Warriors of Poseidon 04 - Atlantis Unmasked

it, citing the need for Atlantean secrets to remain so, and she had stared at him in disbelief and voiced her heated disagreement with the plan.
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    “Are you kidding me? Tiny and his men are our first line of defense if you‟re crazy priest has gone over the edge,” she‟d argued.
     
    But he‟d shaken his head. “You have no idea of the scope of Alaric‟s powers. Imagine if I unleashed my full strength and skills against these humans.” He‟d waited until she‟d nodded, reluctantly seeing his point. But then he‟d gone on. “Now add in the most powerful Atlantean magic in the history of the Seven Isles. Tiny and his men would be brutally killed if they tried to oppose Alaric, and they deserve better.”
     
    It had been the end of the discussion. Telling Tiny that he was free to leave, because she and Alexios were themselves getting ready to go, and letting him see her toss her duffel bags in the Jeep had been the only way to convince the big man that it was okay to leave her alone and unguarded, except for Alexios.
     
    “You take care of yourself, little gal,” he‟d said.
     
    She‟d thanked him and stood on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek and then watched with some amusement as his face had flushed red under his beard. Alexios had been somewhat less sanguine about it, but managed to refrain from challenging Tiny to a duel or something equally archaic.
     
    It would be a lot to get used to, spending her life with a four-hundred-year-old warrior. If she ever had the opportunity, that was. For now, all she could focus on was the meeting with the Fae. She cleared her dishes and then went back to the more important task at hand: oiling her bow and sharpening the steel and silver tips of her arrows.
     
    “Diana, guide my hand, should I need to use your bow,” she whispered and for an instant almost believed she saw the play of moonlight on the feathered fletching of her arrows.
     
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    Just for an instant.
     
    Grace heard his footsteps. Heard him stop in the doorway. Felt the intensity of his gaze before she even raised her head. She pretended she hadn‟t, though. Hadn‟t heard him.
    Hadn‟t felt him.
     
    Didn‟t want him.
     
    She busied herself with polishing the edge of her gleaming bow again, as if she couldn‟t already almost see her reflection in the wood. Maybe he would go away for a while, and she could take time to process. To deliberate on the new information and decide what to do with it.
     
    Fountain of youth. Stay in Atlantis or grow old.
     
    Stay with him for the rest of his life—with a man who baldly admitted he might not be able to let her go. What kind of control over her own life and destiny would she have to surrender in order to enter his world?
     
    Was it worth it? Could it ever be worth it, no matter what her heart was telling her? Had good sex—okay, great sex—made her think love when the real L word in her mind should be lust?
     
    Alexios cleared his throat. “Deep thoughts or avoidance?” he asked, the tone of his voice low and grim. “Are you having second thoughts so soon?”
     
    Grace finally looked up at him. “More like third or fourth thoughts,” she admitted. “This . .
    . whatever this is between us, it‟s too intense. Too . . . big. I worry that it could swallow me whole. Drown me.”
     
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    He nodded and offered up a tight smile. “I see. But you are a world-class swimmer, are you not? So drowning is not such a big concern.”
     
    “If only that were true. But I‟m not—I don‟t know how to be part of a relationship. I‟ve always thought it would be too confining. I don‟t need a man to tell me what to do.” She closed her eyes and blew out a sigh. “I‟m not explaining this very well.”
     
    Suddenly, he was standing behind her and drawing her back into his arms. “You‟re explaining it perfectly,” he said, after dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “But, Grace, with all due respect to your concerns, can you imagine any man trying to tell you what to do?”
     
    He started laughing and she had to smile. He had a point. Better yet, he‟d made the point, and he sounded pretty darn happy about it.
     
    He twirled her around on the bar-stool-style seat and caught the sides of her face in his hands. “Grace, do you think that I could