by Robyn DeHart
Bloody hell, he wanted her.
He found his way up through the slit in her drawers. Her flesh was hot and slick with her need, and she trembled when his fingers brushed against her. She continued to moan softly. He continued his exploration.
He slipped one finger inside her; slowly he began his rhythm. Her pleasure mounted as he moved his finger within her. He found the nub beneath her folds and stroked across it. Her mouth fell open, her eyes squeezed shut, and she arched toward him.
Closer and closer he brought her to the edge, then pulled back. She was fascinating to watch. Undoubtedly, she was the most passionate woman he’d ever touched, and he longed to be inside her. His own desire was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. So he kissed her deeply, then leaned back as best he could to watch her climax.
His finger dipped in again as he flicked across her folds. She tightened around his finger as the pleasure shot through her. “Yes,” she whispered. Her head pressed into the pillow behind her. “Yes.”
Quickly he unfastened his trousers and guided himself into her before her climax subsided. She sucked in her breath and opened her eyes. He found himself lost in their amber depths as he pushed himself deeper into her. Oh, God, she felt good. Hot and tight and so slick.
Her climax started again, and her walls squeezed around his shaft as he increased the depth of his thrusts. And then as his own release rocked through his body, he released a primal moan and collapsed atop her.
Sabine listened to Max’s even breathing as he lay next to her on the small cot. She could still feel the effects of their lovemaking on her body. Her flesh seemed to quiver every time she closed her eyes and remembered the sensations of their coupling.
She had thought she could indulge with Max. Have a brief affair, then go back to her life as it was before she’d met him. But this… His arm snaked around her waist and pulled her to him. She closed her eyes, loving the feel of his warm breath on her bare neck. Lying here with him only made her think of what it would be like to live like this every day. To wake up in the arms of a man you loved.
Of course, she didn’t love Max. She barely knew him. Still, something powerful had happened between them today. Something she’d never experienced before. Perhaps she could pretend that Max wasn’t the sort of man she could fall in love with. But hadn’t today proven otherwise?
And what of the fact that he was English and she Atlantean? That mattered. Certainly some Atlanteans had left their villages and conformed to the English ways. But she was the daughter of a guardian; that should matter.
She needed to keep her wits about her, because she risked her heart as well as all her family’s secrets.
Chapter Nine
Several hours later, they finally arrived in Cornwall. They had successfully hidden from the men for the remainder of the train ride. Max and Sabine exited the train with the throng of people from their car, hoping they’d blend in. So far they had not seen the men again.
Max hired a hackney to take them to the address Lydia had written down. The address Phinneas, the guardian, called home. Sometime during the night, when neither of them had been able to sleep, Sabine had explained that three ships had fled Atlantis during their Great War, each carrying a guardian. During the turmoil and confusion of the exodus, the ships had become separated. Each had landed in a different location in Great Britain. It had taken many generations for all of the Atlanteans to find one another, but once they did, the elders had kept communication open between the groups.
The carriage ride from the train station to Phinneas’s house did not take long, because he lived close to town. The village was small, containing only a cobbler’s shop, an inn and tavern, and a few cottages scattered about the hillsides.
Max kept waiting for Sabine to speak about what had happened on the train ride, but so far she made no mention of their interlude, which suited him. She was nothing more than a delectable diversion. He wouldn’t lie; it had been amazing, and he would find a way to get her back into his bed.
The rig stopped, and Max wasted no time in getting down, then assisting Sabine. As they approached the small thatched-roof cottage, the hairs along his neck rose. The door, though closed, hung from one hinge. It was a cheery place with brightly colored flowers everywhere. Still, the aesthetics did nothing to stave off Max’s wariness. Something was wrong.
They walked up the dirt path to the front door, and as he knocked, the door creaked open.
“Stay behind me,” he said. He withdrew his pistol and led the way into the small cottage.
Phinneas’s home had been ransacked. The chairs near the fireplace lay overturned, and the contents of the cupboards were now scattered about in broken pieces on the floor.
“Phinneas,” Sabine called, her voice wavering.
No answer.
She took a shaky breath.
“We need to look around,” Max said, trying to reassure her. “He might be out.”
There was no sign of him downstairs, so together they climbed to the top floor. They found nothing more than a small bedroom with a bed, washbasin, and armoire. Phinneas lived a simple life, though it would seem a solitary one.
“He’s not here,” Sabine said. “Perhaps he received Madigan’s letter and already made his escape.”
Perhaps, but Max had his doubts. He led the way back downstairs and then out the back door to the garden area.
Again Sabine called to Phinneas, and again there was no answer.
They walked deeper into a garden filled with more flowering plants as well as vegetables. It was well tended, with a fence around the area.
Up ahead, sticking out from behind a large tree, were some worn boots, and they appeared to still be attached to a body. Max held his arm out to stop Sabine from walking farther. “Wait here.” He moved closer to investigate.
Sabine ignored his instructions and followed closely behind him. Lying on the ground behind the tree was, in fact, a man. The body was contorted in an awkward position, as if in the last moments of life, his muscles had all simultaneously convulsed and he had collapsed in severe pain.
