Warriors of Poseidon 01 - Atlantis Rising

Her face shone with the perfection of a Nereid. The silvery light barely illuminated the red-gold waves that must burn like fire in the sunshine. Her eyes…
     
    Not possible. No human has eyes like that.
     
    "They're cerulean," he said aloud, unthinking: "Your eyes."
     
    Cerulean. The color of the royal house of Atlantis.
     
    His color.
     
    "They—my mother had eyes this shade of deep blue," she whispered, one hand reaching up to touch her face.
     
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    Conlan caught his breath, feeling her pain. Something about her mother—
    "She's gone," he murmured. Somehow he knew it. Felt it. He couldn't understand the pull—as if the magnetic draw of the moon to the tides had infused him. He wanted to touch her.
     
    He needed to touch her.
     
    Almost without thought, he reached out to her face with his fingertips. She trembled, but didn't move away, so he dared to caress the curve of her silken cheek with trembling fingers. Longing. Desire surging out of nowhere.
     
    Healthy, clean desire. He hadn't felt desire in more than a century. Certainly not for the past seven years.
     
    Nothing pure. Nothing not twisted.
     
    Damaged goods.
     
    He yanked his hand away from her. "Aknasha means 'empath,' " he said roughly.
    "You're an empath. The first in maybe ten thousand years."
     
    Riley stared up at the man who had saved her from assault and, probably, rape. Maybe worse. If her mind had conjured up her most erotic fantasy to save her from a grim reality in which she really was being attacked, it had done a bang-up job. The man was some kind of superhero come to life.
     
    If they made superheroes who looked like very dangerous Hollywood movie stars, that is. He stood a good eight inches taller than her five foot ten, and his body was a nymphomaniac's wet dream. Heavily muscled shoulders and arms, a broad chest that tapered down to a lean waist. God, his thighs had to be the size of her waist. The man Atlantis Rising – Warriors of Poseidon 01
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    was a mountain of muscle, improbably wearing a black silk shirt that tucked into elegant black pants.
     
    She jerked her gaze up from going any further south and stared fixedly at his chest, her cheeks flaming to know that he'd caught her ogling him.
     
    Although, really, the man must get ogled wherever he goes, so it's not like he isn't used to it.
     
    His silky black hair brushed his shoulders in shining waves, framing a face that defied description. Beautiful. For the first time in her life, she used the adjective to describe a man.
     
    He raised her chin with one finger, and she looked up at him again. He was smiling, amusement lighting up his dark eyes, almost as if he'd heard what she…
     
    "Oh, God," she muttered. "Empath means you can read my mind?" She stared up past the silky hair, past the perfectly sculpted mouth, and past the cheekbones that seemed carved of granite. Finally, her gaze fixed on the icy black eyes that burned over her.
    Strange that ice could be so hot, she thought absently, trapped almost mindlessly in his gaze.
     
    "You did hear me, didn't you?" she asked, embarrassment nearly an afterthought.
     
    He touched her cheek with fingers so gentle she nearly shuddered from the sensation, and he spoke inside her mind with a voice that should be outlawed. I can hear your thoughts, but I can also somehow feel your emotions. It's impossible, but it's true.
     
    Whiskey wrapped in velvet. His low, purely masculine voice carried a smooth, husky tone that curled around her nerve endings until her skin tightened with desire. Desire that caressed every erogenous zone she'd never even known she had.
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    Desire that he would touch her. Desire that he would keep talking to her on the mental path that no other person had ever shared with her.
     
    Desire.
     
    His voice echoed in her mind, rough. Strained. I hear you, and maybe you should think other thoughts. Because something about you is burning me up inside, and I don't know if I'm up to the challenge of controlling it.
     
    She sensed his puzzlement, almost as if he were seeking the answer to an unanswerable problem. He stepped closer to her and wrapped one hand gently around the nape of her neck. I need to touch you. I don't want to frighten you, but please let me touch you. Just my forehead to yours.
     
    His eyes held a stark plea. Please.
     
    Trembling, sure she was