Atlantis
Liam pointed his dagger at the glowing orange object that stared menacingly up at him, its teeth bared in a snarl. “Stand back, Eric. I’ll kill it. Considering the unbelievable mutants that swarmed here during the demon infestation, we have no idea what this might be.”
The small boy following him edged back and away from the rocks that formed a barrier between the wild grasses and the pounding surf. “Is it a demon, Liam? Are we in danger? Should I go protect the little prince?”
Liam’s lips quirked up in a smile that he quickly suppressed. The youngling hadn’t reached his tenth birthday, and yet his first thought was to protect others. It wouldn’t do to let him think Liam was mocking him.
“I don’t think it’s a demon, but better to take no chances, in case it’s unfriendly magic. It might be a spell-trap, or an evil charm, or–”
“A fruit. It’s actually just a fruit,” said a decidedly feminine and somewhat exasperated-sounding voice. “And if you kill my jack-o’-lantern, I might have to hurt you.”
It was her. Of course it was her. Liam couldn’t believe he hadn’t felt her approach in his nerve endings, or just beneath his skin, where she seemed most often to lodge.
He sheathed the dagger, took a deep breath, and turned to face the most annoying, irritating, and, if he were honest with himself—and he always tried to be, in spite of his family—the most intriguing human he’d ever met.
It didn’t help that she was so godsdamned beautiful.
“Why is your fruit glowing?” he demanded, and immediately felt like a fool. Behind him, little Eric snickered.
“It’s a pumpkin,” Jamie said in a long-suffering voice, her fascinating chocolate brown eyes sparkling with what was no doubt amusement at his expense. “A jack-o’-lantern. A simple and traditional Halloween decoration. We carve interesting things into them and then put candles inside, so they glow and look pretty for Halloween parties.”
She was explaining the fruit, and he knew he should listen, but she was just so damn easy to look at. Silky dark hair fell in careless waves around her face, the ends tipped with a startling purple. Those amazing eyes, set in an arresting face that was all honey-gold skin and kissable red lips.
Kissable?
He scrubbed a hand over his face. He needed to head for the training grounds and go a few rounds with one of the new Poseidon’s Warriors trainees. An hour or two of hard exertion might clear his brain, which had seemed to malfunction whenever he’d been around this woman during the month she’d been on Atlantis.
He looked at her again. That luscious body with curves a man could hold on to, while he . . .
Maybe he’d need three hours at the training grounds.
He shook his head to clear it. What he’d seen as a potential threat wasn’t a demon at all. It was a, what did she call it? A jack-o’-lantern. Liam felt like a fool.
The feeling wasn’t new, which made it all the more grating.
“Inviting humans to Atlantis in such high numbers was a mistake,” he said, putting ice in his tone. “It is nearly impossible to maintain the proper security for the royal family, when hordes of unknown people and their–”
“Fruit?” She smiled sweetly and then pretended to cringe. “Oh, no, protect me, Liam! A flying banana is heading my way!”
Everything in him stilled. She was . . . she was teasing him. He, the son and heir to the worst bunch of petty criminals that Atlantis had probably ever known—the one man that mothers had always hid their daughters from. Now that he was grown, even as one of Poseidon’s warriors and King Conlan’s elite guard, Atlantean women treated him like the low-born trash his family had always been. But this woman—this beautiful, maddening human—was teasing him, and her eyes were sparkling up at him with amusement, not malice.
Liam had learned the difference between the two very well over the course of a lifetime lived in the shadow of his family’s misdeeds.
She was teasing him, and he was in a great deal of trouble, because he wanted to beg her not to stop. He took a step closer, almost involuntarily drawn to her, and her eyes widened. He glanced down at her parted lips and had to force himself not to dip his head and taste them.
“If you like fruit, I can introduce you to Atlantean blushberries,” he murmured, for her ears only, although he could see that Eric had become bored and was wading in the surf a dozen paces away. “I’ve heard that they have certain aphrodisiacal properties, when consumed with the right wine.”
Jamie’s breath seemed to stutter as she looked up at him; both of them frozen in the moment. She put a hand up as if to touch his chest, but then hastily shoved it in the pocket of her pants. “As if you’d need aphrodisiacs, looking like that,” she muttered.
He started laughing before he even realized he was doing it. “So you like how I look? I can assure you, the feeling is mutual.”
She backed up a pace, shaking her head. Her hair swept her shoulders in a flurry of chestnut and purple waves that he wanted to touch. Wanted to see spread over his sheets.
Jamie raised a hand to her mouth. He was suddenly struck by a twinge of jealousy that it was her fingers touching her lips, not his, and he realized he was quite possibly losing his mind right here in front of the fruit.
“Your eyes are glowing, Liam,” she whispered. “That can’t be good.”