Joy threatened to knock his legs out from under him; fear that he would lose her iced his heart. How could emotion carry such powerful yet equally opposing forces?

"We have to go back," Tiernan said, pulling out of his arms. "We're so close. We have to go back and discover what they're up to. I can't lose this. Not now, when I've worked so hard for so long."

"Not a chance in the nine hells," he said flatly. "I forbid it."

They stood in the palace garden with Alexios and Grace, the sweet fragrance of the flowers surrounding them an eerie contradiction to the danger they'd just escaped.

She planted her hands on her hips and glared at him. "Are we back to that again? You have no right to forbid or allow me to do anything. If you don't want to go back, that's fine, but I'm definitely going back to that conference as soon as you can magic me out of here."

Grace sank down on an ornate wrought-iron bench, sighing as if she were exhausted or in pain. "It's dangerous, Tiernan. They're sure to know something is up now after three of their goons disappeared. Vampire goons, even. Luckily, dead vamps dissolve, so there are no bodies lying around to give them a clue."

Brennan was surprised to hear Grace agreeing with him. She was a warrior through and through. She was holding her hand over her abdomen again, though.

"Are you ill? Or injured?"

She looked up at him, startled, and then followed his gaze down. A peculiar expression passed over her face, and Brennan turned, only to see an echo of that odd look on Alexios's face.

"How far along are you?" Tiernan asked, smiling.

Grace bit her lip, then shrugged. "It was bound to come out sooner or later," she said, smiling up at Alexios, who was now standing behind her, massaging her shoulders.

It took Brennan another couple of seconds to catch up, but then an enormous smile spread over his face. "With child? You are with child?"

Alexios nodded, pride and happiness fairly bursting from him. "We are. We haven't told anyone, yet, but-"

"But we're glad you're the first to know," Grace said. "We were hoping you'd stand in as one of her godparents."

Brennan threw back his head and whooped, then leapt over the bench, threw his arms around Alexios, and pounded him on the back. Alexios returned the gesture with a quick, fierce embrace.

"My friend," Brennan said, finally understanding the depth of feeling behind that word. "May life bring nothing but joy to you, your woman, and your child."

They clasped arms, and Brennan saw the mixture of happiness and concern in Alexios's eyes.

"You feel it, don't you?" Alexios asked. "You finally feel."

Brennan nodded, a simple motion of his head. His heart was too full to allow words to escape. He avoided the issue with the simple solution of rounding the bench to kneel before Grace.

"Welcome, my sister," he said, taking her hand in his. "I thank you for the joy you have brought to Alexios."

Grace smiled at him, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. "It's wonderful to see you able to feel happy for us, Brennan." She put a hand on his arm. "We'll figure this out, okay? The curse stuff? I am not a descendant of Diana for nothing. One dedicated to a god should be able to help out another, right?"

Tiernan made a small sound behind him, and Brennan glanced back and up at her to see that she was also fighting tears. He stood up and took her hands in his. "Why are you crying, mi amara?"

"I'm not crying," she said, blinking rapidly. "Something in my eyes."

She shoved her hands in her pockets. "Congratulations on the baby news," she told Grace. "That's wonderful, and I completely understand why you don't want to risk putting yourself in danger. But I've got to go back, dangerous or not, don't you see that?"

Grace sighed. "I see it. I'd do the same thing in your position, and I don't even know your reasons, but I'm guessing they're pretty important to you."

Tiernan nodded. "More important than I can explain, especially now. It's late, and I'm exhausted. You definitely need to get your rest, for the baby. So maybe you could show me to a guest room?" She pointedly addressed the question to Alexios, and a savage heat flashed through Brennan.

"I will take you to my room, and you will sleep in my bed," he growled. "Do not ask another for assistance."

Before she could respond, probably to flay him with her tongue, judging from the look of the sparks flashing dangerously in those dark eyes, he firmly grasped her arm and started walking toward the palace door, all but dragging her behind him.

"Brennan," Alexios called out. "Be advised that you will pay for treating her like this. I'm telling you this from experience."

He heard Grace laugh, or thought he did, but Tiernan's low, furious cursing drowned out everything else.

"I am surprised that you even know this vocabulary," he muttered, shoving open the doors and pulling her across the entryway without pausing.

"If you don't slow down and quit dragging me along like this, you're going to find out all sorts of things I know, like how to ram my knee into your-"

He cut her off by the simplest method he knew: he stopped and swept her up into his arms and then kept going, striding toward his rooms in the palace, a fierce determination burning through him.

She didn't struggle, but the glare she pinned him with could have melted Atlantean sea glass. "You don't know me at all if you think you can get away with this."

He stopped in front of the door to his rooms, threw it open, still carrying her, then slammed it shut with his foot. Crossing the room in a few short strides, he tossed her on the bed and then pounced on her, covering her body with his own before she could move.

