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  For my hunny bunny

  Robyn Peterman

  because life is too short to take seriously

  Acknowledgments

  Dear Grimlets,

  Wow. This is it. This is the big one. The one we’ve all been waiting for. (Or is that just me?) I gotta be honest, writing this book—the last Charley Davidson novel ever—brought me to tears on more than one occasion. I love her. I love everything about her. I love Reyes and Cookie and Uncle Bob and Garrett and Amber and Quentin and Angel and … I could go on and on.

  But according to rumor, all series must end. Eventually. And we felt that ending Charley on the number thirteen would be fun and fitting.

  That being said, I have a few accolades I must hand out.

  Thank you so very, very much to my agent, Alexandra Machinist, who has stuck with me through many ups and downs, and to the lovely Monique Patterson, who edited this book with encouragement and enthusiasm. I appreciate both so much.

  Thank you to the lovely Lorelei King for giving a voice to the world inside my head.

  Thank you so much to my family, who have gone on the roller coaster that is Charley Davidson with me and have disembarked the better for it. After all, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?

  Thank you to my very own cheer squad, known to most as Netters, Dana, and Trayce, and includes the likes of Robyn, Eve, Jowanna, Trish, Quentin, the Mercenaries, my Ruby Sisters, my LERA chapter mates, the numerous book clubs who have invited me to be a part of their lives, and my SMP and ICM siblings.

  Trayce and Dana, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your thoughts on everything I write. These books would not be what they are without your incredible insight and honesty. Thank you from the bottom of my ticker, which ticks so much easier thanks to you.

  A special thanks goes out to Amanda Santana for her entirely true “bra” story, immortalized within these pages, and to Aili Gomez and her wonderfully creative son for naming our incorporeal child Ghost Boy. Which totally worked!

  And last but certainly not least, thank you to Grimlets everywhere. (For those who don’t know, if you read anything by yours truly, you’re a bona fide, card-carrying [metaphorically] Grimlet.) I would never have gotten this far without the encouragement of readers like you. You’ve made every hair-pulling moment of angst, every late night in which I was certain I’d never make my deadline, every sob wrenched from my body when I was equally as certain that a scene I wrote was sure to end my career, so very, very worth it.

  Gracias, merci, arigato, maholo, danke sehr, grazie, takk, spasiba, terima kasih, do jeh, efharisto, toda … thank you.

  1

  What, pray tell, the fuck?

  —T-SHIRT

  It wasn’t until I felt the sun on my face that I knew, really knew, I’d made it back. The bright orb drifted over the horizon like a hot air balloon, blinding me, yet I couldn’t stop looking at it. Or, well, trying to look at it. After giving it my all through squinted lids, I gave up and closed them. Let the warmth wash over me. Let it sink into my skin. Flood every molecule in my body.

  God knew I needed it. I hadn’t had a drop of vitamin D in over a hundred years. My bones were probably brittle and shriveled and splintery. Much like the current state of my psyche.

  But that’s what happens when you defy a god.

  Not just any god, mind you. No siree Bob. To get booted off the big blue marble, one had to defy the God. The very One a particular set of children’s books called Jehovahn.

  The Man had some serious control issues. I bring one person back from the dead and bam. Banished for all eternity. Exiled to a hell with no light, no hair products, and no coffee.

  Mostly no coffee.

  And, just to throw salt onto a gaping, throbbing flesh wound, no tribe.

  In this dimension, the one with the yellow sun and champagne-colored sand on which I now walked, I had a husband and a daughter and more friends than I could shake a stick at. But in the lightless realm I’d been banished to, I’d had nothing. I floated in darkness for over one hundred agonizing years, tormented by dreams of a husband I could no longer touch and a daughter I could no longer protect.

  She would be gone by now. Our daughter. I will have missed her entire life. The thought alone shattered me. Cut into me like shards of glass every time I breathed.

  But I’d missed more than her life. It had been prophesied that she would face Lucifer in a great battle for humanity. That she would have an army at her back and, fingers crossed, a warrior at her side. And that she would stand against evil when no one else could.

  I’d wondered for dozens of years if she’d won, the pain of not knowing, of not being able to help, driving me to the brink of insanity. Then I realized something and a peculiar kind of peace came over me. Of course she’d won. She was the daughter of two gods. More to the point, she was her father’s daughter, the god Rey’azikeen’s only child. She would’ve been wily and cunning and strong. Of course she won.

  That’s what I’d told myself over and over for the last thirty-odd years of my exile. But now I was back. An exile that was supposed to be for all eternity stopped just short, in my humble opinion, of its goal.

  Unfortunately, I had no idea why I was back. I’d felt myself being drawn forward, pulled through space and time until the darkness that surrounded me gave way to the unforgiving brightness of Earth’s yellow sun. That big, beautiful ball of fire I’d so often complained about as a resident of New Mexico, where sunshine was damned near a daily occurrence.

  The horror!

