Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

descendant of Diana for nothing. One dedicated to a god should be able to help out another, right?”
    Tiernan made a small sound behind him, and Brennan glanced back and up at her to see that she was also fighting tears. He stood up and took her hands in his. “Why are you crying, mi amara?”
    “I’m not crying,” she said, blinking rapidly. “Something in my eyes.”
    She shoved her hands in her pockets. “Congratulations on the baby news,” she told Grace.
    “That’s wonderful, and I completely understand why you don’t want to risk putting yourself in danger. But I’ve got to go back, dangerous or not, don’t you see that?”
    Grace sighed. “I see it. I’d do the same thing in your position, and I don’t even know your reasons, but I’m guessing they’re pretty important to you.”
    Tiernan nodded. “More important than I can explain, especially now. It’s late, and I’m exhausted. You definitely need to get your rest, for the baby. So maybe you could show me to a guest room?” She pointedly addressed the question to Alexios, and a savage heat flashed through Brennan.
    “I will take you to my room, and you will sleep in my bed,” he growled. “Do not ask another for assistance.”
    Before she could respond, probably to flay him with her tongue, judging from the look of the sparks flashing dangerously in those dark eyes, he firmly grasped her arm and started walking toward the palace door, all but dragging her behind him.
    “Brennan,” Alexios called out. “Be advised that you will pay for treating her like this. I’m telling you this from experience.”
    He heard Grace laugh, or thought he did, but Tiernan’s low, furious cursing drowned out everything else.
    “I am surprised that you even know this vocabulary,” he muttered, shoving open the doors and pulling her across the entryway without pausing.
    “If you don’t slow down and quit dragging me along like this, you’re going to find out all sorts of Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    things I know, like how to ram my knee into your—”
    He cut her off by the simplest method he knew: he stopped and swept her up into his arms and then kept going, striding toward his rooms in the palace, a fierce determination burning through him.
    She didn’t struggle, but the glare she pinned him with could have melted Atlantean sea glass.
    “You don’t know me at all if you think you can get away with this.”
    He stopped in front of the door to his rooms, threw it open, still carrying her, then slammed it shut with his foot. Crossing the room in a few short strides, he tossed her on the bed and then pounced on her, covering her body with his own before she could move.
    “I don’t know you?” He bared his teeth in something that wasn’t at all a smile. “I can still taste the sweet honey of your body on my tongue, mi amara.”
    He nudged her legs open with his knee and settled his weight onto the sweet, lush curves of her body, clenching his teeth together to keep from moaning with the primal need to strip her bare and take her.
    She gasped at the feel of his hard, heavy cock when he pressed it between her thighs and her eyes went wild and unfocused.
    “Do you feel that? That is how much I know you and want you and need you.”
    He took her mouth in a kiss that was just short of savage, the red haze of fury behind his eyes fading only when she responded to him—when she kissed him back.
    The kiss went on forever; for an eternity. It was about possession more than pleasure, but which one of them was possessing the other he did not know. Maybe each of them was both possessor and claimed.
    Finally he forced himself to pull away, when it was clear that if he touched her for one second longer, he’d tear her clothes from her and take her—make her his by force—like the animal he would never, ever allow himself to become. He threw himself away from her and rolled up to sit on the edge of the bed, his heart pounding in his chest and his breath coming in harsh, rasping heaves.
    “You cannot put yourself in danger, Tiernan. You cannot go back into that situation with the scientists who could do vicious, inhuman things to your brain. You are the most courageous woman I have ever known, but I will not let you do this. It’s madness, and it’s suicide.”
    She was silent so long he began to fear she would never speak to him again, and then finally she rolled over and put a tentative hand on his back. “I