Seducing Eve (Guardians of Atlantis) (6 page)

“Don’t move, okay?” she whispered.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“You’ll see.”

She pressed her palm firm against his searing hot flesh and closed her eyes. She imagined what the skin looked like smooth and healed. The heat of the wound poured into her palm. The blood leaked from it onto her skin. She took the injury into her own body, experienced the awful pain and inhaled sharply.

Lucian jerked as if trying to move away but she dug her nails into
his shoulder to steady him. He couldn’t move. Not yet. She was almost finished. But the pain…oh, the terrible pain. It flashed through her for a brief second before it dissipated. And then it was gone. Her labored breath see-sawed in and out of her as she released him and stumbled a step backward. All that was left of his wound was new pink skin.

Eve leaned against the wall, knowing it would take her a minute to recover. Sweat
broke out on her forehead and she swiped it away with the back of her hand. When she turned her palm over, she could see the stain of his blood in her skin. She had absorbed the wound from him and healed it.

Lucian spun around to look at her, his eyes wide.

“What did you do?” he demanded.

“I…healed you.”

He reached behind him, his arm at an odd angle to try to feel the wound that wasn’t there anymore. “It’s gone. Like you took it away.” His gaze met hers. “Is that what you did?”

Holding her wrist, she nodded.

He grabbed her hand and turned it over. His thumb went over her pale flesh, wiping away the last evidence of blood.

“How?”

“I don’t know. I’ve always been able to do it,” she said. “I was born with the gift.”

“Incredible.”

“My parents were the only ones who knew about it.” She pressed her fingertips to her lips and swayed on her feet.

Lucian reached for her, steadying her. “You okay?”

“It takes a lot out of me. I’ll be all right in a minute.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’ve never told anyone about my gift. Only my parents knew and they’re dead.”

“
How did they die?”

“Car accident,” she said. “I was five. I tried to heal them but I couldn’t. I don’t know why I survived. I should have been killed too but I didn’t have a scratch on me. My grandmother raised me but she
passed last year.”

“I’m sorry.” He ran a gentle hand down the length of her hair, making her nerve-endings tingle.

She shrugged off the past. “Let me heal your leg.”

“No,” he snapped. “That took too much out of you. I won’t allow it.”

“But, Lucian, if I do you’ll be able to walk again. And then…you’ll be able to get me out the city.”

He snapped his sharp assessing gaze to hers.
“That’s why you did it. To bargain with me?”

“
Partly,” she said, hopeful. “I couldn’t watch you suffer anymore either. Can you get me out of here? Back home?”

“I can’t let you go, Eve.”

“Why not?”

“Franco will be expecting that. He’ll have all the airlocks guarded with his best men. He’ll be looking for you and me.”

“But…”

“I’m sorry, Eve.”

She straightened. “Then where are you taking me?”

“
Someplace safe.”

A loud explosion rocked the tunnels. The lights flickered and threatened to go out. Eve cowered closer to Lucian as they both looked up the shadowy corridor.
Her weakness was forgotten as adrenaline renewed her strength.

“They’re coming,” he said and he took her by the hand. “Come on.”

He hobbled back the way she’d come. Back toward the medical lab. At the end of the corridor, they turned right. He tried the first door. When the handle wouldn’t budge he kicked it in with his good leg. He winced with the weight he’d put on the bad one. The door banged against the wall with a loud crash.

“I can’t see a thing,” she
said. “Is this the medical lab?”

He stumbled inside and then came out a minute later. “No.”

He did the same with the next locked door. Eve stood in the doorway, not wishing to enter more darkness than she had to and keeping an eye on the end of the corridor where the men would come.

“Ha! Found it!”

A beam of light snapped on and he waved it around the room. She could see the layers of dust covering all the medical supplies.

“Hold this,” he said, waving her inside. He put the flashlight in her hand.

She stepped closer to him as he rummaged through metal shelves to find packages of bandages. He shoved those toward her too.

“Help me,” he said and turned his back to her.

“This is silly. Why don’t you let me—?”

“No. This way or not at all.”

She huffed her annoyance. Tucking the flashlight under her armpit, she knelt to get eye level with his wounded leg. The injury was in the middle of his thigh. She was entirely too close to his perfectly round ass for comfort but if he wasn’t going to let her help, she had no other option.

“
I need antiseptic,” she said.

“No time for that,” he grit out. “Just cover it.”

Her hands were dusty and dirty and she had severe reservations about putting a gauze bandage on him. But if that’s what he wanted, that’s what she’d do. She tore open one of the packages with her teeth and spit out the paper. Eyeing the wound, she realized his pants were in the way.

Great.

“Can you, ah, take off your pants?”

“My pants?”

“The material is in the way.”

“Oh. Right.”

He unzipped quickly followed by the swish of material as he shoved down his pants. And,
oh, god
, he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

Now she was eye level with his perfectly round, perfectly muscular, perfectly hot ass. She blushed.

“Well?” he asked.

“Right.”

His voice snapped her out of her ass trance as she quickly covered the wound with the gauze.

“There. All done.”

He yanked his pants back up over his hips and spun to face her. “Thanks.”

She wanted
to retort with something flippant but they both heard the booted footsteps in the hallway. Running toward them.

