by Alyssa Day
"Come on, baby, give us a little kiss." He puckered up and made a loud smooching sound, and the other thugs howled with laughter.
The nausea rose again in her throat at the idea of any of them touching her. She feinted back, then swung her foot with every ounce of rage inside of her right for the bastard's crotch.
And it connected, hard.
He howled, clutched at his groin, and dropped to the sand like a big, ugly rock. Riley stumbled back, and the thug behind her grabbed her shoulders, his dirty fingers digging into her skin through her light jacket. She hissed in pain, and an answering hiss of sheer male fury scorched through her brain. From behind her, someone roared his outrage to the skies.
Not someone—him.
The man holding her gasped and backed away from her.
She whipped her head from side to side, trying to keep an eye on all three of them at once.
At least the guy on the ground didn't seem to be going anywhere. He lay there, moaning and blubbering in a funny voice. Score one for her, at least.
And then she saw him. Black shadow coalesced into a tall figure running toward her so quickly it seemed as though his feet never touched the ground.
Power, raging and furious, swept over her. Her skin iced at the feel of it.
She was either saved, or she was utterly doomed.
Chapter 5
Conlan fought to breathe, nearly blinded by the red haze of rage that seared through him, choking him, threatening to obscure his vision. A berserker rage.
He welcomed it. Bring it on.
Raising his arms, he channeled the water from the sea. It funneled up into the air in shards, turning to ice as it rose. He shot the ice daggers at his targets—arrows from Poseidon's bow.
The men fell back, screaming, as razor-edged death sliced into their flesh.
"You don't touch her. Ever" he snarled, as he raised his arms in demand. Poseidon's oceans dominated the world.
Poseidon's Warriors dominated the ocean.
He was high prince and the first of the Warriors, and he would destroy them for daring to touch her.
The surf boiled at the edge of the sand, crests of waves rising to impossible heights, seeming almost to seek their prey. Conlan slashed his arms down, aiming his focus. He commanded the frenzy of waves to rise, higher and higher.
His fury swelled, threatening his control. The red haze spread further over his vision. To have the ability to strike back again after so many years of powerlessness…
Anubisa's mocking laughter sounded in his brain.
He was a fucking head case.
Then a touch—inside him. A touch of courage, of defiance.
Light to his dark. Compassion to his mercilessness.
His gaze swung to the woman crouched down in the sand, hands still up to defend herself from the bastards who'd attacked her. In the midst of it all, she'd spared the energy to respond to his madness.
He would smash them for her. Drive the water to strip the flesh from their bones.
Enjoy every last minute of it.
"No! What are you? Stop! You'll kill us!" she screamed up at him, defiant still, in spite of the terror she projected.
Beyond reason, beyond compassion, he raised his arms again, then slashed them down, commanding the wall of water to crash down on the shore. To crush the men, where they lay bleeding and groveling.
He drove the wave toward the shore.
Her voice, broken, tentative, sounded in his head. Stop! Please don't kill me! My sister… I'm all she has. And… don't kill them. Please. Enough death.
Conlan marveled at her goodness, her courage.
Her light.
Even as she thought death was crashing toward her, she spared a thought for the garbage who'd tried to attack her.
He followed her thought back along its path to her mind. I would never hurt you. Trust me.
Or was he a damn fool? Maybe she was just a talented actress. Nobody that compassionate could be real.
But the red haze lifted, receded. Somehow her mental touch lent him calm. A measure of peace. He was inside her mind—she was projecting emotion. There was no deceit—no evil. Nothing but compassion wrapped up in terror. Sorrow.
Conlan focused his power at the water and the men in its path, speaking a single word. "Abate."
In perfect symmetry, the water pounded the shore in an exact spherical shape around the place where she stood, leaving her untouched by a single drop. He felt her shock and wonder at the spectacle and could almost taste her awe as she reached out to touch the wall of water surrounding her.
