Warriors of Poseidon 02 - Atlantis Awakening

you can do with Atlantean magic?"
     
    "Fire is the forbidden element, the only one Atlanteans cannot channel. But I'm not completely useless." He grinned and pulled a clean-looking metal coffeepot and a deep copper pot off a shelf and put them on the table. Then he chanted the words Alaric had made him repeat, over and over, sensing the magical warding that surrounded the cabin as he called it.
     
    "You've warded the cabin," she said, eyebrows raised. "Sealed it magically?"
     
    "Alaric taught me that trick before we left. He believes that Caligula may be able to sense Atlantean magic, and certainly Anubisa can, if she's around."
     
    She nodded and closed her eyes, mumbling something under her breath, and he sensed the power of his warding being reinforced. "That should help, too," she said, then unzipped and pulled off her heavy coat.
     
    Ven stared at her, trapped in the tangled emotions rushing through Mm, damning himself as a randy fool for wanting nothing more than to strip the clothes from her and bury himself in her, to prove in some primitive way that she was alive and unharmed. To claim her as his, for now and always.
     
    "Ven? The water?"
    Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    "Right," he said, almost dazed. He shook his head to break free of the lust-and longing-induced daze, raised his hands and called to the elements, called to the water that was as natural and necessary to his spirit as the air he breathed.
     
    It came immediately, spiraling in through the chinks in the walls in shimmering sheets of droplets, then coalescing into waves and curls of shining water that heated in the air under his gaze and filled the pots until it boiled and bubbled inside them.
     
    "Gennae gave me some coffee when we were packing our provisions," he said, then bent to rummage through his backpack. When he finally found the coffee, which had somehow ended up on the bottom of his pack, and turned back to Erin triumphantly, he promptly dropped the bag from suddenly nerveless fingers. Because she stood there, in the middle of the cabin, wearing nothing but her socks.
     
    "My feet are cold," she said, biting her lip, as if unsure of his reaction.
     
    "I'll warm them," he promised, silently thanking Poseidon yet again for the gift of this woman, this witch, as the heat seared through him, clawing into his gut and his balls and his heart. "I need you, Erin," he managed to get out in a voice gone rough and husky with hunger. Trying to be chivalrous. Trying to show restraint. "I need you so much that I can't promise to be gentle. Are you sure?"
     
    "I don't want gentle. I just want you." She held out her arms, and restraint vanished under a maelstrom of fierce, desperate need. He used his last remaining moments of tightly leashed control to cast the magical Atlantean wards Alaric had made him practice and then he leapt across the small room and pulled her into his arms, exultant, exhilarated.
     
    Erin watched him come toward her with his eyes fixed on her in the fierce, focused gaze of a predator and felt a tiny shiver of unease mixed with excitement. She'd unleashed something by her words and her action and now she stood, bare to him in more ways Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    than one, ready to accept the consequences. She needed to know he was alive on a visceral level, needed to erase the image of the wound in his side, the pulsing blood, that continued to haunt her.
     
    Staring at her, capturing her in his gaze, he ripped at his clothes and piled them, along with their coats, on the wooden bench that must serve as a bed. Then he yanked the thermal sleeping bag from the bottom of his pack and spread it out. The glow from the firelight caressed the muscles of his legs as he bent over the makeshift pallet.
     
    A humming noise started deep in her throat as she watched him and her emerald song rose to meet it. His shadow shimmered across the wall and it trembled slightly.
    Suddenly she realized the extent of the power she had over him and she almost took a step back. Somehow, impossibly, their desires had become entangled together, and they'd become more vitally important to each other than she could understand.
     
    He stood from arranging the bed and turned to stare at her, naked emotion in his eyes.
    She calmed, finally realizing on a soul-deep level that mere time had nothing to do with the need she felt for this man. It transcended the mundane reality