"You saw Eros time walk," he said pensively.
Claire thought it over. "I don’t think so."
Zeus smiled faintly. "You believed the bars were an illusion because he seemed to walk through them. As you know, they are not an illusion. How do you think he moved through them when you could not?"
Embarrassed all over again by the reminder, it took Claire several moments to focus on the question. "Actually, I decided the whole thing must have been a hallucination … or some sort of trick."
"Because you could not come up with a logical explanation," he said, nodding.
Claire pursed her lips, thinking it over.
"The explanation is simple--if you accept what I have told you. He did not walk through the bars, and it was no ‘trick’. He time walked, passed through to a plane before the bars existed and back into the current time."
And she was supposed to accept all this on faith?
"I am not trying to convince you. It does not really matter whether you believe anything that I have told you … so long as you can come to accept us as we are."
"I don’t have a lot of options, though, do I?"
He studied her for a long moment. "No."
Claire’s lips flattened. "I didn’t think so."
Zeus was thoughtful for some moments. "I have decided to allow you the run of the compound. We mean you no harm. The only way that I can see that you could become accustomed to us is to move among us, freely."
As gracious as it was, Claire wasn’t at all certain she was comfortable with the idea. He wouldn’t offer unless he was certain she couldn’t escape—and she saw no point in it otherwise. Not that she wanted to be kept locked in a cell, but she rather thought she preferred to keep to herself. She wasn’t terribly anxious to rub elbows with rebels, however noble their cause might be.
His expression told her he wasn’t terribly pleased. Too late, she remembered that her thoughts were as open to him as if she spoke aloud. He rose, extending his hand and Claire, unnerved by her realization, automatically followed suit. To her alarm, once he’d caught hold of her hand, he used it to tug her closer to him, invading her personal space. She looked up at him in wide eyed consternation.
"You could share my quarters with me," he said, his voice deep, husky with suggestion.
Even though she’d more than half suspected he was coming on to her, she was still stunned.
Not that she believed for a moment that he was anywhere near the age he claimed. He didn’t look a day over--Oddly enough, she couldn’t even come close to pinning it down. He was a handsome man, his face mature, but unlined by age. Like every other male she’d seen since she’d been brought to this place, he was superbly fit, well muscled. There was something about his eyes that suggested the sort of wisdom that only comes from age and a good deal of experience, but nothing about his face or body that indicated an advanced age.
Regardless, she felt no desire for him, and even though it flickered through her mind that her survival might depend upon her willingness to use whatever ‘weapon’ she had—the suggestion repulsed her. Given time to grow accustomed to the idea, she might even have considered trying to use her body herself, but she hadn’t had any time to adjust to her situation at all. The idea took on a whole new and very unpleasant meaning coming from him.
He placed one hand along her face, almost, but not quite, like a caress. She felt heat from his hand—recognized it as something akin to the heat that her healing abilities generated in her hands. A strange lethargy drifted through her and she felt her resistance drifting away with it, as if carried on a gentle current. As the resistance faded from her mind, a new tension invaded her, slithering from the dark recesses of her mind with the stealth of a serpent, awakening her centers of desire so that they blossomed with heat.
Dimly, she realized that he was doing the same thing to her that Eros had, seducing her with his mind. She fought the urge to yield to him, to give in to the clamoring that had begun inside her body to give herself up and allow desire to flow over and through her until she was awash with it.
But pleasure was seductive in itself, a thing apart from the reasoning of her mind and not subject to it. She did not want Zeus to touch her in any way that Eros had. She wasn’t completely certain why. She only knew that some tenuous bond had been formed between them when he had made love to her mind and it felt like a betrayal to yield to another man.
Regardless, she was weak with want and beyond more than the faintest of resistance when Zeus bore her down upon the couch where she’d been sitting only moments before. She caught his hand when he began to work at the buttons of her blouse, but he merely flicked it away and she found she didn’t even have the energy to lift her arm again. She groaned, in both desire and frustration as he scooped her breasts from her bra, fondling them.
The door burst open abruptly and as Zeus whirled to meet the threat, his hold upon her loosened. Struggling to set her clothing to rights, it was several moments before Claire even looked up. When she did, she felt her jaw go slack.
Eros was standing in the doorway, violence in every line of his body, his expression deadly.
Zeus, looking completely unperturbed, even faintly amused, stood, facing him. "There is something you needed to ask? To report?"
Eros’ eyes narrowed. "I came for Claire."
Zeus’ brows rose. "No pretense of an urgent matter that demands my immediate attention?"
"No."
He seemed almost to shrug and gestured toward her. "As you see, she is unharmed."
Feeling as if she was caught up in the aftermath of a serious drinking binge, Claire levered herself up with an effort. Eros’ eyes narrowed on her, taking in her thoroughly disheveled appearance. Claire blushed, knowing she bore every appearance of someone who’d been interrupted in the middle of wild sex. "This isn’t what it looks like," she said nervously.
Zeus sent her an amused look. "It looks like I was interrupted in the act of seducing you, my dear—which I was." He looked at Eros again. "You consider that you have exclusive right to her? Prior claim? You suggested that that was not the case."