She gasped—made a choked sound of laughter. Broadcasted her thoughts: All I can think of is the parting of the Red Sea, but you're definitely not Moses.
Conlan crushed the water down on the little pricks, reining it in at the last possible second. He'd mitigate.
For her.
They might get a little broken, but they'd live. The wall of ocean pounded them to the sand, but left them with enough oxygen in their lungs to survive it.
Which didn't make him all that happy.
As the waves receded, leaving the men crying, babbling, and damn near shitting themselves, Conlan stepped forward and raised his arms again. The waves eagerly leapt to do his bidding, and the surf boiled in anticipation of another strike.
He got a vicious pleasure out of watching them cower the way they'd wanted to see her cower.
Yeah, I can be a bastard that way.
He spoke with every ounce of rage in his body bubbling to the surface, arm muscles clenching with the strain of holding back the wall of water. "I command you to leave this place and never return. You will not attempt to harm another, or I will track you down and serve up the justice that only this woman's compassion saved you from tonight."
He swept them with his gaze, dropped out of formal speak. "In other words, you'll be dead sons of bitches. We on the same page?"
They babbled their promises in broken voices, then ran off, stinking of fear and piss, when he gestured them away. His gaze only tracked them for a moment, then he turned, inexplicably drawn back to the woman. She had guts, or she had a death wish. Either way, she'd seen him command the ocean, and yet she was unafraid enough to stand her ground.
Trained warriors had cowered in front of him with less cause.
How the hell did one small human have such courage?
A fierce curiosity burned through him. He wanted, no, needed, to see her face, which was shadowed by her hair and hidden in the darkness. His fury was disproportionate—it didn't make sense. The thugs were buffoons, easily enough cowed.
But for some reason, he'd wanted to slice the flesh off their bodies.
Maybe being tortured for so long would turn anybody into a sick, twisted bastard. Even the so-called next ruler of Atlantis.
A little logic might help. Use some of that much-vaunted Atlantean warrior training.
Yeah, logic. Logic dictated that he study his own reactions.
Logic counseled prudence.
She started to edge away from him.
Fuck logic.
He tried on a royal command for size. Come closer to me, woman. I have a need to see the face of one who bids me not to harm those who threaten her. Are you compassionate or merely a fool?
She tossed her head, long and tousled hair flying through the air, and something low in his body tightened. She ignored his mental query and his command and stood her ground. "Who are you, and how are you in my mind? You can quit with the ordering me around thing, too, buster. I know self-defense. I would have been fine."
Her voice. It was lyrical, sensuous, music lilting into his ears and resonating through his body. Playing him like delicate fingers on the strings of a harp. His body tightened, straining.
Her body quivered with indignation, yet the emotion she still broadcast confessed the truth. She knew they would have put a big, bad hurt on her.
The emotion. Somehow, he kept losing track of the unexpected, unprecedented, unbe-fucking-lievab
le fact that she was broadcasting emotion. She knew she would have been seriously harmed if he hadn't been there—he actually felt the knowledge and, with it, her residual fear and sorrow.
She sighed, and her body slumped. "I'm… sorry. I should be thanking you. Whoever—or whatever—you are, you saved me from those men. Thank you."
Then she raised her head and peered at him. "You're not going to drink my blood or rip my arms off, now, are you? Because my day has really sucked, and I'm so not up for that," she said, suspicion ringing in her tone.
He blinked, bewildered by her apparent inability to carry on a logical conversation. He figured he'd try using simple sentences and speaking out loud. Maybe terror turned human women into babbling idiots.
Slowly, carefully choosing his words, he tried to explain. "I am not the undead, nor a shifter of shape to animal form. I am… other. You are entirely safe with me, aknasha."
She planted her hands on her hips and stared at him. "You keep calling me that. What does it mean? What does 'other' mean? And why do you talk like you walked out of an old-time fairy-tale book?"
