But then he’d met Quinn. Strong, courageous, and compassionate. A small human female who dressed like a homeless teen, fought like a hardened battle veteran, and plotted like a master strategist. It was she who should be claiming to be descended from Alexander the Great. None would have the slightest doubt.
Quinn glanced up at him, her brows drawn together in concern. For him. The experience was so novel that it sent another shock wave pounding through his body. Someone worrying about him—the monstrous high priest of terror. The one Atlantean women warned their children about, as if he were the bogeyman of their nightmares. “Be good, or High Priest Alaric will take you away to the temple.”
They thought he didn’t know. He’d trained himself to ignore it.
They thought he didn’t care. He’d forced himself not to.
“What are you thinking about? You have a death grip on my hand,” Quinn said, stopping and turning to look up into his face. “It’s Ptolemy, isn’t it? We should go. As long as he has Poseidon’s Pride, everybody is in danger.”
Alaric loosened his grip on her hand and then raised it to his lips. “Yes, Ptolemy. And other things, thoughts of little merit. This place has that effect on me, I’m afraid. Too much time and space for darker thoughts to intrude on common sense.”
A shadow crossed her face, and she pulled her hand away from him and hugged herself as if cold, in spite of the warmth of sand-reflected sun. “I don’t have the centuries of this battle behind me like you do, but believe me, I know about darker thoughts. I sometimes wish I could have been the sweetly ignorant person I pretended to be for my cover identity. It’s amazing what a pink dress and a little lipstick can do for a woman’s perceived IQ.”
He knelt to retrieve a perfectly intact shell, pearly white with creamy brown striations, and shook off the sand before presenting it to her.
“I do not know what this IQ is, but I believe I understand your meaning. Perhaps we should buy Ven a pink dress, so he fools the enemy the next time we go into battle?”
Quinn laughed. “Oh, boy. Can you imagine? No, wait. How about Lord Justice? With that crazy blue hair and the ever-present sword? Actually, though, that might be even scarier.”
She ran a finger along the edge of the shell before closing her hand around it. “Thank you. This is beautiful.”
“A reminder that life is not all blood and death,” he said, wishing he believed it.
He could see in her eyes that she did not believe it, either.
“Ours have been.”
“So that the lives of others would not,” he returned. He found another shell, a broken one, and hurled it far out into the waves. “It has always seemed a fair trade. Until now.”
“Until now,” she repeated slowly. “Alaric, I can never be what you might want me to be. I have forgotten anything I ever knew about any emotions but rage and pain and vengeance.”
“Emotions can be relearned, Quinn. Brennan taught us that.”
“Brennan was a warrior under a horrible curse from Poseidon not to feel any emotion until he met his one true love and then she died. How cruel and twisted is that? Your god isn’t exactly what I’d call loving and benevolent.”
“But Brennan found Tiernan, and she saved him from both the curse and himself. Don’t you think we’re all looking for exactly that?”
Quinn started walking again. “I don’t know. I don’t have time to care. I have to find Ptolemy and discover what he wants with me, before one of the many enemies I’ve made in the past tracks me down to put a final end to my adventures in rebellion.”
“I have a bargain to propose,” Alaric offered. “We spend the day here, not thinking or talking about enemies, or pretenders, or death. Then tomorrow we can return to our normal lives and kill all the ‘bad guys,’ as you so eloquently put it, that you might want.”
Quinn’s eyes were enormous as she weighed his words, and finally she nodded. “I agree. But Alaric, I never wanted to kill anybody. I just so rarely seem to have a choice. When nobody else is there to stand up for what’s right . . .”
As her voice trailed off, he finished the sentence for her. “. . . somebody has to do it. Far too often, that somebody has been you, hasn’t it?”
Their gazes met in perfect understanding, but Quinn shook her head slightly and looked away. “Let’s explore and find out what’s beyond these trees, okay?”
So much courage. Too much. His admiration for her increased each time they talked, until he could no longer untangle respect from desire from need—all of it centered on one small human.
One small, sexy human. She headed for the tree line, and Alaric watched her go, forcing his mind and libido off the instant raging want caused by the sight of her tight little ass walking away from him. It was almost funny, this sexual desire. After centuries of celibacy, he’d thought himself immune to it, and then Quinn had hit him with the force of a tsunami.
His mind, always trained to cold logic and objectivity, could now turn in a split second from thought of battle and enemies to considering what he would like to do with her naked body.
She turned to call back to him and he stopped, stunned by the simple curve of her cheek. She didn’t possess the classical beauty of the women of his race. She had something more. A purity of spirit and a hidden sensuality that all but begged him to release it.
Just as soon as he figured out how to release his own. Hundreds of years of celibacy. That would be . . . interesting . . . to overcome.
His body tightened to an almost painful hardness as he swept his gaze over Quinn’s curves, almost but not quite hidden by the ragged clothes she wore. So. At least certain parts of him had no concerns at all about how to proceed.
He followed her into the trees, smiling his first unqualified smile in many years.
Quinn watched Alaric reach up to pluck a bunch of bananas, unable to take her eyes off the play of muscles in his lovely chest and arms. He’d removed his shirt, a concession to the heat, and she found herself looking for excuses to touch him.
To put her hands all over that hot, slightly sweaty male skin. He was bronzed a golden tan, which surprised her, considering that she’d always pictured him doing, well, priestly things in Poseidon’s temple. Lighting incense or whatever. Her dim memories of attending Catholic mass with a childhood friend seemed to have informed her impression of what Poseidon’s high priest would do.
“So, do you conduct services in Atlantean?”
He tossed her a banana. “Do I what?”
“Church services. Do you all get together and sing songs and pray to Poseidon or whatever?”
He looked genuinely perplexed. “What are you talking about? Also, do I seem like the kind of man who gathers with a group to sing?”
She peeled her banana and started laughing. “Not exactly. Unless it was some kind of battle cry. I was just thinking about what exactly it is that you do as high priest to the sea god.”
“Ah. That.” He devoured the fruit in three quick bites and tossed the peel into the grass, to become fertilizer for the next generation of plants.
“No. It is not a temple like your churches. As high priest, I am the bearer of Poseidon’s most powerful magic, protector of Atlantis, keeper of the scrolls, mentor to the acolytes, and chief counselor to those who need intercession with the gods.”