by Alyssa Day
He looked up at her, and she imagined she saw a glimmer of hope through the pain in his eyes. It was too much to take in, though, too much to understand or even try to understand. She didn’t know him, couldn’t know what he was thinking, but some part of her wanted to help him release so much undeserved guilt and pain. But now wasn’t the right time, and she probably wasn’t even the right person.
Anyway, he was bleeding on her carpet. That much she could fix. Sympathy and a stronger emotion, one she didn’t want to analyze, overcame the lingering wariness she’d felt. She took a deep breath and released the door handle.
“You need to bandage that hand,” she said, heading for her backpack. “I have a mini first-aid kit in my bag. Let’s get you cleaned up and then we can figure out what to do. Oh, and you’re totally paying for that chair, my friend. A reporter’s budget only goes so far.”
He looked down at his hands and blinked, almost as if he hadn’t realized before that moment that he’d hurt himself. “Did you not hear me? What I’ve done? What I’ve caused? Order me from your presence and be done with it, if you have any mercy at all,” he rasped out, his face starkly white. “I don’t know if I can promise to let you go if I remain with you any longer.”
Heat swept through her at the reminder of the other things he’d said to her, but she tried to ignore it. Priorities. Fix his hands, then worry about the rest of it. She found the kit and withdrew Neosporin and a large adhesive bandage, then glanced at him as she walked to the bathroom to wet a washcloth. “I heard you. I also heard what you didn’t say, though. That you tried to do the right thing by her and she wouldn’t let you. That she was a selfish woman who committed the worst possible act against herself and her own baby.”
A thought occurred to her. “How old were you when this happened, anyway?”
He bowed his head. “I had nineteen years.”
She paused, one hand on the faucet. “Nineteen? Are you kidding me? You were a child yourself.”
“Age cannot excuse fault.”
“No, but if everybody who did something stupid when they were nineteen got cursed, the world would be in for a load of trouble,” she snapped, wishing she could get through to him. Wondering why she cared. As she ran water onto the white cloth, she thought of another lost baby, and then she tried to talk past the lump in her throat as she gave him the advice so many others had given her over the past two years. “You need to forgive yourself for something that wasn’t even your fault. It’s not going to be easy, but you can’t get past it if you don’t. You can’t heal, and you can’t move forward, and you’ll never be able to live your life.”
She paused at the threshold from the bathroom and looked first at Brennan, and then at the door to the hall, weighing the risks and rewards of what she was about to do.
Final answer time, Tiernan. Stay or go.
He looked up at her, the lines in his face deepening as if he could hear her thoughts and expected her to run. She’d never seen so much anguish on anyone’s face.
“I will never harm you. I would die first,” he said, and again she felt the pure, musical truth of it surrounding her, wrapping her in a sensual haze that belied the stark words. The sheer power of that truth persuaded her.
“I know you believe that. For now, it’s enough. We need each other, so let’s figure out how to stop these scientists. Together.”
“Together,” he repeated, and then a smile of such dazzling male beauty spread across his face that she almost reconsidered her decision. He was far too dangerously seductive to be trusted. Or was it herself she didn’t trust? Gorgeous, humanity-protecting warriors with tortured pasts were suddenly her thing?
Apparently so. She crossed the room and handed him the washcloth. “Clean that scrape, and then we’ll bandage it. We should probably figure out a story for when someone asks—”
He took the cloth from her, and when his fingers touched her hand, an almost electrical shock sizzled through her nerve endings, causing her to gasp a little and yank her hand back. He lifted his head, his eyes narrowing, and again she had that disconcerting sense of a predator catching the scent of his prey.
“I’m not,” she said suddenly, wiping her damp hand on her jeans. “Your prey, that is.”
“So it would seem. Perhaps I am yours.” His deep voice held an undercurrent of amusement, although his expression was still bleak. He rose to his feet and she caught her breath, realizing all over again just how big he was. How much pure masculine strength was leashed in that tall, muscled body. She was taking a big risk trusting him.
