Atlantis Redeemed (7 page)

“Mine,” he repeated, almost snarling the word, daring her to defy him. Didn’t she know? Didn’t she understand?

Her eyes widened as if in fear, and something cracked in his heart. How could she be afraid of him? He was hers; had always been hers, would always be hers. The tide of need dragged him under and he lost the thought, trapped in the wanting.

“Would die for you,” he managed to say, but then she gasped a little and he could no longer speak. Could no longer think. Had to taste her. Just once. Just the first of thousands, millions of times.

He bent his head and captured her mouth with his own, and the heat of her, the taste of her, the sheer glory of finally holding her blew through him with the force of a percussive blast. He lifted his head and staggered a few steps back, sure that Poseidon himself must have shot a bolt of power at him from the Trident. A shock wave of pain smashed into and through him, and he had little warning before the curse took over and tried to fulfill its directive: his total destruction.

This
could not be emotion—was it? No. It was
pain
. More pain than he had ever known. The universe exploded in Brennan’s soul as sanity fractured. He yanked his daggers from their sheaths—instinct driving him to defend himself in the only way he knew how—but it was useless. Futile. Weapons couldn’t defend against this enemy. He dropped the daggers and fell to the floor, clutching his chest as the tsunami of emotion ripped through him. Shattered two thousands of years of barrenness—drenched the arid wasteland of his soul with pain.

Anguish and unbearable sadness crushed his heart under the implacable weight of it. Thousands of years of loss striking him all at once. Pains never suffered. Deaths never mourned. Never felt. Oh, Poseidon—
feeling
—such a puny word for the pain, the unending agony. Dying would be easier.

Dying would be
preferable
.

“Please, by all the mercy of the gods, just let me die,” he groaned, clenching his teeth, grinding them, his jaw aching as he threw his head back, slamming it against the floor, over and over, mindlessly seeking unconsciousness. Relief. Surcease from the pain. He cried out, or at least he thought he did, as grief claimed him, dragging him down under a riptide of agony to feast on his flesh. On his sanity.

On his soul.

A sound caught his attention, somehow, whispering its way through the pain roaring in his ears. He forced his eyes to open and there she was. Tiernan. Crouching down next to him, hesitantly reaching a hand out. He rolled away from her, unable to bear it. Unable to let her touch him. Maybe it was contagious, maybe she would be caught in the black maelstrom of anguish.

No.

Not her. He could never cause
her
pain.

When she touched his arm, he realized that pain and loss were not the only forfeited emotions returning to him. Oh, no. There were others.

Desire. Need. Pure, driving lust.

Hunger
.

He wanted her with the power of a fierce ocean storm, with a primal need so dark and desperate that it was as if thousands of years of abstinence had all caught up with him at once, demanding to be sated.

Demanding
her
.
Now
.

He snapped up into a crouch, catching her wrist in a vise-like grip. Tried to find the words to make her understand. “Tiernan, I have need of you. My body and soul ache for you.”

Emotions raced across her expressive face, and he watched her anger battle her fear and conquer it. Good. She should never fear him. Especially not when he needed so badly to touch her creamy skin. Bury his face in the long dark waves of her hair. Remove every bit of her clothing to discover if her skin could possibly be as silky soft on every inch of her body as he expected it to be. If the tips of her breasts would flush and harden at the touch of his fingers. His lips. His tongue.

His cock hardened to the point of physical pain, and some distant part of his mind that still retained the tiniest bit of rationality wondered at the feeling. Hot, pure desire, after centuries—no, millennia—of none.

“Your body and soul can just let go of me and step back, my friend, or I’ll kick you right in your Atlantean nuts,” she threatened, yanking her arm away from his grasp.

He allowed her to escape, because he realized that yet another emotion was bubbling up inside him in the face of her defiance.
Joy
. It swirled like a waterspout, filling in the parched and corroded corners of his heart and soul with light and music.
Happiness
.