"I don't know you?" He bared his teeth in something that wasn't at all a smile. "I can still taste the sweet honey of your body on my tongue, mi amara."

He nudged her legs open with his knee and settled his weight onto the sweet, lush curves of her body, clenching his teeth together to keep from moaning with the primal need to strip her bare and take her.

She gasped at the feel of his hard, heavy cock when he pressed it between her thighs and her eyes went wild and unfocused.

"Do you feel that? That is how much I know you and want you and need you."

He took her mouth in a kiss that was just short of savage, the red haze of fury behind his eyes fading only when she responded to him-when she kissed him back.

The kiss went on forever; for an eternity. It was about possession more than pleasure, but which one of them was possessing the other he did not know. Maybe each of them was both possessor and claimed.

Finally he forced himself to pull away, when it was clear that if he touched her for one second longer, he'd tear her clothes from her and take her-make her his by force-like the animal he would never, ever allow himself to become. He threw himself away from her and rolled up to sit on the edge of the bed, his heart pounding in his chest and his breath coming in harsh, rasping heaves.

"You cannot put yourself in danger, Tiernan. You cannot go back into that situation with the scientists who could do vicious, inhuman things to your brain. You are the most courageous woman I have ever known, but I will not let you do this. It's madness, and it's suicide."

She was silent so long he began to fear she would never speak to him again, and then finally she rolled over and put a tentative hand on his back. "I have to do it, Brennan. This is my mission, or my warrior's duty, or however you want to think of it. I have to do it, and I wish you'd help me, but I understand if you don't want to risk it."

He laughed, and the laughter felt as though it were acid, ripped from his chest by an angry god. "Not want to? I would follow you through each level of the nine hells, for only the gift of a smile. If you must do this, I will be by your side all the way. But if you care for me at all, let me fulfill your mission, while you stay here safely in Atlantis."

She jumped up out of the bed and walked around until she could see his face. "Brennan? Even if I didn't owe this to Susannah, I wouldn't let you do it alone. Remember the curse? If I let you go-even if I wanted to let you go alone, which I don't-you'll forget me, and then what? Go through all this with the emotions again when you next see me? How could you bear it?"

His hand shot out and captured her wrist, and he slowly pulled her toward him, until he could lean forward and press his face into the softness of her belly. After a couple of seconds, she put her hands in his hair and caressed his head in a gentle, soothing motion that made him want to remain in exactly that position for the next year or so of his life.

But wishes were not seahorses, or sea nymphs would indeed ride, as the saying went. So he raised his head and stared up into her drowning gaze.

"I will give you up," he said, each word a stake through his own heart, as though he, too, were a vampire. "I will never bother you again, or have anything to do with you, if you will promise to stay safe."

A shadow of something he could not define crossed behind her eyes, and she pulled away from him yet again. "Would that be so easy to do? Give me up?" Her voice was a challenge and, though he thought she herself didn't realize it, a plea.

"I have never done anything in two thousand years that has been even a fraction as difficult," he said quietly. "I would prefer death by torture to the mere idea of allowing you to walk into danger. What good are these emotions anyway, that slice my soul to ribbons at the thought of losing you?"

He abruptly stood, weary of the futile discussion, and gestured toward the doorway to his bathroom. "We should shower. And rest."

She attempted a smile, but it did not reach her eyes. "Sleep now, leave all questions of death, torture, and death-defying activities until the morning?"

"Exactly."

"I can do that." She headed toward the bathroom, but not before he'd realized one crucial fact: to fulfill the terms of the curse, he would be forced to watch her bathe.

To fulfill the terms of his own honor, he'd be forced to restrain himself from touching her.

The concept of torture suddenly gained raw and jagged edges.

Chapter 17.

Tiernan realized the difficulty as soon as she stumbled to a halt in front of the glass wall of Brennan's enormous shower. The bathroom itself was so gorgeous it belonged in a decorating magazine; all gold-veined white marble and thick, sparkling glass. Was there an Atlantean Home Journal?

She smiled a little as the exhaustion-induced stupid rambling went on in her tumbling thoughts for a bit. Thinking about how incredibly beautiful the palace was in every way was a simple defense mechanism.

It kept her from thinking about how beautiful Brennan was.

Even now, as he silently pointed to the marble tub with its gold-and-silver faucets, raising a single eyebrow, something about his large, powerful presence made the oversized room seem just a little bit smaller. Just a little bit more intimate.

Both of them could fit in that tub . . .

"No," she said quickly, both to herself and to his unspoken question. "The shower is good enough. I'd fall asleep and drown in a tub right now."

A flash of something predatory crossed his face, but it was gone almost before she saw it, and he simply nodded and did something with a complex system of weights and levers in the shower. A rainfall of water immediately misted into being, water coming from all directions, showering forth from hidden spouts. She could feel the warmth and steam even from where she stood, a few feet from the opening.

