Devil May Cry (Dark-Hunter 11)

"I think I'm becoming addicted to you."

She laughed. "You barely know me."

"Yes," he said with a wicked grin, "but I know parts of you better than anyone ever has."

She blushed at that. "You're incorrigible."

"Not true, I'm highly encourageable. I take very little prodding most days."

She kissed his cheek before she moved away. "I can't believe you're this playful considering what's going on."

He let out a tired breath before he raked his hands through his dark hair. "I'm trying to distract myself from the utter misery of guilt and doubt that's plaguing me. There, for a second, it was actually working."

Kat went immediately to his side to put one hand on his hard stomach and the other on his back. She looked at him with a pained expression. "Oh, hon, I'm sorry. Should we get naked now?"

He rolled his eyes at her sarcasm. "Forget it. Too much of a cock-kill."

She stepped back, laughing. "Cock-kill, huh? What an interesting expression you've developed." She gave him a devilish smile. "Perhaps a little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation could bring it back?"

He took his earlier comment back; she was her mother's daughter. She could torment a man with the best of them. "You are evil taunting me like this."

"I know. I'd apologize, but the agonized look on your face makes it all worth it."

He lifted his hand to touch her hair. It was like silk on his skin. Rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb, he remembered the feel of her on top of him. "I still don't understand you. Why you're here with me. Helping me. It doesn't make sense."

"Maybe it's your compelling personality that draws me to you like a moth to a flame."

Sin snorted. "Repellent, you mean."

She arched a brow as if surprised by his words. "Is that self-deprecation from a god?"

"Ex-god."

"Even so, it's not something one usually finds in your breed."

He rubbed her cheek with the backs of his fingers, savoring the soft texture of her skin. "Neither is a heart or a soul. Yet you seem to have both.'"

Kat shivered at the lender look on his face. Warmth spread through her at the sensation of his hand on her flesh. He was delectable. "I keep telling you I'm not a god."

"Yeah... but you would have been had your mother not been afraid of the other gods finding out she was sleeping with your father."

Perhaps, but Kat wasn't into titles or power trips. Pantheon politics had worn her down eons ago. She truly wanted no part on that. She just wanted...

Honestly she didn't know. She'd spent most of her life serving her mother's whims. Kat hadn't been born to a world when dreams or ambitions turned out well. Usually those two things resulted in someone's ultimate humiliation or a grand disembowelment.

It'd been her life's ambition to save herself the pain of both. Truly, she'd never even dreamt of knowing a man at all. It seemed inconceivable to her now. But she had been living her life blindly, with no thoughts of a future. The world, her world, just was. Sin had changed that.

For the first time she did want something, and that actually scared her, because she knew he would never share himself with her that way. It wasn't in him to settle down and have a family. He was a warrior who wanted nothing to do with her mother's pantheon, and though Kat wasn't a goddess in it, she was still a part of it.

Trying to force the issue would only lead to her humiliation. She was sure of it.

"So what were you like as a god?" she asked, trying to imagine him all those centuries ago. He didn't seem like he'd be any better at their politics than she was.

He shrugged. "Like all the others, I suppose."

She couldn't believe that. "No. I don't think you were ever like them. I know from my glimpse into your life that you never cheated on your wife even though she cheated on you. Why is that?"

A veil fell over his face, obscuring his thoughts and emotions from her. She felt nothing but emptiness.

"I went to Artemis, intending to cheat."

Kat looked away as she summoned what she'd felt while in his past. He was lying. "No, you didn't."

"How do you know?"

Not wanting him to know what she was doing, she met his gaze. "I don't believe you'd be faithful all that time and then toss it to the wind on a whim. There was another reason you went to Artemis."

Anger darkened his brow, before he moved away.

"Sin?"

There was no mistaking the wrath in his gaze as he looked at her. "What?"

An intelligent person wanting to live would have dropped the subject, but Kat was more suicidal than most. "Why were you on Olympus?"

His eyes were hollow. "Do you really want the truth?"

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't."

He left her then and went to the bar to pour himself a double shot of whisky-it appeared that was always his answer when something truly disturbed him.

He tossed the drink back and grimaced before he glared at her and answered, "I was lonely." The pain on his face actually stole her breath. "I didn't sleep around for one simple reason. I was tainted. Half human, half god, I didn't fit in anywhere, and believe me, the Sumerian gods were quick to point that out. Ningal, my wife, had abandoned our bed centuries before. She only married me because I was exotic and different. But once the others started in on her for being with a mongrel, she banned me from her bed. After all, what kind of children would she breed with someone who wasn't a full- blooded god?"

He clenched his teeth as if the pain were more than he could bear before he spoke again. "I thought something had to be wrong with me. Whoever heard of a fertility god not sleeping around? A fertility god whose wife was never in his bed? But I wasn't about to become my father and prey on a human woman who wouldn't be able to resist me. It's wrong to use people that way, and I knew how much pain my father's lust had caused my mother. Then Artemis appeared one day while I was out riding in Ur. She was surrounded by deer, looking peaceful and, don't laugh, sweet. I'd never seen a more beautiful woman, so I stopped to chat with her, and then next thing I knew, we were laughing. And in no time, we were friends."

It made sense to Kat. They were both gods of the moon. They probably had a lot in common. "What made you go to her that night on Olympus? Really?"

He looked away. "Anger. Ningal had humiliated me and I was tired of being laughed at. I was a powerful god, but not the most powerful of my pantheon. I knew there was no way I could confront them and win. They would have united against me. So I went to Artemis, wanting her to help me weaken my own pantheon. I thought that if she really loved me as she claimed, we could join forces against them."

He laughed bitterly. "Be careful what you wish for you, you just might get it. I wanted all of them destroyed for what they'd done to me, and they were. I just didn't see my own downfall as part of that plan."

Guilt tore through her at the agony she heard in his voice, the self-loathing she saw in his gaze. She'd never meant to hurt him or anyone else. "Artemis is incapable of giving what you sought."

He scoffed. "Thanks, but I'll let you in on a secret. I learned that three thousand years ago when she bound me up and sucked me dry."

Wanting to soothe him, Kat crossed the room to take his hand before he poured himself another shot. "You do realize what you've just done, don't you?"

"Insulted your intellect?"

"No." She took his hand into hers. "You've opened yourself up to me. Trusted me."

Sin grew silent as he realized she was right. He'd told her things he'd never told anyone else. But it was so easy to talk to her. Unlike others, she didn't seem to judge him for his past or his mistakes.

She made him forget to be guarded.

"I guess you and your mother will have a good laugh at me then when you talk later."