“I will earn your trust,” he said, holding out his wounded hand, palm up.
She was instantly suspicious to hear her thoughts reflected back at her. “Can you read my mind?”
“No, but your face is a mirror to your thoughts at times, Tiernan Butler.” He studied her, as if trying to memorize her features. “I had not realized you were so very beautiful.”
She felt her cheeks heating again and busied herself with the antibacterial ointment and bandage, trying to touch the actual skin of his hand as little as possible. Trying not to notice how his hands were as large and masculine and elegant as the rest of him. He smelled deliciously male, with a hint of salt and sea mixed in, and she inexplicably wanted to wrap herself up in his scent and roll around like a kitten with fresh catnip.
She forced herself to focus on the task, fastened the bandage, and went to wash her hands and discard the wrappings. He followed her across the room and leaned against the doorway, arms folded over his chest, watching every move she made.
“You’re all set. Now, what is the plan? I know you’ve got a cover story in place as some kind of rich benefactor, but Rick didn’t—”
The phone rang again, cutting her off mid-sentence at the same time that someone pounded on the door of the room. She stuffed the first-aid items in the top of her open backpack, pulled out her cell phone, saw that it was Rick again, clicked it to voice mail, and headed for the door. Before she could reach it, Brennan was suddenly standing in front of her, a deadly stillness in his posture. He was so fast she hadn’t even seen him move.
“We still must discuss who dared to hurt you,” he said, skimming her neck with one finger, scorching a trail of heat across her skin. “And then he will die. If I am very lucky, this will be him now.”
Brennan jerked the door open, and a man standing on the other side practically fell into the room. He’d clearly been eavesdropping. Tiernan managed to uncurl her lip into a polite smile before he recovered his balance, but he offered up in response only an officious sniff that matched his neatly pressed pin-striped suit. Unfortunately, his balding head flushed a hot red, giving away the mortification that his superior expression couldn’t hide. Human, then. Vamps didn’t have the blood pressure to do that.
“Ms. Baum? Tracy Baum?” He made a point of looking anywhere but up at Brennan, who had a good foot of height advantage on him. “I’m Mr. Wesley, your liaison to Dr. Litton. He wanted me to be sure and catch up to you right away with your press pass and schedule and answer any questions you might have.”
He shoved a dark blue folder at her. Tiernan took it from him and smiled her best ditzy reporter smile, ignoring Brennan’s sudden and unmistakable tension at her side. Always good to be nice to the mad scientist’s Igor, after all. Brennan was going to have to get used to her in her undercover role if he really intended to stick close.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Wesley. Please call me Tracy. I’m so looking forward to this conference and everything I can learn for my article.” She put a hand on his arm and leaned in, as if sharing a confidence. “I’m sure you’ll be very helpful.”
Behind her, Brennan made a sound low in his throat that almost sounded like . . . a growl? She evaluated the odds she could stamp on Brennan’s foot without Wesley noticing, then decided to just introduce him instead. “This is—”
“Brennan. Litton is expecting me,” Brennan interrupted smoothly. “When do we meet?”
Wesley instantly turned flustered, all but fluttering his hands. “Oh, Mr. Brennan. Dr. Litton is so glad—so honored—uh.” He paused, biting his lip. “Thrilled. He’s thrilled, we’re all thrilled, that you’re here to consider further funding of our research. It’s really cutting edge. You see, we’re—”
“Yes. I will see, won’t I?” Somehow, Brennan managed to edge his calm tone with a layer of menace. “I don’t just hand out ten-million-dollar grants on the basis of no evidence. So far, what I’ve seen from my first half million hasn’t impressed me.”
Tiernan wanted to applaud his technique. He’d be fantastic undercover. Of course, the man actually spent most of his life undercover, come to think about it. It wasn’t like he went around announcing he was an Atlantean warrior. She was still waiting for High Prince Conlan’s go-ahead to break that story.
