Atlantis Redeemed by Alyssa Day Page B

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