Warriors of Poseidon 06 - Atlantis Betrayed

welcoming heat.
    When they both finally quit coming, he rested her back on the table and carefully, regretfully, withdrew.
    They were both breathing too hard to talk, so he removed from his pocket the handkerchief Hopkins had so thoughtfully provided and offered it to her.
     
    “Thanks. I think I saw some napkins over there,” she whispered, her cheeks blushing again. She was such a fascinating contradiction of wanton and innocent, his woman.
    His woman. He was beginning to like the sound of that.
    Maybe he was bewitched—but if so, it was the normal enchantment between a man and a woman. One he’d thought he would never experience. Far more than mere sex.
    He filed the thought away to consider later. They cleaned up and he kissed her again. A long, slow, gentle kiss.
    She took a deep breath. “Are you ready to go pub hopping?”
    “I can’t talk you out of this?”
    “No. We’re partners, remember?”
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    He took her hand. “You can never, ever leave my side. And if I tell you to run, you do it. Understand?”
    “Perfectly.”
    “Okay, let’s do this. And, Fiona?”
    “Yes?”
    “This is my new favorite museum.”
    She blushed all the way to the car.

Chapter 19
    The slightly pointed tips of Gideon’s ears had been practically on fire by the time he’d stepped outside the museum. Whoever—or whatever—that upstart Christophe was, Gideon would enjoy every second of the torture he planned for the man. How dare he touch Fiona? She was to be Gideon’s. She would belong to him and only him. For a very long time. Eternity, perhaps, if he deigned to share the elixir with her before tiring of her. For her to be in the arms of another man made Gideon want to crush the entire museum into rubble, with the aristocracy still inside it. It would certainly be no loss to the world.
    Not a good idea, though, considering his current plans. Still, Gideon wanted to lash out at someone to take the edge off his rage, but Maeve, the little coward, had run off to her car without a word, and now he was fuming in the backseat of his own car, like the impotent English lord he was supposed to be.
    Enough. His meeting with Telios wasn’t scheduled for hours, but since when did Fae lords need to adhere to schedules?
    “Stop the car,” he ordered his driver. “I’ll get out here.”
    The driver, at least, knew better than to argue. He pulled the car to an immediate stop, and Gideon stepped out. He would make better time via his own method of travel, and he knew exactly where he was going. The St. Mary’s tube station, on Whitechapel Road.
    One simple bend in light and space later, Gideon stood inside the permanently closed station of London’s Underground, looking around in disgust. A few burning torches lit the darkness to a dim glow.
    Most vampires were not known for attention to cleanliness, and Telios was no exception. At least there were no drained bodies lying about, although the stench attested to their recent presence. The rank odor of decaying flesh was practically suffocating in the claustrophobic space.
    “What’s the matter, Fae? A little too dark for you?” Telios’s voice grated, as always, but this time it held a little more of an annoying quality. A bit of smugness, perhaps.
    Gideon would enjoy crushing that.
    “Do you know the history of this place?” Telios gestured at the rubble piled against the bricked-up platform. “Opened in 1884. Perfect timing for me, since there was always a fine hiding place in that storage room just off the platform. Ate a few workers, I did. But the station closed down in the late Atlantis Betrayed – Warriors of Poseidon 06
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    1930s. They used it again as a war shelter against air raids for a bit during World War II, but a bomb smashed the building to bits. Too bad, really. It was easy enough to snatch a few of the fools rushing down into the dark to escape danger. Escaping the bombs, don’t you know? Not so effective, when certain death lies in wait.” He cackled and did a complicated kind of mincing dance. “Now that nobody ever comes down here anymore, it’s mine. All mine.”
    Gideon’s lips curled back from his teeth. The vampire truly was insane. But Gideon didn’t care about sanity, so long as Telios had acquired the sword.
    “Did you get it?”
    Telios quit dancing and gave Gideon a far too shrewd look. “I may have.”
    “What does that mean? Either you did or you did not.