What Happens When Fertility Goddesses Go on Strike? Nothing Much — Except Maybe the End of the Human Race.

For Immortal Huntress and cunning private investigator Nikki Glass, vengeance trumps all in the final novel in acclaimed author Jenna Black's addictive urban fantasy series, Divine Descendants.

When private investigator Nikki Glass became immortal as a descendant of Artemis, she never dreamed she'd find herself playing marriage counselor to the gods. But she doesn't really have much of a choice when the crazed ex-wife of Anderson Kane — a god in disguise who just happens to be the son of a Fury — decides to enact revenge by wiping out all of humanity. Somehow, Nikki must convince the two to kiss and make up, but with Anderson now gone AWOL, she'll have to find him first. To top it all off, the cat's out of the bag that Anderson killed Konstantin, the Olympians' deposed leader. Now their new boss — Konstantin's son — is out for blood.
With every mere mortal's fate now resting in Nikki's hands, can she outsmart the gods . . . or will she be doomed to spend the rest of eternity in a barren and desolate world?

For more on this sultry novel, visit XOXO After Dark!

Eyes locked with his, I brushed my fingertips over the scars I could reach without moving my hand. Jamaal tensed again, but he made no attempt to stop me or pull away. Nor did Sita make a sudden and unexpected appearance, which was the surest way to spoil a mood, as we'd found out before.

Once again, Jamaal's tension eased, his body accepting my touch. How long had it been since a woman had touched him like this? He'd been Liberi for more than a century. I liked to think that there had been other women before me to ease his loneliness and isolation, but I wondered if he'd ever been able to let down his guard.

Watching carefully for any signs of distress, I allowed my hand to roam, slowly stroking the length of his sternum. There were so many ridges and valleys that if I hadn't known what I was touching, I'd never have been able to figure it out. Jamaal broke eye contact so he could watch the progress of my hand.

"It doesn't disgust you?" he asked in a hoarse voice that hardly sounded like his. "Touching them like this?"

I rejected the facile denial that first leapt to my mind and allowed myself to think a moment before answering. "It disgusts me to think someone did this to you," I said. "But I'm not touching the scars — I'm touching you."

Jamaal shuddered and closed his eyes, but not before I glimpsed the shimmer of tears. Abruptly, he turned over onto his side, facing away from me. I knew it wasn't a rejection, that he was simply trying to hide his emotions. He liked to pretend anger was the only emotion he was capable of.

I knew better.

Instead of letting him retreat, I carefully brushed his beaded braids out of the way and lay down behind him, my arm around his chest, my face nestled against the back of his neck. I could almost feel him fighting his urge to pull away, to reject the intimacy I offered, but instead he held still. I closed my eyes and inhaled the scent of him, reveled in the warmth of his body.

When I'd first met Jamaal, he had been broken, a man with nothing to live for but his endless rage. The death magic was eating him alive from the inside out, and he had for all intents and purposes given up. Only an idiot would have fallen for him under those circumstances, but from the very beginning, I had seen in him a reflection of myself. He was what I would have become if the Glasses hadn't been willing to accept an angry, rebellious eleven-year-old hellion into their home, hadn't loved me and tamed me and given me a sense of self-worth after my birth mother abandoned me.

He wasn't exactly all about unicorns and rainbows now, but he was in a vastly different place than he had been a few months ago. He had hope, even if he was sometimes reluctant to admit it, and I no longer felt like I needed to justify my feelings for him. I wasn't ready to officially stamp the L word on those feelings — never mind my Freudian slip when I'd made peace with Sita — but the combination of warmth and yearning that flooded me as I spooned Jamaal — and he let me — came pretty damn close.

When Jamaal's breathing slowed and evened out into the rhythm of sleep, I knew that tonight's had been his biggest breakthrough so far.

Jamaal held me close and turned us over so that I was on top. Anxiety and bad memories had combined to leach the arousal out of him, and I feared we were already at a disadvantage.

He lay stiff and tense below me as I rose to my knees. I didn't want to know what evil images were flashing across his mind.

The demons may have been nibbling at him, but Jamaal was nothing if not determined. He reached up and cupped my breasts. I leaned into him, giving him full access. Even with all the uncertainty, his touch was incendiary, and I made a small, needy sound as arousal came rushing back into my system. My nipples hardened under his touch, and if the stirring between my legs was any indication, Jamaal liked that.

"You are so f*cking beautiful," Jamaal said in a hoarse whisper as his eyes raked up and down my body.

I couldn't help smiling at the compliment. I raised my arms over my head and stretched languorously, pulling all my muscles taut. Jamaal's hips lifted slightly, letting me feel the erection that was well on its way back to full mast. I'd never thought of myself as particularly pretty or sexy, but his quick reaction made me feel like a cross between a cover model and a porn star.

I wrapped my hand around his erection to steady it, keeping a careful watch on his face in case I accidentally triggered something unpleasant, but his eyes were wide open, staring at me with undisguised desire, and I knew that he was firmly here with me in the present.

Carefully, I lowered myself onto him, and we both groaned with the pleasure of it. Jamaal closed his eyes and threw his head back with abandon, but almost instantly came back to himself and fixed his gaze on me once more. I gathered it was easier not to drift into the past if he could keep his eyes on me and constantly remind himself who he was with.

I began moving my hips in a slow, easy rhythm, teasing us both with the pace. Jamaal's hands slid down my body, and one of them found its way between my legs and brushed over my sensitized nub. I gasped and couldn't help moving faster.

"No fair," I panted. I wanted to make this last, but it would be damn hard to do with him touching me like that.

"You don't like this?" Jamaal asked with exaggerated innocence.

If he could play with me like this, he wasn't desperate enough. I forced myself to slow down just a little and reached up to massage my breasts. I was not at all surprised when that made him gasp out a soft curse and his hips bucked beneath me.

"No fair," he moaned, but not like he really meant it.

Thinking that surely we were now completely clear of the shadow of his past, I ground myself against him and thrust faster. Never mind the slow, languid buildup. I'd had about as much teasing as I could take.

"Touch my scars," Jamaal panted out, and that threw some water on my fire.

"What?"

"She liked . . . touching my scars while she f*cked me."

He was still hard as a rock beneath me, but I could almost feel his past trying to rush back in and claim him. He meant for me to replace his memories of his b*tch owner with images of me, but I had to draw the line somewhere.

"I'm not her," I told him. "I'm doing this my way."

Maybe he would have tried harder to get me to follow his script, but I leaned back to get a better angle, and that apparently pressed his buttons in just the right way. He forgot all about giving me stage directions, his hips lifting to meet me as he toyed with my nub with one hand and used his other to clamp on to my butt with a death grip.

Desire and pleasure crowded out every other thought and emotion. Our bodies moved in tandem as we thrust, the bed, creaking beneath us in a way that would have made me self-conscious if there were room for that in my mind. Jamaal was breathing so hard, the cords of his muscles so tight, that I was sure he was going to come any moment.

But he was a man of his word. He'd told me I would be going first, and he waited until I was already tipping over the edge myself before he cried out in climax.