Atlantis Awakening (11 page)

The stones on her rings, released from the dampening she'd forced on them, sang out joyfully. Emeraldsong and opalsong harmonized to create a powerful symphony of joyous desire that played through her body, through his body, through the room. At the first notes of the music, Ven groaned and curled one hand into her hair to tighten on the back of her head. He shifted a little and suddenly the hard heat of him was centered between her thighs and she felt the liquid welcome of her body in reaction.

Still kissing her, he touched her neck, her shoulder, and then his hand softly caressed the side of her breast, and she gave up the fight, surrendered, game over, no more rational Erin. She bucked against him and rubbed every inch of her body against his, moaning in the back of her throat at the goodness, the rightness, the heat and the pure, pounding need.

The emeralds trilled sharply, then faded into background music as the sensations pouring through Erin took command of her senses. When he rubbed his thumb over her aching nipple, electricity seared through her body and she arched up against him, mindlessly repeating his name, moaning, pleading.

He stopped kissing her long enough to speak her name with such longing, such desperate desire that she shuddered beneath him. The opals sang to her, to him, to them both; sang a sonata of joy and home. But the emeralds pounded their thunderous pulse of desire and need over and around her and Ven until she thought the universe would surely explode if he didn't bury himself inside her right now, right now, rightnow
rightnow
.

He pushed her shirt up a little, eyes on her as if to ask permission, and she took a shaky breath and placed his hands on her breasts. He closed his eyes for a moment, gently caressing her through her bra, and then opened his eyes and flashed a very wicked smile at her.

“You shouldn't do that to a man, Erin. Because you are so fu—…
freaking
beautiful, and getting my hands on your breasts is like getting the world's best present.”

She looked up at him, too swamped with longing and craving to attempt to return his joking in kind. “I don't know why, but I need you right now. My body is on fire and I need you to touch me, Ven. It has been so long since anyone touched me…I
need
you.” Her voice caught, and she was surprised not to feel ashamed at the stark plea she heard in her own words. But she wasn't ashamed. She was flying, she was burning up, she was going to die if he didn't release the explosive pressure building inside her.

But…oh, Goddess. Protection. “Wait! I don't have any, I mean, we need protection!” Her face flushed hot red.

He instantly understood. “We're safe. Poseidon does not allow his warriors to father children until he has blessed the rite of fertility.”

She bit her lip. “Um, what about…I mean, I'm clean, but—”

“Atlanteans are immune to human illnesses, as you are to ours,
mi amara.
There is nothing at all to fear.”

A mischievous grin flashed across her face and she shot a pointed glance down between their bodies. “Sure, nothing to fear, easy for you to say. To use terms you warrior types might understand, I'm the one with the giant sword getting ready to try to fit in my sheath.”

He burst into laughter, as did she, and the miracle of their laughter reignited their passion. Slowly, though, the smile faded from his face, replaced by something darker. More powerful. A predator stalked her from behind the blue-green flames glowing in his eyes, and she caught her breath for an instant. “I am honored beyond measure by your words and your wanting,
mi amara
,” he said roughly, lifting his hands to frame her face. “Yet I must say this: I want to do the honorable thing and tell you I'll back off and just hold you, but my control is shredding. Never in my nearly five hundred years have I wanted anything or anyone the way I want you right now. So say no or say yes, but either way, be damned sure. Because I need to be inside you more than I need to take my next breath.”

She stilled for a long moment, but her body and the song in her soul made the decision for her. She smiled at him. “Yes.”

He paused, then nodded once, and stared at her with a single-minded focus that reminded her again of a predator stalking its prey. “Now,” he rasped out. “Now.”

Before she could catch her breath, he grabbed the top of her shirt in his hands and ripped it down the center. The sound of fabric tearing shocked her with its suddenness. His large hands were surprisingly nimble at unclasping the front of her bra, and he pushed it aside and stared down at her breasts with such fierce possession stamped into the lines of his face that she shuddered a little. No man had ever looked at her like that, like she was everything he wanted. Everything he needed. His desire became her aphrodisiac, swirling her further and deeper into mindless physical craving.

