“I’ve been fighting demons since I was a kid, first in my own house, and then for the military. I’m not a total slouch.” God, he couldn’t believe he’d just brought up the kid thing, and if Limos possessed a single female gene, she’d latch onto that like a tick on a hound.

“I don’t think you’re a slouch.” Her hand fell off him as he straightened and turned to face her. “You managed to knock me off my feet once, if I remember right.”

A glint of amusement flashed in her eyes, and he snorted at the memory of gripping her ankle and tugging her feet out from under her so she landed on top of him.

“There are some serious holes in my memory, some doubts about what’s been real and what hasn’t, but I do remember that.” He inhaled a shaky breath. “Was the stuff you told me about your… fiancé… real?” Limos’s gaze skittered away. “Horseman?”

Her eyes shifted back to him and narrowed. “Say my name.”

“Answer my question.”

“Say. My. Name.”

Frustration spiking, he bent down, getting right in her face, nose to nose. “Answer the f**king question.”

Clearly, they were at an impasse, and he was not going to back down. If two dozen ugly-ass demons with meat hooks, sledgehammers, and skinning knives couldn’t make him say Limos’s name, she didn’t stand a chance.

She must have realized that, but not wanting to concede defeat, she flipped her hair over her shoulder and stalked to the edge of the crystal pool at the base of the waterfall, where she looked down at her fingers. “Dammit. Broke a nail.”

“Jesus.” He threw up his hands in frustration. “Can you ever focus on one subject or take anything seriously?”

“I take my nails very seriously.” She huffed. “When you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn to enjoy the little things. Speaking of which, I have something of yours. I don’t know how important they are to you, but I’ve kept them with me.”

She held out his dogtags, the silver chain dangling from her closed fist. He took them, another small connection with reality, and when he looped the chain around his neck, he almost felt whole again. Now he needed his weapons and Army ring, and he’d be good to go. Unfortunately, his captors had taken his ring, so there was no getting it back.

“Thank you.” His voice was humiliatingly hoarse.

Limos had guarded the dogtags, which he could replace for a few bucks, as if they were a treasure. And she’d treated him equally as well, he realized. She could have dumped him off at Underworld General or handed him over to the R-XR or The Aegis, but instead, she’d nursed him back to health herself. She’d done what she had to in order to get him to eat. She’d engaged all his senses to bring him back to reality.

Arik had no doubt that if she’d left him with the military or The Aegis, he’d be strapped to a bed, attached to IV lines, and doctors would be poking, prodding, and digging into his brain. Hell, they could have made him worse.

“You still don’t believe this is real, do you?” She looked down at the water swirling around her feet and bubbling around the smooth pebbles.

Reaching out, he hooked his finger beneath her chin and lifted her face to his, needing the sensation of touching her warm skin to make absolutely, one-hundred percent sure that he would be telling the truth. “I believe it. Nothing in that hellhole was as warm as you.”

She swallowed. “Then why won’t you say my name?”

“I can’t take the chance that anyone will hear it. You said it has to be uttered while I’m in misery, but I won’t risk it.”

“Why? After everything you’ve gone through because of me, why don’t you want to say my name and watch me get what I deserve?” Her words were bitter, her voice hard, and he wondered what kind of life she’d had to make her think he’d do something like that.

“I won’t tell you I didn’t think about it,” he admitted. “When I was in Sheoul, all I could think of was revenge. But I know you didn’t mean for what happened to happen, so no, I can’t do that to you.”

She reached up to play with her Seal pendant. “And why, when you were dreaming of revenge, did you turn the demons down when they offered you a deal… my torture for yours?”

Ah, damn, he wished she didn’t know about that. He didn’t need anyone knowing what he’d endured down there. Torture, it turned out, was a deeply personal, albeit, horrible, experience that he’d rather not share.

“I couldn’t take the deal because I couldn’t have lived with myself.” A sudden, gory image of Limos being brutalized at the hands, claws, and tools of those demons flashed in his head, and he had to tamp down a growl. “I know what those f**kers were capable of, and I would never wish that on you.”

Her throat worked on a swallow. “What do you wish on me?”

“Me,” he said with brutal honesty. “Fool that I am, I wish me on you. Like, on you. When I said in the bedroom that I’d have had you under me in a heartbeat, I meant it.”

