by Alyssa Day
But wanting to claim her was wrong. It made him no better than Ethan. Not to mention the slight problem that she was half shape-shifter. Poseidon didn’t exactly allow his warriors to interact with the dual-natured. He spared a thought for Alaric’s reaction to the news that Bastien had mated with a shape-shifter, and grimaced.
Not that it mattered. Kat had made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with him, after all, when she went running down the hall. Bastien sent his senses into the elements and adjusted the temperature of the water sluicing down his body. He needed it to be icy.
Kat finished toweling the water from her hair and wrapped the robe more firmly around herself. She’d been too distracted by Bastien to think of clean clothes when she’d escaped into the bathroom. Only ten steps, though. She only needed to make it ten steps down the hall to her bedroom without him seeing her.
“Oh, get a grip,” she lectured her reflection in the steamy mirror. “It’s not like he’s going to grab you and ravish you. He’s a perfect gentleman.”
Her reflection seemed to have its own thoughts on the matter, though, because it made a face back at Kat. “Yeah, I know,” she told herself. “Damn the luck, right? And, really, the only worry is that I’ll jump on him.”
She pushed open the bathroom door, realizing that talking to herself in the mirror—and, worse, expecting her reflection to talk back—was a slim stick of beef jerky away from the crazy machine. She peeked down the hall for a glimpse of her guest, but the coast was clear.
As she slipped into the hall, she heard the sound of rain outside. “That’s odd. We had sunshine in the forecast for the next three days,” she murmured, then pushed aside the cotton curtain that covered the small hallway window and looked outside.
Her knees turned to water. She had to grab the windowsill to hold herself up, because the object of her more heated shower fantasies was standing in the middle of her yard. Stark naked. And, from what she could tell, he was somehow magically causing water to dance around and caress every inch of his incredibly firm, muscled body.
She stood there, frozen, and watched the playful loops and curls of water twirl over his thickly curved biceps and down the muscled planes of his back to his, oh, dear heavens, firm, tight, and gorgeous butt. She watched the water continue down the corded muscles of his huge thighs and the length of his long, long legs and heard a low, growling noise. It took her a moment to realize that the sound came from her. She wanted to lick him. The cat inside her sat up and begged at the idea.
Kat’s mouth dried out as she continued to watch him, unable to tear herself away. He turned, and she caught sight of his huge chest and the silky hair that arrowed down his abdomen to the erection that was as fierce and strong and huge as the rest of him. The heated emotions of her inner cat got tangled up with her own, more human, thoughts, and all she could think was yes, yes, oh, that, I want that, I want to lick him and bite him and I want to play, and I want to feel him pounding inside me with that, oh, please, oh, please, I’m so cold, I’ve always been so cold, I want that heat. A warm torrent of silky wet heat dripped between her thighs at the thought, at the sheer aching desire of it, and she moaned, digging her nails into the wood of the windowsill.
And he turned, sparkling with the luminescence of the water surrounding him, and looked straight into her eyes.
Bastien felt her watching him. Knew she was behind the window. The feral warrior who lurked behind the amiable mask he showed the world roared inside him, wanting to get to her. Wanting to possess her. Needing to at least show her exactly what she did to him.
It wasn’t gallant or courteous or gentle. It was sheer raw need pouring through him at the thought of her watching him. He turned to face her house and the window where he knew she stood. Planted his feet and let her see him. All of him. Let her see his fierce arousal—his desire for her. Only for her.
Felt his legs tremble with the force of his longing. When he met her gaze through the glass, the shock of awareness sparked and burned through his veins. She wanted him, too.
Grimly determined, he released the water he’d been channeling and headed for the steps to her house. Prayed she wouldn’t deny him. But realized, with the sliver of rational thought left to him, that they might both be better off if she did.
Nine
Kat knew the second Bastien made the decision. She saw his eyes change; saw them darken with a heat that mirrored her own. Watched in awe as the tendrils of water sparkling around him suddenly pulsed with a shimmering blue green light. Nearly fell to her knees when he started for her door.
What had she unleashed, and why was it exhilaration rather than fear that swept through her? She shivered at the prospect of tasting passion in the arms of a warrior who’d stepped straight out of a legend. She heard the door bang open, and the sound sent shockwaves trembling through her.
Clutching the folds of her robe at her throat, she didn’t even pretend to back away. She wanted him—oh, dear God in heaven, how she wanted him—and he was coming. Stalking down the hall toward her with the arrogant pride of a warrior and the lethal menace of a predator. She didn’t know which aroused her more. The cat inside her snarled its mingled defiance and desire, while the woman made a low, moaning sound in her throat.
He stopped, mere inches away, and looked down at her. His jaw clenched with the effort it cost him to remain still; to keep from touching her. The passion in his eyes seared into her, and she felt the melting in her core as it dripped warm, creamy wetness onto her thighs. He still said nothing, but the faint trembling shudder that shook through his body reassured her. This was no ravager to take without permission. He wanted her, but he waited.
