Blazing red heat stained her cheeks. "Are you saying I-" her mortification was so great she almost couldn't finish her sentence "-stink?"
"You have dirt smudges here." He ran his fingertip over the side of her mouth. "And here." That finger moved to her chin, and his nostrils flared. "While you are beautiful to me as you are, I thought you might wish to wash."
He thought she was beautiful? As she was? Grace nearly melted into her seat. Most men found her a little too plump, a little too red and freckly.
She struggled to form defenses against him, and reminded herself that she wasn't ready to handle such a dangerous man. "I won't take long." Her legs trembling, she pushed up and raced to the bathroom. She slammed the door shut.
Just in case he entertained any notion of slipping inside, of stripping out of his clothes and getting into the tub with her, of letting the warm, wet water deluge their intertwined, naked bodies, she twisted the lock. She pressed her back against the cool wood, her breathing shallow.
Damn if she didn't pray Darius would burn the lock away.
CHAPTER 13
Alex Carlyle was hot and cold at the same time.
A single guard shoved him inside his newest prison. A single fucking guard because he was too weak to be any real threat. The drugs his captors were pumping through his system were hell on his body. They kept him compliant, groggy and dependent. Kept him uninterested in escape.
Kept him stupid.
Or maybe his weakness stemmed from low blood supply. Vampires were allowed to suck from his neck anytime they wanted, as long as they didn't kill him. He almost wished they'd finish the job.
For months he'd done nothing but breathe and live Atlantis. He had acquired the proof he'd wanted of its existence, but he no longer gave a damn.
He shivered. The room was cold. So cold frost formed every time he breathed. Why, then, did his skin burn? He sank to the hard floor. Another tremor scratched down his spine like long, sharp fingernails.
A woman was shoved into the cell. The only exit slid shut behind her.
Alex closed his eyes, too tired to care. Within moments, small, delicate hands grasped his shoulders and gently shook him. His eyelids flickered open, and he found himself staring up into Teira's beautiful, ethereal face.
"You need me?" she said.
He'd lost his glasses, but he didn't need them to see that her pale brown eyes were alight with concern. She had the longest lashes he'd ever seen, as light as her waist-length hair. She claimed she was a prisoner, just like he was. The two of them had been "escorted" so many places he didn't know where he was anymore.
This newest cell was stripped bare, as if someone had recently scraped everything off the walls. "I'm fine," he lied. "Where are we this time?"
"My home."
Her home. He inwardly sighed. That told him nothing. She'd never mentioned where she lived, and he hadn't asked because he didn't know yet if he believed a word out of the woman's gorgeous mouth.
He didn't know whom he could trust anymore.
Lately he'd been swindled and double-crossed by everyone he encountered. Every member of his team had betrayed him, willingly giving away his location and his purpose for a few hundred dollars. The guide he'd hired to see him safely through the Amazon had been a paid mercenary. Now he had to contend with Teira.
She was beautiful, exquisitely and guilelessly so, but beauty often hid a mountain of lies. And she was too concerned for him, too eager to learn about him. Perhaps she'd been sent to seduce the location of the medallion from him, he thought irritably. Why else lock her in a cell with him? He laughed humorlessly. Why else but to fuck the answer out of him.
Well, the joke was on her. Teira wasn't his type. He preferred women who wore too much makeup, and tight clothes over their even tighter, surgically enhanced bodies. He preferred women who screwed hard and left the same night without a qualm-if they didn't speak to him in the meantime, even better.
Women who looked like Teira terrified him. Instead of makeup and tight clothes, they wore an air of innocence, a marry-me-and-give-me-babies kind of wholesomeness that unnerved him.
He'd spent too many years caring for his sick father, too afraid to leave the house in case he was needed. He stayed as far away from wholesome women as he could. Just the thought of being permanently grounded made him nauseous. His captors should have locked him up with a slutty-looking brunette. Then he might have talked.
His jaw clenched. He never should have acquired that damn medallion.
What had Grace done with it? And why the hell had he sent it to her? He hadn't meant to involve her; he simply hadn't realized the extent of the danger until it was too late. He didn't know what he'd do if she were hurt. There were only three people he gave a shit about, and Grace was at the top of the list. His mom and Aunt Sophie claimed a close second and third.
Teira gave him another gentle shake. Her fingers were like ice, and he noticed her teeth were chattering.
"What do you want?" he barked.
She flinched but didn't back away. "You need me?" she asked again. Her soft voice floated over him, as lilting as a spring breeze. Her English wasn't very good, but she'd managed to learn the basics-and quite quickly, too. How convenient.
"I'm fine," he repeated.
"I help warm you."
"I don't need your goddamn help. Go to your side of the cell and leave me alone."
Her innocent features dimmed as she scooted away.
He fought a wave of disappointment. He would never tell her, would never admit it aloud, but he liked her nearness. Dirt might streak the smoothness of her skin, but she still smelled as exotic as a summer storm. The scent comforted him-but scared him, too. She was not his type, but he often found himself gazing at her, yearning to hold her, to touch her.
As if she sensed his inner longings, she moved back to him and smoothed her trembling fingertips over his forehead, down his nose and along his jaw, her touch light. "Why will you not let me help?" she asked.
He sighed, savoring her caress even while he knew he should make her stop. Cameras were probably hidden everywhere, and he didn't want anyone to think he'd finally caved where this woman was concerned.
"Do you have a syringe? Do you have whatever the hell they're giving me?"
"No."
"Then you can't help me."
She began tracing strange symbols over his cheek. An intense concentration settled over her features.
His tremors gradually slowed, and his coldness receded. His muscles relaxed.
"Feel better?" she asked, a trace of weakness to the words.
He managed to give her an indifferent frown and lift his shoulders in a shrug. What symbols had she drawn and what did they mean? And how in God's name had they helped him? He was too stubborn to ask.
"Why you not like me?" she whispered, biting her lower lip.
"I like you just fine." He wouldn't admit that he would have died without her. His captors, the same men who had chased him through the jungle, then plucked him from one location to the other, had been brutal. He'd been beaten, drugged and nearly drained, and shuddered with each memory. Always Teira was there, waiting for him, comforting him. Holding him with her quiet strength and dignity.
"Why do they have you locked in here?" he asked her, wishing immediately that he could snatch the words back. He didn't want to watch her features cloud with deceit as she spun a web of lies. He knew why she was here. Didn't he?
Softly, gently, she lay beside him and wrapped one arm around his waist. The woman craved bodily contact like no one else he'd ever met, as if she'd been denied it most of her life. And he'd be lying if he said her little body didn't feel good curled up next to him.