Her features registered the instant she found her footing, and in a flash he realized where he’d seen that unique blonde hair before, where he’d smelled that exotic, hypnotic scent.
During her one-on-one training sessions.
During their highly specialized time alone together.
During her extremely erotic, immensely pleasurable seduction sessions, directed by him.
Seraphine. Sera. His Sera. He’d been her seduction trainer twelve—no, eighteen months ago.
He blinked, barely believing what he was seeing. She looked different from what he remembered. Every other time he’d been near her she’d been dolled up with sexy makeup, her hair perfectly styled, her voluptuous body wrapped in whatever arousing attire he’d picked out for her. Now she looked more like a warrior than a Barbie doll, but he still recognized her. Knew not just from her scent and that unique hair, but from the way his blood heated and rushed straight into his groin as a rash of memories of her wicked hands, her sinful mouth and tight body consuming his flooded his mind.
All nymphs were easy to train in the Siren ways of seduction, but this one had been a natural. She’d been able to suck and fuck better than any other recruit he’d worked with in his last hundred years serving Zeus as a Siren trainer, and that was saying a lot, considering Zeus handpicked the females he wanted in his Siren Order from across every race and realm.
The pain in his arm faded from his mind. In her familiar eyes he saw a flash of recognition that pushed him a step closer and caused him to reach out for her. But just as his fingers grazed her skin, she kicked out with her leg and nailed him in the side of his head with the toe of her kick-ass boot.
The force of the blow knocked him off his feet and set him flailing toward the grassy meadow. Pain spiraled up his spine as he hit the hard earth and grunted. Opening his eyes, he blinked several times, shocked that she’d gotten the jump on him. Blonde hair flashed in his line of sight once more, followed by the icy glare of her crystal blue eyes as she leaned over him with her blade held high.
And holy shit, that was hot. Hotter than he ever remembered her being.
“If you think this is fun, god,” she said in a low voice, “then you’re more useless than I thought.”
Oh, but this was fun. Staring up into her challenging gaze was more entertainment than he’d had in months—no, years. And anticipating what the little vixen would do next didn’t just fuel the flames already rising inside him; it made him hard as stone.
* * * *
Of all the hunters she’d expected Zeus to send after her, Erebus had been the last.
Sera probably should have struck while he was down, but something had held her back. She’d told herself it was because he was a minor god, which meant he was immortal. Any further attack on her part wouldn’t kill him, only enrage him, and she didn’t want to tangle with the god of darkness out here in the dark. So instead she’d decided to take advantage of his shocked expression and ran. But that niggling voice in the back of her whispered that wasn’t the real reason she’d held back.
She shook the voice away as she pushed her legs harder through the dark forest. Erebus was nothing to her now but one of Zeus’s henchmen. She didn’t care what her stupid heart had once felt for him. She only cared about putting as much distance between her and the asshole as she could now.
Her muscles burned as she darted around trees and brush, over downed logs and across a narrow stream. He would chase her, she knew. He would probably catch her. Her only hope at this point was to make sure he didn’t catch her with it.
A searing pain tightened her lungs as she slowed her steps in the darkness and scanned the forest. Dried leaves and fallen twigs crunched under her boots as she searched for something—anything—that would help her. Panic spread through every cell, and she started to run again, squinting to see, hoping—
Her boots skidded to a stop when she spotted the decaying log lying across the forest floor ten yards to her right. Rushing in that direction, she dropped to her knees near the base and felt around, searching for any kind of hole. The instant she found one, she silently rejoiced, pulled the medallion from her pocket, and shoved it deep into the log where no one would accidentally find it.
Pounding footsteps echoed through the silent forest at her back. Her adrenaline surged.
