Vampire in Atlantis

better,” he said aloud, fully aware that he was talking to himself—out loud—and that was surely step one on the path to madness.
    Mad or no, she loves me, and she is mine.
    The sane part of his mind, he found, had no wish to argue, so he allowed himself to fall into a light doze, now that they were securely hidden from any view from outside.
    She loved him. She loved him .
    But when he slept, he dreamed of purple fire.

Chapter 18
     

     
    Daniel woke first, a change in the air pressure alerting him to the coming dusk. He and Serai had slept nearly twelve hours, and each of the times he’d woken to check on her during the day she’d been sleeping deeply, all but unconscious in his arms. He knew the trek was taking its toll on her, but there was no alternative. Her fear of heights wouldn’t allow her to fly. If they didn’t find the gem—Well.
    He would not think of that.
    She lay curled against him, and her scent of sunshine and sea surrounded him with its delicate flavor. He wanted to taste her again, and his body hardened painfully at the thought of waking her by undressing her and kissing every inch of exposed skin. She sighed in her sleep and put a hand on his face, as if petting him or telling him to wait just a little while, or so he imagined. He grinned ruefully. Even in the face of impending danger and almost certain death, his blood rushed to his cock at the sight of her. In some ways, he really wasn’t much different from that boy she’d known so long ago.
    His grin faded as he realized one crucial difference: that boy would not have been fighting the urge to sink his fangs into her oh-so-tempting neck. The blood thirst was worse than he’d ever known it, and he had a strong feeling that it was more about his feelings for Serai than about the blood itself. He didn’t need to feed on blood very often. The blood of the human who had “volunteered” outside the bar would suffice for at least a week more.
    No, it wasn’t about need. It was all about desire.
    Trying to distract himself, he took her hand in his and realized it was icy cold, so he massaged it, trying to provide heat from friction since his own body temperature ran a little cooler than human or Atlantean. He knew she was shaky from the stasis, in spite of the magic. How she could bear up under the pressure and the demands of this quest after eleven thousand years of inactivity was enough to boggle the mind.
    “You’re an extraordinary woman, Serai of Atlantis,” he murmured, and he wasn’t even all that surprised when she opened her eyes and looked into his.
    “You’re quite the bee’s knees, yourself,” she said, smiling.
    He laughed. “I haven’t heard that one in a long time. And thank you.”
    Her brows drew together. “I know. My knowledge of languages is extensive, but my grasp of the correct chronology is rather fluid. I know Rome is long gone, but sometimes I find myself thinking in Latin. The proper speech patterns of England during the Regency period fascinated me, so I might inadvertently drop into those. I find American English a little tiring and flat, if that makes sense, with none of the lyricism of Atlantean, so it’s hard for me to maintain conversation it it.”
    “I never would have been able to guess that,” he said, switching to ancient Atlantean. “I think you’re amazing. Your brain must be truly a marvel, to keep up with all of those languages.”
    She shifted, making him all too painfully aware that she still lay in his arms, when his pants seemed to shrink a couple of sizes.
    “My strength is up, but my limbs feel weak. Almost as if they weren’t connected to my body,” she said, also in Atlantean, strain evident in her pale face. “Walking will be difficult this night.”
    “Let me help.” He sat up and pulled her arm into his lap, then began a vigorous massage to get the blood moving and her muscles warmed up. He realized the oddity that he, a vampire, was working to increase Serai’s blood circulation without any intent to partake of that blood, but it was far from the oddest thing he’d encountered in the past few days, so he filed it away under “irrelevancies” and continued, moving on to her other arm for a while.
    “May I remove your socks?”
    She bit her lip, and in the fading glow of what little light reached them this far back in the cave he saw that her cheeks had turned pink yet again.
    “You can’t possibly be shy at the thought of me seeing your feet after I