As he considered how to answer her, the bank of clouds overhead finally passed beyond the edge of the moon. The shimmer of moonlight on her features plowed a wave of sensation right through his gut. Nobody could be that beautiful.
He almost laughed. She'd been talking about fairy tales, and she looked like she'd stepped out of the pages of one. Her face shone with the perfection of a Nereid. The silvery light barely illuminated the red-gold waves that must burn like fire in the sunshine. Her eyes…
Not possible. No human has eyes like that.
"They're cerulean," he said aloud, unthinking: "Your eyes."
Cerulean. The color of the royal house of Atlantis.
His color.
"They—my mother had eyes this shade of deep blue," she whispered, one hand reaching up to touch her face.
Conlan caught his breath, feeling her pain. Something about her mother—
"She's gone," he murmured. Somehow he knew it. Felt it. He couldn't understand the pull—as if the magnetic draw of the moon to the tides had infused him. He wanted to touch her.
He needed to touch her.
Almost without thought, he reached out to her face with his fingertips. She trembled, but didn't move away, so he dared to caress the curve of her silken cheek with trembling fingers. Longing. Desire surging out of nowhere.
Healthy, clean desire. He hadn't felt desire in more than a century. Certainly not for the past seven years.
Nothing pure. Nothing not twisted.
Damaged goods.
He yanked his hand away from her. "Aknasha means 'empath,' " he said roughly. "You're an empath. The first in maybe ten thousand years."
Riley stared up at the man who had saved her from assault and, probably, rape. Maybe worse. If her mind had conjured up her most erotic fantasy to save her from a grim reality in which she really was being attacked, it had done a bang-up job. The man was some kind of superhero come to life.
If they made superheroes who looked like very dangerous Hollywood movie stars, that is. He stood a good eight inches taller than her five foot ten, and his body was a nymphomaniac's wet dream. Heavily muscled shoulders and arms, a broad chest that tapered down to a lean waist. God, his thighs had to be the size of her waist. The man was a mountain of muscle, improbably wearing a black silk shirt that tucked into elegant black pants.
She jerked her gaze up from going any further south and stared fixedly at his chest, her cheeks flaming to know that he'd caught her ogling him.
Although, really, the man must get ogled wherever he goes, so it's not like he isn't used to it.
His silky black hair brushed his shoulders in shining waves, framing a face that defied description. Beautiful. For the first time in her life, she used the adjective to describe a man.
He raised her chin with one finger, and she looked up at him again. He was smiling, amusement lighting up his dark eyes, almost as if he'd heard what she…
"Oh, God," she muttered. "Empath means you can read my mind?" She stared up past the silky hair, past the perfectly sculpted mouth, and past the cheekbones that seemed carved of granite. Finally, her gaze fixed on the icy black eyes that burned over her. Strange that ice could be so hot, she thought absently, trapped almost mindlessly in his gaze.
"You did hear me, didn't you?" she asked, embarrassment nearly an afterthought.
He touched her cheek with fingers so gentle she nearly shuddered from the sensation, and he spoke inside her mind with a voice that should be outlawed. I can hear your thoughts, but I can also somehow feel your emotions. It's impossible, but it's true.
Whiskey wrapped in velvet. His low, purely masculine voice carried a smooth, husky tone that curled around her nerve endings until her skin tightened with desire. Desire that caressed every erogenous zone she'd never even known she had.
Desire that he would touch her. Desire that he would keep talking to her on the mental path that no other person had ever shared with her.
Desire.
His voice echoed in her mind, rough. Strained. I hear you, and maybe you should think other thoughts. Because something about you is burning me up inside, and I don't know if I'm up to the challenge of controlling it.
She sensed his puzzlement, almost as if he were seeking the answer to an unanswerable problem. He stepped closer to her and wrapped one hand gently around the nape of her neck. I need to touch you. I don't want to frighten you, but please let me touch you. Just my forehead to yours.
His eyes held a stark plea. Please.