The knowledge of her power over this warrior from ancient prophecy thrilled her beyond any desire she’d ever felt, and she had to put her hands out to his chest to hold herself upright. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”
Bastien heard her surrender and threw his head back and roared out his claim. He had channeled the fury of lightning itself before, but had never known this searing fire that burned through his blood. The hunger echoed in his pulse and in hers, which he heard quickening as he reached out to her. Finally, finally put his hands in that wealth of glorious hair and gently wrapped one palm around the back of her head to pull her to him.
“Kat,” he murmured. “Lady Kat, do you say yes to me? If yes, you will be mine for this night.”
She stared up at him, and the shape of her eyes was somehow lengthened, her pupils changed. The mysteries of womanhood and of her dual nature were reflected in her eyes. “Yes, Bastien. I say yes. I need to feel alive.”
He paused, though nearly driven mad by her words. “I would not take advantage of your sorrow, my lady,” he said roughly. “As a scion of Atlantis, I may call down an hour or two more of cold shower to ease this fire you create inside me.”
She smiled at the image created in her mind and shook her head, then put a finger against his lips. “No, Atlantean. I do not say yes merely out of my sorrow, but from the need I have for you.” She ducked her head and then raised it to meet his gaze. “The need I have felt since I first met you, two years ago.”
The courage and desire shining in her eyes released him from the bounds of restraint, and he lifted her into his arms. Bent his head to kiss her, knowing even as he did that he was lost. When his lips touched her, a touchstone deep inside his soul unleashed a torrent like unto the one that had driven Atlantis to its undersea destiny.
More, more.
An ember of sanity struggled to surface, bearing thoughts of Poseidon, Conlan, and Atlantis. Duty and honor and mission.
But desire swamped sanity. Longing triumphed over logic. He needed, by the gods, he needed, and he had never needed anything in his four centuries as he needed the taste of this woman.
He swept his tongue into her mouth and kissed her with all the desperate wanting she provoked in him, and wonder of wonders, she kissed him back.
Kat’s mind raged at the feel of him, the h
eat of him, and the steel of muscle under skin that trembled at her touch. She caught her breath at the first touch of his lips and was lost. Her breath, his breath, they mingled together in a kiss that lasted longer than an eternity, shorter than a thought. Caught up in the strength of his powerful arms, she melted against him, sank into his strength, surrendered her willing spirit to him.
This moment was hers, no matter what may follow it. He was hers, if only for a night. She smiled against his lips, and her cat purred inside her. For one moment trapped in starlight, wrapped in desire, the two sides of her dual-natured existence came together as one.
“You are mine, then, for this night? You freely give yourself into my care?” he asked, no, demanded of her.
The fierce longing in his tone carried any lingering hesitation away on its currents. She was desired, and she desired. Nothing had ever felt so right to her as this one moment, her body wrapped in the arms of a warrior.
“I am yours,” she said, relinquishing her control and trusting him with everything she had. “I am yours.”
Bastien did not ask again. He’d been granted permission, now it was in him to take. To take and to give and to bring an end to this pain of wanting that had swamped him since he’d first caught sight of her face, terrified but filled with grim resolve, two years past.
He lifted her off the floor and, hands firmly grasping her rounded hips, swung around to find her bedroom. She gasped and he took her mouth again, plundering. Possessing.
Mine. The voice in his head demanded he claim her, mark her, brand her as his own.
Cherish her, protect her, keep her for the long centuries of my existence.
His body demanded something more urgent and immediate. He hardened even further against her, his cock straining against the robe she wore, as he reached her bed. He slowly released her to slide down his body and reached between them to untie the cord that kept him from feeling her shower-damp skin against his heated flesh.
As he pushed the edges of her garment from her shoulders, the creamy skin thus revealed damn near brought him to his knees before her. He pulled in a sharp breath and then reconsidered.
“On my knees seems a fitting tribute to your beauty, my lady Kat,” he murmured against her hair, against her throat, against the swell of her breasts as he sank to the floor in front of her.
She bent and cupped his face between her hands, golden eyes huge in her pale face. “But—”
“Shh,” he whispered. “Let me learn the secrets of your body. Let me touch you and taste you and know you.” He captured the tip of one breast in his mouth and licked and suckled on it, gently at first, then strongly, until she moaned and made a helpless thrusting motion with her hips.
Then he transferred his mouth to her other breast and replaced his lips with his fingers on the first, gently squeezing and lightly pinching the nipple as he sucked on its twin, until he heard her moaning again, this time his name. She twined her fingers in his hair and pulled.
“Please, please.”
He looked up at her, and the soft flush of her skin combined with the heat in her eyes to undo him. He had no more thought for gentle seduction, but only for taking. For driving into her until she could never get him out.
For claiming.
He tested her readiness with a finger, nearly crying out at the hot wetness that welcomed him into her body. He bent his head to her nipple again and drove two fingers inside her. This time it was she who cried out, bucking against his hand.
In one motion, he stood and lifted her, then twisted to fall back upon her bed with her on top of him. He held her head to his and plundered her mouth once more, with his fingers still steadily thrusting inside her. Then he rolled over so that he straddled her body. “I need you now, my lady. I must offer my apologies for reverting to the haste of my youth, but I find that I need to be inside the heat of your body more than I need to find my next breath.”
