Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,83

how we tried to make you. What a clever, resourceful little creature you are, to have hidden yourself for so long.”

She brushed her fingers over the glass, as if she were touching the features of his face. Across bold, black brows that slashed elegantly over his closed eyes. Eyelashes so long and thick anyone would have mistaken him for a female if not for the diamond-cut angles of his nose, jaw and cheekbones. The long, corded column of his throat and the obvious bump of his Adam’s Apple in the middle of the hollow.

And those rose-colored, full, generous lips. They would make any girl green with envy. And any man immediately imagine what they would feel like wrapped around his cock.

Lilith could well understand why Medusa used the Creature for more…prurient services to get what she wanted from various allies, enemies and spies. Even if he never revealed his true form as he did her bidding, there was something about him. Something innately compelling, tantalizing. Sensual and sexual.

Lilith could not put her finger on it, but she didn’t care enough to continue ruminating.

“Pity that it does nothing for me. Your unique allure. All I care about is your ultimate form. It will surely be magnificent.”

All that black hair and pale, moonstone skin. He was so tall in his true form, much taller than any of the shapes and figures he assumed in disguise, of either sex. Six and a half feet of long, lean limbs, if she wasn’t mistaken. It was hard to tell when he was horizontal instead of on his feet.

Broad shoulders and narrow hips. Hard but malleable muscles that would enable him to move like a dancer, flowing, instead of stomping. Light and airy. Smooth and silky. Large, vein-wrapped hands with long, elegant fingers. Even his feet were attractive, what little she’d glimpsed of them before encasing him in the steel vessel.

As Lilith learned from her experiment with Medusa and herself, their monster form would take somewhat after their humanoid forms. The two heads of the Hydra, when Medusa and she still shared the body, looked completely different.

The one with the slitted yellow eyes that spewed corrosive poison had been Medusa’s head. Likely the result of the injections Lilith subjected her to over many millennia. The one with black eyes and hellfire was hers. Only one head remained, after Medusa’s destruction.

For now.

“I wonder which type you will be…” she mused out loud, her eyes glittering in the darkness of the cave, roving curiously across the Creature’s pallid features.

Strangely, though his vitals were lethargic and weak, there was something intensely defiant in his face. His jaw looked as if it was clenched in fury, his brow furrowed with determination.

He was strong, Lilith always knew. His soul stronger than any she’d ever encountered before. He was a survivor, just like her. They would be unbeatable together.

But not as team.

No, she’d never have an equal.

There had been a time…a time before time…when she’d relied on, shared everything, and tied her fate to another. When heaven, earth and hell had been theirs to rule. When she’d felt no lack, only fullness. No pain or regret. No sadness or longing. She’d trusted that everything would always be the same. She never thought about breaking the laws of the universe because there was nothing to gain. They already reigned supreme. Herself and her other.

Two halves of the same coin. The perfect balance for each other.

Look where that complacency had gotten her…

And then, despite everything she lost and suffered, punished equally but differently for a crime her partner committed against the Universal Balance, she’d survived on her own. Relying on wits, cunning, trickery. She’d been powerless. Defenseless. Relegated to being a parasite among Immortals. The lowest of the low—a fox spirit who could only pretend to be the skin she wore, but never the real thing.

She’d suffered as a Pure One, Dark One, human, animal…But because she was never truly one of them, only wearing their skins, she never enjoyed the “benefits.” The strength and purity of a Pure One. The insatiable lust and dominance of a Dark One. The wildness and freedom of an animal spirit. And even the mundane, childish, averageness of a human.

She’d always been on the outside looking in. Emulating, but not feeling. Sometimes, she could almost sympathize, but never could she empathize.

If Medusa had called her a “sadistic sociopath,” there was good reason for it. She had no real appreciation of “humanity,” of the lessons she was supposed to