There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

-- The Gift of the Magi, O. Henry (1917)

Lyric didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Emotions were bubbling up inside of her – so many emotions that she didn't know how to handle it. Couldn't recognize them; couldn't identify them. Didn't know how to cope.

She'd been terrified when he'd arrived feeling so icy cold, like he was near death, and that fear hadn’t quite subsided over the hours she’d spent watching over him. She still didn't know what had happened. He’d raved and ranted about a storm, Poseidon, and unicorns of all things. She chalked it up to the head injury. No doubt he would tell her the true story when he was feeling a little better. In the meantime, she'd sit right back in the chair where she'd already spent hours listening to him breathe, holding his hand while he slept, and sending prayers that he would survive and be okay.

Even asleep, he was such a presence in her small bedroom. He felt larger than life and almost electric. Even unconscious, he radiated an energy that called to her; sent a frisson of tingling energy down her spine and lifted the hairs on the back of her neck in awareness.

Awareness of him.

He was sleeping again, and the time she hoped it was restful. He felt warm, but maybe that was just the aftereffect of being wounded? The "superior" Atlantean healing at work raising his metabolism? She didn’t know, and it wasn’t like she could Google it.

But he was resting this time, not tossing and turning and muttering as he’d been doing before.

Lyric was so tempted to touch him. To finally touch more than just his face. To reach out with her fingertips and measure the breath of his shoulders, the muscles in his arms and chest, and even to stroke his hair. When she lifted his head to drink, she'd been able to run her fingers through the thick waves of his hair, which was something she'd been longing to do for a long time.

"Dare? Dare, are you awake? Would you mind if I touch you?"

He didn't answer, so she decided to take that as permission, in spite of the fact that she’d deliberately whispered. Which was completely and entirely wicked of her, but she couldn't resist the temptation.

And she was tired of trying.

She reached out with both hands, tentatively at first and then less so. Her fingers shaped the edges of him – the edges of a man. He was all hard muscle. Strength and sinew wrapped around his shoulders, arms, and chest like armbands. There was no give to him – no yielding.

Who could live with such a hard man? Who would want to? She already knew the answer to the latter but was still unsure about the former. He stirred a little in his sleep and then turned his head into her palm as if he were enjoying the feel of her fingers stroking his hair.

He mumbled something. A name. Seranth. A twinge of something that felt a lot like jealousy curled up from her throat, but then subsided. He’d told her about Seranth and explained their bond. Seranth was a sea spirit; a water elemental, and they worked in tandem to sail his ship, the Luna, across the seas. Seranth was part of him. She was also part of the ship itself and part of the sea and sky. He’d said he couldn't describe it any more clearly than that, but that had been enough. She’d told him she thought she understood, at least a little.

She herself had felt the presence of a guardian angel in her life ever since the night of the car crash that took her parents. An Angel who had been with her ever since. It was different, but a little bit the same. Angel and spirit. Christian and pagan. He came from a time before Christ, and she lived in Christ's grace. But she knew –hoped – that what was between could transcend differences and bridge barriers. She prayed that he would recover, and then she would admit her feelings. She would invite him to stay with her for Christmas and celebrate the holidays with her family and friends.

Maybe he'd even invite her to Atlantis sometime.

He stirred beneath her fingertips, and she realized she'd been stroking his hair for several minutes without even realizing what she was doing. She felt his forehead again with the back of her hand out of habit, not at all expecting the blazing heat in his skin. She snatched her hand away, shocked. He should be glowing at that temperature. She had to call Penny. Something was seriously wrong—surely this couldn’t just be his metabolism.

It had to be fever, or maybe something worse. Please God let it not be something worse.

She started to rise to retrieve her phone from the kitchen, but his hand shot out and grasped her wrist with unbreakable strength.

"Don't leave me," he demanded. For demand it was. Sick or no, he wasn’t asking; he was telling. This was the voice of a sea captain in complete control.

"I need to call the doctor, Dare. I need to –"

He yanked on her arm, so she fell forward onto the bed and partially on top of him. Before she could move, he curved one of those strong arms around her and held tight.

"No. Stay with me. I need you. Please."

This time, his voice was less of a demand and more of a seduction. Silken tones from his damaged throat – honey over whiskey. Playful, but implacable.

"I need you to hold me, Lyric. Beautiful Lyric. Six long years of wanting to hold you, and it only took almost dying,” he murmured into her hair.

She froze, unable to believe what he was saying. Unable to believe that he was saying the exact things she herself had felt for so long.

Oh, oh, oh, oh. He smelled like salt and sea and sky and man. Delicious, unbelievably sexy man. She closed her eyes, snuggled into the curve of his arms, and took a deep, happy breath.

But then she shook her head and told herself to snap out of it.

"Dare. I can't – we need to – you’re burning up. I have to call the doctor. You probably have an infection from where your head was sliced open. I don't really know how ‘superior Atlantean healing powers’ work on infection, so I'm gonna propose we go with good old-fashioned human antibiotics."

"I'm fine,” he muttered into her hair. "Don't need anything but you."

She inhaled sharply, but whether she was gasping from shock, surprise, or a massive case of untimely lust, she didn’t know. What she was feeling wasn’t important, though, no matter how much she’d wanted to hear exactly that from him. What mattered was that she needed to get him some medicine.

"Okay. You need to let me go. Now,” she said, injecting a firm tone into her voice. It was the voice she used with young art students. No nonsense. In charge. They always snapped to attention immediately.