Eros’ lips tightened. "What passed between us is our affair."
Something glittered in Zeus’ eyes. "Indeed?"
Eros ignored that comment, holding his hand out to Claire. "Come."
Claire didn’t particularly like the commanding nature of that one word, but she wasn’t one to cut off her nose to spite her face. She scrambled off the couch and moved eagerly to his side.
"She will share my quarters."
Claire gaped at him, realizing belatedly that she’d jumped from the frying pan and into the fire, but she wasn’t going to debate the matter at the moment. Settling into his chair, Zeus made a dismissing motion.
Eros frowned, but said nothing more. Catching Claire by one arm, he escorted her from the room. The moment the door closed behind them, Claire tried to jerk her arm free, but Eros’ hand merely tightened. He strode angrily down the corridor, through the exercise arena and down another corridor. Claire, trying to keep up just to keep from falling, was thoroughly lost after the first couple of turns. Still weak and disoriented from the mind hold Zeus had placed upon her, she was too confused in her mind to consider argument or objections.
By the time he stopped before a room and pushed the door open, however, she’d recovered suffiently to balk. Not that it did her a great deal of good. She dug her heels in and Eros merely snatched her inside anyway, slamming the door behind them.
The moment she saw his face, she realized his anger was still roiling. Her own anger suffered a bit of a deflation in the face of it, replaced by a healthy dose of caution.
"Why did you follow him to his room?" he demanded tightly.
Claire gaped at him indignantly. "As if I knew which room was his! He said he was giving me a tour. I didn’t expect it to end in his room!"
Eros bent over until he was almost nose to nose with her. "You had no plan to seduce him to win your free
dom?" he ground out.
Again, her jaw dropped, but anger surged forth almost immediately. "Frankly, I hadn’t had time to formulate such a plan, because I didn’t know he had screwing on his mind!"
"You should have," he ground out.
"Should have thought of it? Or should have known?"
He straightened, eyeing her in a way that made her long for the nerve to slap his face. She was no fool, however. She didn’t know him, or what he was capable of, or how firm a grip he might have on his temper. She wasn’t about to provoke him into doing something she would probably regret more than he did.
"That he was of a mind to fuck you senseless."
"You don’t have to be so crude about it!" she snapped. "But, just exactly how was I supposed to have figured that out? He’s old enough to be my—ancestor!"
He looked slightly taken aback. "He is a virile man—you are a beautiful woman. Is that not enough to give you a clue?"
She glared at him. "Well, I beg your damn pardon! As it happens I’m just a little disadvantaged here. I don’t know what the hell is going on, or where I’m at, or what’s going to happen to me, and I haven’t had time to think about sex a lot. I’m just a little more concerned about saving my ass at the moment." She smote her head. "But you’re absolutely right! What was I thinking? Men think with their cocks, don’t they? Death take me! So long as I have my cock in a woman, I’ll die happy!" she said nastily.
He stared at her a long moment. Finally, the faintest of smiles quirked one side of his mouth. Reaching out, he caught her upper arms and dragged her up against him. "This is only men who think this way?"
Claire eyed him warily, uncertain of whether he was teasing or not. There was a gleam in his eyes that promised much. She frowned on a sudden thought. "Eros … wasn’t he supposed to be the god of love?"
Chapter Six
To Claire’s surprise, Eros flushed. Intrigued, she studied him for a moment. "You were teased about being named for him," she guessed.
He looked uncomfortable. "No."
A thought occurred to her but she dismissed it. Like a boomerang, it returned almost immediately. "Zeus said you time walked—when you seemed to move through the bars."
He frowned. After a moment, he released his grip on her arms, sliding his hands up to her shoulders. He massaged them a moment, then lifted his hands to stroke her hair, smoothing it and resting his hands on the tops of her shoulders, against her neck. "I am in my prime."
A shiver of delight traveled down her spine at the simple caresses, veiling her with a soft, unthreatening haze of intimacy. His comment pierced it with a touch of humor. "That’s not what I asked," she murmured.
He bent his head, rubbing his cheek along hers as he nuzzled her ear and then nipped the lobe. "I thought you might want to know," he murmured huskily.
The heat of his breath, the warmth radiating from his body lifted the fine hairs along her body, heightening her senses, creating a curl of warmth in her belly. The flicker of amusement was banished by a faint uneasiness. "You are Eros," she murmured, feeling more than a little dizzy.
"Yes."
She pulled away from him, studied him, her uneasiness growing. "Where am I? What is this place?"
He allowed his hands to drop to his sides. "You know. You just do not wish to accept it."
"Because it’s too fantastic to believe," she said shakily.
He tilted his head slightly. "Why? Because it shatters what you hold to be immutable truths, that we were no more than fabrications of primitive minds? Or because you are unwilling to accept that you are not, as you believed, the most advanced civilization of this world?"
He had a point. Never having been in the position where the technology she was familiar with paled to near primitive beside the technology of another race made acceptance very hard. Even if she accepted that it was purest conceit to think along those lines, though, there was still the fact that, according to them, they had existed as far back as the dawn of recorded history, and yet, beyond those early recordings, they had never been detected.
