Read Warriors of Poseidon 01 - Atlantis Rising for Free Online Page B

flesh off their bodies.
     
    Maybe being tortured for so long would turn anybody into a sick, twisted bastard. Even the so-called next ruler of Atlantis.
     
    A little logic might help. Use some of that much-vaunted Atlantean warrior training.
     
    Yeah, logic. Logic dictated that he study his own reactions.
     
    Logic counseled prudence.
     
    She started to edge away from him.
     
    Fuck logic.
    Atlantis Rising – Warriors of Poseidon 01
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    He tried on a royal command for size. Come closer to me, woman. I have a need to see the face of one who bids me not to harm those who threaten her. Are you compassionate or merely a fool?
     
    She tossed her head, long and tousled hair flying through the air, and something low in his body tightened. She ignored his mental query and his command and stood her ground. "Who are you, and how are you in my mind? You can quit with the ordering me around thing, too, buster. I know self-defense. I would have been fine."
     
    Her voice. It was lyrical, sensuous, music lilting into his ears and resonating through his body. Playing him like delicate fingers on the strings of a harp. His body tightened, straining.
     
    Her body quivered with indignation, yet the emotion she still broadcast confessed the truth. She knew they would have put a big, bad hurt on her.
     
    The emotion. Somehow, he kept losing track of the unexpected, unprecedented, unbe-fucking-lievable fact that she was broadcasting emotion. She knew she would have been seriously harmed if he hadn't been there—he actually felt the knowledge and, with it, her residual fear and sorrow.
     
    She sighed, and her body slumped. "I'm… sorry. I should be thanking you. Whoever—or whatever—you are, you saved me from those men. Thank you."
     
    Then she raised her head and peered at him. "You're not going to drink my blood or rip my arms off, now, are you? Because my day has really sucked, and I'm so not up for that," she said, suspicion ringing in her tone.
     
    Atlantis Rising – Warriors of Poseidon 01
    Page 45 of 351
    He blinked, bewildered by her apparent inability to carry on a logical conversation. He figured he'd try using simple sentences and speaking out loud. Maybe terror turned human women into babbling idiots.
     
    Slowly, carefully choosing his words, he tried to explain. "I am not the undead, nor a shifter of shape to animal form. I am… other. You are entirely safe with me, aknasha."
     
    She planted her hands on her hips and stared at him. "You keep calling me that. What does it mean? What does 'other' mean? And why do you talk like you walked out of an old-time fairy-tale book?"
     
    As he considered how to answer her, the bank of clouds overhead finally passed beyond the edge of the moon. The shimmer of moonlight on her features plowed a wave of sensation right through his gut. Nobody could be that beautiful.
     
    He almost laughed. She'd been talking about fairy tales, and she looked like she'd stepped out of the pages of one. Her face shone with the perfection of a Nereid. The silvery light barely illuminated the red-gold waves that must burn like fire in the sunshine. Her eyes…
     
    Not possible. No human has eyes like that.
     
    "They're cerulean," he said aloud, unthinking: "Your eyes."
     
    Cerulean. The color of the royal house of Atlantis.
     
    His color.
     
    "They—my mother had eyes this shade of deep blue," she whispered, one hand reaching up to touch her face.
     
    Atlantis Rising – Warriors of Poseidon 01
    Page 46 of 351
    Conlan caught his breath, feeling her pain. Something about her mother—
    "She's gone," he murmured. Somehow he knew it. Felt it. He couldn't understand the pull—as if the magnetic draw of the moon to the tides had infused him. He wanted to touch her.
     
    He needed to touch her.
     
    Almost without thought, he reached out to her face with his fingertips. She trembled, but didn't move away, so he dared to caress the curve of her silken cheek with trembling fingers.