Heart Of Atlantis

and without reserve. She felt herself falling, drowning, sinking into an abyss of wanting and
feeling
and needing, and she realized her arms were twined tightly around his neck and she was pressed against his body so close that not even a breath separated them.
    It wasn’t close enough.
    She sank into a whirlwind of feeling; a storm of longing that made the tornado he’d created in Tokyo seem like nothing more than a soft breeze. Nerves long untouched signaled bright flares to the pleasure center in her brain, until she felt herself incandesce with the sharp, almost painful brilliance of pure desire.
    She moaned, or he did, and he lifted her higher in his arms, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed even closer, feeling from the large, hard bulge of his erection that although rules may have stopped him in the past, he certainly wasn’t unwilling or unable now.
    He wanted her, and the knowledge drove her further and further over the edge, past sense and reason, and into an abyss filled with need and want and hunger.
    He pulled back a little and stared down at her, his eyes burning in a face gone stark and hard with desire.
    “Quinn, I need you. Now. I need you naked and underneath me or on top of me or however you want, but I need you to be naked. Right. Now.”

Chapter 9
    Alaric had never been more in danger of losing his sanity than he was right at this moment with this woman he held so tightly in his arms. If she stopped kissing him, he was sure he would die from the loss of her touch. Everything he was and ever had been was centered on the burning waves of need and hunger rushing through him. He wanted Quinn like he’d never wanted any woman before in all the long, lonely centuries of his life.
    He needed her. To the nine hells with the repercussions.
    “Alaric? Your emotions just changed. What are you thinking about?” Her eyes were dark and dazed, but trying to focus.
    “Nothing important,” he said firmly and kissed her again.
    “No,” she said, struggling to put a bit of space between them. “That’s not true. What is going on in your brilliant but dark and twisty mind?”
    He shook his head and leaned toward her again, but she put a hand up between them and pushed.
    “Tell me.”
    He gave in, knowing she would persevere until he did so. “All of my life, I have been told that the vow of celibacy is the key to my power. The Elders strongly impressed upon me the need to protect myself from the desires of the flesh or the call to softer emotions.”
    She squeezed his arm and then backed away a step so she could look up into his face as he continued.
    He had no choice now. He had to tell her, and there was no way to pretty up the stark truth, so he just said it. “There’s a good chance that if I break my vow of celibacy, I’ll lose my magic.”
    The bald statement hung in the air between them for several long moments, and then Quinn backed away from him so fast she stumbled and fell on the ground. He moved to help her, but she shook her head, scrambling backward on all fours.
    “Don’t touch me! How can you possibly say that to me and then try to touch me?” Her voice held a tinge of hysteria, and her eyes were wild. “I can’t bear that burden, Alaric. Don’t ask me to.”
    “No, you don’t understand. This is only what the Elders told me. Keely, the scientist who has soul-melded with Justice—she’s an object reader. She told me that the Elders lied or at least were wrong. That in truth the most powerful high priest in the history of Atlantis was not only not celibate, but he was actually married. Nereus was married to Zelia, and from what Keely said, they were extremely happy and in love.”
    She kept shaking her head, back and forth, over and over. “Keely said. She’s human, right?”
    He nodded the affirmative.
    “So a human who claims to be picking up psychic woo-woo emanations from
objects
tells you that, okay, sure, Alaric, it’s okay to break your sacred vow, it will all be fine, no worries, and you think that’s good enough?”
    “Serai confirmed as much,” he said, a little desperately.
    “Right. And there couldn’t be anything wrong with
her
memory, after eleven thousand years of stasis, right?” Quinn shook her head. “We can’t take that chance. Maybe this Nereus never had to swear the same vow you did. Maybe his powers worked differently. Or maybe she’s just wrong.”
    “When you say it in those terms, of course—”
    “And what