked her lips while staring at his penis.
Subtle, she was not.
His erection jerked forward, hopefully in response to her provocation, because she had absolutely no practice or experience at being seductive, so she was totally winging it.
“You are trying to kill me, aren’t you?” He forced the words out from between clenche
d teeth. “I am trying to be a gentleman. Heroic again, even. But by all the gods, I think you expect too much of me.”
She stood up, ignoring the fact that he backed away even farther, and made her own heroic attempt—to keep her eyes on his face. “But you miss the point. Nobody is asking you to be heroic this time.” She blushed a little, remembering her actions earlier. “This is just me, Alexios. No strange reaction to an alpha call, no Fae magic, just me. Just me, wanting you. What if we were to take it easy? Be gentle? Can’t we at least try?”
She swallowed past the lump in her throat, humiliat ingly aware that her last plaintive question had sounded almost like begging. She looked down at the floor, sure that this moment was one of the most difficult she’d ever lived through. It was far easier to be brave when it was only her life on the line.
But this was her heart and her pride.
He took a step closer and began unbuttoning her shirt, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead, then her chin, then to the pale skin of her chest that he uncovered with each released button.
“Gentle,” he murmured between kisses. “I think I can do gentle.”
Alexios heard himself tell Grace that he could be gentle, even while everything in him claimed it a lie. How could he be gentle when he wanted nothing more than to throw her back on the bed and slam into her body until he was so deep inside her that his cock touched her womb? How could he be gentle, when he needed to bind her arms and legs and touch her and bite her and leave the marks of his nails and mouth and teeth all over her?
He wanted, no, needed to claim her. To brand her. To make her his, indisputably and forever. And there was nothing gentle in any of that.
As if she were in the room with them, he heard phantom laughter. Anubisa’s laughter. “And so I win,” this phantom born of the hells of memory whispered. “I have conquered you, body and soul, and nothing is left of you that isn’t twisted, broken, and wrong.”
His fingers shook as he opened the buttons of Grace’s shirt, and then he froze, unable to continue. What if the vampire goddess had been prophesying instead of simply uttering more of her vile threats, when she’d spoken those word to him all those years ago? What if Alexios truly were twisted, broken, and wrong?
Shaking his head in denial and despair, he began to back away from Grace. Lovely, brave Grace, who deserved more. He looked up, finally forcing himself to meet her gaze so he could tell her.
“Grace, I cannot—”
“Stop thinking so hard,” she advised, smiling as she cast his own words back at him. Then her smile faded. “After what happened here—after our people died . . . I need you, Alexios. I need your warmth so I can feel alive again. I’m willing to take a risk that I’ve never taken before and admit that I have feelings for you.”
She put her palms on his chest and drew in a shuddering breath, then moved closer to him. “I know you’re going to leave, that you have to go back to Atlantis and do your important warrior stuff, and save the world or whatever. I know you’ll live forever, and I’m just mortal. It’s the whole thing I always wondered about when I was a kid—what the heck was Lois Lane thinking? But for now—just for tonight—I really need for you to be with me.”
Something in the hard lines of his face softened as he gazed down at her, and a smile quirked at the edges of his lips. “I think I can take a break from ‘saving the world or whatever’ to be with you.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and then held his hand out, palm up, toward Grace. In the exact center lay one of his daggers. “In return, I ask you a favor. If something should go wrong—if I should endanger you in any way—you must promise that you will use this on me.”
Her mouth fell open. “Are you kidding me? You want me to promise to, what? Stab you? Wow, Alexios, that’s really setting the mood.”
He placed the dagger on the bedside table and then turned back to her, grasping one side of her still half-buttoned blouse in each hand. “You want me to set the mood?” His predatory grin glittered in the lamplight. “Watch this.”
With that, he yanked, and the shirt tore open, buttons flying through the air. He knelt in front of her, and being so very careful of her bandaged side, he lifted her breasts in his hands and buried his face between them. She stroked his silky hair and tried not to hyperventilate, but then he moved his head and caught one of her nipples with his mouth and sucked hard, right through the lace of her bra, and her knees went weak. He caught her butt in his big hands and held her in place while he licked and sucked that nipple until she was panting, then switched to the other side and gave her other breast the same treatment.
A kind of gasping moan escaped her throat and he looked up at her, flashing that dangerous smile. “How’s that mood setting going?” His nimble fingers were suddenly at the front of her jeans, unbuttoning and unzipping them, and he was pulling her pants and underwear down her legs before she could breathe or protest or start cheering. When the jeans were a puddle at her feet, she lifted a leg to step out of them, but he grasped her left calf in one hand and her right thigh in the other, lifted her left leg over his shoulder and put his mouth on her.
She shrieked a little, then stuffed her fist in her mouth so she didn’t make any other embarrassing noises that might bring Tiny and his men running, but then she had to say something, had to stop him, surely she should be doing something to pleasure him . . . oh. Goddess.
“Alexios,” she moaned. “Please, don’t . . . we . . . I want to please you.”
He lifted his head and stared up at her, and his eyes were hot with hunger and powerful need. “You are pleasing me. I want to lick you and taste you and suck your honey into my mouth until you scream while you come. I am very pleased.”
Then he bent his head to her again and swiped a hot lick of his tongue directly across her core and licked the hard nub of her clit into his mouth and started to suck it the way he’d sucked her nipple. This time she couldn’t stop the scream, even with her hand pressed against her mouth, and then she gave up entirely when he put his finger inside her and drove it in and out, first one, then two fingers, in and out rhythmically while he sucked on her, and the world exploded when she came so hard the edges of her vision went fuzzy.
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. Want
ing 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.
