Atlantis Redeemed (8 page)

No going back.

 

 

 

 

Tiernan took slow, deep breaths and tried to convince herself she wasn’t insane. To stay in the room with this man, who’d assaulted her only minutes earlier—it was stupid and dangerous. But the stakes she was playing for were so high; high enough that she’d been willing to risk her life in order to discover the truth. And the feeling she got from Brennan was not, oddly enough, danger. It was sadness. A vast, unbearable despair. He hadn’t even noticed the tears streaming down his face as he’d held her. The lace of her bra was still damp. Her cheeks heated at the memory of his face on her chest.

He’d said he was sorry. He’d mentioned a curse, and it had been the truth. Now she would listen with one hand on the door, ready to escape, in case she didn’t like what she heard. She could do that much. She could
risk
that much.

She nodded again, and Brennan began his story. An almost unbelievable story—totally unbelievable to anyone but her—that began in ancient Rome. She studied him carefully as he told her of his “drunken debauchery” all those years ago. Every line of his body echoed his remorse. He sat with his head bowed, shoulders slumped, and hands clasped together and resting between his legs. How he’d failed in his duty, forsaken his honor, and been the worst man ever to walk the planet, according to his story.

Any journalist worth the ink in her printer would have dismissed him as dangerous and deluded, or at least any journalist who couldn’t tell truth from lies merely from hearing the words. An unpleasant idea occurred to her and she interrupted him right in the middle of “alone with an innocent maid.” Maybe she could no more distinguish truth from Atlanteans than she could from the vampires. She hadn’t been in the fabulous ancient city long enough to experience any outright lies, or so she’d thought at the time.

“Hmm. Seems you hesitated a bit over the word ‘innocent, ’” she pointed out, not mentioning how the word had sounded a warning in her mind.

He hesitated, clearly thrown off. A muscle clenched in his jaw, and she got the impression he was gritting his teeth against another wave of the craziness that had swamped him before. When he’d assaulted her. Adrenaline pumped through her, leaving her nauseous as she edged closer to the door and tightened her grip on the handle.

“I—No, that was my error. She was an innocent lass.”

Her senses jangled. Not anywhere nearly as harsh as “nails on chalkboard,” but not nearly as mild as “gentle wind chimes” on her personal Tiernan Butler scale, either. She was definitely sensing something; if not lies, then at least deflection.

“They defined innocent as something different way back then?”

A dark flush rose in his cheeks. “I am aware of no difference in definitions. However, her innocence or lack thereof is not relevant to this story.”

Another tingle. Still, not enough for corroboration. She needed a baseline. “I need for you to lie to me.”

He lifted his head and stared at her, his green eyes widening. “I beg your pardon. I thought you just said that you need me to lie to you.”

“That’s what I said. I’m a journalist, and I trust my instincts,” she said, fudging a little herself. “I need to know if they work on Atlanteans. Tell me a lie, and say it like you really believe it. Like you’re trying to make
me
believe it.”

“But if you know I’m lying—” he began, his eyebrows drawing together.

“I know, I know. It sounds stupid. But I think at this point you owe me one.” She deliberately wrenched the door handle down. “Unless you’d rather I just leave now.”

Something dark and deadly shimmered in his gaze before he looked down at the floor again. There was a silence for several seconds, and she thought it signaled his refusal. Then he looked up at her again, and his face had changed. Hardened. The heat in his gaze was almost tangible, and she could feel its weight on her skin.

“You want me to lie to you? As you wish. Listen to this, and listen very closely.” He moved his hands to the arms of the chair and grasped them so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “Here is the greatest lie I have ever told:
I don’t want you
.”

His big body shuddered and the muscles in his arms flexed as he tightened his grip on the chair, and then he continued, his voice barely more than a rasp, as the heat raced through her at his stark words. “I’m not battling a desperate, soul-searing hunger to touch you, and taste you, and take you. I’m not fighting the results of the curse and two thousands of years of bleak loneliness in order to protect your honor. I’m not ashamed almost unto death that I assaulted you earlier. There is nothing about your beauty or your courage that makes me desperate to carry you away from this place and spend the next several weeks or months or years worshiping your naked body while you tell me every detail about your life.”

He stopped suddenly and pinned her in place with the naked yearning in his gaze. “Is that enough of a lie for you, Tiernan Butler?”

She had to catch her breath before she could speak. Her lungs were somehow empty; his words had deprived her of both oxygen and speech. Every nerve ending in her body was jangling, and a new, harsh sound was buzzing in her eardrums. If she had to find a label for this level of lie, it would be chain saw.

Chain saw times one thousand.

He’d been lying, oh yeah. He had definitely been lying at the same time he’d been telling her a very real truth. No man she’d ever known had said anything like that to her. No one had ever wanted her as much as this man—this warrior—wanted her, with an intensity that should have frightened her more than it did. It stunned her and drew her to him, even as it frightened her. Intensity could turn to obsession, fast. She was likely in far more danger than she was willing to admit.

However, her Gift worked on him. She had definitely known when he was lying. She could listen to his story. She could find a way to work with him. She had to—for Susannah. The rest of it, including the odd compulsion she had to go to him, touch him, and forgive him, could be ignored.

