Heart Of Atlantis

without you,” he said, and his saying so was another gift, the best present ever.
    “How long will it take? Do we need to help it along?”
    Alaric smiled. “I think you’ve done enough, my fierce one. It will be at least ten hours before we reach the surface. Right now, I suggest we find something to eat and get some rest.”
    “And a shower,” she added.
    He groaned. “I’m not sure I can take any more of imagining you in the shower.”
    She grinned at him. “Who said you have to imagine it?”
    They raced each other to his rooms.

Chapter 29
    Alaric slammed the door to his rooms shut behind them and sealed them with the most powerful ward he knew how to create. Nobody was getting in that door. He thought about it for a moment and then added soundproofing.
    Quinn stripped out of her borrowed shirt and pants on the way to the bathroom and then turned around and smiled at him, standing there in nothing but a few strategically placed scraps of lace. He almost swallowed his tongue.
    She bit her lip and then grinned. “Didn’t take me for a girly underwear kind of woman, did you?”
    He couldn’t answer her, because his brain and his vocal cords had both quit working. In fact, nothing on his body seemed to be functioning, since he was literally frozen in place, or at least so he thought, until his pants started pressing into his crotch.
    Ah
.
    She bit her lip again. “Are we really going to do this? Remember the Elders.”
    “The Elders can go fuck themselves,” he growled, and she started laughing.
    “I have given Poseidon my resignation from the office of high priest. If, in fact, giving up my celibacy means that I have given up my magic, I will mourn it for a fraction of a second, and then I will roll over and kiss every inch of your body again.”
    She smiled at him but still didn’t move. “What will you do with your life if you can’t be a magical warrior?”
    “I’ll raise peacocks and roses in the palace garden,” he said, trying to jest, forcing himself not to move, when every fiber of his being cried out for him to leap across the room. “I’ve always thought I’d look good in one of those floppy hats.”
    “I hope that’s all you’ve got that’s floppy,” she said, and then she unfastened her bra and dropped it to the floor, right before she stepped out of her lace bottoms.
    Alaric lost all ability to focus on anything else, and he stalked her to the bathroom, stripping off his own clothes as he went.
    She stepped into the shower and started adjusting dials, and clouds of steam billowed out into the room.
    “This is a wonderful shower, I hope you know that.”
    Words. She was making words, when she was naked. And she had that body. And those small, firm breasts. And an ass that made his mouth water. All naked, too.
    “Want,” he said. “Need. Now.”
    She took his hand and pulled him into the shower with her. “Okay, Tarzan. I want you, too.”
    Just before he kissed her, he confessed to a horrible truth. “Quinn, this isn’t going to last long. It has been a really, really long time.”
    She smiled and put her arms around him, and all he could do was feel the glory of her body against his. It wasn’t a mirage, or an illusion, or a fantasy created by his lonely mind during a long, dark night. She was really here, in his arms.
    Quinn.
    His body touched hers, and the feel of her was a miracle and a promise and a blessing. Skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat. He wanted, and he
needed
, but just for this moment, the simple touch of her silken skin calmed the beast he’d become when he thought he’d lost her.
    He stroked her arms, her back, and the smooth curve of her hip, while kissing the softness of her cheek and the graceful length of her neck and pulling her closer to him. Always closer. She put her hands in his hair and pulled his head back from her shoulder so she could kiss him, and he slanted his head to take her mouth. He drove his tongue into her mouth like he wanted to drive his cock into her body, balancing on the edge of losing control, and she gasped, a tiny, hiccupping sound that inflamed him to the point of madness.
    Control shattered and restraint vanished. Alaric dropped his head to her perfect, perfect breasts and sucked the rosy tip of one into his mouth. Quinn cried out and he was fiercely glad—fiercely triumphant—this perfect woman wanted
him
, too, and everything was absolutely and completely right with his world.
    He lifted her up and set her