A sound worked its way up through his chest and burst from his throat. Laughter. Rusty, after so long unused, but definitely laughter. Joy sliced through Brennan, sharp as the blades of his daggers, honed on the sharpening stone of absence and abandonment. It was bliss, it was
joy
, it was ecstasy beyond the hopes of the gods themselves. All of the elation he should have experienced over thousands of moments during the course of his emotionally barren existence sprang to life inside him all at once.

Joy, so much joy, thousands of years of experiences that should have brought him delight, but had not. Those lost moments cascaded through him, image after image, speeding up until he was delirious from the panorama of memories that crashed through his mind, filtered through the emotion pounding on every inch of his body; nerve, bone, and sinew.

This, then, was the devious nature of the curse. He would regain his emotions, and they would drive him insane. But he lost the clarity of that realization as she opened her lovely, lovely mouth to speak.

“Brennan,” she said again, his name and something else, and her voice was cool water to a parched warrior who’d battled long and hard in the desert wastes of Persia; warmth and softness to one who’d survived weeks hunting vampire warlords in the frozen heights of Siberia. Her voice was joy made into sound, but her words were meaningless.

He
needed
her. Only Tiernan could ride the torrent of emotion with him and help him tame it. She was his, and he was hers, and he had waited for her for all the long years of his life. If only he could climb inside the cool, serene center of her, he would be restored. She had to understand. He had to
make
her understand.

He pushed himself off the floor in a sudden, explosive movement and caught her silken hair in his rough and calloused hands. Warriors’ hands. Hands that had no right . . . But the thought disappeared, crushed under the spiking drive of need. He had to make her understand. She was his life and sanity.

She was his everything.

He pulled her to him, ripping at the clothing that formed a barrier between them, desperate to feel her skin, her radiant, translucent, beautiful skin. Closer, closer. She struggled and the pain stabbed at him, joy turning to despair. Would she really try to leave him? Abandon him to a barren existence yet again?

Poseidon’s curse roared through his memory.
Cursed to forget her
. No. Never. The idea of it drove him to a panic that clutched him in its sharpened claws and ate at his soul. Thousands of years of enforced solitude shattered around him, and his barren and desperate heart lurched like a hideous creature, squinting, into the light.

“Mine,” he snarled. “You will never, ever leave me again.” Tearing at the cloth that dared block her from his touch. Burying his face in the warmth between her lovely round breasts, marveling at the contrast of his sun-darkened hand against her creamy skin.

“Lonely,” he managed, wondering why the lace covering her from his sight was darkening with wetness, why his mind had gone hot and black. “Help me.”

She made a sound, said more words, but though the meaning of the words was lost to him, the meaning of the sound was clear. Pain. Fear.

He was scaring her. Maybe hurting her.

The realization cut through the fog of madness as nothing else could have done. No. He would never hurt her. Oh, by all the gods, what had he done?

What was he still doing?

He threw himself back and away from her, forcing himself to find a semblance of calm. Forcing himself to hear and understand what she was saying.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she said, her face so white he thought she would surely faint from shock or terror at any moment. “Brennan. Brennan, we’re supposed to be allies. What happened? Did the vamps get to you, too?”

She thought he was enthralled? But . . . he needed to tell her. He needed to explain.

“So long,” he began, the words nearly choking him. “So long, and the curse. So
lonely
.” A burst of wild laughter surged up from his chest, cutting off whatever he’d been about to say. How to explain an ancient curse to a modern journalist? She’d think him a liar or, worse, insane. He probably was insane.

But he had to try. He slowly stood and backed farther away until he was standing against the window of the small room. “Tiernan. I—Oh, gods, it hurts.” He doubled over for an instant, then forced himself upright again. “I cannot . . . cannot begin to apologize enough for my . . . my behavior. I can only beg your forgiveness and hope you will give me the chance to explain.”

She jumped to her feet and ran to the door, never stopping until her hand was on the handle. “Are you nuts? After that? I’m going to call the police and . . .”