Wesley wasn’t setting off any warning bells in her mind, though. The little he’d told them so far had been the truth. Or at least the truth as he believed it to be, but that was the one constant drawback to her abilities. Litton could have fed his assistant a bunch of crap. People were very, very good at lying to one another—and even to themselves.
“Well, yes. We don’t really want to discuss this in the hallway, do we? I just came to give Ms. Baum her materials, and—” Suddenly the man seemed to make the connection he should have wondered about in the first place, and he narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. “In fact, I am surprised to find you here with a reporter, Mr. Brennan. We certainly . . .” Wesley’s voice trailed off and his face turned a peculiar shade of greenish white.
Tiernan glanced at Brennan and had to bite her lip to keep from laughing out loud at the fiercely intimidating glare he was directing at Wesley. The warrior had “arrogant billionaire” down cold.
“Yes. Well.” Wesley adjusted his tie, surreptitiously loosening it as he broke into a light sweat. “Dr. Litton will be able to answer all of your questions. I’ll be sure to tell him you’re here.”
“You do that,” Brennan said, putting an arm around Tiernan and closing the door in the man’s face.
Tiernan shrugged away from Brennan’s arm, waited a few moments, then peeked through the peephole to make sure Wesley was gone. Then she turned to Brennan. “Really, did you need to terrify the poor man?”
“I had a certain reputation to uphold. We have set up my identity as a very eccentric billionaire who is not only arrogant but highly demanding.” Stepping closer, he lifted a strand of her hair, then let it slide through his fingers, pinning her in place with the force of his searing green gaze. “He is lucky I did nothing more than intimidate him. When you smiled at him, I wanted to make him bleed.”
She caught her breath at the unvarnished truth in his words. “Brennan, you said you would behave.”
“Yes, and I will do my best, Tiernan. That does not mean I do not experience the emotions I am now forced to suppress. Interesting irony, is it not?”
A muscle in his jaw jumped, and he pivoted and walked away from her, muttering something under his breath that was definitely not English and definitely not very nice.
“I heard that,” she called. “Will you teach me how to swear in Atlantean when this is over?”
He stopped still and then glanced back at her over his shoulder, amusement tilting up one corner of his mouth. “I will teach you anything you want in Atlantean, when this is over.”
It was her turn to flush as his intended meaning swept over her, causing certain highly provocative visuals to dance through her brain. But thinking of one extremely buff, unbelievably hot Atlantean warrior naked was not doing anything to move them toward their goal.
“So it’s their move,” she said briskly. “Now we go to the reception and see what we can find out from drunken scientists with hopefully loose lips?”
He nodded, but before he could respond, Tiernan’s phone rang again. She hesitated, then retrieved it and thumbed the screen to “on” just as it clicked over to voice mail. The screen told her she’d missed yet another call from Rick, who wasn’t going to be the slightest bit happy about it, but he knew by now that she often went hours or even days without checking in when she was hot on the trail of a story.
“Hot” was certainly the operative word. She shoved her phone in her pocket and studied Brennan as he crossed to her window and looked out into the night. The dark waves of his hair brushed the collar of his shirt, which drew her eye to that lovely expanse of broad, muscled shoulders and back, tapering down to a very nice waist and oh, holy Atlantis, the man even had a tight, perfectly shaped butt. Why were all the gorgeous ones either married or two-thousand-year-old cursed warriors?
She rolled her eyes, both at her black humor and at her easy acceptance of his story. She’d had a long time to get used to unbelievable tales, though, and it didn’t hurt that nobody could lie to her. Humanity’s reality had changed almost beyond recognition in the past ten years. The world’s shock, fear, and disbelief over the existence of shifters, vampires, and who knew what else, had gradually given way to a wary acceptance and then—now—even a dangerous complacency. The monsters counted on that, though. The bad ones. The deadly ones.