“He matches the description Agnes gave me,” Sabine said.
She sucked in her breath. Max turned her away from the body. “I’m sorry, Sabine,” he murmured. He held her shoulders tightly to keep her facing away from Phinneas’s body.
“Two of them,” she murmured. “Two guardians gone.” She turned away from Max to again look at the body. “His face is frozen in the exact expression of pain that Madigan had.” Her voice cracked. She swallowed and kept staring at the dead man’s face. “Evidently when a guardian dies, it is most unpleasant.”
Two guardians were dead. Which meant only one remained. Someone was going to an awful lot of trouble to make it appear as if the prophecy had begun. Or perhaps there was someone out there mad enough to believe that he could bring about the prophecy himself.
“Poison,” Max said. He saw no blood, no visible wounds on the body.
“No,” Sabine said.
“This Madigan, you said he died shortly after he arrived at your house,” Max said.
“He did. But not from any wound.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Sabine,” Max said. “Explain it to me.”
She exhaled slowly. “The guardians are mystically connected to the elixir they protect. If that elixir is stolen or lost to them, they have a short window to retrieve it, and if they don’t, they perish.”
“Or the thief could have poisoned them,” Max argued.
A deep frown settled on her brow. “Simply because you can’t explain something does not mean it can’t exist,” Sabine said.
Well, she had him there. It wasn’t completely out of the realm of oddities he’d seen in his lifetime. Hell, he’d seen Pandora’s box. And he’d been chasing after a lost continent since he was a boy. He’d allow for possibilities like poison, but he shouldn’t ignore the mystical.
“What is that?” she asked, pointing to the man’s fist.
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Something was caught in his hand. Max knelt on the cold earth and worked it from Phinneas’s hand. “Paper,” he said. He smoothed out the sheet. The penmanship was terrible, the note nearly illegible, but finally Max was able to determine what it said. “‘It has begun,’” he read aloud, then looked up at Sabine. “He must have spent his last moments writing this.” Max shook his head. “None of this makes any sense. I always assumed the prophecy was about the fall of Atlantis.”
“No, it’s not.” Sabine paced along the length of the fence. “It’s a warning. The final bit of guidance from the elders of our culture. Their last attempt to protect us.” She stopped and met his gaze. “And if I don’t find a way to stop it, the Chosen One will find a way to destroy us all, Atlanteans and English alike.”
It seemed unlikely to Max that one person could orchestrate the destruction of a modern civilization such as Great Britain’s. But so far that one person had managed to murder five of England’s most decorated and highest-ranked military officers. Max would be a fool if he underestimated that.
Sabine closed her eyes and repeated the words of the prophecy: “The seven rings of Atlantis will fall by fire and steel, opening the path for the army of one. Empires will crumble and crowns will melt. The three will lose their blood unless the dove can bring salvation.”
She was beautiful. Standing there with her eyes closed, speaking softly, she nearly stole his breath. He wished she’d wanted him to comfort her for more than a minute, though even having that thought gave him pause. He was not the comforting sort, having always preferred the lighter, more playful side of the ladies. Damned if he didn’t need to focus more on the danger at hand than on whether he would be able to find his way up Sabine’s skirt. Especially if such thoughts made him long to hold her as much as bed her.
“So the rings could represent the military leaders,” she said.
“Or so whoever is killing them believes,” Max countered. “I suppose the three would be the guardians.”
She ran a hand over her throat. “The dove; I don’t know what to make of that.”
“You came here to get help from Phinneas. Perhaps you’ll find some answers in his belongings,” Max said.
“Yes,” she said. “Good idea.”
“You go ahead and get started without me. I’m going to bury Phinneas. I know it’s not a proper burial, but we can’t simply leave him here like this.” He eyed the property around. “And calling the authorities would bring too many questions,” Max said. “I think I saw a shovel leaning against the back of the cottage.”
“Thank you, Max. I truly appreciate that.”
He put his pistol in her hand. Her amber-colored eyes looked up at him. “Listen for anything and keep your eyes open. If anyone comes near you, shoot him. We can find out who he is later.”
It had been nearly three hours since they’d found Phinneas. They’d missed the last train to London and instead had decided to stay the night in the small house and travel back tomorrow, allowing themselves more time to search the house. Max was upstairs in the sleeping quarters going through the man’s bureau.
Admittedly, it was strange to rifle through the belongings of a man he’d never known. Part of Max relished it, loved the digging and the discovery. Even if the searching was between socks and in drawers rather than in dirt in a sacred place.
He kept his eyes open for anything that might have to do with Atlantis, prophecy or not. So far he’d found nothing but clothes that were threadbare and worn, books on ancient philosophy, but none that Max wasn’t already familiar with, and a large collection of ribbons.
The ribbons themselves were ordinary, though varied in length and width and color, but Max found it strange that a man would collect them. These Atlanteans were a mysterious group. He thought of Sabine and how intriguing he found her. Was it simply her Atlantean heritage that had captured his interest? Or her stunning beauty? She appealed to him on a more primal level than any woman he’d ever known, matching him intellectually and passionately, and not only sharing his interest in Atlantis, but living it within her very blood.
