Warriors of Poseidon 04 - Atlantis Unmasked

sight.
    Maybe he could spend the next few weeks wearing an eye patch. Or two.
     
    “Yes, we‟ll be right up,” she called, then glanced at Alexios. “Is that okay with you? I‟d like for you to at least say hi, get any first impressions, then you and I can go get some lunch and discuss plans while Sam takes care of the newbies.”
     
    “No!” he said, way too loudly, apparently, considering the way she was looking at him.
    He didn‟t trust himself to be alone with her just yet. “I mean, yes, let‟s meet them and we‟ll all have lunch together. One often gets a truer opinion of a man at his leisure than when he knows himself to be studied.”
     
    She considered that for a second. Nodded. “Makes sense. Except it‟s at his or her leisure.”
     
    “I beg your pardon?”
     
    She grinned. “You have to quit doing that. Begging my pardon. Or it‟s going to be a long few weeks. And I said „her‟ because there are five women in the new group.”
     
    With that, she bounded up the stairs to meet Sam, who Alexios already didn‟t like. The man looked shifty. And clearly he was far too old for Grace, so what was she doing hugging him, no matter that it was brief? And what kind of animal was that unnaturally wrinkly pile of fur loping its way down the stairs?
     
    The animal ambled across the grass toward Alexios, who narrowed his eyes. “I was not begging. I am an elite Atlantean warrior, one of the best of the best. I serve the sea god himself, and I do not beg,” he told it. Correction. Him.
     
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    He barked sharply and then sat down and looked up at Alexios, with his mouth open, tongue hanging out in a doggie grin. Forget Ven. Even the dog was laughing at him.
     
    Grace called down to him. “Alexios, are you coming?”
     
    He gave the dog‟s ears a quick scratch and then headed up the stairs, telling himself to focus on his center. Calm down and immediately cease reacting to the woman in such a way. He needed to meet with the Fae, find the diamond, and spend a few weeks assisting Grace with training. How bad could it be?
     
    The fort, three days later, late afternoon
     
    Alexios paced restlessly through the rooms and grounds of the fort, nodding curtly to the scattered groups of humans who were practicing with various weapons. After years of serving as a tourist attraction to camera-laden visitors and their ice-cream-dripping younglings, the old fort was back to its original use as a first defense against enemies.
    Of course, the Spaniards who‟d built the fort had probably never anticipated that, nearly three hundred forty years later, the enemies would be rogue shape-shifters and vampires. Or, considering the Spanish vamp-killer history that had pissed the vampires off enough to order the fort closed to tourists, maybe they would have.
     
    But they probably wouldn‟t have guessed that an Atlantean warrior would be the one doing the training.
     
    Or that said Atlantean warrior would be failing, miserably.
     
    His foot itched to smash a kick into the coquina walls, but the fragile shell-and-sand limestone was too delicate to take the abuse. Unlike Grace. Who was neither fragile nor delicate, but an enormous pain in his ass. Three days with her had been three days of unrelenting agony. Everywhere he turned, she was there, a living, breathing reminder of what he couldn‟t have. Couldn‟t touch.
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    Couldn‟t claim.
     
    Even sweaty and dirty from training, she was so sexy she made his teeth hurt from the constant jaw clenching he had to do to keep from yanking her up into his arms and taking her mouth with his own. Worse, she was smart, funny, and generous. Everything he ever would have wanted in a woman—if he‟d ever wanted a woman. In that way.
    That for-a-lifetime kind of way.
     
    Which was crazy. Anyway, she had really annoying quirks that drove him nuts. Like when she was planning strategy or trying to figure out mundane budget issues, she had a habit of chewing on her lower lip and toying with the end of her braid that drove him nuts.
     
    Okay, honesty. Nearly drove him insane with blind lust.
     
    He wanted to play with her hair. He wanted to chew on her lips. Taste her. Bite her. Sink his teeth into her.
     
    Sink his cock into her . . .
     
    “Alexios!”
     
    As if his churning thoughts had called her name, Grace‟s voice cut through the muted