He pulled her up into his arms and kissed her again. Hot, demanding kisses, almost bruising in their intensity, alternated with long, slow, kisses that drove every rational thought out of her mind and had her clutching at his shoulders to pull herself closer to his body.

He stopped kissing her long enough to stand up and yank off his own clothes until he stood next to the bed, proudly nude, the erection jutting out in front of him as enormous as the rest of him. The craving grew fiercer and her body cooperated, heat licking through her and liquid need preparing her for his entrance. “Yes,” she said. “Now. Please.”

He pulled her underwear down her legs and tossed it over his shoulder, pressing a kiss to her abdomen as he did so, his hot breath making her stomach muscles clench in reaction. His fierce look of triumph sent tingles of electricity through her as he caught her shoulders and effortlessly lifted her up into his arms and kissed her again, running his hands down her back, cupping her butt, squeezing and kneading her until she couldn't stand it anymore. She needed to feel him against her, and she leapt up, putting her legs around his waist.

He shouted out a laugh, then said something to her, words spilling out of him, fierce words in a beautiful language she didn't know. He whirled around with her in his arms, then walked, holding her, to the nearest wall and pushed her up against it, so that she was sandwiched between the wall and six and a half feet of hard-muscled, naked Atlantean warrior. She rubbed her body against his, moaning, not caring that she was going for shameless on the wanton witch scale, only knowing that she wanted his hardness rubbing against her most sensitive places. The contact of her nipples against his chest as she moved drove her insane, and she moaned again, wild with need.

“Ven, I need you. I know it's crazy, and I don't care, I don't
care
, I just need you,” she said, beyond embarrassment or pretense. “I need you inside me now.”

 

Ven heard the words and thought he must be dreaming some fantasy of the mountain of the gods. The most intriguing woman he'd ever known, the woman whose courage and beauty and magic had captured his soul, wanted
him
.

Wanted him
inside
her.

Wanted him
now
.

Holy freaking balls of Poseidon.

He reached down between them to see if she was as ready for him as he was for her, and the feel of her wet heat against his fingers shot a bolt of hot lust through his body straight to his cock. He thrust two fingers inside her, as deep as they would go, and growled a warning when she squirmed against his hand. The beast inside him that was more animal than man, that had battled and fought and killed for centuries, warning her not to try to escape him. But she said, “Yes, more, yes,” panting as she said it, reassuring him that she wasn't trying to get away, and the beast calmed, gave way to the man. Ven almost had time to wonder what the fuck was happening to him before another wave of lust rode him, hard, and he groaned as his body clenched, his hips bucking involuntarily.

Praise Poseidon, she was riding his fingers and rubbing her breasts against him and he had to get inside her before he died. He bent his knees and lowered his head and caught a tight, perfect nipple in his mouth and sucked hard, fingers still moving inside her. He found her clit with his thumb, rubbing her in the same rhythm that his fingers were moving to, and she caught his hair in her hands and screamed out his name.

When she exploded around his fingers, shuddering in his grasp, he shouted out his triumph and his possession, and he turned and crossed the room in one leap with her still in his arms. Before she could change her mind, or come to her senses and realize a battle-hardened warrior would never be enough for her, he laid her down on the bed and yanked her legs apart. Put his hands on the bottoms of her thighs and held her open to him. Stared at her slick, swollen folds and murmured a promise that he would taste her soon. Would bury his face and lips and tongue in her honey and taste her until she screamed and came in his mouth.

She shuddered at his words, and he lost the power of speech.

He tried to tell her how beautiful she was—how special.

All that came out was “
Mine
.”

She stared up at him with a passion-drenched gaze, panting from her orgasm, desire still sparkling in the glorious blue of her eyes. “Ven?”

“Mine,” he repeated, unable to form words, unable to understand them. Why could she still talk?

