by Alyssa Day
“I never expected anything of the sort, big guy,” she said mildly, keying in the final codes to break through the encryption sequence. Now it was a matter of time and waiting and hoping there wasn’t some kind of self-destruct written into the encryption code, like in a bad movie. She set the laptop on the floor next to her and stretched.
“What’s a Warrior of Poseidon, anyway? Some kind of cult of hot guys? Is that what that tattoo on your chest is about?”
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
Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness area
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?
No. Of course not. He was a damned fool to think it.
“Not my past,” he said flatly. “Nobody would love to hear about my past.”
“Then don’t tell me all of it. Just tell me the part that happened right after you became a nightwalker. What happened? Did it hurt? Was the mage training hard?” She slipped her hand in his so naturally that he almost didn’t notice it until they’d taken a few steps, and then a wave of warmth and peace swept through him and he tightened his fingers, never wanting to let her go.
They walked in silence for nearly ten minutes, Serai apparently content to wait for his response, while he considered what to say. Finally he shrugged. Let her hear it, then. Let her know firsthand what a monster he was. It would be easier for her to let him go when the time came.
Easier for him to leave her to a better fate, as well.
“I became a monster. There was nothing left of the Daniel you knew; he lost himself to the bloodlust and the pain of losing you.”
She flinched a little, but tightened her grip on his hand. “I’d heard it was bad at the beginning, for the newly made.”
“It’s bad enough, as far as I saw from others, but never as bad as I became, or at least that’s what they told me. I had lost you forever. I thought you were dead. I had nothing else to live for, so I didn’t bother to live. I wanted to die, but the monster’s sense of self-preservation was too strong.”
He heard her indrawn breath, but ruthlessly continued. She’d wanted to hear it. She could hear it all.
“By the time I was sane enough to think that maybe the story I’d heard was wrong, that maybe you lived, Atlantis was gone. Vanished beneath the sea. After that, I became a monster the like of which the world had never seen. For several years, I raged and rampaged, killing humans and treating them as nothing more than prey for slaughter. I went after the criminals and the rogue soldiers, those who looted and pillaged and raped. I killed them all and drank their blood and I gloried in it.”
She stopped walking, but he refused to look at her.
“You were trying to achieve some sort of justice,” she said, but he ruthlessly cut her off, before she could get carried away with some false idea of his nobility.
“I was a murderer, after vengeance. Nothing more. Don’t try to make me out to be anything heroic. It would be the worst kind of lie,” he said roughly.
“So what changed?”
He started walking again, all but dragging her along. “What do you mean?”
“What changed? That’s not who you are now, so what changed?’
He flashed back to that moment, that one crystal-clear moment in time. The moment he’d never forget.
“I met a girl who reminded me of you,” he confessed, the words almost dragged out of him.
The memory that he could never, ever forget. As if on command, it played again in his head in brilliant, heartbreaking color:
He’d attacked a small village where a gang of marauders lived, killing and maiming every man in it without regard for anything but the ever-present, voracious bloodlust, when a girl threw herself on his back and started punching him in the head. He threw her off without a thought, but when he turned, he realized that she was only a child. He never, ever killed children. Even in his madness, he’d retained that much of himself.
But in a flash of light from the fire, he realized something else: she looked like his Serai. Not exactly, not like a sister or daughter or even a cousin. But there was something in the curve of her cheek and the fall of her hair that arrested him and froze him in place.
“How can you do this? Are you a monster?” the girl cried out, but he didn’t hear her. He heard her words in Serai’s voice, and he was destroyed.
He threw all the gold in his pockets at the girl and ran. Ran, and then flew, and never stopped until he found himself deep in the middle of a forest so old and dark and deep that the humans believed it to be cursed. He opened a hole in the ground underneath an ancient tree and threw himself into it, covering himself up and losing himself to the pain.
The mage who’d turned him found him and coaxed him back to the surface. Cleaned him up and taught him a few hard truths. Told him he had a choice: study and learn and work to make the world a better place, or become one of the evil, lost ones. The first choice was the harder one.