  And here it was, bathing me in its brilliance as my feet sank into dew-covered sand with every step I took. I walked toward it. The sun. Craving more. Begging for more.

  “I will never complain about you again,” I said, tilting my face toward the heavens, because the thought of my daughter growing up without me wasn’t the only thing that had driven me to the edge of sanity. Nor the heartbreak of missing my husband. His hands on my body. His full mouth at my ear. His sparkling eyes hooded by impossibly thick lashes.

  No, it was the perpetual darkness that pushed me so far inside myself I could hardly stay conscious.

  I’d tried to escape. To find my way back to my family and friends. Boy, had I tried. But it seemed like the harder I struggled, the deeper I sank. The realm in which I’d been cast was like an inky, ethereal form of quicksand. If not for the wraiths …

  I stopped and bent my head to listen. Someone was following me, and for the first time since materializing on the earthly plane, I tried to take in my surroundings. With my vision adjusting, I could just make out the sea of peaches and golds that stretched out before me. Sand as far as the eye could see.

  Then it hit me. The Sahara. I’d been here before. With him.

  I started walking again, slowly, making him come to me as I used every ounce of strength I had to tamp down the elation coursing thro
ugh my veins.

  I’d dreamed about this moment for so long, a part of me wondered if it was real. Or if I was hallucinating. But I felt the warmth radiating from his body and I knew. Heat—his heat—pulsated over me in rich, fervent waves, stirring parts of me that hadn’t been stirred in decades. Or churned. Or even whisked, for that matter.

  I dared a glance over my shoulder. My knees weakened and my stomach clenched at the sight. Dressed as a desert nomad in traditional, sky-blue garb, he followed at a leisurely pace. A light breeze pressed his robe against his body, outlining his wide shoulders, long arms, and lean waist.

  A turban of the same sky blue had been wrapped around his head and face until only his eyes shone through.

  Dark. Shimmering. Intent.

  Like that could fool me. Like I wouldn’t know my husband from a thousand miles away. His essence. His aura. His scent.

  Of course, the ever-present fire that licked over his skin, the lightning that arced around him, didn’t hurt.

  He moved like an animal. A predator. Powerful and full of confidence and grace. Every step calculated. Every move a conscious act.

  And he was closing in.

  I turned back to the horizon, my heart bursting with the knowledge that my husband was still here. Still on Earth. Still sexy as fuck.

  And yet, there was something not quite …

  I whirled around to face him when I realized part of what I was feeling, part of the tangle of tightly packed emotions that made Reyes Reyes, was anger.

  No. Not anger precisely. Anger would be far too tame a word. He was livid. Furious. Enraged. And it was all directed at me.

  I’d stopped, but he continued his advance. The stealth with which he moved was born of an instinct millions of years old. He was a predator through and through. A hunter. He knew how to stalk and kill his prey before that prey could detect even the slightest hint of danger. But dangerous he was. On a thousand different levels.

  Still …

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked, holding up a finger to both stop him and give attitude. Two birds, one stone, baby.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t stop. He only tilted his head, the scarf making it impossible to see the expression underneath, and continued his trek toward me. But I could still feel it. The anger simmering just below the surface.

  I didn’t know if my ability to read the emotions of others was a part of my grim reaper status or my godly one. Either way, I’d had the ability to feel emotion pouring out of people since I was a kid. But Reyes was usually much harder to read.

  Usually.

  He kept walking, his gait so casual one would think he was out for a morning stroll. And yet purpose filled every step he took.

  I had no choice but to retreat. I’d been exiled to a hell dimension for a hundred years. I wasn’t eager to visit another here on Earth. And an angry Reyes was a … a what? A panty-melting Reyes? A ravishing Reyes? A god?

  I stumbled backwards then righted myself and stood up straight to face him. I would not cower in the face of my enemy—a.k.a. my husband.

  Five feet away.

  “Now, listen up, Mister Man.”

  Four.

  “I’ll have you know—”

  Three.

  “—that I did not come back here—”

  Two.

  “—to be accosted by an angry—”

  Wait. A veil of sheer white flowed in my periphery, picked up by a soft breeze, and I looked down, wondering what the fuck was I wearing. “What the fuck am I—”

  One.

  An arm wrapped around my waist, and Reyes pulled me against him, his hard body molding to mine. There was nothing gentle about his hold as he studied me.

  I studied him back. I reached up and pulled the scarf down to reveal his perfect nose, full mouth, darkened jaw. His irises, eclipsed by the shadow of his own lashes, shimmered a deep, rich brown sprinkled with green and gold flecks, and I sank into him. It had been so long. So very, very long.

  When I wrapped both arms around his neck, he lowered his head and buried his face in my hair. I basked in the feel of his body against mine, reveling as well in the fact that I actually had a body. A corporeal one. A corporeal one that had urges and impulses and desires, traitorous carcass that it was.

  “Can we just put the anger aside for a little while and see to my needs?”