She moved, lifted a hand to push a strand of hair from her face, and the motion triggered the predator, the conqueror inside him who demanded that he stake a claim on this woman.

His woman.

“Mine.
Now,
” he growled, and then he centered himself over her and looked into her eyes once more, sanity trying to raise its head, honor giving her one last chance to change her mind.

But she smiled up at him and nodded and said the most beautiful word he'd ever heard.

“Yes.”

At that moment, he shifted so that he was no longer blocking the window, and the moonlight shone across her body as it lay opened to him, transforming her back into the goddess she'd been outside the Nereid Temple.

He paused for a heartbeat, understanding on some primal level that he was about to make love to a goddess turned human. Not caring what price he might pay for it.

Mine.

In one powerful thrust, he drove his cock all the way inside her slick heat and he shouted again, shouted her name, shouted his claiming in ancient Atlantean, the only language his brain could remember.

She clenched around him and cried out, wrapping her legs around his waist and digging her heels into his ass, not pushing him away but pulling him closer, and he was only too eager to get with that particular program, oh, thank you Poseidon.

“Erin, if you do that again, I'm going to go off right now like some damn youngling,” he said, panting, as he held still for a moment, then belatedly realized he'd said the words to her in his native tongue and repeated them in English.

“Well, then we'd just have to try again, wouldn't we?” she said, biting her lip to keep the smile from forming.

He leaned closer and captured her lips again, kissing her until he was inhaling her breath and her music and her soul.

“Say my name, Erin. Tell me you want me,” he demanded, slowly pulling out of her body, then plunging back in, over and over, speeding up the rhythm in response to the little moans and gasps she made underneath him.

“I…yes. Ven,” she breathed. “I want you, oh Goddess, Ven, I want you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.”

Some primitive instinct deep down in the primal waters of his genetic ancestry roared out its triumph. Every muscle in his body tightened at the sound of his name in her lilting voice. His cock swelled and hardened until the friction from her tight, wet sheath drove him insane with sensation.

Her music broke forth again; the emeraldsong and opalsong soared through the room and through the two of them as their limbs tangled together and their bodies joined. He thrust into her harder and deeper, driving farther into her with every stroke. Erin suddenly gasped, dragging her nails down his back, and tightened around him as she exploded, crying out his name as she came. The force of her orgasm drove him over the edge, and he thrust into her as far as he could go and kept still, holding her tightly in his arms, while he pulsed his release inside her. Then he collapsed beside her, pulling her with him so he remained in her body, careful not to crush her with his weight.

“Ven, I—” she began, but then she made a funny little gasping sound, and the music that had been soaring through the room exploded inside of his head. A rainbow of music, a sunrise of melodies, a concerto sung by angels and Nereids rang, floated, spiraled through the room and through both of them, and the force of it slammed Ven back against the pillows, still clasping Erin in his arms, satiation giving way to another wave of impossibly powerful, driving hunger.

But suddenly the splendor and power of the music blasted through his mental shields and maybe through hers, too, because he looked into her eyes and saw the depths of her soul.

Saw the murder of her family—she'd been there. She'd seen it all, tried to help, tried to stop it, been beaten and stabbed. Caligula and his minions had left her for dead.

The whole thing played out in his head like a violent movie, complete with a soundtrack from the lowest of the nine hells. Her mother and sisters sobbing and shrieking as they'd died.

Erin had dragged herself to the coven, wounded, nearly dead, and demanded that they train her, though she was only sixteen years old.

He saw her strength, her loneliness, her despair. Her driving need to avenge her family.

He saw himself, and her wonder at feeling such a tangible, powerful connection to a man she'd only just met.

He saw her soul, and he fell over the precipice into the abyss. Strong, fearless warrior that he was, Ven was suddenly more terrified than he had ever been in the half millennium of his existence, because he realized that if he'd seen into her soul, shining with her courage and light, it was highly likely that she'd seen into the black and twisted corners of
his
. He closed his eyes as a blade sharper than any dagger ever honed twisted in his gut.