Teasing on Tuesday

When Tiernan meets Brennan again, from ATLANTIS REDEEMED:

The fog coalesced into a sparkling, shimmering shape—a large and broad shape—the shape of a man. The golden light from the lamps reflected off of tiny particles in the water, projecting a cascade of mini-rainbows across every flat surface in a brilliant light show. Then the cloud of mist exploded outward as if triumphantly hailing the man who stepped from it.

The man. The man who, mere seconds before, had been nothing but a cloud. A fog.

The man who now stood in the center of her hotel room, breathing hard, staring at her with his ice-green eyes.

Except they weren’t as icy as she remembered. No, this man’s eyes were pure green fire, and every inch of her skin burned as the heat of his gaze swept her from head to toe and then back, lingering on her neck.

“Brennan?” His name came out in a whisper, but he snapped his head up and stared straight into her eyes when she spoke. A brief whisper of danger sent a chill down her spine, and her senses translated the deadly stillness in his pose as that of a feral animal crouching to leap.

Feral and primitive. Wild and beautiful. His silky black hair fell in waves around a face that would cause the highest paid male model to weep with jealousy. Pure masculine beauty, with dark brows over those amazing green eyes. The cheekbones and bone structure all the Atlanteans she’d met had shared, as if they alone had posed for the most sublime of the ancient Greek statues. And his mouth . . . oh, his mouth. How could a simple combination of lips and teeth make her wonder what it would be like to taste him?

As reality crumpled around her, some vestige of control snapped into place and Tiernan managed to force words from her suddenly dust-dry throat. “I’m guessing I missed a pretty spectacular entrance back in Boston when I was hiding behind that couch? I had wondered how you guys busted through that window so high off the ground, but I was more thinking ropes coming down from the roof.”

He took a single step toward her, then another, his large, muscled body leaning forward as if he were stalking her. “He dared to touch you,” he growled, the words nearly unintelligible. “He put his mouth on you. I will kill him.”

She backed away but the motion seemed to infuriate him even further, because he dove across the several feet separating them as if he really were that wild animal leaping for its prey.

“Brennan, stop! I don’t know what this is about, but you need to calm down so we can--" Memories of his crazed wildness the first time he’d seen her flashed into her mind, shutting down her powers of speech as he took the final step and slammed his hands flat against the wall on either side of her head, caging her against his body.

He wasn’t going to listen to her. She was in danger. Rick had been right, she should have listened, but no, she had to be tough and now for the second time in an hour she was facing a predator.

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to be prey for a vampire or anybody else,” she shouted, shoving at his chest as he leaned further toward her. It was like shoving a brick wall. A hot, hard, brick wall, that smelled like salt and sea and man.

He froze in place, then tilted his head to one side, pinning her with a long, considering stare. “Not his prey,” he finally said, his deep voice sizzling across her nerve endings.

She caught her breath, but before she could speak he lifted one hand from the wall to touch the side of her face.

“Not his prey,” he repeated, bending his face down to hers. “Mine.”

from ATLANTIS REDEEMED, coming February, 2010