Oceanborne (5 page)

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Authors: Katherine Irons

Tags: #Romance, #Paranormal, #Fantasy

BOOK: Oceanborne
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Elena nodded and continued the translation.
“I discovered my lover in his bed,
And my heart overflowed with sweetness.”
Orion nodded. “Close enough.” Why hadn't she picked an oil merchant's inventory to translate? Hearing love songs read from such kissable lips was intoxicating. Still on her knees, she was close, too close, close enough for him to feel her breath on his bare thighs.
“But New Kingdom? Why are these tablets here with the Linear B?” she demanded. “The time isn't right. They can't be genuine.”
He dropped to his knees beside her. “They're real, all right. But not original poetry. Plagiarized from an earlier civilization.”
“No,” she insisted. “You're wrong about that. “It's Egyptian.
Love Songs of the New Kingdom
. Do you have any idea how old that is? We're talking 1200, maybe 1500 B.C.E. Fully documented by—”
“Plagiarism,” he repeated. “Originally composed by—” He broke off, unwilling to cloud the waters by giving the name of the twelfth-dynasty Atlantean court poet who had written the love song in honor of the king's royal marriage. “An earlier civilization,” he finished.
She glanced at him again. “Tell me the truth. They aren't genuine, are they? You're not an antiquities thief; you're a dealer in fakes.” She stood and dusted her hands off on her jeans. “If these tablets had been discovered in the early nineteenth century, they'd be the centerpiece in a world-class museum, not left here for any lobster fisherman to discover and cart off.”
Elena's tone left no doubt in Orion's mind as to what she thought of him, and he felt a punch of embarrassment in his vitals. His desire deflated as he attempted to defend himself.
“No, I wouldn't do that. These are real. I'm not sure why Jones didn't retrieve them, but the photographs exist. I believe his ill health kept him from returning to the site, and when he died …”
She sniffed. “But
you
knew where they were.” She shook her head. “I'm not the fool you've obviously taken me for. Your charade is over, Mr. Xenos. You'll be lucky if you're not spending the next ten years in a Greek prison.”
Orion raised his hands, palm out, and stepped back. She certainly had a way of throwing cold water on his plans for a romantic afternoon. The woman was a shrew. What he'd seen in her and why he'd bothered to show her these treasures was beyond him.
“You think these are fakes?”
“I do. You probably have a little workshop in Athens where your associates turn out statutes of Athena and—”
“Enough,” he said. He went to a shelf and pulled out a rough sandstone slab no larger than his two hands held together. “Look at this. What you call Linear A. It's an account of the king's expedition to—”
She made a sound of disgust. “The more you say, the deeper you dig yourself into the swamp,” she said. “Linear A has never been translated, and I doubt that you're the first scholar to do so. And having achieved the feat, you don't tell anyone. You keep this bit of knowledge to yourself. Hardly! These must be fakes.” She turned away, unwilling to even examine the precious carving. “I appreciate the opportunity to see this structure, but I think it's time we returned to the beach.”
“I doubt if the storm is over yet. It was pretty damp up there.”
“I'm tough. Let's go, or shall I find the staircase myself?”
“What would it take for you to believe me?”
Elena shook her head. “Sorry. Once you lose credibility with me, you're done for.”
He wasn't ready to give up. If he could take her into the sea, there was another place not far from here where the remains of a wall jutted up from the ocean floor. That wall contained inscriptions in Linear B and in Atlantean. But he wasn't sure that the shades had left. They might be lying in wait off the beach, hoping that he and the woman would leave the relative safety of the land.
But she wasn't done. She had to zing him one more time. “You really disappoint me, Orion,” she said. “I knew you were some sort of scoundrel, but I didn't take you for stupid, as well.” She pushed past him, moving toward the place where they'd entered the outer hall.
“Wait,” he said, trying to hold back his anger.
She stopped, spun back to face him, and gave him a rude gesture involving the movement of a particular finger on her right hand. “Go to hell, Orion!”
That was when he lost control.
CHAPTER 5
E
lena was fast, but Orion was faster. Her pulse raced as she heard his bare feet striking the floor behind her. Her survival instinct went into overdrive, and when he grabbed hold of her, she whirled on him, ready for a fight. If Orion wanted to play rough, she was fully prepared to put him down, driving a fist into his Adam's apple, followed by a sharp knee-thrust to his groin.
But, to her surprise, when his fingers tightened on her arm, the message she received wasn't violence, but something entirely different. Orion's touch wasn't that of an assailant, but of a familiar lover. Odder still, her reaction was a powerful flood of sexual arousal. And when he pulled her into his embrace and covered her mouth with his, she could have sworn she heard violins.
She'd once gotten the best of a mugger on the Paris subway, and she'd been waylaid by two camp cooks on a site near the Aswan Dam. Both times, her self-defense skills were up to the task. She'd walked away unscathed, while the men who'd believed she was an easy target learned a lesson in manners. But this time, with this man, she found herself helpless in the face of his seduction.
“Elena.”
