In a quick movement, he gripped her biceps, hooked the back of her knees with a sweep of his leg, and took her down to the towel. She landed half on top of him, and she didn’t hesitate for a second. She kissed him hard, and he met her aggression tongue for tongue, nibble for nibble, lick for lick.

She lifted herself to crawl more fully on top of him. His hands stroked her back, her hair, her arms, wisely keeping his fingers away from her lower body. Her bikini covered the chastity belt, but no one in their right mind would take any chances, and Arik was definitely not a dummy.

“I want to touch you,” she murmured against his lips.

His tongue made a sensual sweep over her bottom lip. “You sure?”

In answer, she dragged her hand down his rippled abs to where his pants splayed open and his c**k jutted upward. He hissed and arched into her touch as she closed her fingers around the thick shaft. The textures fascinated her… silky skin over steely flesh, ridges and bumps that gave way to the velvety smooth head. And when his h*ps began to roll into her grip, her own pelvis rocked, rubbing her center against his thigh.

With a groan, he gripped her hand and stopped her. “Can you touch yourself? With your chastity belt, are you allowed?”

Heat flooded herat "0em" widt cheeks. “Uh-huh.”

A naughty smile curved his lips. “I so want to see that.”

She pushed herself up off his chest. “You want to… watch?” God, she didn’t think she could do that.

“I can’t touch, so… yeah.” He dropped his gaze to her bikini bottom. “Take it off.”

“But—”

“Do it.” He sat up and whipped off his own T-shirt. “Now, Horsewoman.”

His voice, a resonant, husky command, had her shivering in appreciation. She’d never taken orders well, but something about Arik’s erotically charged directive made her want to obey. As he peeled off his pants, she knelt next to him and reached behind her to undo her top.

Arik’s eyes smoldered behind heavy lids. He lay back on the towel, propping one arm behind his head while his other hand palmed his cock. As she removed the top, his hand began to pump long, slow strokes along the length of the dusky brown shaft. She’d never thought that a man touching himself could be so sexy, but she could watch this all day.

His body, magnificent to begin with, hardened, all the muscles bunching, the tendons in his neck standing out starkly as he threw back his head, eyes slitted and focused on her. Pleasure was etched on his face, his mouth open slightly, and lower, his fist pumped faster.

Heat built in Limos’s veins, and wetness bloomed between her thighs. She licked her lips, found herself drifting closer. She could replace his hand with hers. Then kiss her way down his chest, his stomach… oh, damn, was she actually thinking she’d like to put her mouth… there?

Yes, yes she was.

The plum-colored head glistened, its color deepening, and the desire to run her tongue over the tip intensified. As if he heard that thought, his entire body undulated, his h*ps surging, bringing to mind how the motion had been similar when he’d been on top of her, rocking, riding her hard.

“The bottoms,” he said roughly. She’d hesitated, her fingers on the waistband. “Now.”

She hooked her thumbs inside the fabric and pushed down, noting the way his strokes increased in speed. Again, she paused, just before the fabric cleared her center. “I wish you could do this.”

His gaze, which had been locked on the bikini, flipped up to hers. “I do too. I want to touch you, taste you, so bad.”

Oh, she wanted that too, and she felt herself go utterly wet at the very idea of him doing those things. Quickly, because it was a waste of time to fantasize, she shoved the bikini bottoms down and crawled toward Arik, intent upon putting her mouth on him. But even as she brushed her lips across the swollen cap, he hooked her thigh with his arm and dragged her toward him.

“What are you doing?”

He waggled his brows. “Sixty-nine.”

“Wait, what?” She dug her knees into the sand, refusing to budge. “You can’t.”

His grin was wicked. “No, but you can touch yourself, and I can watch.”

He tugged hard, and in a heartbeat, she was kneeling over him, straddling his head.

“Fuuuck,” he breathed. His voice was husky, slightly strangled. The power she had over him was remarkable and entirely unexpected. “You’re so beautiful.” She might have melted right there, if he hadn’t taken one of her hands and brought it up between her legs so her fingers were at her core. “Make yourself come.”

She was pretty sure her face was the color of a ripe apple, but she did what he asked, slipped her fingers between her folds and stroked. The smooth pearls rubbed alongside her hand, and if she closed her eyes, she could pretend it was Arik touching her. Licking her. And when he blew a hot breath over her, she felt the first stirrings of a cl**ax.

Flooded with desperate need, she lowered herself on one elbow and took his shaft into her mouth. His body arched beneath her, and a desperate, low groan rumbled his chest. “I’m not… not going to… last.”

She dipped one finger inside her and dragged it up to the little knot of nerves that was screaming for release. “Me either.”

Sucking him deep, she swirled her tongue around the top of his c**k while she swirled her finger over her cl*tin the same rhythm, and in no more than a dozen heartbeats, she was on the edge, her h*ps pumping, her breath coming in furious gasps around his shaft.

“Now,” he moaned. “Now.”

Yes, now. The orgasm exploded through her, a scalding, white-hot strike of lightning that intensified at the feel of his breath on her core. In her mouth, his shaft swelled, and warm fluid spurted onto her tongue and down her throat. He tasted salty and tangy, and suddenly, the act that had grossed her out for her entire life became something she wanted to do again and again.

But only to Arik.

His body jerked, his pelvis rocking as his cl**ax waned and hers ebbed. She continued to stroke herself until her flesh became too sensitive, and instinctively, she read Arik’s sensitivity in his gasps and twitches. Gently, she licked up his shaft to clean him off, and then, while he lay there recovering, Limos scrambled to throw on her bikini so her chastity pearls wouldn’t come into contact with his skin.

When she finished, she lay down next to him, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Another first,” she murmured.

“What, a modified sixty-nine? ’Cuz I gotta say, that was a first for me too.”