Not all of them had wanted to come out and face the light of day and the insane press of media. Many, many of the vampires and shifters had wanted to remain hidden, content to remain the stuff of legend, nightmares, and really bad horror films. But the majority, or at least the most powerful, had won that argument.
Tiernan and her colleagues had discussed the reasoning for years, over endless pitchers of beer, margaritas, cosmopolitans, and mojitos, as drink fads had come and gone. They’d each had their pet theories that had changed over time, but Tiernan had always stuck firm to her original explanation. Vamps were the ultimate game players. Showing themselves to humans and integrating, more or less successfully, had allowed them a much larger arena. Now they weren’t fighting just for control of individual territories and the “sheep,” as they called the humans who lived there, but for control of countries and kingdoms, insinuating themselves into governments and power centers in industry, finance, and the media. The U.S. had gone the furthest, the fastest: now Congress had a third house, called the Primus, that was all-vampire.
Power on an international level, and why not? It was much easier to take over the world when you could travel to its cities on your own corporate jet, with blacked-out windows and willing donors who doubled as flight attendants or simply came as guests.
Peanuts, pretzels, or O negative?
Now the not-so-lost continent of Atlantis was in the mix, complete with a tyrannical god-ruler who had arbitrarily cursed one of his warriors for a tragedy that wasn’t even his fault. Corelia had been the architect of that decision, leaving Brennan no options. He hadn’t even known about the baby. To Tiernan, that was the worst punishment of all: to find out that you were a father and find out that you were not, all in the same breath.
An unpleasant thought struck her like a lightning bolt to her stomach: had he been? Corelia didn’t sound like she’d been the most faithful of women. What if the child hadn’t been Brennan’s at all? Unfortunately, that led to unanswerable questions: Could a god really know these things? Did Poseidon have some sort of super DNA tester abilities or had he merely been guessing? She groaned at the barrage of questions—ones she could never ask Brennan without hurting him even further.
Brennan had been telling her the truth. He believed he would not harm her; that he would die to protect her. She only had to worry about a recurrence of the strange fit he’d gone into when the curse had struck, and that was easy enough to handle. All she had to do was escape long enough for all of the terms of the curse to apply. “Out of sight, out of mind” took on a whole new meaning. If he couldn’t see her, he wouldn’t remember her, and she’d be free to get on with her mission.
Alone.
Alone was better, anyway. So there was no reason the prospect of Brennan forgetting her very existence should cause a hollow
feeling in her stomach. She kicked herself out of her mental wanderings as Brennan wheeled around and strode toward her so swiftly that he’d already halted, only inches away from her, before she could think, move, or even breathe. Staring into her eyes, his own narrowed as if daring her to stop him, he put an arm around her waist and pulled her even closer, until her breasts were pressed into the hard heat of his chest. Just when she thought he’d kiss her, he simply rested his face on the top of her head and inhaled deeply, like he was breathing her in. Memorizing her scent.
Every nerve ending she had went from zero to sixty at the feel of his hot, hard body against hers, and she had to struggle against a wicked and entirely abnormal impulse to snuggle even closer. It had been months, no, more than a year, since she’d had any kind of intimate relationship, and her body was crying out that enough was enough of the enforced abstinence, already.
It was more than that, though. The heat sizzling through her limbs was about way more than lack of sex. This was personal—it was about Brennan. The way he looked at her, as if he’d like to strip her bare and take her up against the wall, not to mention the things he’d said to her . . . Well. That had been enough to set the most restrained woman’s sexual urges on fire, and she’d never been one for restraint.
He turned his head so she felt his warm breath against her ear, and her traitorous body trembled a little. Her cheeks instantly burned with embarrassment. It was one thing to have the hots for the crazy ancient cursed guy in your hotel room; it was quite another to let him know it.
“I, who have spent so very long being entirely rational, find that any semblance of calm or logic has deserted me, simply from the sight of your innocent touch on that man’s arm,” he murmured. “I have become a Neanderthal, lacking only a cave to which I might drag you and a club with which to beat off the occasional stray woolly mammoth.”