Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

has to be. Well, on the bright side, I’ve never shared a room with a billionaire before. Do you have dollar signs on your pajamas?”
    Brennan stared after her, feeling yet again like he was having some difficulty keeping up with this fascinating woman. When she was too far away to hear him, he finally remembered to answer her question.
    “I don’t wear pajamas.”

Chapter 12
    Tiernan followed Brennan into his hotel room, after he’d made sure nobody who shouldn’t have been was lying in wait. Something about these warrior types; they took their protection seriously. She was rather glad about that after the day she’d had, although Brennan himself was one of the reasons she’d needed protection in the first place. She ran a quick check for bugs again, since they’d been out of the room. Still clean. Either Litton was trusting, stupid, or too arrogant to think their conversation was important.
    After she put the scanner back in the bottom of her bag, she turned to Brennan. “We need to talk. Devon may be the vampire who cornered me for the little chat earlier, but I can’t be sure.
    He wouldn’t admit it, unfortunately. I didn’t want to press, him, either, considering the situation.”
    Brennan said nothing but just stood there, motionless, his back to her.
    “Brennan? Are you communicating with Alexios again with your special Spidey senses?” When he didn’t respond, she sighed. “Look, I know full well the gravity of this situation, but I thought that maybe by keeping it light, I was helping you to keep a lid on the emotions. I can’t imagine how horrible it must be to get swamped with two thousand years of emotion all at once. I really admire you, to be honest. I think I’d go completely insane if I had to live through feeling everything that has happened to me just in the past twenty-eight years.”
    He flinched as if she’d struck him, and an icy tendril of concern whispered down her spine. “If the party was too much, the dancing with a vampire and all, and you’re going to have another breakdown, please tell me now,” she said, edging back toward the door. “Because I’ve had about all I can take for one day.”
    Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
    Page 77 of 232
    He finally turned around, moving very slowly, and raised his head until their gazes met. She gasped and backed up another step, feeling her fight-or-flight mechanism kick into full, adrenaline-charged overdrive.
    “Your eyes. They’re not green anymore,” she whispered.
    “What color are they?” He stood perfectly still, as if he knew that she would bolt at the first sign of motion.
    She stared into his eyes, which had, impossibly, turned a midnight black. But black with a difference. “They’re . . . they’re black, with tiny blue-green centers, almost—”
    “Almost?”
    “Almost like flames. Like tiny, blue-green flames.”
    He slowly, so slowly, raised one hand and held it out to her. “Tiernan, I need you. I need to hold you, just for a little while. The emotion—it’s smashing through me. Pounding through my body and my blood and my bones. Nothing in my life has prepared me to vanquish an enemy that lives inside of me. I can’t—I can’t hear myself through all the noise.”
    He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “You calm the turbulence. Does that make any sense at all?”
    She nodded, almost in spite of herself. She knew, intellectually, that she didn’t need to get caught up in this Atlantean’s problems. Ancient curses, vengeful gods, and sanity-threatening emotion—it was all too fantastical. Too crazy and far, far too much on top of the very real and very dangerous mission she was on now.
    She needed him, though. She needed him because he was part of her cover, and Litton and the vamps believed he was important, and . . .
    She was lying to herself. She wasn’t tempted to hold him for the mission, or for the story, or even for Susannah, in whatever convoluted way that might make sense.
    She wanted to hold him for herself.
    “Just for a little while?” she repeated, not knowing what answer she wanted to hear: yes, a little while, or no, I will never let you go. It was impossible that she could feel such intense and complicated emotions for this man she knew almost nothing about. Truth, though.
    Even to herself. Especially to herself.
    She did know him, on some level that had nothing to do with reason or logic or even time itself.
    “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, for a little