Warriors of Poseidon 02 - Atlantis Awakening

quite classify welled up from his chest and soared through him. He wanted… he wanted … he needed.
     
    Suddenly need was all that existed, spiraling in the air between them, curling through his veins. So he kissed her.
     
    He put one arm around her waist and caught the back of her head with his other hand and pulled her off balance so that she landed across his lap, and he bent his head to capture her lips with his own. She gasped a little, and he caught her breath in his mouth and felt like he'd swallowed a wish or a prayer; captured a part of her soul in his own.
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    Music soared from her and into him, and the heat and welcome of her mouth was a symphony of desire conducted by a maestro. She made a moaning sound in the back of her throat and he tried to swallow the sound, tried to swallow the music, tried to inhale her light and sound and magic into his heart, and still, still, he kissed her.
     
    By the light and the water and O, Holy Poseidon, she was kissing him back.
     
    In a flash the kiss changed from exploratory to possessive as every inch of him shouted out his need to lay her back in the flowers, tear the clothes from their bodies, and pound into her right there in the garden.
     
    His zipper must have been damn near leaving a tattoo on his cock from the pressure, because just the taste of her was sending him up in flames. An inferno of hunger and wanting—and suddenly he realized she felt exactly like a dream come true in his arms.
     
    A dream he could never deserve.
     
    All the dreams he could never attain.
     
    He wrenched his head away from hers, fighting a battle with himself to do it, and pulled great, shuddering breaths into his lungs. She stared up at him, her blue eyes darkened with passion and her lips swollen from his kisses, and a primal urge deep in his soul roared out his need to possess her.
     
    A need he could never fulfill. He lifted her limp form up and away from him and prepared to try to convince himself—convince them both —that the kiss could never be repeated.
    "Erin, we cannot—"
     
    An icy wind sliced through the air between them and he pulled Erin behind him, knowing what it meant. Knowing who it meant.
     
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    "No, you cannot," Alaric said flatly as he shimmered into shape. "And you, gem singer, have broken the laws of Atlantis. Poseidon's penalty for the unlawful use of magic on our shores is death."

Chapter 9
    Still dazed from Ven's kisses—from the power of the gem-song that had poured through her; through them both—Erin sat on the grass and stared up at the man who'd just pronounced her death sentence. He was huge, like Ven. Tall, broad-shouldered, and with muscles straining the shoulders and sleeves of the black silk shirt he wore so elegantly. He even had long black hair like Ven. But his features were so different. The sharp-cut planes of his face, his aristocratic nose, and his high cheekbones all shouted haughty arrogance. Not to mention the whole death penalty thing wasn't making him look warm and fuzzy.
     
    Ven flashed up off the ground to stand in front of her so fast she almost didn't see him move, and a horrible freight train of sound roared from his throat. Was he…growling!
     
    "Touch her and die, Priest. Come near her, harm a single molecule of her being, and—Poseidon's chosen or no—you will die screaming," Ven said, his low voice far more menacing than another man's shouting would have been.
     
    Erin jerked her head back and forth to snap out of the weird daze she'd been in since Ven had touched her. Then she scrambled to stand up next to Ven, and she glared at them both. "If we're going to talk about my death, perhaps I can be involved in the conversation?" she said, holding her hands out loosely at her side, in case she needed to call to her power quickly.
     
    The man Ven had called "Priest" pointedly glanced down at her hands and bared his teeth at her. His eyes glowed a fierce emerald green that was shocking in its intensity.
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    She'd never seen any creature but a vampire whose entire eye glowed like that, and that was usually right before it ate somebody.
     
    "I am Alaric, high priest to Poseidon, gem singer, and this is my realm. Think you that your puny earth magic will work against one such as myself, the greatest power Atlantis has ever known?"