She lurched to her feet and tore off to her left, zigzagging around trees and brush. The medallion didn’t look like much—a coin slightly smaller than the palm of her hand, stamped with the imprint of Heracles and surrounded by the traditional Greek key design. Even if some hapless person did manage to find it in that log, she hoped it would be so covered in dirt and grime that they wouldn’t know what it was. But Erebus absolutely could not find it because one look and he would know. He’d know the power a person could wield with it, and she knew without a doubt he’d take it right back to Zeus.
Her heart pounded, feeling as if it had taken up permanent residence in her throat. Sweat slicked her skin even though the fall night was cool and damp. She ran harder, faster, intent on getting as far from that log as possible. She couldn’t go to the half-breed ruins now as she’d planned. She couldn’t risk Erebus following her there. Couldn’t risk his interfering with her only chance to contact her friend Elysia in Argolea.
Something hard slammed into her from the side, knocking the air out of her lungs and the thoughts from her mind. She grunted as her body sailed to the right and smacked against the hard earth. A groan tore from her throat. Pain spiraled through every cell in her body, and her vision wavered.
She rolled to her side. Groaned. Tried to get up. Tried to find her feet so she could run. But he was on her before she could even push up on her hands.
His big body straddled hers, and he dropped to his knees, his massive tree-trunk-like thighs pressing against her ribs. She lashed out with her hands to claw him off her but he captured her wrists easily and pinned them to the ground over her head. “Enough!”
Hearing his voice so close colored everything in red. She kicked out with her legs and thrashed from side to side, trying to throw him off, but he was too strong. Her hair whipped across her face as she fought harder, not wanting to hear his deep voice, now wanting to feel his hard body against hers, not wanting him ever again.
He squeezed his thighs so tight against her ribs, she gasped, and his fingertips dug into the skin of her wrists until pain shot straight to her brain, slowing her fight. “I said enough, nymph.”
Breathing hard, she glared up at him through wisps of sweaty hair, hating that he was here now. Hating even more that he was just as handsome and enticing as he’d been a year and a half ago when she’d seen him across the Siren training field for the first time. Jet black hair, dark eyes, mahogany skin, and a body that was an almost seven-foot wall of solid muscle.
She knew those muscles intimately. Had traced them with her hands and fingertips and tongue during their steamy sessions when he’d been her seduction trainer. Only for her it hadn’t just been seduction. Because of those erotic nights and the things he’d made her feel, he’d ruined her ability to think about or even look at another guy without remembering his whispered words against her overheated flesh and the way he’d been able to make her melt with just one carnal look. And then he’d cast her aside as if she’d never meant a single thing to him at all.
Which she hadn’t, she realized as she glared up at his narrowed black-as-night eyes. He hadn’t even used her damn name when he’d ordered her to stop fighting. Knowing him, he probably didn’t even recognize her.
And why would he? He’d fucked hundreds, probably thousands of trainees in his time serving Zeus as one of the Sirens’ trainers. She’d been nothing special to him. She’d just been the stupid nymph who’d foolishly believed every bullshit lie the gods—him included—had fed her.
Fury coiled tight in her veins, and her chest rose and fell with her quick breaths, but she didn’t fight. Didn’t look away either. He might have caught her, but he did
n’t have the medallion. And the second he loosened his grip, she’d be gone.
“That’s better,” he said, his voice losing that edge of rage she’d heard when he’d pinned her to the ground. “I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours tracking you, and I’m tired.”
She didn’t buy that for a second. Not that he hadn’t spent that amount of time tracking her—he was a god known for hunting down Zeus’s most menacing foes—but that he was tired. He was a fucking god. Gods didn’t get tired. They were Energizer bunnies raring to go at the slightest provocation, as she’d learned multiple times when he’d fucked her until she’d passed out.
He lifted his weight off her and hauled her to her feet with one hand wrapped tight around her biceps. “Get up.”
She stumbled. Gasped as he jerked her up and against the hard wall of his chest. Tried to push away. But he kept her close so she was forced to inhale his natural badass scent of snapdragon skull flowers, leather, and hints of cognac.
