Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

with a long, considering stare.
    “Not his prey,” he finally said, his deep voice sizzling across her nerve endings.
    She caught her breath, but before she could speak he lifted one hand from the wall to touch the side of her face.
    “Not his prey,” he repeated, bending his face down to hers. “Mine.”

Chapter 4
    She’d been partially hidden; blocked by the door that had stood between them. The door that he would have ripped from its frame with his bare hands. But as Brennan had transformed back from mist into his body, the woman had stepped out into the room and he’d seen her face clearly. The face from the newspaper clipping he yet carried in his pocket. The face from those fragments of nearly forgotten dreams. He saw her face, and the entire world jolted and fell out of orbit. There was no sun. There was only her.
    Tiernan.
    She was so very beautiful. Waves of dark hair framed her face, a perfect frame for her enormous dark brown eyes. The curve of her cheek must have inspired poetry. The curve of her lips must have inspired song.
    The curves of her body—well. Those inspired something entirely different. He’d felt his heart pounding in his chest as his body reacted suddenly and fiercely, every inch of him going hard and ready.
    She’d stared up at him, defiance and caution mingling in those dark, dark eyes as she met his gaze. That’s all it took. A single glance, and he was done. He was hers.
    Then she’d spoken his name, and his calm had shattered. He’d leapt at her, desperate to touch her. To taste her. To take her and make her his and never, ever let her leave him.
    She’d said something, shouted something, but only one word penetrated. Prey? Who would dare to make his woman prey? Not prey.
    “Mine,” he repeated, almost snarling the word, daring her to defy him. Didn’t she know? Didn’t she understand?
    Her eyes widened as if in fear, and something cracked in his heart. How could she be afraid of him? He was hers; had always been hers, would always be hers. The tide of need dragged him under and he lost the thought, trapped in the wanting.
    Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
    Page 28 of 232
    “Would die for you,” he managed to say, but then she gasped a little and he could no longer speak. Could no longer think. Had to taste her. Just once. Just the first of thousands, millions of times.
    He bent his head and captured her mouth with his own, and the heat of her, the taste of her, the sheer glory of finally holding her blew through him with the force of a percussive blast. He lifted his head and staggered a few steps back, sure that Poseidon himself must have shot a bolt of power at him from the Trident. A shock wave of pain smashed into and through him, and he had little warning before the curse took over and tried to fulfill its directive: his total destruction.
    This could not be emotion—was it? No. It was pain. More pain than he had ever known. The universe exploded in Brennan’s soul as sanity fractured. He yanked his daggers from their sheaths—instinct driving him to defend himself in the only way he knew how—but it was useless. Futile. Weapons couldn’t defend against this enemy. He dropped the daggers and fell to the floor, clutching his chest as the tsunami of emotion ripped through him. Shattered two thousands of years of barrenness—drenched the arid wasteland of his soul with pain.
    Anguish and unbearable sadness crushed his heart under the implacable weight of it.
    Thousands of years of loss striking him all at once. Pains never suffered. Deaths never mourned.
    Never felt. Oh, Poseidon—feeling—such a puny word for the pain, the unending agony. Dying would be easier.
    Dying would be preferable.
    “Please, by all the mercy of the gods, just let me die,” he groaned, clenching his teeth, grinding them, his jaw aching as he threw his head back, slamming it against the floor, over and over, mindlessly seeking unconsciousness. Relief. Surcease from the pain. He cried out, or at least he thought he did, as grief claimed him, dragging him down under a riptide of agony to feast on his flesh. On his sanity.
    On his soul.
    A sound caught his attention, somehow, whispering its way through the pain roaring in his ears.
    He forced his eyes to open and there she was. Tiernan. Crouching down next to him, hesitantly reaching a hand out. He rolled away from her, unable to bear it. Unable to let her touch him.
    Maybe it was contagious, maybe she would be caught