Heart Of Atlantis

against the wall. He, Alaric, high priest to Poseidon, most feared man in Atlantis, had turned into a blithering idiot. All because there was a naked woman in his bathroom.
    No, not
a
naked woman.
The
naked woman. The
perfect
woman. The one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
    When the door finally opened, he was pretending to read a book, which he promptly dropped on his foot as soon as he saw her. Her short, dark hair was wet and combed back and away from her perfect face, and she was wrapped in his white silk robe. It was far too big for her, even with the sleeves rolled up, but she looked like a fallen angel; all porcelain skin and huge, dark eyes.
    He wanted to run.
    He wanted to shout.
    He wanted to worship at her feet.
    “I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed this,” she said nervously. “I washed my clothes out in the sink, so as soon as they dry out—”
    “Keep it,” he said hoarsely, fighting hard to keep from leaping across the room and pouncing on her like a lust-crazed youngling. “It looks far better on you than it ever did on me.”
    She plucked at a sleeve. “I feel like this is a huge mistake, being here, and wearing this, and—”
    “Nothing could be further from the truth. Everything in my life that doesn’t have you in it is a mistake,” he replied with total sincerity. “I am willing to spend eternity telling you that.”
    He couldn’t bear being apart from her for one more second, so he slowly crossed the room, giving her time to say no. “I need to touch you, Quinn. I need to taste you and feel your skin against mine. I need to know that this conflagration inside me isn’t only one-sided.”
    She lifted her chin defiantly, but she didn’t back away.
    She didn’t back away.
    He sent a quick prayer of thanks to any and all gods who may have ever existed, simply because she didn’t back away.
    “It’s not only one-sided, and you know it,” she said softly, and she may have said something else, at least her beautiful lips formed words, but then he was kissing her and didn’t hear anything but the rush of desire beating underneath his skin.
    He devoured her lips and caught her tongue with his and kissed her so deeply he was unsure where he ended and she began. He was clumsy and frantic, and he was afraid that she would reject him for either or both of those things, but she gently touched his face and slowed down the kiss before breaking away and taking a deep breath.
    “I’m right here,” she whispered. “You don’t have to make up for hundreds of years in the next five minutes.”
    His laughter held the edge of madness. “Do you promise? You won’t disappear? Because I can’t imagine how I’d ever survive if you did.”
    She took his face in her hands. “No sex. Not yet, maybe not ever, until we figure this out. But for heaven’s sake, kiss me, already.”
    She didn’t need to ask him again. He held her as tightly as he could and kissed her as if the world would end if he ever stopped. The earth could have cracked open and devoured them, and he wouldn’t have cared, because he was finally kissing her. In fact, the room felt like it was shaking underneath his feet from the sheer rush of hunger desperate to be fulfilled. By all the gods, she was
his
, and he’d be damned to the lowest of the nine hells if he’d ever,
ever
let her go.
    Quinn trembled in his arms, and suddenly his hand was under the silk of the robe and touching the silk of her breast. His body shook with the force of his need, and he feared he’d go off like an untried boy, right there in his pants, simply from the touch of her skin.
    “Please touch me,” she moaned. “Oh, this is dangerous, but I don’t even care.”
    He didn’t care, either, not about rules or oaths or consequences. His heart raced, and his blood burned like liquid electricity in his veins, and the sound of pounding battered at him until he realized it was
actual
pounding . . . on the door.
    On the
godsdamned door
.
    “Go away, or I will destroy you where you stand,” he roared.
    His chief acolyte, voice shaky but determined, answered him through the door.
    “My lord, the Trident is malfunctioning. It’s shooting blasts of pure magic throughout the temple. Two of our people are injured and one barely escaped with his life. My lord? You must help us.”
    Alaric’s dazed mind took a few seconds to register that the floor probably
had
been shaking, after all. He snapped his focus to his surroundings and