“Go inside with the others,” Acheron said.
He watched Ias return while he thought over the man’s words.
He couldn’t leave it like this.
Acheron could function alone, but the others…
Closing his eyes, he willed himself back to Artemis.
This time when her women opened their mouths to scream, Artemis froze their vocal chords.
“Leave us,” she commanded them.
The women rushed for the door as fast as they could, then slammed it shut behind them.
As soon as they were alone, Artemis smiled at him. “You are back. I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
“Don’t, Artemis,” he said, curbing her playfulness before she started with it. “I’m basically back to yell at you.”
“For what?”
“How dare you lie to those men to get them into your service.”
“I never lie.”
He arched a brow.
Looking instantly uncomfortable, she cleared her throat and leaned back into her throne. “You were different and I didn’t lie. I merely forgot to mention a few things.”
“That is semantics, Artemis, and this isn’t about me. This is about what you’ve done to them. You can’t leave those poor bastards out there like you have.”
“And why not? You’ve survived quite well on your own.”
“I am not the same as they and well you know it. I had nothing in my life worth going back to. No family, no friends.”
“I take exception to that. What was I?”
“A mistake that I’ve been lamenting for the last two thousand years.”
Her face flushed. She came off her throne and descended two stairs to stand before him. “How dare you speak to me that way!”
Acheron whipped his cloak off and tossed it and his staff angrily into a corner. “Kill me for it, Artemis. Go right ahead. Do us both a favor and put me out of my misery.”
She tried to slap him, but he caught her hand in his and stared down into her eyes.
Artemis saw the hatred in Acheron’s gaze, the scathing condemnation.
Their angry breaths mingled and the air around them snapped furiously as their powers clashed.
But it wasn’t his fury she wanted.
No, never his fury…
Her gaze drifted over him. Over the perfect sculpted planes of his face, his high cheekbones, his long, aquiline nose. The blackness of his hair.
The eerie mercury of his eyes.
There had never been a mortal born who could equal his physical perfection.
And it wasn’t just his beauty that drew people to him. It wasn’t his beauty that drew her to him.
He possessed a raw, rare kind of masculine charisma. Power. Strength. Charm. Intelligence. Determination.
To look at him was to want him.
To see him was to ache to touch him.
He had been built to please, and trained to pleasure. Everything about him from the sleek muscles that rippled to the deep, erotic timber in his voice seduced anyone who came into contact with him.
Like a lethal wild animal, he moved with a primal promise of danger and masculine power. With the promise of supreme sexual fulfillment.
They were promises he delivered well on.
In all eternity, he was the only man who had made her weak.
The only man she had ever loved.
He had the power in him to kill her. They both knew it. And she found the fact that he didn’t intriguing and provocative.
Seductive and erotic.
Swallowing, she remembered him as he had been when they first met.
The strength of him. The passion.
Defiantly, he had stood in her temple and laughed when she threatened to kill him.
There before her statue, he had dared do what no man before or since had ever dared…
She could still taste that kiss.
Unlike other men, he had never feared her.
Now, the heat of his hand on her flesh seared her, but then his touch always had. There was nothing more she craved than the taste of his lips. The fire of his passion.
And with one mistake, she had lost him.