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Something dumbly primal turned his brain to mush and his vision red, and he grabbed her by the upper arms. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

Surprise in her expression faded to sadness. “You can’t stop it. And you can’t stop me from meeting my fate. It’s coming. I saw a preview of it today.”

“What are you talking about?”

She reached up and traced the outline of his dogtag chain under his T-shirt. “The barriers between the demon world and human world are so thin now. It’s only a matter of time before I won’t need to go to Sheoul for Satan to grab me. He’ll be able to do it here. The invasion at your base was just the beginning.” She moved closer, and his heart beat faster. “Then there’s Sartael.” She peered up at him, and God, he’d never seen anything so sad in his life as the look in her eyes.k i hi “He was the best hope I’ve had of finding my agimortus in thousands of years. And I killed him.”

“I’m sure you did what you had to do.”

Her sudden burst of laughter startled him. “Yeah,” she said. “I did.” Throwing back her head, she downed the rest of her drink and hurled the glass into the sand. “Just like I did what I had to do when I erased your memory.”

He stiffened, the raw anger from what she’d done coming back at him with as much force as if she’d slapped him. And he knew from experience that she could hit hard.

“What’s the matter, Arik?” She pressed up against him in a bold, unexpected surge. “You still mad at me? That’s fine. I deserve it. I deserve every drop of hate you have to spare. It was my fault you went to Sheoul. I did want you to kiss me, and I wasn’t strong enough to stop it.” She dragged her hand down his chest and stopped with her fingers on his waistband. “Oh, I’m powerful enough to slaughter a legion of fallen angels, but I didn’t have it in me to turn you away. And the memory thing? I thought I was helping you, but you know, maybe I did it because it’s what I would have wanted. Because I’m not strong enough to own up to hurting my brothers. So I assumed you wouldn’t be either. But you are, aren’t you?”

Arik’s heart was pounding against his ribcage, and his thoughts were a messy knot. He had no idea what the thing with her brothers was about, and Limos’s behavior was confusing the shit out of him. Worse, he sensed there was a whole lot of pain behind her actions that he couldn’t do anything about. How did he fix something he didn’t understand?

“Look, it wasn’t so much the fact that you messed with my memories that pissed me off as it was the fact that you didn’t tell me, and then you lied about it.”

“Lies,” she murmured, as she trailed her fingertip along his waistband, letting it dip underneath as if testing the waters. “My entire existence is built on them. They’re catching up with me.”

Squeezing her shoulders, he gave her a little shake. “Horseman!” he barked, trying to snap her out of whatever this mysterious mood was. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I don’t think I have time to tell you what’s wrong.” Leaving one hand on his waist, she brought the other up to his neck and dragged his head down so his lips were so close to hers he could almost taste the salt and lime on them. “There are things I want before I’m taken, Arik,” she whispered. “I know you hate me, but please… give me this.”

She kissed him. Hard. Her tongue met his with an aggression he hadn’t anticipated. Before this, she’d been timid, accepting of his actions, but whatever was driving her now was also starting to affect him. Because she was wrong about him hating her. Very, very wrong. Oh, he wanted to hate her, but at this point, he needed to be with her more than he needed to hold onto his anger.

Fisting her silky hair, he hauled her against him, and when his hips met hers, he groaned at the intimate contact. He’d been naked with women, skin on skin, but nothing had rocked him like this.

And then, in a shocking move, Limos dropped to her knees on the towel and clawed at his fly almost desperately, as if getting his pants open was the key to saving the world or some shit.

“L—” Cutting himself off before her