Warriors of Poseidon 01 - Atlantis Rising

through the room. "Maybe we can set up a tea party for you on our next mission?"
     
    Denal jumped to his feet, crumbs dropping to the floor. "If you ever tell anyone that story, I'll—I'll—"
     
    Bastien laughed. "Might want to stop there, until you grow a little bit, youngling. Besides, I'm tired from being out on patrol all night. Wouldn't be a fair fight, would it?"
     
    Riley fought to keep from grinning at the idea of Denal going up against Bastien. The older warrior towered over him by nearly a foot and was as broad as the side of a small hill.
     
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    But the conversation brought her back to her earlier point. "Good morning, Bastien. So, if Denal is a youngling, how old are you?"
     
    "Good morn, my lady. I have nearly four hundred years, praise be to Poseidon." Bastien ambled over to the coffee and poured the rest of the pot into an enormous mug that looked like a doll cup in his hand.
     
    "And Conlan?" she asked, not sure she even wanted to know the answer.
     
    Bastien cocked his head and gave her a quizzical grin. "Prince Conlan is merely a few weeks away from the age of his ascension to the throne, of course. He will celebrate five hundred years on that day, when he meets his lady wife and becomes king of all Atlantis."
     
    Riley dropped her coffee mug and stared, unseeing, as coffee ran in rivulets across the table. "When he meets who?"

Chapter 25
    Riley shoved her chair back from the table and stormed down the hall in search of one lying, deceitful, soon-to-be-neutered Atlantean prince.
     
    She found him in the dining room with Alaric, both of them bent over a large map spread over the table. Her treacherous body tingled a little at the sight of him, dark hair pulled back from his face with a leather tie, muscled legs just wide enough apart that she could imagine fitting right in between them, lying back on the table—
    —and turning into human bimbo of the week while his fiancee waited back home at Atlantis.
     
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    "You're a dead man," she began, then faltered when Alaric lifted his head and pinned her with that scary green glowing gaze of his.
     
    But not even facing Alaric at full steam would stop her. Not this time. "Back. Off. Alaric."
    She bit off the words. "You and I are going to go around about whatever it is you did to my sister, but I need to talk to your prince for a minute."
     
    Alaric's lips curled back from his teeth and the flashlight behind his eyes strobed up about a thousand degrees, but Conlan held up a hand. "Enough. What is this about, Riley?" He held a hand out to her, sending warmth and confusion through their emotional bond.
     
    She slammed down her shields. Hard. Enjoyed the sight of his flinch.
     
    "Forget to tell me anything when you were undressing me last night, Prince Conlan?"
     
    He drew his eyebrows together, confusion clear in his eyes. "What—"
     
    "You. Half a millennium old. Which is way, way too old for me, anyway, by the way. The throne. And, hmmm, what was it?" She tapped a fingernail on her teeth, looked up at the ceiling.
     
    "Oh, right. Your queen. Ring any bells, asshole?"
     
    She heard somebody gasp behind her, but was way beyond being embarrassed.
    Humiliated, sure. But it wasn't like everybody in the house didn't already know she was the prince's slut du jour.
     
    Riley's face burned at the thought, and she was glad that Quinn was gone. Conlan took a step toward her, and she pulled one hand back in a fist. "I've never punched anybody Atlantis Rising – Warriors of Poseidon 01
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    in my life, but if you take one more step, you can be the first. Did you know that it has been years for me? Years since I trusted any man enough to take that step with him?"
     
    Tears ran down her face, and she brushed them away with one hand, hating her weakness. Her stupidity.
     
    "Riley, I swear to you—"
     
    "Oh, yeah. This should be good," she said bitterly. "Tell me all about how it's not what I think. That you weren't cheating on your fiancee with me last night. That the feelings you showed me weren't a pile of astonishingly putrid lies."
     
    With that, the pain finally worked its way through her anger. Seared through her defenses and scorched its way through the center of her being. She faltered, nearly collapsed from the intensity of the pain.
     
    "How could you?" she cried. "How are you able to lie to me with your