“Time to go
, sweetheart,” he said. “Get behind me.”

She did as
she was told, still clutching the flashlight in one hand. He stepped out into the hallway and fired off several rounds. When they fired back, he ducked back into the room, pressing against the doorframe.

“Eve, I want you to run that way.” He motioned with the gun toward the darkness. Deeper into the tunnels of the maze.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’ll cover you. And then I’ll be right behind you.”

She hesitated. She didn’t like the idea of running into the darkness alone. Armed only with a flashlight. “Promise?”

Return fire exploded outside their door. The men were getting closer.

“Promise. Now, go.”

He turned back to the open doorway, gun at the ready.

A moment of indecision flashed through her. She didn’t want to leave without him. What if there were more of those disgusting viperfish? She stood on tiptoe to peer over Lucian’s shoulder and saw the men charging toward them. It was all the inspiration she needed.

Armed only with the flashlight, Eve took off into the gloom.

She heard a round of shots fired behind her but didn’t dare look back. She dragged her lower lip between her teeth hoping Lucian was all right. She didn’t want to be lost in these tunnels alone. That would suck.

She
ran until her lungs burned and stopped finally to lean against a wall, looking back the way she’d come. Total darkness. The only light she had was illuminated around her from the flashlight. She heard nothing. No voices. No footsteps. No shots.

Where was he? What was he doing?

Her heart beat like crazy as she braced herself against the wall, the cold pressing into her nearly naked back. She squinted, hoping that would help her see better but it didn’t. She waved the flashlight down the hall but the beam of light only went so far. Not nearly far enough to reach where Lucian had been standing when she left him.

She strained her ears to listen to the sounds in the quiet but heard nothing
.

“Lucian!”

Silence was her answer.

She had to go back. She needed to know if Lucian was alive or dead. Alive
, she could find out what was happening. Dead, she could decide what her next steps should be.

She preferred the alive outcome best.

With one tentative step, she started back down the hall.

She hated this. The unknown. It sucked. She was a planner. She needed to know what was happening and was going to happen and she needed a plan. This no plan thing was totally not working out.

“Lucian?” she called.

A clink of metal against the stone floor echoed back to her. She paused, her hand on the wall, the other clutching the flashlight so tight her hand cramped.

“Lucian…?”

And then…

Ka-boom!

The explosion vibrated the walls and floor. It was so powerful it nearly knocked her off her feet. She slammed into the wall, looking for something to hold on to. She found nothing.

Seconds after the blast, she could see a hulking form heading for her. Her heart clotted in her throat as she stared at the man, hoping it wasn’t one of the guardians. Her hands shook making the beam of light shiver in the murk. And then his features came into view and she could see it was Lucian running toward her. Behind him smoke and fire followed. His run was more of a gimp.

Her heart leaped into her throat and she was frozen in place.

“Run!” he shouted. “Run, Eve, damn it!”

She spun on her heel and bolted into the darkness. The beam from the flashlight bounced along the floor and walls. Her sprint disturbed the dust and she could see the particles floating in the shaft of light. One glance over her shoulder told her she shouldn’t have looked.

Lucian hurried as best he could but she could see he would soon be consumed by the ball of fire heading straight for him. She stopped, turned and ran back toward him. She didn’t know what she planned to do but she had to help him. She couldn’t let him die.

He halted and they stared at each other as she
tried to close the distance between them as fast as she could. He fired off round after round into a grate in the wall then kicked it, making a wider opening. With one glance at her she knew what he meant to do. He plunged head first into the opening.

As she got closer to the makeshift opening, she could feel the heat of the fireball coming toward her.

She didn’t want to die. Not today.

She
nose-dived into the opening as the fire consumed the corridor in which she’d been standing. She went headlong into Lucian who caught her in his arms, grunted and stumbled. He couldn’t maintain his footing, though, and they tumbled to the ground with a thud.

His back took the brunt of the fall.
But his arms wrapped around her and he held her cradled against his chest. A nice warm chest. He didn’t move and she feared he may have hit his head and was knocked out.

“Lucian?”

“For a girl who doesn’t weigh very much you sure pack a punch.”

The g
iggle bubbled up her throat and turned into hysterical laughter before she could stop it. Tears leaked from her eyes. But she wasn’t sure if they were tears of laughter or fear. Everything had happened so fast she didn’t know how to process it all.

When she finally got control of herself, she wiped the tears away.

“Are you okay?” she asked. She flattened her palm against the muscles under her.

“I will be,” he said.

She didn’t want to move but she worried about the fire on the other side of the wall. She lifted her head and looked out. But the flames seemed to be dying.

“The fire?”

“The walls, ceiling and floor are fire retardant,” Lucian said. “The last thing Atlantis needs is a fire we can’t escape.”

“Oh.” She put her head back on his chest. She
liked this way too much. “What happened back there?”

“I happened, that’s wh
at.”

Holding her against him, he sat up. She fit in his lap as though she’d always belonged there.
As though she were made to fit there. Her legs circled his waist as she looked up at him in the dimness. In her leap and crash, she’d lost the flashlight. It had skittered across the floor and spun, stopping to point at a wall. The shaft of light splashed on the dingy wall back at them, illuminating his face in soft light.