Redemption would not be cheaply bought.
Daniel chose redemption. But a thousand years is a very long time, and although the world changed, evil remained the same. Finally his mentor gave in to despair and walked into the sunlight. On that day, Daniel chose a lesser death. He chose to put himself in a state of hibernation for a very, very long time, in hopes that perhaps the world would be different when he awoke. Better.
Worth fighting for.
He had no idea that he would sleep nine thousand years.
When he woke, the world had changed. He traveled all over it, helping where he could, studying and learning the new ways and customs and amazing technology. Unfortunately, people were still dying. But he met an unexpected group of allies: the Atlantean warriors. He didn’t bother to ask about Serai, though. Who would know anything about a girl dead for more than eleven thousand years?
Her quiet voice broke into his reverie. “But before that? You met the girl who looked like me, and then what? You . . . you fell in love?”
“What? No, I didn’t fall in love. I managed not to kill her, too, though.” He lifted her up and over a fallen tree. “Are we still on the right path?”
She closed her eyes again, for nearly a minute this time, and then nodded. “I’m so tired, though. I can still feel the Emperor, and it’s not moving. The witch hasn’t done anything with it in a while, as far as I can tell. Maybe they’re resting for the night?”
“Maybe. But those were vampires that passed us earlier, and if they are part of a more powerful vampire’s blood coven, they won’t be sleeping.”
She leaned against him briefly, then took a deep breath and started walking again. “Why would a witch be helping a vampire? Why would they want the Emperor, anyway, or even know about it?”
“Who knows? I don’t know anything much about Atlantean history, Serai, and anyway, you’re not the only one who slept most of the world away. I slept for nine thousand years, hibernating until the horrors I’d seen—the evil I’d done—could fade in my memories.”
“Did it work?”
“No,” he said, kicking a log so hard that it shattered into kindling. “No, it didn’t. But I deserve to live with the memories of what I did. It’s my own version of hell.”
“Not just bad memories, though,” she said, almost whispering. “You remembered me.”
“I did. I remembered you.” He stopped walking and roughly pulled her to him, needing to feel her in his arms. “I will always remember you, even when you have come to your senses and left me, but I promise you that you will remember me, too.”
With a desperation born of passion, he took her mouth with his own. Claimed it—claimed her—though he could never deserve to keep her. Kissed her as if he were a dying man and she the only chance at life.
“Remember this,” he said fiercely. “Remember the feel of my mouth on yours, my body against yours, when you find that perfect Atlantean man someday.”
She started to protest, but he silenced her with his lips, kissing her so hard and deep that he could almost pretend that she belonged to him and always would. It would have helped him find his way back to sanity if she’d fought him.
Instead she pulled him closer, and he was lost.
Long minutes later, he raised his head, coming back to himself enough to realize they stood unprotected in the middle of the path, and their enemies were closer than was safe. Serai clung to him, her body trembling, and he had never wanted anything as much as he wanted to strip her clothes from her and take her, bury his cock in her warm sweetness, and make her his.
His timing sucked.
“I love you,” she said.
And the bottom fell out of his world.
He opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out but a hoarse, choked noise, and then finally he made his stunned brain work and words happened. “Your timing sucks.”
Her eyes opened so wide that they were enormous in her pale face, shining like the night stars in the moonlight, and he had just enough time to realize how unbearably hurt she would be by what he’d said before she started laughing.
Serai laughed so hard she doubled over, clutching her stomach, and then she laughed some more, while he grew more and more puzzled. When she finally could breathe again, she rose on tiptoe and kissed his chin.
“Oh, my love. You are still that blacksmith at heart, aren’t you? I was afraid you were too elegant and powerful and sophisticated for me, a poor inexperienced maiden, but you are still my Daniel, aren’t you?”
He looked away from her, scanning the area, the sky, the trees, the river. Anything to avoid looking at her beautiful, innocent, hopeful face.
“I can never be your Daniel. Forget that boy, that stupid useless blacksmith. What we thought we had was a childish dream, and we’re both too old and wise to believe that dreams can come true.”