Larissa Ione - Immortal Rider

“What are you doing?” she gasped.

“Nothing.” He smoothed his thumb up and down the side of her leg, in the sensitive place where the ankle met the calf. Her muscles were firm, her skin silky, and man, he wanted to slide his hands up higher. But he had her where he wanted her—off guard. Now to take it one step further…

“You,” he purred, “are a HILF.”

“A what?”

“Horseman I’d like to fuck.”

With a yank, he tugged her leg out from under her, and at the same time, he twisted so she came down on top of him, breaking her fall. She looked so startled, so utterly disbelieving that he’d bested her, that she lay motionless on his chest, mouth open, staring at him.

God, she was gorgeous. And that mouth… made to make a man beg for mercy. So he kissed her. Didn’t even realize he’d done it until his lips were on hers. He hadn’t thought she could be any more shocked, but her eyebrows shot up so far it would have been comical if he hadn’t been rocking his head up to put them into a more serious kiss. That was the thing about him—no half-measures. He might not have realized he was kissing her, but once he did? He was taking it as far as she’d let him go.

Command and conquer.

For a brief, sweet moment, she kissed him back. Her lips softened and her tongue met his, hesitantly, as though she wasn’t sure what she was doing.

And then his world turned upside down.

Limos reared back, and with what he was pretty sure was all her strength, she slammed her fist into his cheek. Pain spiderwebbed across his face, along every bone, through every tooth. He’d been tasting her, and now he was tasting his own blood.

“What the hell?” he shouted… or at least, he tried to shout. His words were mushy, thanks to his mashed lips, cut tongue and, likely, badly fractured jaw and cheekbone. He heard something more like, “ Nut da bell .”

“You kissed me!” Eyes wild, she backed away so fast she lost her flip-flops. “Do you know what you’ve done, you idiot? You’re going to pay for kissing me.”

Son-of-a—

All around him, the ground began to rumble, and a second later, giant, spiny arms punched up out of the dirt. Hands seized him, a dozen maybe. Agony wrenched through him as his limbs were twisted and pulled, and his skin was shredded.

Consciousness became a fluid thing, something he couldn’t quite reach. His vision went dark, but his ears still worked, and before they shut down, he heard Lit s he heamos’s panicked voice, but what she said made no sense.

“ Don’t say my name, Arik! No matter what they do to you, don’t speak my name! ”

Limos was utterly frozen, terrified in a way she had never, ever been. And given that she was five thousand years old, that was saying something.

Her brothers and Ares’s guests charged out of the house, weapons drawn, and then they skidded to halt.

“Jesus Christ,” Kynan shouted. “Arik!”

“Limos, no.” Thanatos tugged her against him, stopping her from going after the behemoths that had grabbed Arik and were dragging him down into the earth.

“He kissed me.” She said the same thing over and over, her voice a high-pitched, terrified wail.

Wordlessly, Ares produced a small blade, and in one smooth motion, launched it. Limos’s first instinct was to stop him, but the knife was already in the air, on a course for Arik’s heart.

The whistle of an arrow cut the night, and Ares’s dagger shattered. Pestilence, his ice-blue eyes glowing in the light of the moon, stood near the cliff, his bow in hand, a satisfied smile on his face. “You’ll thank me later, sis.”

Thanatos lunged, and a black, furry blur streaked past them both. Before Hal, Cara’s hellhound protector, reached Pestilence, he opened a portable Harrowgate and stepped through it.

He was gone, and when Limos turned back to Arik, he was gone too. The only sign that he’d been there was a smear of blood in the sand.

“What the fuck just happened?” Kynan rounded on Ares. “Why did you try to kill him, you cocksucker?”

Limos couldn’t speak. Funny how moments ago she’d been screaming incoherently, but now she couldn’t dredge up a single word. Ares, for his part, stayed calm despite the fact that Kynan had called him a cocksucker and was now fisting his shirt and snarling in his face.

“He kissed Limos,” Ares said, his voice rough as sandpaper. Maybe he wasn’t as calm as she thought. “She isn’t allowed to give her affections to a male in any way.”

Kynan released Ares to turn his murderous glare on Limos. “Explain.”

There were still no words. None. The night, which she’d always hated because it reminded her so much of Sheoul, closed in on her. How could Arik have done that? How dare he think it was okay to kiss her , one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

“Goddammit,” Kynan snapped. “Someone fucking answer me.”

“We told you that Limos is to become Satan’s bride,” Thanatos said. “But not until her Seal breaks, she’s captured in Sheoul, or until she does something to make him jealous.”

“Okay,” Kynan said, “so the big guy is jealous. Why is she still here but Arik is gone?”

“Because it’s not that simple. The Dark Lord can’t have her until the male who incited the jealousy utters her name while in agony.”

Kynan swallowed loud enough for her to hear. “So he’s still alive? Where?”

“Hell,” Limos rasped. “Arik is in hell.”

One month later…

Arik didn’t know how long he’d been in hell. Time was one never-ending, no-lube fuck when you were in the dark and in nonstop agony. And these bastard demons wouldn’t let him die. He’d tried, but they just kept healing him.

At least right now it was quiet, a few stolen moments in which he could sleep. Sleep and dreams were his only pleasure… even the dreams that were about the female who had landed him in this hellhole in the first place.

Limos .

Closing his eyes, he settled back against the cold stone—bliss on his bruised, bare skin. With a little effort, he shut out the rumbling of his stomach and the incessant drip of water outside the cell that was intended to drive him crazy with want, since the demons rationed his water, and what little he got was usually stagnant and disgusting anyway.

He tried to think of his sister, Runa, and his nephews. Tried to force his thoughts toward his job with the U.S. Army’s paranormal unit, the R-XR, as well as the forced-on-him involvement with the civilian demon-fighting organization, The Aegis. Tried to think about his escape plan… anything other than Limos, but his mind kept drifting to the beautiful ebony-haired, violet-eyed female. He hadn’t liked her when he first met her, mainly because she’d kicked his ass, broken his ribs, and threatened to crush his organs into marmalade.

Marmalade… God, he was hungry.

So, no, he hadn’t been overly fond of the third Horseman of the Apocalypse.

Still wasn’t. Because of her, he’d been dragged to Sheoul, the demon realm deep in the earth, stripped naked, and tortured within an inch of his life. Repeatedly. And the weird thing was that all the demons who held him captive wanted was for him to say her name. Her freaking name .

What. The. Hell.

So far, he hadn’t broken. Well, he’d broken , but the creepy-ass demons of unknown species kept a Seminus demon around to heal him so he wouldn’t die and they could keep breaking his bones and peeling off his skin. They’d even tried sleep deprivation, starvation, and getting into his head to make him think he was somewhere much more pleasant so they could trick him into saying her name. He’d been subjected to every torture and violation known to man. And then some, ’cuz demons were creative as fuck.