Trembling, sure she was out of her mind to agree to it, she nodded. She couldn't help herself. Something inside of her wouldn't let her run away. Maybe insanity, or maybe just the adrenaline high from surviving two near-death experiences in a single evening.
But every protective instinct that had served her well in her job—that should have been shouting caution, caution, back away from the superhunk—was screaming yes, yes, yes, touch me, touch me.
Riley snapped out of her mental ramble, realizing that the hottest man she'd ever seen was bending toward her. Slowly, ever so slowly, he lowered his face toward hers, as if to kiss her.
Oh, if he'd only kiss her.
A mere breath away from her, he smiled a slow smile of sheer male satisfaction. It made him look even more the predator he clearly was.
I'm down with that, aknasha. But first, I want to feel the touch of your mind. With that, he lowered his forehead to hers.
For the second time that night, Riley's world exploded.
Her body stiffened, and she jerked backward so hard she'd have fallen if he hadn't captured her with strong hands on her arms. He. Him. Conlan. His name was Conlan and he was… some sort of leader. Thoughts and impressions leapt from his mind to her own, drowning her in sensations and colors. His… thoughts?… aura?… soul? … a vivid blue-green, like a pool of the clearest water or the depths of the sea. But blackness—a boiling blackness swirled in the middle of it.
Torture. Pain. A name—a face—dark beauty ruined by evil and madness.
Anubisa?
She twisted in his arms, trying to escape from the intensity of his mind's capture of hers, but he held her with arms like steel bands.
Just as the pain branded in his memories held her in its thrall. Torture, pain, burning—slicing, shredding, searing agony… How could he have borne so much pain for so long?
She gasped, trying to breathe, trying for distance. No longer trying to pull away, but seeking to understand.
How? How was he inside of her mind? She felt him—she knew him—she understood him on some fundamental level. She could read his fierce determination to discover her, to explore her, to… have her? The intensity of his mind scan changed, with all the subtlety of the tidal wave he'd called earlier, into an outpouring of sexual longing.
A violent hunger, tinged with his shock at his reaction to her. She yanked her head away from his in a desperat
e attempt to protect herself and thought, for an instant, that she saw blue-green fire raging in the depths of his black pupils.
She shook her head to clear it, and spoke out loud to try to dampen the hunger rising between them. "Conlan. Your name is Conlan, right? I don't know how I know that, but… mine is Riley."
Then, in spite of her fear, she laughed a little. "Wow. Talk about a 'me, Tarzan, you, Jane' moment."
Then the memories banished the smile from her face. "How could you bear it? So much pain for so long…"
She shook her head, aching for him. Aching for this man she didn't even know. "It would have driven me insane."
He finally spoke, voice flat. "Don't jump to any conclusions. I never claimed to be sane."
Chapter 6
Conlan threw his head back, gulping in a lungful of air, the ugly reality of his memories stark in the silence between them. She had more courage than he'd even guessed, this small human. With his mind thrust into hers, he'd touched the fundamental core of her—their thoughts nearly melded. The purity of her soul shocked him; his cynicism was centuries old.
One touch and he knew her, somehow.
Intellectually.
Emotionally.
"Again. I need to touch you again," he said roughly, pulling her closer. "Please."
He gazed down at her, willing her not to deny him. She stared back at him, fear subsiding into acceptance, and then she nodded and closed her eyes, lifting her forehead to his.
But he didn't want a mere innocent touch this time. He needed just a taste of her. Just a small taste. He knew he was lying to himself about the small part even as he thought it.
He didn't care.
He swept down to capture her lips with his own. At the first touch of his mouth, her eyes snapped open, and she gasped just enough for his tongue to sweep inside of her mouth and complete his possession. The taste of her sent all sane thoughts out of his head. He felt the energy bursting from him, seeking the elements.
He didn't even try to stop it. The sea boiled up over the edge of the sand and underneath them, and the wind whipped itself into a frenzy around them.