  He pulled back and stared down at me, his gaze intense enough to start a fire. Then he lifted the robe over his head and tossed it and the turban onto the sand. The solid frame on which he’d been built, the wide shoulders and slim waist, the soft highlights and deep shadows of muscle and sinew, dissolved the bones I’d only recently reacquired.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Before I knew it, the world tilted. His strong arms lowered me onto the robe, a pair of nomadic trousers in the same startling blue as the rest of his garb his only attire.

  And I apparently wore a white gown of some kind, the material like gossamer as he raked it up my body, his mouth, hot and wet, following its path.

  Every kiss caused tiny quakes to ricochet against my bones. When he lifted the gown up over my arms, he stopped at my wrists and used the material to bind my hands above my head, holding them there with effortless ease.

  A cool morning breeze washed over every exposed inch of me, as did his gaze. Both induced a wave of goose bumps that rushed across my skin, prickling as they blazed a trail wherever his attention landed. Even the heat emanating out of him and into me couldn’t squelch them.

  But I couldn’t get enough of him. This man I’d dreamed of every minute of every hour for one hundred years.

  His dark skin still bore the tribal tattoos that doubled as a map to the underworld. And the scars that lined the surface of his body attested to the many hells he’d endured. To the many lives he’d lived.

  First, he was a god, the god Rey’azikeen, also known as the Hellmaker—long story—and little brother to none other than Jehovahn Himself. Then he was Rey’aziel, a demon, the son of Satan, in fact, and a general in Lucifer’s army. Lastly, he was Reyes, a human for all intents and purposes. He became human to be with me. And he’d paid the price.

  But he was here with me now. Reyes Alexander Farrow. My soul mate and my lover and my husband. So when he shoved his trousers past his hips, pushed my legs apart, and buried himself inside me in one, long thrust, the explosion of pleasure that washed over me was both achingly familiar and astonishingly novel.

  He swallowed my gasp, kissing me long and hard and deep, siphoning every doubt I had that this was real. That he was here. On me and around me and inside me.

  He began a slow, rhythmic offensive, burying his thick cock with painstaking precision. Taking his time. Exploring every inch of me with his hands and his tongue until the pleasure pooling in my abdomen convulsed and threatened to break free.

  But his need seemed greater than even my own. It had been an entire century, after all. I could hardly blame him. So what began as a slow seduction of my senses quickly escalated to an exquisitely furious assault.

  He abandoned all thoughts of propriety as his thrusts grew quicker and shorter and more desperate. He buried his face in my hair, his breaths warm against my cheek as he uttered the one word I would’ve given my life to hear not thirty minutes ago, his nickname for me: “Dutch.”

  His voice was as beautifully rich and stunningly sensuous as I remembered, the tenor alone driving me even closer to the brink of orgasm.

  I dug my fingers into his steely buttocks, urging him deeper, the movement luring me toward that piercing edge.

  “Please,” I begged, whispering in his ear.

  He shoved even harder. Even faster. The pressure building and building until his entire body stiffened beneath my hands.

  I felt his orgasm as strongly as I felt my own. It crashed into me, his guttural growl heightening my own pleasure, mingling with the sweetest sting known to mankind.

  Holding on for dear life, I clasped my arms around hi
s neck and rode out the undulating waves of sensation, my spasms milking him as he emptied himself inside of me. He curled his fingers into my hair and panted into my ear, his warmth spilling into me. His fire engulfing me.

  After a long moment of recovery in which the world slowly came back into focus, he wrapped his arms around me and rolled until I lay atop him. A place I loved to be.

  “Welcome back,” he said softly, his breath stirring my hair.

  Hiding the fact that I was on the verge of tears, I buried my face in the crook of his neck and let my lids drift shut.

  I was back. I didn’t know how or why or for how long, but I was back and that was all that mattered. For now.

  * * *

  I awoke an hour later in my husband’s arms, reveling at the feel of his skin against mine. There was so much I needed to know, so much I’d missed, but I asked the one question that had driven me to near lunacy.

  I rose onto an elbow, peered into his infinite eyes, and asked, “Did she win?”

  He didn’t answer at first. Instead, the barest hint of a grin softened his features, giving him a boyish charm that I knew firsthand could be both endearing and lethal, often simultaneously. I’d seen that charm in all kinds of situations, from disarming a deranged stalker to coaxing a viperous demon out of a human host, and every time, it worked in his favor.

  Crazy thing was, he wasn’t the slightest bit aware of it. He had no clue what he did to men and women and demons alike. Or, if he did, he only took advantage of it in dire situations because his face could’ve opened so many more doors. He was, after all, the son of the most beautiful angel ever to grace the heavens.

  He traced my mouth with his fingertips, and my chest filled to capacity with such a deep, eternal love, it threatened to burst. Which would kill the mood entirely.

  I pulled my lower lip between my teeth, then asked again, “She won, right?”

  He tucked a wayward strand of my brown hair, the same hair that hadn’t seen the inside of a shower in over a hundred years, behind my ear.