Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

have to do it, Brennan. This is my mission, or my warrior’s duty, or however you want to think of it. I have to do it, and I wish you’d help me, but I understand if you don’t want to risk it.”
    Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
    Page 102 of 232
    He laughed, and the laughter felt as though it were acid, ripped from his chest by an angry god.
    “Not want to? I would follow you through each level of the nine hells, for only the gift of a smile. If you must do this, I will be by your side all the way. But if you care for me at all, let me fulfill your mission, while you stay here safely in Atlantis.”
    She jumped up out of the bed and walked around until she could see his face. “Brennan? Even if I didn’t owe this to Susannah, I wouldn’t let you do it alone. Remember the curse? If I let you go—even if I wanted to let you go alone, which I don’t—you’ll forget me, and then what? Go through all this with the emotions again when you next see me? How could you bear it?”
    His hand shot out and captured her wrist, and he slowly pulled her toward him, until he could lean forward and press his face into the softness of her belly. After a couple of seconds, she put her hands in his hair and caressed his head in a gentle, soothing motion that made him want to remain in exactly that position for the next year or so of his life.
    But wishes were not seahorses, or sea nymphs would indeed ride, as the saying went. So he raised his head and stared up into her drowning gaze.
    “I will give you up,” he said, each word a stake through his own heart, as though he, too, were a vampire. “I will never bother you again, or have anything to do with you, if you will promise to stay safe.”
    A shadow of something he could not define crossed behind her eyes, and she pulled away from him yet again. “Would that be so easy to do? Give me up?” Her voice was a challenge and, though he thought she herself didn’t realize it, a plea.
    “I have never done anything in two thousand years that has been even a fraction as difficult,”
    he said quietly. “I would prefer death by torture to the mere idea of allowing you to walk into danger. What good are these emotions anyway, that slice my soul to ribbons at the thought of losing you?”
    He abruptly stood, weary of the futile discussion, and gestured toward the doorway to his bathroom. “We should shower. And rest.”
    She attempted a smile, but it did not reach her eyes. “Sleep now, leave all questions of death, torture, and death-defying activities until the morning?”
    “Exactly.”
    “I can do that.” She headed toward the bathroom, but not before he’d realized one crucial fact: to fulfill the terms of the curse, he would be forced to watch her bathe.
    To fulfill the terms of his own honor, he’d be forced to restrain himself from touching her.
    The concept of torture suddenly gained raw and jagged edges.
    Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
    Page 103 of 232

Chapter 17
    Tiernan realized the difficulty as soon as she stumbled to a halt in front of the glass wall of Brennan’s enormous shower. The bathroom itself was so gorgeous it belonged in a decorating magazine; all gold-veined white marble and thick, sparkling glass. Was there an Atlantean Home Journal?
    She smiled a little as the exhaustion-induced stupid rambling went on in her tumbling thoughts for a bit. Thinking about how incredibly beautiful the palace was in every way was a simple defense mechanism.
    It kept her from thinking about how beautiful Brennan was.
    Even now, as he silently pointed to the marble tub with its gold-and-silver faucets, raising a single eyebrow, something about his large, powerful presence made the oversized room seem just a little bit smaller. Just a little bit more intimate.
    Both of them could fit in that tub . . .
    “No,” she said quickly, both to herself and to his unspoken question. “The shower is good enough. I’d fall asleep and drown in a tub right now.”
    A flash of something predatory crossed his face, but it was gone almost before she saw it, and he simply nodded and did something with a complex system of weights and levers in the shower. A rainfall of water immediately misted into being, water coming from all directions, showering forth from hidden spouts. She could feel the warmth and steam even from where she stood, a few feet from the opening.
    “I cannot leave,” he said, his voice low and hesitant. “The curse . . .”
    She