Heart Of Atlantis by Alyssa Day Page B

head, as if considering her options. “Just stay there,” she advised. Then she turned and walked away from him until she was about twenty feet from the surf line, where she sat down and stared out at the waves.
    He waited another few minutes before he stood up. Just in case.
    Clearly, he wasn’t the only one on the beach who was balancing on the crumbling edge of sanity. He’d gone mad when he’d believed her to have been kidnapped or worse. Now that he knew she was safe, she could kick water on him all day long. He smiled again, and sent a fervent prayer to whatever gods were listening—although quite pointedly
not
to Poseidon—that he could continue to keep her safe.
    No matter what the cost.

    As the sun rose over the horizon, Quinn stared out at the waves and tried to let the beauty and serenity of the island sweep through her. The pure, salty scent of the ocean surrounded her as the breeze of the water played with the damp ends of her hair. The gentle roar of the tide all but demanded that she relax and let nature’s peace calm her raging thoughts. She could pretend she was on a vacation. Tourists would pay a fortune to visit this unspoiled beach, and it was all hers.
    Well. All hers, if she didn’t count
him
.
    She was trying to ignore him.
That
would teach him. Probably nobody ever ignored Alaric, Mr. High Priest Arrogant Son of a . . . Actually, she didn’t know whose son he was. She didn’t know anything about his family. Did Atlantean high priests even have mothers? Did they spring, full-grown, from some kind of whale egg?
    It would never work between them. Yes, they had some insane animal attraction between them, but what did they even know about each other? She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and then almost laughed as the most terrifying warrior and most powerful magic-wielder she’d ever known sat in the water, waiting for her permission to stand up. She counted down under her breath, “. . . three, two—”
    He stood up before she got to one, as expected, and it ticked her off even more that he rose up out of the water with his usual elegance. Alaric moved with the grace of a predator stalking prey, and too often lately she’d felt like the bunny rabbit to his wolf. His natural arrogance and belief he was in charge of every situation and every person he encountered wouldn’t allow him to understand her: her fear of losing herself to his dominating nature; her fear that if she gave in, even once, to passion with him, she’d never be able to resist him again.
    As he walked out of the water and onto dry sand, a brief shimmer of blue-green magic glowed around him. When the light dissipated, his clothes were completely dry. She wished she knew how to perform that handy trick, since her jeans were soaked and sand was sticking to them.
    Alaric waved a hand in her direction, and her clothes also dried in a shimmer of light, as if he’d been reading her mind again. She didn’t like it. Not one bit.
    She pitched her voice to carry over the crashing surf. “Can you read my mind?”
    He raised one dark eyebrow and smiled. “No, I have told you I cannot. It does not take thought-mining to anticipate that you would wish to be dry, however.”
    “Right. Can you guess what I’m thinking now?” she asked sweetly, as he approached.
What lovely broad shoulders you have
,
she thought, and then felt her face burning.
    He studied her face, and his smile slowly faded. “Ah. I cannot imagine it is anything complimentary.”
    She forced her mind back to the issue at hand, and away from how well his hard-muscled body filled out his clothes. “Let’s talk about how you might have gotten some of those people in the cars back there killed.”
    “I would rather discuss kissing you,” he said solemnly, and she nearly laughed but fought it down.
    “This isn’t funny.”
    “No, it isn’t funny.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “You are right. I could have caused people to die. This