As her words trailed off, he fought for some measure of rational thought and managed to realize what she must be thinking. “A few moments, please,” he whispered, but she seemed to hear him. An eternity passed as she considered his words, but finally she nodded, and he bent over and inhaled long, slow, deep breaths, practicing the calming exercises he had not used since he was a novice warrior. At first he thought it was in vain; that the simple act of drawing breath could not begin to conquer the madness of so many years of returning feelings.

In. Out. In. Out. Finally, tens or hundreds of breaths later, he achieved what he hoped was at least a temporary leash on the raging emotions, and he was able to recall the reason behind their presence.

“If you call the police, our mission here will be ruined,” he said quietly. “We cannot afford to draw that kind of attention to ourselves if we wish to discover the truth behind these scientific experiments on shifter and human brains. I can never apologize enough for what happened, but I can attempt to explain.”

She hesitated, and then nodded.

A bolt of hope shot through him, threatening to take him to his knees, but he ruthlessly stamped it down. “You are now afraid to remain anywhere near me, however, and with very good reason.”

She nodded again, narrowing her beautiful dark eyes but still remaining silent.

“Then perhaps you will do me the very undeserved honor of listening to me for a short time, while I tell you a tale from long ago. All I ask, though it will be almost impossible, is that you try to believe that I am telling you the absolute truth.”

She considered that for several long moments in silence, her hand still on the door handle and her body still poised for flight. Finally she apparently came to a decision, because she gave a brief nod. “All right. I’ll listen to you. For Susannah. But remember what you said about truth. Trust me, I
will
know the difference.”

Darkness shuttered her expression, almost as if the burden of truth somehow pained her. Brennan shook off the fanciful impression and sat down in a chair in the corner farthest from her, so as not to threaten her any more than he already had. He refused to admit, even to himself, that his legs felt as if they would no longer hold him up. Shame swamped him and he was unable to meet her eyes, terrified of the condemnation he’d see in them. That he deserved.

“Let us begin, then, with an unforgivable truth that occurred more than two thousand years ago,” he said, steeling himself against the disgust he knew she’d feel for his debauched existence and the deaths he had caused. She was the one—she
must
be the one—and now he would destroy any hope that she would ever have any feelings for him other than fear, revulsion, and condemnation.

After Corelia and the babe, though, he had known he could never deserve a chance at happiness. It had been an eternity since he’d even thought the state possible.

Poseidon had won. Finally and irrevocably. Brennan would tell his story, she would order him from her, and he would welcome death. There could be no going back from this, once it began.

“It was the year you name 202 B.C. I was a young warrior then—” He looked up her, the bitter shame nearly swamping him as she stood, still at the door, clutching the two sides of her ripped shirt together. “Please. If you desire to repair your clothing, I will turn my back.”

She laughed, but it was wild and held no humor. “Repair this? That will take more than the mini sewing kit. Turn around, and I’ll change.”

He did, expecting to hear the sound of the door opening as she made her escape. Instead, after a short pause, he heard the zipper of her bag opening and had to force himself to stomp on the images of her undressing that his mind tried to provide.

“Okay,” she said.

He turned around and found her leaning against the wall, one hand again on the door handle. She’d pulled on a dark sweater to replace the shirt he’d torn, which was no longer in sight. Bitter shame burned through him again, but he gritted his teeth against that or any other emotion. She deserved to hear his story without his sniveling self-pity coloring any part of it.

She nodded at him to continue, her dark eyes fixed and staring as if she were nearly in a trance, whether from fear or anger he could not tell.

“Truth, warrior,” she murmured. “Sing me the truth of your Atlantean secrets.”

Something about her voice sent chills sweeping up his spine. It was different, somehow. Almost hypnotic. Perhaps—but he could not stop to analyze it. No going back, after all. So he sat in the too-small chair in the too-small room and he told her the story of a warrior cursed by his own god.