She blinked. Opened her mouth. “But h—” He didn’t give her a chance to say anything. He grabbed her shoulders and hauled her against him. She let out a little gasp, but she didn’t refuse him anything as he took her mouth the way he’d fantasized about every time he closed his eyes.

Water splashed around them, tiny droplets of mist blanketing their faces as their tongues met. Limos’s lips were soft, her body hard, her fingernails sharp as she dug them into his biceps. But, like before, when she slid her hands up to his shoulders, her touch was tentative, halting.

He wasn’t so reserved.

He dropped his hands to her thighs and then dragged them up and under her wrap, but she grasped his wrists and stopped him.

“Why,” he murmured against her mouth. “Why are you so skittish?”

“Because I’ve never done this.”

He whipped his head back. “Bullshit.”

“It’s true.”

“You’re saying you’re a virgin? You’re five thousand years old and you’ve never had sex?”

“How could I?” A bird fluttered past, and he wasn’t surprised when Limos’s attention went with it. He waited impatiently for her to turn back to him. “I was betrothed when I was a child. You experienced what happened when I kissed you.”

God, he hadn’t even thought of that. Of course she wouldn’t have been able to be with anyone if her fiancé took jealousy to a galactic extreme.

“Why me?” he asked, dying to know why, after all that time, she had finally given up a kiss. “Why did you give in to me that night?”

Her entire body began to tremble, and he held her tighter. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, she stopped shaking. “Because I’d been drinking.”

Instant bullshit flag. He’d been watching her all night, and yeah, he’d seen her suck down some nasty-looking blue drink and later, a slushy pink one, but no, she hadn’t been drunk.

“You’re lying.” He palmed the back of her neck and massaged, urging her to come clean.

“I’m not.”

“That’s a lie too. There’s nothing I hate more than lying, Horseman.” Leaning in, he kissed her throat to soften his words, though nothing would ever soften how he felt about lying. He’d fallen for far too many of his father’s lies, had seen his mom and sister deeply wounded by those same lies. “Tell me why you finally gave in.”

A soft cry escaped her, almost as if telling him the truth pained her, and for a terrible second, he was afraid she’d say that she’d done it on a whim. To satisfy her curiosity. That he could have been anyone and that he’d been the chump who’d rolled the crappy dice.

“Because in all those centuries, you’re the first male I’ve wanted that badly.”

Masculine pride puffed him up at her answer. “That’s really cool to hear, but why me?”

Her lips, swollen from his kiss and dewy from the waterfall’s mist, turned up in a dazzling smile. “Do you remember the first time we met, at Than’s place? And you were all in awe of us?”

“Awe is a strong word,” he muttered, and she laughed. She was beautiful when she did that.

“You amused me. Not many people do that. And you took having your ribs broken really, really well.”

“So you were attracted to me because I have a high tolerance for pain?”

“Well, that’s hot, but you also made me laugh, and you give me butterflies,” she added brightly before sobering. “You also… you looked at me like I was… I don’t know…”

“Wicked sexy?” he offered, and that smile hit him again.

“That, but more. Like I was a puzzle. I liked it. Males usually look at me like I’m good for one thing. Which is funny, because that’s the only thing I’m not good for.” She sighed. “And then at Ares’s party, I saw you watching me. And I saw you coax Rath out from behind the cement planter where he was hiding from all the strangers in the house. It was sweet.”

He shrugged. “He was just a baby, and he was scared half to death. Poor Cara was going crazy looking for him.”

“See? It just… I dunno. It made me want to be near you.”

“So you asked me to spar?”

“It’s all I could do. That’s as close as I could get to any male. But then you got all arrogant and called me a HILF, and as outraged as I was, I was flattered and turned on, and then you tugged me down on top of you and kissed me… and I’m babbling.” She scowled at him. “I never babble.”

It was probably some sort of mortal offense to think of a Horseman as cute, but she was. She might be able to kick his ass to the moon and back, but she was also the most feminine woman he’d ever met. Everything about her appealed to the male in him… the protective side that wanted to cage her in his arms and make sure nothing hurt her, and the carnal side that wanted to push her up against the wet boulder behind her and make her scream his name. Even if all they did was more of what they’d done in her bed, he would coax sweet noises from her lips.