Ohmygod. She gasped as her brain moved the last piece into place.
Máax pulled out and turned her body toward him. He kissed her again, pushing her back to the tree, cupping and massaging her breast. Once again she felt him hard, needy, and positioning her for another round. "Wait." She pushed back to look into his serene turquoise eyes.
"Yes, my love, what is it?"
"I think you just got me … pregnant."
Máax tensed and then pulled away. He stared into her eyes. "Of course I did. I am a god who loves you. And you are the Goddess of Love who loves me. Did you really think we could make love and not bear fruit?"
Hmmm … Good point.
"But just to be certain, I think I will make love to you a few dozen times more." He looked up at the sky. "From my calculations, we have another hour before we need to make it to the pickup spot."
Ashli blinked in rapid succession. "A dozen times? In an," she swallowed, "hour?"
"Like I said, I am a god. I was deprived of your body for seventy thousand years." He shrugged. "And what can I say? I'm still male." He smiled sweetly, melting her heart.
"In that case"-she flung her arms around his neck-"I'm here to help."
Epilogue One
Standing at the head of the table, Penelope rubbed her tiny baby bump and looked down at Kinich who sat calmly in the chair beside her. Like the other ten deities sitting alongside them, he hadn't broken a sweat.
"How can you all be so calm?" she asked.
She was overwhelmed with joy for Máax-justice had been served-but she was nervous as hell about the remaining part of this trial. What came next had been culminating for a lot longer than she'd been alive. And the outcome would change everyone's lives. Everyone's. Like many of the women in this story, she'd been drawn into the crazy, beautiful, miraculous world of the gods by whatever forces existed out there in the Universe. And while she still didn't understand many, many things, she did know they were all connected. Kinich, once the God of the Sun and still the most powerful light in her universe, was now a different kind of immortal. A vampire. She, through some very odd chain of events, had inherited his powers and his title: Ruler of the House of Gods.
The point? She was connected to the gods. What affected them affected her and vice versa.
Deep breath. Because now, she had to serve justice. Zac and Cimil had done terrible, terrible things. This was not going to be easy.
Kinich, quite possibly the most beautiful male on the planet with his golden-streaked, honey-brown hair and trademark god-sized frame, beamed at her, his eyes flickering from blue to black. "You can do this, my wife." He leaned forward and kissed her belly. "I love you, Penelope, and I cannot wait for this all to be over so we can spend our days making love, preparing for our child to come."
Penelope melted.
She turned toward the room, which was abuzz with commotion.
Please, gods, give me strength.
She rapped her gavel on the desk. "Attention, everyone, I hereby call Zac, the God of Temptation, to answer for his crimes."
Zac stood and moved toward the center of the room.
"Sorry," she said, "Ashli took the chair, so you'll have to stand."
Zac didn't bat an eyelash. "Let's get this shit over with."
Penelope didn't know where to start. Zac had betrayed her in the worst kind of way. He had known he possessed the power of temptation, the power to make a person want something regardless of right or wrong. And with such power came great responsibility as it did with all of the gods. But what Zac did was unforgiveable. At her most vulnerable moment, pregnant, having believed she'd lost Kinich, Zac used his powers to make her believe she had feelings for him. Then when Kinich turned up and became a vampire-a long, long story-Zac made Kinich crave her blood. He thought she would never love a man, errr, ex-god, err, vampire, who was a threat to her and her unborn baby.
A-hole.
Penelope rapped her gavel on the table. "I hereby open proceedings against Zac, God of Temptation. Zac, you are accused of using your powers on another deity without permission-a violation of a sacred law. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Kinich didn't flinch, but Penelope felt the anger radiate from his body. She knew Kinich wanted him dead. Dead dead. Not deity dead. But killing a deity wasn't possible. In fact, punishment was rather limited: banishment, removal of one's human shell, suspension of powers, and incarceration or entombment.
Zac's turquoise eyes locked on Penelope, and she resisted squirming.
"Zac?" Penelope said. "This is your chance to be heard before we decide the punishment. Don't you have anything to say?"
Dressed in a navy-blue shirt and blue jeans, he squared his shoulders. His messy dark hair fell around his ears. "I have no excuse, Penelope. I love you. I would do anything to keep you safe."
Penelope's blood boiled. "You … love me? Love! Is that what you call almost having me and my baby killed, you son of a bitch?"
Her words did nothing to rattle his cage.
"You have a right to be angry," Zac stated calmly, "but my brother threw you away. He turned his back on you not once, but twice. You deserve better than that."
She couldn't believe him. "So you used your powers to get what you wanted?"
"I used them, yes, but never on you. I only told that asshole brother of mine to give in to his temptations, to be exactly who he was-a selfish, bloodthirsty prick."
Kinich exploded. "I'm going to fucking kill you!"
The Uchben soldiers, who'd been milling about the periphery of the room, quickly stepped in front of Zac, ready for Kinich's pounce.
Zac's eyes remained fixed on Penelope. "I never, ever used my powers on you, Penelope. Not once. Everything you felt for me was real."
Crapola. She didn't know what to say because she had felt something for Zac, but it wasn't love. At least, not the romantic sort. In her darkest hour, he'd been there for her, kept her hair out of the toilet when she had morning sickness, held her when she felt so heartbroken that she didn't know if she'd continue breathing. Kinich had abandoned her. Yes, she now knew why, and given the same choice, same situation, she would have done exactly what Kinich had. Kinich had bartered away his divinity to win a pivotal battle against the Maaskab and free his brother. But that didn't mean her heart hadn't ripped in two.
She sank into her chair and covered her face. "He's right, Kinich. I let him in. You were gone-forever, I thought-and Zac was there for me, for us." She rubbed her stomach.
Kinich nodded, and she knew what he was thinking: it had been his own damned fault. He would never blame her, not given all that he had once done to push her away. "But that does not excuse using his powers on me," Kinich said quietly. "I could have killed you, Penelope."
She nodded. No, there was no excuse for that.
She wiped her eyes and looked up at Zac. "Do you have anything else to say?"
"Only that I will never stop loving you, Penelope. You are truly the most remarkable, sexy, passionate woman I've ever known."
Kinich growled.
"And I truly regret hurting you," he added. "But what I did pales in comparison to the pain Kinich caused you. Yet you forgave him. I only hope you'll forgive me, too."
She bobbed her head, not in agreement, but to acknowledge she'd heard him. "You may go back to your seat until it's time for sentencing."
Damn, this sucked. And it would only get harder.
She blew out a breath. "I call Cimil, the Goddess of the Underworld."
It took one hour and forty-five minutes to read the charges against Cimil who, by the way, looked utterly pleased with herself. She grinned like a madwoman the entire time in her bright red tango dress that matched her bright red hair, loose and wild, just like her mind.
The charges ranged from heinous to the downright unbelievable. The unjust imprisonment of generations of clowns-she hated their unnatural state of constant happiness-shoplifting Love Boat DVDs, tag switching at garage sales, operating a taxi without a permit, unlawful unicorn racing, switching Red Hot candies for suppositories at a retirement home, waterboarding sea turtles (looking for Nessy), spraying "Fucktard" on several ancient Egyptian ruins (she'd been fighting with Roberto that day), creating vampires, including the evil ones, aiding the Maaskab, entrapping her brethren, the invention of SPAM, and … well, the extinction of the dinosaurs. Hundreds and thousands of deaths of innocent humans along with millions of creatures.