"That is not entirely true."
She had become somewhat used to having her thoughts heard. She supposed it was her own gift that had made it easier to accept theirs—although it was disconcerting to be around so many people with paranormal abilities, especially such powerful ones. "If anyone had found Atlantis, the whole world would’ve known. Even if it was only one person who’d told such a tale and nobody really believed them, it would still be the biggest topic of conversation for the media and everyone would know about it."
"Those who have found us are not allowed to leave with their memories."
The comment sent a wave of coldness through her. "You destroy their mind?"
"We remove selective memories. They are not harmed. Their memories are otherwise preserved, but we can not allow anyone to leave with memory of us or Atalantium. In this way, we have protected Atalantium from detection for all time."
"Selective?" she said faintly, feeling more than a little ill as clumsy attempts at brainwashing flooded her mind.
Eros frowned. "It is nothing like that. The brain is a recording device. It is a delicate instrument, but it is still much like any other recording device invented. We simply probe the mind with our own, discover the memories and replace them, or alter them to protect our way of life."
"And this is what they plan for me?" she demanded, both frightened and angry, although she wasn’t entirely certain why. In truth, there was safety in it for her. If they didn’t have to worry about her telling anyone, there would be no reason to kill her. They could let her go. She wasn’t as convinced as she would like that it was neither painful or extensively destructive. She didn’t want to be a vegetable—and beyond that, she wasn’t sure she wanted to loose everything. If she couldn’t remember Eros once she’d left here, would it take the emotions that went with the memories? Or would it leave her with a haunting emptiness?
He touched her cheek, brushing it with the back of his knuckles. She saw in his eyes that she’d shared her anxieties and her feelings, although she hadn’t meant to. It angered her. "My mind is an open book to you—it’s not right."
"It is not intentional. I can no more not read your thoughts when you are near me than you can not hear when someone speaks."
Her lips tightened. "But I can refuse to hear. I can block the words from my mind, drown them out with my own thoughts."
He sighed. "As I can—but you knew I was probing your mind. I had not expected you would allow me to know anything you did not wish me to."
She pulled away, looking around the room. It was sparsely furnished, but comfortable enough—far more comfortable that the cell where she had been kept. At least there was some privacy—except that she was to share it with Eros.
She thought it a very bad idea.
"You will be safer here."
"Who’ll protect me from you?" she asked tartly.
His lips tightened. "I will do nothing you do not wish me to do. On my honor."
Claire released an irritated sigh. "Maybe you can’t help but play with my mind, but when you take my will, you’ve no way of knowing what I really want."
He grasped her hand and lifted it. Feather light, he brushed a kiss across her palm. Heat instantly traveled from her palm, up her arm and set her heart to a jarring thud. "Did that deprive you of will?"
She licked her lips, but said nothing.
He separated her fingers and took one into his mouth, sucking on it. Claire watched him, mesmerized, feeling her belly clench in response to the moist heat and pressure of his mouth. At once, her skin prickled, seeking stimulation. Her nipples puckered, hardened, thrust against her bra.
"Did that?"
Her mind was so fogged with desire it took her a moment even to understand the question. "It’s not the same," she said a little breathlessly.
"It is exactly the same," he contradicted. "If my touch gives you no pleasure—if you feel no desire for me, then you nee
d only tell me and I will not force my unwelcome touch upon you again," he added huskily as he moved against her once more, breathing deeply of her scent as he nuzzled her throat and neck.
Her mouth dry from her gasping breaths, Claire licked her lips, feeling her eyelids drift closed. "But I don’t want to feel this," she objected.
He nudged her earlobe with his tongue and finally sucked it into his mouth. "Why?" he asked when he released it.
Claire gathered her wits with an effort. Because I don’t trust you. Because I’m afraid of what it will do to me. Because I fear you will hurt me in a way that can never heal.
He rubbed his lips across hers, pressed slow, almost chaste kisses to her lips. By loving you?
By not loving me, she thought despairingly. "By making me think I love you when it’s nothing more than rebound.
He released her abruptly. "This man you called Mark … you loved him?"
She didn’t want to think about Mark, much less talk about him.
Frustrated anger tightened his features. "What is this rebound?"
She sighed, irritated. "Emotional attachment that’s misplaced. It happens when you’re ripped abruptly from a bond with a person you’re tied to emotionally. People tend to attach to the first person that comes along that they find reasonably attractive. Unfortunately, it can’t be trusted as a real emotion. More often than not it’s nothing but self delusion your mind invents to protect your from the pain of separation."
"It is not me you do not trust. It is yourself you do not trust and this man, Mark."
He was angry, but she didn’t care. "I don’t trust you either. I desire you. I’m not going to even try to lie about that. Under other circumstances, maybe I could believe that I could have sex with you and still remain emotionally detached. Right now, I know I’m vulnerable. I know I couldn’t remain detached and I know that’s dangerous for me in more ways than one. I don’t believe that you mean me no harm and even if I did believe that, I don’t want to get emotionally attached to someone I know only wants to use me for his own ends.
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