He glanced around the dark forest as if searching for something. Or someone.
With his hand still wrapped tightly around her upper arm, he turned to the left and hauled her with him. “This way.”
His legs were way longer than hers, and she had to hustle her steps to keep up so she didn’t trip and fall. And as she did, she couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t searched her for the medallion. And why she wasn’t already dead.
She wasn’t stupid enough to ask those questions, but she wasn’t exactly upset over that fact, either. Since he hadn’t killed her, it meant she still had a chance. Her mind spun with every step, her eyes scanning the darkness for something—anything—that would offer the opportunity to flee.
They reached the top of the rise, and he slowed his steps. Light was already rising on the eastern horizon, just enough for her to see the massive lake surrounding a small island housing some kind of crumbling structure far below. “There it is.”
“There what is?” she mumbled, glancing around the dark forest and the steep mountains that rose out of the crystal blue water.
“Where we’re going.”
He pulled her with him down the hillside toward the lake.
“Wait.” She grunted as her boot hit a rock, and she stumbled, hoping he wasn’t taking her where she suddenly thought he was taking her. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere we can be alone.”
His hand tightened around her arm, and his gaze drifted down to her. But this time when he looked at her, his eyes were no longer enraged. They glowed with an erotic light. One she recognized well. One that sent a new kind of fear and anger swimming in her veins.
“I’ve got plans for you, Seraphine. Big, hard, very wicked plans.”
Shit, she was right. And the fact he’d used her name meant she was in serious trouble because this male knew her every weakness.
Unless some kind of miracle happened in the next few minutes, there was no way she could hold out against what he had planned next.
Chapter Two
Motherfucker, he was hard.
Not just from the feel of her hot little body plastered to his side as he hauled her down the mountainside, but from the way she’d very nearly kicked his ass out there in the trees.
Darkness closed around him as he dragged her into a cave that opened to a series of tunnels, which provided passage beneath the lake to the island beyond—a darkness that only made his dick throb harder. Darkness turned him on. Danger made him hard. This minx’s reactions and the way she was still trying to fight him made him absolutely ache with the need to take her and tame her and show her who was really in control. Especially when he remembered how responsive she’d been during their training sessions and how easy it had been to drag her into all the dark, dirty filth that got him off.
“I want to know where you’re taking me,” she said as he pulled her around switchbacks in the tunnel, her breath heavy at his side, her skin so hot against his he was starting to sweat.
He didn’t owe her an explanation. She was lucky he hadn’t decided to kill her after the way she’d lashed out. Or taken her to Zeus already. The second he’d recognized her he’d decided not to do either, though. Not because she didn’t deserve one or both but because he had his own plans for her. Plans that didn’t include the King of the fucking Gods, at least not yet.
Eventually he knew Zeus would want her back for punishment, which could include anything from having her reassigned as a servant or handmaiden or even a sex slave. And though Erebus wasn’t wild about any of those options—especially the last, unless she was his sex slave—he knew he had time. Time to have his own fun before his life-long obligations to Olympus drew him back.
Hell, he deserved some fun after the years he’d spent in servitude, didn’t he? As far as he was concerned, he deserved more than a little fun simply because he had to deal with Zeus’s incompetent Siren trainees on a daily fucking basis.
“I’m taking you to the half-breed ruins,” he said, tugging her around another corner in the dark, deciding he didn’t want her completely defiant. Oh, he enjoyed an adrenaline-amping fight now and then, but it was so much more enjoyable when he could coax a female’s reluctance into cries of sensual pleasure. With Sera’s nymphomaniac tendencies, he knew it wouldn’t take much persuading.
“No one’s there,” she argued. “The half-breed ruins have been empty for twenty-some years.”
Exactly. No one was there. No one could hear her screams from inside its walls. No one would even know a minor god had gone off the grid there with a cheeky little nymph who made him so hard he hurt.