“No, this. Snuggling up to someone. The only males I’ve ever even hugged have been my brothers and Reaver.”

His hand came up to stroke her hair. “I can’t even imagine,” he said quietly. “We humans. ght get lonely so quickly… hell, I know a lot of people who are so needy that they can’t go more than a couple of months, or even weeks, without a man or woman to be with.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve always been too busy to worry about it.”

“You can’t tell me you’ve never had a relationship.”

He shrugged. “I got laid a lot in high school, but it was more about getting away from my shit at home. Joined the military the day I turned eighteen, and I dated a little, but nothing serious. And then I joined the R-XR, and that pretty much ended any chance of a serious relationship unless I wanted to date someone I worked with.”

“How long have you been with the R-XR?”

“Ten years. I was twenty, on leave in Japan. My buddy and I got lured into this underground bar by two really hot chicks. Turned out they were vampires. I barely got out with my life, my buddy was killed, and when I woke up in the military hospital babbling about vampires, I thought for sure I was going to end up in a rubber room. But I was sedated, and the next time I woke up, it was at the R-XR facility in DC.”

“So in all the time you’ve been with the R-XR, you’ve been… single?”

“Yeah. Can’t tell anyone what I do, you know?”

“You can’t expect me to believe that you’ve been celibate all that time.”

His rumbling laughter echoed pleasantly through her. “No, but trust me, it’s nothing I want to talk about. One night stands here and there.” Limos had the intense urge to find every one of his partners and turn them into hellhound snacks. “What about you? I know you couldn’t be with anyone, and you said I was the first you wanted to be with, but weren’t you ever a little tempted?”

“No.” Lie.

She’d been tempted by the Dark Lord himself. Though the verbal betrothal had taken place when she was only an infant, when the time came to negotiate the written contract, she’d walked into his chamber, as regal as any queen, her sights set on landing the king of all demons. Lust had taken her by storm the moment she’d laid eyes on him, and fear had only heightened her desire. A mystical aura surrounded him, and anyone who stepped into it became drunk with his unimaginable power and supercharged sensuality, and Limos had proved to be no different.

Females and males alike succumbed, unable to resist his draw any more than the moon could resist the Earth’s gravitational pull. In her heightened emotional state, she’d been jealous of the na**d females engaging in orgies all around him, had been homicidal as they touched him. She’d even had to stand by and watch Lilith give herself to him.

But Limos had gone untouched. It hadn’t even been his hands that fastened the chastity belt around her waist. At the time, she’d been furious. Now she was very, very glad.

Problem was, it had taken far too long to get to the glad point. For hundreds of years rednd after she and her brothers had been cursed as Horsemen, she’d plotted to start the Apocalypse and take her brothers to her husband as her wedding gift. She’d been a demon in every sense of the word, living up to her upbringing, lying to everyone she met, including her brothers. She’d schemed, plotted, stabbed them in the back at every turn.

And they’d embraced her.

They hadn’t known that every word out of her mouth was a lie, that for centuries, she was behind all the horrible things that happened to them, from the deaths of their servants, to attacks by demons.

But eventually, they’d worn her down with their affection and their constant support and protection. And then one day she’d found Thanatos standing over the body of a slave who had died saving his wife from their master’s lust.

“Are you sad for that human?” she’d asked, her question almost a taunt.

“No.” Thanatos’s voice was hollow. “I’m sad that we will never know what it’s like to love like he did, or have someone love us like that.”

“We have each other.” Another taunt. She was a bitch. And she liked it.

“And I’m grateful beyond measure.” His yellow gaze lifted, and burned right through her. “But it’s not the same. Who would die for you when the time came, Limos?”

Something in that conversation had stuck with her, and later, she’d gone back to the scene, unsure why. She’d grabbed the slave owner’s wife and threatened the woman to see what he would do if given the choice of saving her life or his. He’d chosen his. He could get another wife.

In that moment, she’d realized that the marriage she’d chosen would offer the same results. She would be the queen of the underworld… and a brood mare that could be replaced.

Screw that. She’d killed the man and gotten a whole new outlook on life.

Arik’s warm palm massaged her neck muscles, which had grown tight at the memories she despised. His other fingers stroked her right arm, tracing the lines that formed Bones.

“Can he feel that?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Right now Arik was caressing the beast’s leg, and her thigh tingled in response. “He likes it. I think you might be one of the few people he won’t try to eat.”

“Good. Cuz that would suck.” Bones stomped his foot, letting Arik know he’d had enough, and Arik took the hint, settling his hand over hers. “You grew up in Sheoul, right? Raised by Lilith?”

Ugh. Not a subject she wanted to discuss. “Yes.”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t pleasant?”

“It was horrible,” she murmured, and the fib spread through her with a familiar warmth. “But I escaped, and here I am. Now, let’s talk about you, because that’s much more interesting.”

And because if he was talking, she wouldn’t have to worry about lying.

Twenty

Arik did not want to talk about himself. Limos was much more interesting, but when she rubbed her palm in a slow circle over his chest, he fell into a lulling sort of trance and forgot why he didn’t want to talk.

Limos cleared her throat. “Can I ask you something?”

If that wasn’t a prelude to a question that was going to be hard to answer, he didn’t know what was. “You can ask, but I can’t guarantee I’ll answer or that you’ll like what I say.”

She nodded, cleared her throat again. “Runa said you wouldn’t like yourself if you knew what you’d done to her, and Shade said your father was abusive, that you used to protect Runa and your mother.”

“So?” He knew he was being defensive, but this was one of the very few subjects he didn’t like to talk about.

“So… tell me.”

He eyed her sideways. “That’s not a question.”

“You sound like Ares,” she grumbled. “Okay, let’s try this. Where are your parents?”

“Dead.”