Vampire in Atlantis

she pulled away from him to sit up on the pallet, leaning back against the wall.
    She drew in deep breaths, and he tried not to think about what interesting things that did to her breasts under the filmy dress she had on, but hell, he was only a man. Vampire, yes; mage, once; politician, no more; but before and after all of that, he was only a man, and hot damn but she was beautiful.
    “The Emperor is a gemstone from Poseidon’s trident,” she finally said, when her breathing was back under control. “One of the seven that the Atlanteans of my time scattered throughout the world when Atlantis dove beneath the sea.”
    “Why? And who had the balls to steal jewels from the sea god?”
    “There’s no need to be crude,” she said, and he was intrigued to see the flush that rose in her cheeks, visible even by firelight.
    She was blushing. Eleven thousand years old and still an innocent. The lustful images his mind had been playing as he watched her in the firelight washed away in a wave of guilt and shame. She was lost, in trouble, and hurting. She was a maiden, she’d said, and though part of him was primitively, stupidly glad that no man had ever touched her, the weight of the knowledge sobered him. She was a virginal Atlantean princess, and he was a monster. Beauty and the beast never had a happy ending together in real life. He of all beasts knew that.
    “Poseidon gave his trident to Atlantis so that we could escape war on the surface,” Serai said. “I think it was only supposed to be a temporary measure. But as the years, centuries, and then millennia passed, the secret of where the jewels had been originally hidden—not to mention where they had gone since then—was lost.”
    Daniel jumped up and walked around again, needing to put distance between them. “What does that have to do with you? I understand on the bigger level, Atlantis needs all the gems to rise, right. But why is the Emperor causing you pain?”
    “The Emperor has special powers. Well, all the jewels do, actually. But one of the Emperor’s powers is to sustain Atlanteans in stasis, through a connecting gemstone.”
    Daniel had heard stranger things. He nodded and motioned to her to continue.
    Serai shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure of the mechanics of it, if that’s what you’re asking. Who really understands how magic works? All I know is that the analogy one of the priests used several thousand years ago resonated with me. He compared the Emperor to a great river like the Nile; both sustain life. And, like the Nile overflowing its banks to irrigate Egypt, once a year the Emperor flooded our minds with information, so when we were awakened, we weren’t anachronistic, useless women with no knowledge of how the world and Atlantis had changed in our . . . absence.”
    Daniel realized belatedly that she’d been speaking English as well as she’d spoken ancient Atlantean. “How many languages do you speak?”
    “I don’t know. All of them?”
    His mind flashed back to a movie he’d watched with Ven once on a rare evening the demands on an Atlantean warrior and a vampire leader abated enough for them to escape their responsibilities. “Can you do kung fu?”
    “What? What are you talking about?” She stood up and pushed the heavy weight of her hair back from her face, igniting in him a powerful desire to be the one touching her hair. Kissing her sensual lips. Caressing—No.
    Stop.
    Virgin . In trouble. Not taking advantage of her. Not if he ever wanted to live with himself.
    “What about kung fu?”
    “Nothing. Never mind. Stupid random thought. So why is the jewel hurting you?”
    She crossed to the fire and put her hands out to the heat, although it wasn’t particularly cold in the cave. Not to him, at least. Maybe to a woman fresh out of thousands of years in a crystal prison, it felt freezing. He had no idea how to deal with this Serai, the woman who had stepped out of a fairy tale, so beautiful and so tempting.
    “Sleeping Beauty,” he murmured.
    She glanced back at him over her shoulder, the fire silhouetting her curves through the thin material of the dress, and his body hardened. Wanting. Needing. Even his fangs were aching, trying to drop down, and he’d had complete control over them for centuries. He realized he was breathing in time with the beat of her heart, and he forced himself to back away as far as he could get. Still, it was a cave. He was maybe a dozen paces from her, a distance he could cross in