"I cannot leave," he said, his voice low and hesitant. "The curse . . ."

She nodded, too tired to argue about it. He'd seen her naked in the woods, after all. A warm flush climbed up her neck and face at the memory. He'd done far more than see her.

"If you'd just turn around," she finally said. "Until I get in there. I'd appreciate it."

He turned immediately, but something in the tense way he held his shoulders told her plainer than any words could how very difficult all this was for him. She'd felt the sheer, primal force of his fierce arousal, both in the forest, earlier, and on the bed just moments before. But he'd held back, both times.

He'd held back. She hadn't. She'd been sort of a shameless hussy.

She grinned at the outdated phrase and the notion of it fitting her, of all people, as she made quick work of stripping out of her clothes and quickly stepping into the shower. She resisted the automatic moan of pure, hedonistic delight when the wonderfully powerful spray hit her body from all directions.

All directions. Her eyes widened when she turned a little to lift her hair off of her neck and one stream of water happened to strike very sensitive flesh. Oh, boy, this shower could be a lonely single girl's best friend. Her gaze immediately went to Brennan, because it wasn't a pulsating shower jet she wanted between her legs.

It was him. All of him. Every hard, hot inch that she'd felt between her thighs when he'd captured her on that giant, soft, made-for-wild-passionate-nights bed. A hot blush rose from her breasts and swept up her neck and face to her hairline, and she silently offered a thank-you that he wasn't watching her right then.

But when he turned around to see her because of the curse, and caught her staring at him like a lust-struck idiot . . . She hurriedly reached for the intriguing glass bottles on the shelf. Shampoo and soap. That's what she needed.

That's all she needed.

Brennan tried his best, he really did; he'd be prepared to argue before the highest Atlantean court his case that he'd given it his best efforts to keep from looking at her as long as he could. However, when the sound of bath oils being uncorked came to his ears, at the same time that the edges of his grasp of Tiernan's reality grew hazy in his mind, he was forced to turn around and catch a single glimpse of her.

It was almost a hardship, really. His conscience scoffed.

His breath dried in his mouth and all of the air in the room vanished, replaced with longing, need, and desire. She was turned slightly away from him, so that she didn't see him watching her, and as he stood, entranced, she raised her arms to wash her lovely dark hair. He inhaled sharply as the iridescent mass of bubbles formed and then sluiced away in the multiple streams of the shower, leaving her hair and body glistening, covered with drops of water.

He'd never been jealous of drops of water before.

He wanted to lick each one of them off her body, one at a time.

His body was shaking with need, and his cock strained against his pants so hard it hurt him. He was aroused beyond anything he'd ever known, just from the sight of the curve of her back and hip, down to her firm, round ass. He caught a glimpse of the silken shadow between her legs as she turned, and he was suddenly urgently, fiercely sure that he'd never wanted anything in his life as much as he wanted to go to her, stripping his own clothes off as he went, and plunge his cock into her so deeply that she'd cry out his name.

Instead, he turned around. Turned away.

All heroic sacrifices did not involve weapons and battle and death. Some were about a beautiful human woman standing in a shower.

Several minutes later, during which he'd taken only two quick glances when he felt the curse snaking around the edges of his mind, she finally called his name.

"Brennan? I'm done and wrapped up in these wonderful towels. I don't know how to turn off the shower, or if you wanted to-"

"Oh, by the gods, how I want to," he growled, then he turned and pounced on her, yanked her off her feet, and kissed her, fast, furious, almost bruising. "But I won't." He released her and, tearing at his clothes, stepped into the shower, throwing shirt and pants and boots against the far wall with, at least in the case of the boots, satisfying thunks.

She sighed loudly, and he heard it even over the roar of the shower and the pounding of so much blood in his skull. "I'm too tired right now, or we'd have a little chat. Do you have spare clothes?"

He pointed to the cabinet under his sink, then squeezed his eyes shut, so he wasn't tempted to see her bend over. The towel was long, but, still . . .

"I have several sets of sparring clothes under there. They'll be too big, but they're soft enough to sleep in."

"Thank you."

When he was forced to open his eyes to see her, for fear of the results of the curse, she was dressed in a soft gray sparring outfit, and the sight of her wearing his clothes sent a spear of fierce possession thundering through him.

She was his, and he would keep her safe, even if it had to be in spite of herself.

He had no choice.

"I'll just lean here, okay?" she called out, leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes. Every line of her body drooped with exhaustion and he hurried his bathing so he could put her to bed.

His bed.

She would be in his bed, and he would have to somehow, by all the gods, refrain from touching her.

He caught the groan before it escaped, and with a quick glance at her, still resting against the wall, he turned so that his back was to her, in case she should look up. With a fierce, practiced stroke, he pumped his cock once, then twice, in a painfully necessary attempt to take some of the edge off his need before he had to share a bed with her.