Teacher voice had absolutely zero effect on Dare.

His response instead was to tighten his arms around her and start kissing her neck. An electric sensation shot straight from his lips to every erotic part of her body, and she really thought she might either melt or go up in flames.

“Dare! Listen--"

He gently bit her earlobe.

"Ohhhhh," she moaned, before she could help it. "No. Dare! Not now. I need to get you some antibiotics."

He pulled his head away from her neck, and she took a moment to sincerely regret it. Before she could say anything else, though, he put his hand on her butt.

This time it was he who moaned. Or groaned. A sound from deep in his throat that rumbled in his chest beneath her cheek, and made her want to rip his shirt off with her teeth. “Oh, Lyric. Oh, Lyric.”

“I—what?”

"You have the nicest, roundest ass I've ever seen," he told her with all evidence of true appreciation.

She blinked.

"Thanks a lot,” she said somewhat tartly. “Just what every woman wants to hear. Any other compliments you want to throw my way?"

"So hot. So lush. So delicious. I bet you’ll be so wet for me. So, so wet and hot." His voice was a rasp of sex and seduction that was slowly driving her completely insane, and the heat was building between her thighs as if his words had been a premonition.

"I’ve wanted to get my hands on your ass for years. And your breasts. Oh, your breasts. I think poets could write songs to your breasts. I need you, Lyric. Let me put my mouth on you."

Lyric went boneless; every synapse she had shot fireworks through her nerve cells--through her veins--even through her bones. She'd never been so indescribably, overwhelmingly, incandescently turned on in her life.

Naturally, her freaking conscience decided to speak up and tell her that she was in imminent danger of hooking up with an Atlantean who was addled by injury and fever. Not exactly the best way to start off a relationship. 

Freaking conscience.

She sighed.

“Dare. Enough. You’re burning up. Let me get you some antibiotics. A big, fat needle filled with penicillin might take your mind off your libido--"

“Your ass,” he mumbled dreamily, and she could feel him smile against her neck.

“And off my ass,” she agreed, sighing again.

“Kiss me.”

“What?” Surely he hadn’t said…

“Kiss me, and I’ll let you go get needles and pessanillin. Pennalissen. Parasillin. Whatever.”

“Deal,” she said, before she could have second thoughts about taking total advantage of an injured, delirious man. He had his hands on her ass, after all.

“Deal. Now. And on my lips, no cheating with forehead kissing.”

Lyric took a deep breath. She needed to steel herself for this, in spite of—or perhaps because—she’d wanted it for so long.

“Okay, You can kiss me now.”

He laughed. “No, my copper-eyed beauty. You have to kiss me.”

She summoned her nerve and pulled away from him a little bit; just enough to raise her head so she could reach his lips with her own.

Her brain and all parts much farther south were doing cartwheels at the idea that she was planning to kiss Dare, so she told them to calm the heck down. This was going to be a chaste, calming, gentle kiss with a closed mouth, offered just so he’d let her go get medicine for him.

She took a deep breath, and then she leaned forward and touched her lips to his.

And the world turned upside down.

The moment her lips met his, Dare tightened his arms on her and half sat, half rolled, until he had her beneath him, and then he took total control over what she’d laughingly—ridiculously--thought was a kiss. That wasn’t a kiss.

This was a kiss.

He didn’t take; he plundered. He teased and seduced; advanced and retreated. He kissed her with skill and hunger and that sense of barely leashed power that made her head spin. She slipped her arms around him and kissed him back, meeting him beat for beat, breath for breath.

She wondered, gloried, reveled in the feel of his hard body against hers and the taste of salt and spice of his mouth.

This was a kiss—and she dimly realized that, once it ended, she might never, ever be the same.

When she forced herself to pull away, they were both breathing hard, and his skin temperature was in the fiery blaze range. Damn. She’d forgotten her end goal somehow during that explosion of feeling.

“Dare. I need to get you that medicine.”

He instantly released her. “A deal is a deal, I always tell Seranth…Seranth? Seranth?”

She sat up and then stood, but he seemed to have forgotten all about her.

“My arm band! Where is it? Did you take it off? Did that doctor…Seranth?” He was shouting by the end, the anguish clear.

She knew what the sea spirit meant to him, and a bolt of pain clenched in her chest at his loss. “No. We didn’t take it, Dare. You didn’t have it on when you arrived. Your shirt was torn…is it possible that it fell off in the water?”

She reached out to touch his shoulder, but he brushed her hand off and pushed himself up to a sitting position.

“No. It can’t fall off. It’s not jewelry; it’s the physical manifestation of my bond with Seranth. Poseidon bestowed it and only he…” His voice trailed off and then she jumped at the sound of his fist crashing into the end table.

“He took it. He took her away from me.”

The pain in his voice buffeted her, and she flinched away. She’d never heard a human voice filled with such suffering since...since the accident. Her mother hadn’t died right away, and Lyric had heard—no. No. She forcibly locked that memory away. There was a man who needed her right here in the present.

“Dare. I can’t—what can I do? How can I help? I’ll call the doctor to come over and see--"

Before she could finish her sentence, he lurched up off the bed, stumbled into her, and knocked them both to the floor. He’d somehow rolled over in mid-fall, so his back and head took the brunt of the impact, but it was still enough to knock the air out of her for a minute or two.

When she could stop gasping and breathe again, she sat up and turned to him. “Dare? Are you okay?”

But her only answer was silence.