She could almost hear Rick’s voice in her head, repeating over and over again:
The story is everything
.

She finally took her hand off the door handle and stepped away from the door, ignoring her suddenly wobbly knees. “Maybe I could sit down now,” she said, her voice only a little shaky.

She pulled the second of the pair of hotel chairs toward her, still needing distance from him, regardless of whether he was telling the truth or not. He was sorry, yes, but he hadn’t said anything about whether or not he’d be able to control whatever had pushed him to attack her in the first place.

As she sank into the chair, her cell phone rang. She glanced at her backpack but then ignored it. Probably Rick. No matter who was calling, it couldn’t be as important as this. She fixed a measuring stare on Brennan. “I think that’s enough lying. Please tell me the rest of your story. But first I need to ask you one thing, and this time, please tell me the absolute truth.”

“Anything,” he said, but caution or something else narrowed his green eyes.

“Whatever happened earlier. Can you promise me that it won’t happen again? Can you promise me you won’t hurt me in any way?” She bit her lip, knowing that everything rested on his answer.

“I pledge this to you, Tiernan Butler. No matter the intensity of the curse as it tries to destroy me, I will do everything within my power to protect you, even should it mean giving my life in order to keep you from harm,” he said, each word clear and distinct, spoken with the weight of a solemn vow in that deep, sensual voice of his.

She was shaken by both the words and the utter honesty in which they were offered. He leaned forward, searching her face as if he were willing her to believe him. He needn’t have worried. She believed him completely, but of course he couldn’t know why. Nobody knew why.

She had no choice but to believe him. She was a walking lie detector.

Brennan had no hope that she would forgive him, or even stay long enough to hear the rest of his tale. How could she possibly trust him now? After what he’d done to her? He waited, holding on to the flimsy chair as if it could anchor him. Stop him from rushing to her to plead forgiveness. She had no idea that his sanity hung, precariously balanced, on the edge of her decision.

“Go ahead, then,” she said, making a circular motion with her hand. “Tell me about this curse.”

The blood rushed from his head in a great wave until he felt light-headed with it. She believed him. She would let him explain. That was enough. It had to be enough. The rest was up to him.

“You were at the ‘innocent maid’ part of the story, if I recall.” The hint of a smile twitched at the edges of her lips, and he stared at her mouth, fascinated, focused on how much he would surrender to see her smile, until she cleared her throat. “Brennan?”

“I have never told the story in its entirety to anyone,” he said abruptly. “You will be the first, which is only fitting, since you are involved in the curse’s fulfillment.”

When it was obvious she was going to speak, he shook his head, forestalling the questions that she must have. “It’s better if I get this out all at once. Then you can decide if you can bear to have me in your presence.”

She frowned but subsided and leaned back in the chair.

“I know you learned a little about us when you were in Atlantis so briefly before. As Prince Conlan and the Lord Vengeance probably told you, we are the Warriors of Poseidon. We all swear fealty to the sea god himself in a ceremony that originated more than eleven thousand years ago. As Poseidon’s chosen elite, we are held to the highest standards of duty, honor, and conduct. However, I failed in all three of these,” he said, barely able to speak the words. He jumped up to pace around the room, veering away from her when she flinched a little at his approach.

“I was a drunken ruffian. I spent much of my free time, and even time that I should have been training, drinking wine in Rome, carousing with women, and, to put it bluntly, behaving like an ass.”

Images from those days flashed in his mind, as vivid as if they had occurred only weeks before. He shoved a hand through his hair and pushed it away from his face and then turned to pace to the other side of the room.

“There was a girl. A woman,” he hastily corrected himself. “She was so seductive, and I was more than willing. She was a senator’s daughter. I thought—I thought our alliance was simply a pleasurable diversion.”

“You had a fling?” Tiernan asked, her expression solemn, although he thought he saw a hint of mischief dancing in her glorious whiskey-dark eyes. The rest of his tale would kill her amusement.

“We were caught,” he said flatly. “I offered to marry her. She didn’t want me, and in any event, her father said I was unsuitable. There was a scandal and the sea god . . . well. Poseidon was not pleased.”

“You took the hit, huh?” Her voice was warm, almost as if she had sympathy for him.

He did not want her sympathy. He could never deserve it.

“He cursed me. He cursed me with such an unforgiving and unending curse that I have spent more than two thousand years of my life unable to feel any emotion.” Rage, rage that he could finally feel after so long without it, seared through his blood. “Two thousand
years
,” he repeated, and then he bitterly recited the words that had been burned into his memory in that tavern back room:

He closed his eyes, fists clenched at his sides, in the middle of the room, waiting for her to heap scorn upon him for his failure. Waiting for her to run away from the horrible import of his words.

“Bit harsh, wasn’t it?”

His eyes snapped open at the unexpected words. She still sat in the chair, her head tilted to the side, watching him.

“You don’t understand. I have not told you the worst of it, for I am a coward.” He paused, as another wave of pain sliced through him when he thought of Corelia and the babe. The child who would have been his son or daughter, had it lived.

Had it not died, because of him.

She made an impatient movement. “I understand perfectly well. I understand that you were a hell raiser when you were young, as so many of us are, and I also understand that your sea god is a little bit unbalanced, no offense.”