He had one more corner of the room to look through, then he would join Sabine downstairs. She’d been digging around in the kitchen area, but so far she’d been fairly quiet, so Max had assumed she hadn’t found anything of note.
Max tucked the bag of ribbons back into the drawer, then had second thoughts. He wondered what would possess a man to gather a simple item like ribbons into a large collection, but he supposed everyone had their own fascinations. Or perhaps they held more sentimental meaning. Sabine’s aunts knew the man, perhaps they could shed some light on the collection. Max put the ribbons in his bag, then closed the drawer.
His shoes noisily tapped the wood-planked floor as he made his way to the remaining portion of the room. A small chest sat in the corner. On the top was a basin and water jug and below was a set of two drawers. Max touched the chest and it wobbled. He rocked it back and forth a few times, finally noticing the front right leg was shorter than the other three. He took a step back to kneel at the chest, and his foot hit a hollow sound. He stopped. He walked again and heard the same noise. He pounded his foot over the area. Definitely different from the rest of the floor.
Quickly, he knelt and tapped the boards with his knuckle. There was a noticeable difference in the sound over one board when compared to the surrounding boards. He ran his fingers along the edge of the board until he found a gap wide enough to wedge in his fingernail; there he pulled up and the board lifted.
It wasn’t a large space, but the hollowed-out cubby was large enough to hide a cigar box. Max pulled it out, and there inside, he found a bundle of envelopes, all addressed to Phinneas. He quickly flipped through them, noting that they all shared the same penmanship and were all written in Greek, but none listed a sender’s name. He tucked the letters in the same bag in which he’d placed the ribbons.
The cigar box lay empty on the floor, so he tried tucking it back into the cubby. But he could not make it fit. He reached his hand in and felt beneath the wooden planks. His fingers ran across something smooth. With considerable effort, he was able to pull out the item. It was a thick leather-bound book, written in a language he did not recognize.
He stowed the book, then replaced the loose floorboard. A cursory glance through the remaining two dresser drawers came up with nothing new.
He made his way downstairs to join Sabine. His feet had barely touched the bottom step before she asked, “Did you find anything?”
“Some old letters.”
“None of them are recent?” she asked.
“I didn’t look through all of them, but I don’t think they are. They all appear to be from the same person. Phinneas had hidden them in a hollow floorboard.”
It was well past dark outside. Sabine yawned, but tried to gracefully cover it with the back of her hand. Her hair had come loose from its confinement at her neck, and soft tendrils framed her face.
“I found clean linens upstairs in the bureau,” he said.
She yawned again, then smiled. “Sleep sounds nice, but I don’t know that I’d truly be able to rest.”
“I also found a book,” he said. “In a language I don’t recognize.”
“A book? That could be precisely what I need.” She came toward him, and he pulled it out of the bag and handed it to her. Reverently, she ran a hand over the worn leather cover. “This is it. The Seer’s book.”
“The Seer?”
“The three guardians, the Sage, the Seer, and the Healer, each with a unique purpose. The Seer was the prophesier, and this book,” she said, holding it out, “is where all his dreams and visions and predictions were written. Not just Phinneas, but those who came before him.”
“We might be able to find out more about the map’s prophecy in there,” Max said.
“Only if Phinneas had recent visions about it. This is the book I was telling you about, the one that used to hold the prophecy.”
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��Then let’s hope Phinneas had some good dreams lately,” Max said. He leaned over her shoulder. “We might need to find a translator, though I don’t know where, because I don’t even know what that is. It looks a little like Greek, but every symbol is different.”
Sabine smiled. “It’s Atlantean.”
“And you can read it?” he asked.
“Of course.”
He looked around the kitchen. “Did you find anything down here?” he asked.
She shook her heard. “Nothing.”
“You’ve had a long day, and you’re clearly exhausted. Why don’t you lie down?” When she started to shake her head in protest, he added, “You don’t have to sleep, and you can use the time to look through the Seer’s book.”
She allowed him to lead her back up the stairs to the small bedchamber. He handed her the stack of clean linens, and then went about making a pallet on the floor for himself. The blanket that had been draped over the chair became a flat and rather sad-looking bed, but it would work for the night. And his coat, folded over several times, made a serviceable pillow.
After her bed for the evening was prepared, she sat on the edge looking around the room. “I wish I had known him,” she said softly. “I feel as if he was a member of my family.”
He said nothing. He had no words of comfort to offer, even if he wanted to. Which he didn’t. The impulse he’d had to comfort her earlier had unsettled him. He could easily shock or amuse. He could seduce a woman with only a few words. But comfort? No, comfort was not for him. The urge to console her was too tender an emotion. Too delicate. And entirely too close to something deeper.
He couldn’t risk letting her get too close. Couldn’t allow her to touch that part of him he’d buried long ago. He knew all too well the pain of losing someone he loved.
He could seduce her. He knew she’d respond to his touch, and damned if he didn’t want her. But touching her now could be mistaken as sympathy. No, he just needed to get some sleep.