Her name on his lips raised goose bumps on her arms as tension sparked between them, and the raw desire in his green eyes made her breath catch in her throat. Her heightened senses were assaulted on all sides. Not only did she hear the strains of a love song, but the air smelled of mountain waterfalls and tropical flowers.
“Elena.”
She gasped, opened her mouth to protest, and tilted her face to receive his kiss.
It was electric.
She'd been kissed before. She'd been kissed by boys since she was nine years old, but she'd never felt the ground shift under her feet or had her insides melt to warm Jell-O. And she'd never felt heat flash through her veins or her bones feel as though they'd turned to liquid.
Orion kissed her lips, her eyelids, and her throat. Giddily, she sagged against him, clasping his face between her hands, and kissing him back with equal abandon. The thought that he was a thief and a scoundrel flicked across her mind, but she was beyond caring. All that was important was touching him … having him touch her. Arms and legs entangled, they sank down, not onto the cold stone floor as she expected, but onto a luxurious bed of furs.
I must be hallucinating
, she thought, but undercurrents of delicious sensations overwhelmed her and shattered her resolve. Romantic images tumbled in her mind: apple orchards in bloom, moonlit beaches, Tuscan ruins, and a covered bridge she'd once walked over in Vermont.
I must be losing my mind!
Orion kissed her mouth again, and she melted against him. She parted her lips, taking him in, thrilling to the sensation of tongues caressing, of the taste of him. Vaguely, she was aware of him whispering sweet words in her ear, love words that thrilled her in a language that she'd never heard before. And although she didn't understand a single fragment, tears of joy welled in her eyes.
She nipped at the wide expanse of his muscular bare chest, tonguing his skin, savoring the salty-male taste of him, inhaling his scent. Her breath came in quick gasps, and she could feel an urgent tension building in the pit of her stomach. They didn't speak. What she felt was too great for words.
When Orion slipped a big hand under her tee and gently cupped her breast, she groaned with pleasure. And when he bent to kiss her nipple through the thin material, her cleft grew moist and throbbing. She yanked the top over her head, wanting to feel his mouth on her skin.
This time, his caress was slow and teasing. His lips closed over her swollen nipple and his warm tongue laved and then suckled until her need became an exquisite agony. And all the while, he kept stroking her, tracing the curve of her back and buttocks, rubbing and caressing, bringing her to an intense state of need.
His touch was at once tender and demanding, and she craved it as an addict craves the object of his addiction. She could feel her body responding, her breasts growing taut and sensitive, the heat rising in her core. This was madness. Sobbing with unfulfilled need, she rolled onto her back, pulling him on top of her.
She could feel the hard length of his huge erection pressing against her, and she dug her nails into his back. “Please … please …” she begged. Her breath came in hard, quick gasps, and the heat of his body burned like a smoldering brand. “Yes. Yes.” She sobbed with emotion, and reached up to tighten her arms around his neck.
“Elena …” He fumbled with the button on her jeans. He was hard and hot and ready for her, bigger than any man she'd ever known. His erect shaft bulged beneath the red trunks. All she could think of was the feel of his body against hers. She had to have him deep inside her.
“Elena,” he whispered. “Do you—”
“Yes, yes,” she cried. “Now, I want you now!”
“Not yet.” He rolled off her and onto the heaped furs before kissing the hollow of her throat, her mouth, and her breasts again, all the while touching and stroking her body.
She had believed that she was at the peak of her excitement, but Orion Xenos knew a few tricks that she hadn't experienced before. She tangled her fingers in his hair and groaned again as his hot, damp kisses moved slowly down over her breasts and belly to linger and caress her inner thighs. She arched her back and closed her eyes when his seeking tongue probed the folds of her cleft.
She was wet and slippery … Muscles in her groin contracted, throbbing with desire, her slick passage opening and closing like a tight fist. Elena moaned as she tossed her head from side to side, losing all reason in this all-consuming drive to have him fill her, to have him drive into her hard, over and over, until she climaxed and found the physical release she needed so desperately. “Now,” she pleaded. “I want you now.”
“I can't …” she whimpered. “I'll …”
But then he nuzzled her inner folds apart and thrust his hot tongue inside, she experienced a climax so intense that wave after wave of pleasure rocked her and she cried out. He rose on his knees and gathered her sobbing into his arms. He held her, rocking her against him, cradling her, kissing her hair, her face, her bare shoulders, and murmuring her name over and over.
“I want … I want …” she whispered. “I want you.” She ached for him, needed to feel every inch of him.
“And I want you,” he answered, gently pushing her back against the furs and covering her with his beautiful body. He pressed against her, touching and stroking until she felt the throbbing heat growing once more.
“Now!” she insisted. “Now!” She closed her hand around his shaft, savoring the smooth texture and swollen head of his enormous sex. He groaned, and she felt him nudge her quivering folds.
“Are you certain you want this?” he asked. “Of your free will?”
“Yes,” she cried. “I do. I want you.” She arched against him and opened for his first thrust.
 