She stared up at him for a long moment, body shuddering in reaction to her desire and the motion of his fingers across the pearl at the junction of her heat. He had a moment to wonder at the secrets hidden deep in the amber of her eyes, before she slowly smiled and lifted her legs to clasp around his back. “I need you, too, my poet warrior. And remember that I’m not the only one surrendering, here.”
He moved his hand to guide the head of his cock against the slick wetness of her opening, and then he put his hands on the bed on either side of her as he bent to kiss her yet again. “Gladly do I surrender, Kat Fiero,” he whispered, and then he threw back his head and roared his possession as he drove into her with one stroke, not stopping until the base of his cock thrust against her pelvis.
She arched up and into his body and screamed, an eerie sound that had as much of panther in it as woman, and then she dug her nails into his back and clung to him, thrusting into him in time with his movements. “Oh, yes, please, now,” she said, more demand than plea.
“Yes, mi amara, I am pleased to comply,” he said, voice rough with the effort of forming coherent speech. He drove into her, harder and faster, gone partly mad with hunger and a desperate, terrible passion.
Knowing he would defy Poseidon himself for this woman.
He felt the moment she approached the precipice; her entire body tightened around his own. He thrust, impossibly hardening beyond any limits his body had ever known.
As he drove her up and over the edge into the abyss, she looked into his eyes, into his soul, and uttered a single word. His name.
“Bastien,” she murmured, and he was lost.
The stars that surely had shone upon Atlantis in its glory days exploded behind his eyes and in his blood and—for a moment, a long moment, an incalculable moment—he felt her inside him as jewels burst in his brain to color his world.
A rift opened in the fabric of his universe, a fissure in his bleak solitude, and she slid in, warm and silken as a summer rain on the ocean waves. Her essence opened itself to him as the unfurling of a bed of sea stars, and it tempered the bleakness of his hardened soul. Hopefulness met grim resolve, compassion met implacable duty. Her kindness entwined itself in the dark, crabbed spaces of his black soul and somehow lighted the path to absolution.
He was lost, and yet she had found him, and he would never, ever be the same.
Ten
“What just happened?” Kat lay—okay, she was collapsed, in fact—halfway on top of Bastien with her legs hanging over the edge of the bed. She was trying not to admit to herself that she was entirely freaked out. Basically, this was the first time she’d made love, since a few ineffectual fumblings in college. Oh, yeah, and the sky had exploded in her brain.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Just an unbelievably passionate interlude with a four-hundred-year-old warrior from the lost continent of Atlantis.
Bastien’s voice rumbled in his chest, under her head. “That, my lady, was a passion unmatched in my history.”
He sounded as exhausted as she felt. Kat smiled, fiercely glad of it. “Truly?” She turned to look at him. “There had to be a lot of women in so much history.”
He raised an eyebrow and reached to pull her up so that her head rested on his shoulder and she fit snug against his side, her leg resting on his thigh. “Not nearly as many as you might think. When one is bound by inexorable duty and mission, one loses the taste for dalliance.”
She tried to pull away from him, but his arm tightened around her. “Is that all I am? A dalliance?” She hated the note of uncertainty in her voice even as she heard the words tumble out, so she tried to laugh it off. “Well, that was a pretty terrific dalliance. That should hold us both for a while, until we find somebody else to dally with, right?”
He sat up abruptly, drawing her to sit beside him. “If that is what you think, you are utterly mistaken,” he said flatly. “There will be no other dalliance, mi amara, for either of us. Please do not speak of it again.”
She blinked. “Okay, that was unexpected. After your brave words in front of Ethan
, are you now suggesting that I surrender my independence to you? And what is mi amara?”
“Your surrender, as mine, was not of your independence but of your solitude, I think,” he said, pulling the blanket around her when she shivered at the cool currents of air-conditioned air blowing on her bare skin. He laced his fingers in hers, and she looked down at their joined hands, marveling that she could feel so completely safe and cherished—so right—in the arms of a man she barely knew.
And yet…somehow there had been that moment of knowing. That moment when her soul had seemed to wing its way out of her body and twine its way through Bastien’s heart, the same way their fingers were joined together now. She’d known him on a level far deeper than she’d ever known another living soul; known the pain he’d faced, the battles he’d fought, and the black acts he’d been forced to commit on behalf of humanity.
He believed he was damned for it. Damned to the nine hells, whatever that meant. Having caught a glimpse of his despair, she could guess, though.
The mere thought of it terrified her. But before she could find words to tell him why the idea was bad, awful, and just wrong in so many ways, he spoke first.
“I am wrong for you.” His black eyes were filled with pain as his words echoed her thoughts. “I have done so many things, caused so much death and destruction in the name of my mission—in the name of my god—that I can never undo.”
She leaned against him, driven by the despair in his tone to offer comfort instead of rejection. Her heart rebelled at the thought of turning away from him. “What you have done, you have done as part of your duty to protect, haven’t you?”