Warriors of Poseidon 06 - Atlantis Betrayed

Manor
    Christophe waited, watching her every minute, but the shaking didn’t start for a while. First, she’d seen Sean safely into Hopkins’s care. Declan was sleeping, but she’d gone to his room and checked on him even after Hopkins reassured her. Denal sat in a chair by Declan’s window, daggers resting on his lap. He rose when they entered the room, but Christophe had already communicated with him so he knew there was no threat.
    She leaned over and kissed her brother’s forehead, smoothing a strand of hair away, and Christophe was struck by the realization that she must have done the same so many times as the boy grew up. Declan didn’t wake, but he smiled in his sleep.
    Fiona raised a hand to Declan but didn’t speak; she just turned and left the room. Christophe followed her, desiring with every fiber of his being that he could protect her from what came next, but helpless to understand how. If only Conlan were here, or Bastien. They were so much better with women and emotion.
    He had never so desperately wished he knew how to comfort another.
    She made it to her room and then to the shower, peeling her clothes and wig off along the way and letting them fall to the floor in a trail of discarded disguise. Moving robotically, stumbling as she walked, Atlantis Betrayed – Warriors of Poseidon 06
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    Fiona turned the water on to full heat and then climbed into the billowing steam in her glass-enclosed shower.
    That’s when the shaking finally began.
    Full-body shudders wracked her body as she leaned against the wall, and the glass trembled with the force of her pain. Christophe stripped out of his own clothes in an instant and entered the shower, pulling her into his arms.
    “Shh, mi amara. Shh. It’s over now. Let it out, let it all out, but it’s over now. It’s all over. Shh. I’m right here for you.” He smoothed her hair away from her face, over and over, as she sobbed as if her heart were shattering in her chest.
    “He could have died. He could have died. Did I rescue him from his murderous father only to kill him myself? He’s only twenty-two years old, Christophe, and he could have died.” A fresh wave of grief and reaction took her, and he could do nothing but hold her, rocking back and forth, until it subsided a little and she could listen to him.
    Listen to reason.
    “You can’t take the blame for that attack. They said they wanted me to stop asking about Vanquish.
    They didn’t even know who you were, in that wig and makeup. Me. Not you. It is I who bear the blame.”
    She lifted her face to him, her eyes reddened with pain and fury. “No. No. Let’s put the blame where it belongs. On those bastards who stole the sword, and murdered the guards. On those vampires who attacked us.”
    “I’m wondering if they’re the same.”
    “If they already have the sword, why would they care about us?”
    “It might have been misdirection. But we don’t need to worry about this now. Now you should rest.”
    “No,” she said again. “Now I want you inside me. I want to feel something other than horror and fear and rage.” She lifted her arms and put them around his neck. “Make me feel, Christophe.”
    And so he did. He lifted her in his arms and joined his body to hers, taking her there in the steaming heat. He directed the channels of water to swirl around her and caress her even as he held her and murmured nonsense words into her ear and thrust steadily home. She cried a little as she held him and kissed him, and the shudders of reaction gently, gradually, turned to trembling of a different sort entirely.
    Their joining was not about passion and possession but a declaration of need; the simple need to experience warmth and light. To face their own mortality without doing so alone. He’d wanted sex after battle before, on many occasions. It was a purely chemical reaction to the adrenaline charge of a fight.
    This was utterly, completely, different. This was seeking comfort and the welcome of home. He was fiercely proud to be the one she needed, and as if in reaction to the thought, the barrier between her soul and his began to open, surrounding them with heat and light. Her soul danced around her, a Atlantis Betrayed – Warriors of Poseidon 06
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    shifting dream of blues. But the lovely colors were darkened; tinged with black shadows and the somber gray of grief. It caught him off guard and he ceased to move within her.
    She lifted her head from his