“Can't reach her? What do you mean they don't know where she is?” Greg Hamilton's voice rose above the drone of the motors. His boyish features hardened as his shoulders tensed and he drew himself upright in the leather seat. “Keep trying and let me know as soon as you reach her.” He ended the call and reached for his drink. Finding the glass empty, he called for Michelle to bring him a refill.
“Would you like an early supper?” she asked. “I have a nice prime rib and—”
“Just the Scotch. I'm not in the mood for eating.” He turned to the window, curbing his impatience, biting back the retort
, “If I'd wanted dinner, I would have said so.
” Michelle was too good an employee to piss off because Elena had pulled another of her vanishing tricks. Not only was Michelle a top-notch secretary who could double as a flight attendant when he or his father flew, but she had the tits and ass that would stop a clock.
His father had found her dancing in a strip bar in Austin six years ago and been so impressed that he'd paid for her college degree on the condition that she come to work for him after graduation. Michelle had taken him up on it. Greg suspected that his father had been extracting perks for some time, though; so, as attractive as he found her, he did nothing about it. He didn't like sloppy seconds.
He accepted the single malt Scotch on ice, thanked her, and sipped it slowly as he stared out at the heavy clouds that enveloped the plane in a gray fog. At least he didn't have to make the effort of being sociable. He was the only passenger in the newest of the company's private jets, flying nonstop from Houston to Athens.
He checked his I-Phone again to see if Elena had e-mailed him or attempted to call. Nothing.
Where the hell had she gotten to, now?
He'd made a point of telling her that he had only twenty-four hours of leisure in Athens before he was expected onboard the ship. He'd thought she was looking forward to an evening of hitting the tavernas and nightspots as much as he was.
It was times like this that he wondered why he hadn't given up on Elena Carter and moved on to one of the many young women of Houston society that his mother was constantly pushing on him. As the only son and heir to the Hamilton enterprises, he was expected to marry and produce at least one legitimate male offspring before he turned forty. Elena definitely wasn't Mom's first choice, but so long as she was Caucasian, educated, and knew a seafood fork from an oyster knife, his father was satisfied.
Greg had been planning on popping the question. He liked to think that he had picked her because it made good business sense. Elena's fluency in languages and her European connections would be of immense help in securing the natural gas leases Hamilton Energy needed to be a player on the world stage. The fact that marrying Elena would send his mother on a three-day bender was a plus. No two women could be so totally different. His mother's career had been finding the right man to provide her with the finer things in life and allow her to maintain a premier position in Houston society.
As far as he was concerned, Elena had the goods. Not only was she hot in bed, she could hold her own at a turkey shoot or at a cocktail party. Although she hadn't inherited a fortune from her father, Elena wasn't impressed with his money or background, and she wouldn't expect him to spend the next twelve months picking out silver patterns and wedding caterers.
Elena lived in her own scholarly world of two-thousand-year-old sunken ships and dusty libraries. Theirs could be a civilized twenty-first century marriage where he could continue to live his life the way he liked, and Elena could keep the home fires burning and raise a handful of redcheeked cherubs to keep his parents amused and out of his hair.
He drained the last drops of twenty-five year Macallan and thought about having another. Instead, he tried Elena's cell again, but all he got was the same “This number is currently not available.” Greg glanced at his watch. There was still time to catch a few hours of sleep before they reached Athens' airspace, but he wasn't in the mood for sleeping. He reached for his laptop and began to go over the last reports on the new drilling site.
Sometime later, Michelle appeared at his seat with a steak, and after the first bite, Greg discovered that he was hungrier than he'd thought. Come to think of it, he had missed lunch and had nothing but coffee and a donut for breakfast. “Could you check the weather for me in Athens again?” he asked.
Michelle, as usual, was all efficient smiles.
Hell, Greg thought. If he couldn't catch up with Elena, maybe he'd take Michelle clubbing tonight. The city had too much to offer, and he didn't want to go alone.
Orion couldn't do it.
As much as he wanted to take what was offered, to bury himself inside Elena and quench the fierce heat that raced through his body like a fever, the wrong of what he was doing cut him deeper.
With a groan, he clenched his hands into fists, summoned all his strength, and rolled off her. Shaking with emotion, he rose to his feet, and backed away. His breath came in hard quick gasps; pain seared through his veins. She lay there waiting, open, and vulnerable.

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