Heart Of Atlantis

into our new job plans. Give the Naked Cowboy a run for his money. You can be the Glowing Gardener.”
    He glared at her, or at least she thought he did, since magical sparks shot out of his eyes like lasers.
    She started laughing. “You know, this is actually really cool. You’re going to be quite a hit with fourteen-year-old boys who love video games.”
    “You are having far too much fun with this, when I am concerned I may actually explode from an excess of power flooding through my body.” He swung around and touched her with a single finger, as if to test the connection.
    She screamed, and he leapt away from her.
    “Quinn, I’m so sorry, where are you hurt?”
    She couldn’t help it. She started laughing. “Sorry. I thought somebody needed to break the tension.”
    His mouth actually fell open a little. She’d succeeded in fooling the most powerful man in Atlantis. The small success made her grin, at least until he raised one hand and pointed a finger at her. A ribbon of glowing silver-blue light arrowed out from his finger and sped across the room toward her, swirled around her until it wrapped her up tight, and then inexorably, inch by inch, pulled her toward him.
    “Oh, I am going to make you pay for this,” she warned him.
    Judging by the insufferably smug grin on his glowing face, he wasn’t very concerned. “You deserve it,” he told her, and then he released the energy, pulled her into his arms, and kissed the breath out of her. The energy flooding his body added an extra punch to the sensation, increasing the sensual power of his kisses until she was sure she’d drown in a wave of heat and passion.
    “Stop right now,” she finally managed to say, and he reluctantly released her. “We need to figure this out.”
    She walked over to an ornately carved wooden table and poured him a glass of water from the blue-and-white porcelain pitcher. “Drink this and think mundane, non-magical thoughts.”
    He raised an eyebrow at her high-handedness, but he drank the water. Either that or the non-magical thinking must have worked, because he started to dim, little by little, until he was almost back to his normal self, only glowing a little around the edges. He promptly grabbed her and kissed her again, and this time when she finally pulled away, breathless again, he pointed silently at her hands.
    Which were also glowing.
    “Oh, boy.”
    “Human lightbulb,” he said, and it took her a minute to realize he was actually joking about job opportunities.
    He started laughing, and she shook her head.
    “Wow. Sex must be really,
really
good for you. Have I ever heard you tell a joke?
Ever?
”
    “Tour guides equipped with our own flashlights for all the midnight ghost tours,” he replied, and she nearly fell over. Two jokes in one century? From
Alaric
?
    “Hey, nobody but me gets to touch your flashlight, buddy,” she quipped and was rewarded with another easy smile, almost as if he were at all used to smiling. It was kind of like a minor miracle.
    She had to grin at the idea of Alaric giving a guided ghost tour, though, but then she thought better of it when an awful truth hit her. “Ghosts? Are there ghosts, too?”
    “You’ve seen vampires, shape-shifting giant monkeys, and demon kin from another dimension, and you’re going to quibble over ghosts?” As he talked, he pulled on fresh clothes from his apparently limitless selection of black shirts and black pants, and she spared a moment to mourn the loss of the view.
    All that lovely, muscular, naked man. And all hers. She felt like purring.
    “Ghosts?” he repeated, probably wondering why she was staring at him like a lovesick cow.
    “It’s just that ghosts are dead people, and quite honestly I’ve seen enough dead people to last me a million lifetimes.”
    Alaric took her in his arms and held her tightly. “Never again. We’ll be ordinary and boring together. No battles, no dead people, no flying monkeys.”
    She laughed a little. “Let’s go see this thing. How often do you get to watch the most famous lost continent in the history of the world actually rise?”
    Alaric’s smile faded.
    “Hopefully, rise without being destroyed,” he said grimly.
    “I could have lived without thinking about that.”

    Alaric and Quinn walked into the palace gardens, and he was amazed to see that while the two of them had been . . . resting, the whole of Atlantis had been transforming the gardens into a giant banquet facility. Tables were