“Chief counselor?” She didn’t quite buy that one. “Really?”
He grinned so wickedly that she wondered if her clothes would spontaneously disappear.
“I’m not much of the counselor type. My chief acolyte handles those requests. He says I am more likely to tell them that life is meant to be difficult, and the gods do not reward those who moan and complain.”
“So, in other words, the ‘suck it up, buttercup’ style of priestly counsel,” Quinn said, forcing the words out through her laughter. “I can see why he doesn’t let you talk to people.”
Alaric raised his eyebrows. “I believe you just insulted me. I am perfectly capable of talking to people. I just don’t like it.”
“Really? I never would have guessed.”
“People are annoying,” he announced, folding his arms, which did delightful things to the muscles in his arms and chest. Her throat suddenly went dry. She felt like she’d been celibate almost as long as he had, and surely that was the reason her body trembled and her breath caught in her lungs whenever he was nearby. It was a good thing he wasn’t allowed to have sex, or they’d either set the island on fire with their passion or set a world record for clumsy fumbling.
“Poor baby,” she finally answered him, with an utter lack of sympathy. Then she finished peeling her banana and took a huge bite, closing her eyes in bliss as she chewed and swallowed.
“This is delicious—” She forgot what she was saying when she glanced up and met his gaze. He was staring at her mouth, and his eyes were a blazing emerald green.
“Delicious,” he repeated, his voice strained. “Quinn, you tempt me beyond reason. I have spent the past several hours waging a private war against myself to keep from touching you, and I find I am losing the battle.”
He took a deep breath. “I need to kiss you now. Will you allow this?” He’d lowered his arms to his sides, and she saw that his hands were clenched into fists.
“I don’t think it’s a very good idea.” She realized her hands were shaking, and she dropped the fruit so she could hide them behind her back. Never show weakness to an enemy.
Or a potential lover.
She considered various responses and finally settled on the simple truth. “If you kiss me, how will we ever stop? I’m not sure I can be strong enough for both of us. Not with you.”
His smile sharpened and grew predatory. “Quinn, I don’t want to ever stop.” He took a step toward her and then another. “I could kiss you for an eternity, and it wouldn’t be enough.”
She knew from their very few, very brief encounters that he was telling the truth—truth enough for both of them. She was helpless in the face of it.
“Then kiss me already,” she said, surrendering to the inevitable.
He flew across the space separating them, and she barely had time to draw in a breath of the deeply scented tropical air before he was on her, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her nearly off her feet.
“I have waited all of my life for you,” he said roughly, and the stark honesty in his face humbled her.
“I feel the same way,” she whispered, knowing she should deny it. Knowing it was wrong. She’d done such horrible things in the name of the rebellion. Dark and deadly things. Twisted and awful things. She could never deserve Alaric, this warrior priest who’d stepped right out of the pages of mythology and into her heart.
“Stop thinking so hard,” he murmured, and then he took her mouth with his, and she found herself incapable of thinking anything at all.
His kisses burned her skin—her mouth, her face, her neck. He kissed her as a dying man might beg for grace or benediction; desperately and without reserve. She felt herself falling, drowning, sinking into an abyss of wanting and feeling and needing, and she realized her arms were twined tightly around his neck and she was pressed against his body so close that not even a breath separated them.
It wasn’t close enough.
She sank into a whirlwind of feeling; a storm of longing that made the tornado he’d created in Tokyo seem like nothing more than a soft breeze. Nerves long untouched signaled bright flares to the pleasure center in her brain, until she felt herself incandesce with the sharp, almost painful brilliance of pure desire.
She moaned, or he did, and he lifted her higher in his arms, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed even closer, feeling from the large, hard bulge of his erection that although rules may have stopped him in the past, he certainly wasn’t unwilling or unable now.
He wanted her, and the knowledge drove her further and further over the edge, past sense and reason, and into an abyss filled with need and want and hunger.
He pulled back a little and stared down at her, his eyes burning in a face gone stark and hard with desire.
“Quinn, I need you. Now. I need you naked and underneath me or on top of me or however you want, but I need you to be naked. Right. Now.”
Chapter 9
Alaric had never been more in danger of losing his sanity than he was right at this moment with this woman he held so tightly in his arms. If she stopped kissing him, he was sure he would die from the loss of her touch. Everything he was and ever had been was centered on the burning waves of need and hunger rushing through him. He wanted Quinn like he’d never wanted any woman before in all the long, lonely centuries of his life.
He needed her. To the nine hells with the repercussions.
“Alaric? Your emotions just changed. What are you thinking about?” Her eyes were dark and dazed, but trying to focus.
“Nothing important,” he said firmly and kissed her again.
“No,” she said, struggling to put a bit of space between them. “That’s not true. What is going on in your brilliant but dark and twisty mind?”
He shook his head and leaned toward her again, but she put a hand up between them and pushed.
“Tell me.”
He gave in, knowing she would persevere until he did so. “All of my life, I have been told that the vow of celibacy is the key to my power. The Elders strongly impressed upon me the need to protect myself from the desires of the flesh or the call to softer emotions.”
She squeezed his arm and then backed away a step so she could look up into his face as he continued.
He had no choice now. He had to tell her, and there was no way to pretty up the stark truth, so he just said it. “There’s a good chance that if I break my vow of celibacy, I’ll lose my magic.”
The bald statement hung in the air between them for several long moments, and then Quinn backed away from him so fast she stumbled and fell on the ground. He moved to help her, but she shook her head, scrambling backward on all fours.
“Don’t touch me! How can you possibly say that to me and then try to touch me?” Her voice held a tinge of hysteria, and her eyes were wild. “I can’t bear that burden, Alaric. Don’t ask me to.”
“No, you don’t understand. This is only what the Elders told me. Keely, the scientist who has soul-melded with Justice—she’s an object reader. She told me that the Elders lied or at least were wrong. That in truth the most powerful high priest in the history of Atlantis was not only not celibate, but he was actually married. Nereus was married to Zelia, and from what Keely said, they were extremely happy and in love.”
She kept shaking her head, back and forth, over and over. “Keely said. She’s human, right?”
He nodded the affirmative.
“So a human who claims to be picking up psychic woo-woo emanations from objects tells you that, okay, sure, Alaric, it’s okay to break your sacred vow, it will all be fine, no worries, and you think that’s good enough?”