He narrowed his eyes. “When did you see that?”
“Um, I might have peeked when you came out of the bathroom in only a towel.” She could feel her face turning pink, but what the heck. He’d been totally worth looking at. “What does it mean? Can I see it again?”
He scowled, but pulled his shirt up to show her the tat. She tried not to swallow her tongue as the move revealed his ripped abs and then the broad, muscular chest she’d wanted to get her hands on the night before.
High on the right side of his chest, she saw the tat again.
“This mark was branded on my skin by Poseidon himself when I swore my vow to serve the sea god and protect humanity. The circle represents all the peoples of the world, intersected by the pyramid of knowledge deeded to them by the ancients. The silhouette of Poseidon’s trident bisects them both.”
He shoved his shirt back down, and a dark flush rose on his cheekbones. She stared at him, fascinated, realizing he felt shy. The big, tough warrior who’d saved her life was shy about taking his shirt off.
The contradiction was kind of adorable, and definitely hot.
“So you swore to protect humans? And you’re trying to tell me you’re eleven thousand years old?” She rolled her eyes. “I’m guessing, let me think, um, no.”
“No, I’m not eleven thousand years old, but the first Warriors of Poseidon who originally swore the vow to protect—Oh, hells, are you almost done with that computer?”
She shrugged. “It’s working. Could take a while.”
“What time is it?”
She glanced at the bottom right of her computer screen. “Nine-fifteen. Fifteen minutes past the last time you asked. Don’t you have a watch?”
She could have barbecued chicken in the heat of his glare. Which reminded her that she was hungry. Again. As usual. For more than just food, too, after seeing him in all his muscled glory. But she figured she was out of luck on that one. Scruffy human computer nerds were so not his type, probably.
“I don’t wear watches. They don’t function properly with Atlantean magic around them. My father—” He stopped talking mid-sentence and glared at her again. “Why am I telling you any of this?”
“Your father?” She rummaged around in her backpack, looking for a granola bar or an apple. Preferably a Snickers. It had nuts. Health food, for sure.
“None of your business, human.” He whirled around and started back across the floor.
“Seriously?” She started laughing. She couldn’t help it. “Human? Are you going to start mumbling ‘my Precioussssss’ next?”
“What are you talking about? I never understand anything that comes out of your mouth,” he growled, actually growled at her, and she laughed again.
Which seemed to irritate him even more.
“Interesting you mention my mouth, since you can’t seem to stop staring at it,” she added, taunting him.
He whirled around and flashed across the room so fast she didn’t even see him move, and suddenly she was suspended in midair, held up by his big hands on her upper arms. His gorgeous, angry face was inches away from hers, and his eyes were practically glowing a hot, dark blue.
No, wait.
They actually were glowing.
Oh, crap.
“I don’t want to stare at your mouth,” he said, biting off each word. “I don’t want to stare at your bizarre hair, or your curvy little body, or the silky way your skin shines even in this hideous light. I didn’t want to have to restrain myself from tearing your clothes from you last night while you slept, and plunging into your hot, wet, tight—”
“I get it,” she said, gasping. “Got it. Totally. You don’t want to want me. Check. You can let me go now.”
He lowered her slowly down the length of his body until she was standing on her own two, rather unsteady legs, but he didn’t release her arms.
“No,” he said, tilting his head. “I don’t think I can let you go right now.”
He bent his head to hers and she saw it coming, even had time to escape, because he’d relaxed his grip on her arms, but she didn’t want to escape. Didn’t want to be let go. She put her arms around his neck and grinned up at him.
“This is going to be trouble,” she whispered.
“You already are,” he said, and then he kissed her, and oh, holy Linux squared but the man could kiss. She melted against him shamelessly, every nerve cell in her body dancing a tango—or at least a wild drunken chicken dance—at the feel of his mouth on hers.
Then he put those big hands of his on her butt and lifted her up and into him, against that extremely large, hard erection, and she quit thinking of anything at all except to thank her lucky stars that she’d already disconnected all the cameras in the vault for the entire night.
That decryption was going to take an awfully long time after all.
When her back hit the wall of safe-deposit boxes, and his mouth closed over her breast right through her top, she leaned her head back and moaned as loudly as she wanted. It was a soundproof vault, and nobody was in the bank but them. Nobody was coming, either. Reisen shoved her top and bra out of his way and sucked her nipple into his mouth and she revised that thought.
She fervently hoped at least the two of them would be coming. Soon.
Chapter 17
Daniel finally allowed Serai to stand up when he hadn’t heard anything but the sounds of nature for at least fifteen minutes.
“Are they gone?” she whispered, brushing dirt off her hiking clothes. “Also, what was it? More vampires?”
“Yes. I thought a few shifters were with them, at first, but flying shifters would have been birds, silent or chirping or something, not talking. They were vampires, and they were clumsy amateurs. Loud and arrogant, without a clue somebody might have been here to hear them.”
“Lucky for us, surely?”
He touched her cheek and smiled at her, trying to shove the knot of fear and rage for her—for what might happen to her if they didn’t succeed—deeper in his gut. She didn’t need to know he had the slightest doubt.
“Everything is lucky for us. When we’re done with this little errand, we’ll go to Vegas.”
She laughed. “Isn’t that in the desert? With the places humans go to shove money in machines and listen to the little bell sounds?”
He shook his head. “I think that was one strange filter the Emperor put your knowledge of the world through.”
“Yes, I would agree,” she said seriously. “Who is Justin Bieber, and why is his hair poisonous to small girls?”
It was a long time before he could stop laughing hard enough to answer her.
They made good time, considering, and had hiked nearly three miles when she admitted to needing a break. She drank water and ate some bread and nuts from her pack, while he stared at her and tried not to think about how sweet her blood might taste.
It was a very unsatisfying rest break, which only got worse when she pinned him with that sapphire gaze and asked the one question he’d been praying she’d never get around to asking.
“What happened to you after you became a nightwalker? What have you been up to for the past eleven millennia?”
He stood up so fast he knocked over the rock he’d been using for a seat. “We need to get going. Definitely no time to discuss boring details of the past several thousand years.”
She put her things away in her backpack and didn’t answer him, but he could feel the weight of her disappointment—or disapproval—in her silence.
“It’s not a pretty story,” he finally said, not looking at her. Not wanting to see her face.
“I don’t want pretty. I want the truth. All I’ve ever wanted. Your history is a part of you, and I love . . . I love to hear about the past,” she said, biting her lip.
Daniel felt like the rock he’d been sitting on had just slammed into the side of his head. She loved him? Had she been about to admit to that?