She tugged against this grip. “Erebus, please. This is a bad id—”
It was the please that brought him around. Or maybe it was the way she said his name. He wasn’t sure which, but something in her voice made him whip back and push her up against the cold rock wall.
She gasped as he moved in close at her front. Blood rushed straight into his cock at the reaction, making him even harder. He knew he shouldn’t tease her, that he was only tormenting himself by doing so, but he didn’t care. She was like a drug making him high, making him want. And it had been so long since he’d wanted anything purely for himself, he couldn’t seem to force himself to stop.
“I like it when you beg, Seraphine.” He leaned in close and traced the line of her ear with the tip of his nose. She trembled, which shot his blood even higher. “I love it when you beg me. Do you remember when I had you tied to that bed in the training center, when you begged me to fill you, to fuck you, to make you come?”
Her throat worked in the darkness as she swallowed, and her hands landed against his chest. Hands that were warm and soft and so much more than he remembered. He wanted them on his skin. Wanted to feel them wrap around his cock. Wanted her to draw him toward all her warm, wet heat all over again as she pushed him over on that bed, as she straddled his hips, as she rode him to a blistering climax that had been better than any he’d had in a thousand years.
She didn’t answer, but the way her breath sped up, the way her hands curled into the fabric of his shirt and didn’t push him away told him she was already acquiescing.
A smile curled his lips as he lowered his face to her neck and breathed hot over her scintillating skin. “I remember, oraios. I remember the way your fingers clawed at my back after I released your bindings and you screamed for me to give you more.” He drew in a deep whiff of her rich, citrusy scent. A scent that was so intoxicating it had made him wild on Olympus anytime she was near and still haunted his dreams to this day. “I remember the way you flipped me to my back, the way you scored your nails down my chest until you drew blood, the way you made me scream.”
She groaned, a sound that caused his erection to twitch against his fly and him to rock against the wicked heat of her lower body.
She bit down hard on her lip. Her fingers curled tighter in his shirt as she fought what he knew was her own growing desire to press back against him. But instead of giving in to her
needs as he wanted, she whispered, “Why are you doing this to me?”
He drew back just enough so he could see her face. It was pitch black in the tunnel, so dark he knew she couldn’t see his face, but one look was all it took to see she wasn’t peering up at him. Her eyes were tightly shut, her face scrunched as if in pain. But not the same pain of lust and desire swirling like a vortex inside him—this was another kind of agony. An emotional torment he didn’t understand and which dimmed his craving until it was a manageable ache instead of a burning demand.
He eased back a step, putting space between them, and released her arm. As cool air swept over his body, he watched her eyes flutter open. Watched her head turn and her gaze narrow as she tried to see him. Watched that silky blonde hair he’d enjoyed fisting flutter over her slim shoulders.
His heart hammered against his ribs, and his blood was still up from a hunger that hadn’t been satisfied. But the heartache he’d seen in her features moments ago continued to resonate inside him, keeping him from touching her again.
Conflicting thoughts raced through his mind. She was a nymph, a Siren recruit, Zeus’s property, so he shouldn’t care what she was feeling besides lust. But he did. As his heart continued to beat in long, steady thumps, he realized he cared more than he liked. Even now, when all he wanted to do was strap her down and ravage her until they both screamed, he cared. Because his desires where she was concerned were rooted firmly in pleasure, not pain. He wasn’t a sadist, regardless of his darkness. He wasn’t Hades. He wasn’t even Zeus. And even though he’d fucked hundreds of Siren recruits, all in the name of training, he remembered now what it was about Sera that had resonated so strongly with him then.
She had been different. She hadn’t just wanted sex, as so many of the other recruits did the moment they saw him. She’d wanted to talk. She’d spent time getting to know him. As they’d lain in bed together after her sessions, she’d made him smile with tales of the recruits’ antics in the barracks and on the field. At times she’d even made him laugh, as she had when she’d tried to bind him to that bed and hadn’t been able to tie a knot that would hold.