Page 51 of White Hot Kiss

“See,” he murmured in a thick voice, and he let go, his fingers trailing over my cheeks. “Your life isn’t about all you can’t do. It’s about what you can do.”

“Your tongue is pierced,” I said dumbly.

A wicked gleam filled his gaze. “That’s not the only thing pierced.”

His words really didn’t sink in. Suddenly, I was so angry I thought my head was going to pull an Exorcist. He dared to kiss me. And I actually liked it? I didn’t know who to be more ticked off at—him, or my traitorous body, but wait—where else was he pierced? The last thought caused my brain to play happily in the gutter, and that ticked me off even more.

Roth cocked his head to the side. “Now you’ve been kissed. One thing off the bucket list.”

I hit him.

Cocked back my arm and punched him in the stomach like I was a heavyweight boxer.

He grunted out a choked laugh. “Ouch. That kind of hurt.”

“Don’t ever do that again!”

Even after I hit him, he still looked pleased with himself. “You know what they say about first kisses.”

“You regret them?”

His smile faded. “No. I was going to go with ‘you never forget them.’”

Struggling not to hit him again—or laugh—I took a deep breath. “Tell me about the one who was like me, or I am walking away from here.”

“You’re so dramatic.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Are you sure you want to know about her?”

I was sure of three things: I was never going to forget that kiss, I needed to know about this demon and I was really getting sick of his know-it-all attitude. “Yes. I’m sure.”

“The one who could do what you could was a bit more...invested in her ability,” he said, leaning against the back of a bench.

I pursed my lips. No further explanation needed. The one like me enjoyed taking souls.

“She was also very good at what she did, so good that she was one of the most powerful demons to ever walk topside. There were other things she could do besides taking souls.”

A bundle of nerves formed in my stomach. “What else could she do?”

Roth shrugged, his gaze fixed over my head. “Things you probably don’t want to know about.”

My breath caught as unease spread through me like a choking weed. “Who was she, Roth?”

His eyes met mine, and part of me already suspected what the answer was going to be.

“The demon was your mother,” he said, his gaze never leaving mine.

“Okay.” I swallowed. Hard. And I took a step back. “So that explains what I can do. Makes sense, right? Most people get their mom’s eyes. I just got her demonic soul-sucking ability. And her ring. What was her name, anyway?”

I wasn’t sure I even needed to know her name, because it would make her all the more real to me, but I couldn’t take back the question.

Roth let out a low breath. “Your mother was known by many names, but most knew her as Lilith. And because of that, you’re on Hell’s Most Wanted List.”

Sitting on the bench, waiting for Morris, I stared straight ahead, not really seeing or hearing anything. Okay, so my mother was a demon who sucked souls. That didn’t take a huge leap of intelligence to figure out, but I hadn’t expected who she was. Lilith? Like the freaking Lilith? The mommy of all things that go bump in the night? There was no way. There had to be another Lilith because that demon hadn’t walked topside for a millennium.

Folklore claimed that Lilith was Adam’s first wife and had been created like him, but she refused to become subservient to Adam. This caused many epic battles between them, eventually leading to God banishing her from Eden and then creating Eve. Needless to say, Lilith wasn’t a happy camper. To get back at Adam and God, she ran off and seduced the archangel Samael. Things went downhill after that.

That much was true, but the rest was mostly bunk from what I’d picked up in the old, crusty religious texts Abbot had in his office. The whole eating-babies myth was utter bull. Lilith never slept with Satan. She never slept with any demons. She slept only with one angel, and the rest were all human consorts. But the Alphas weren’t too pleased with her in the first place, and after she hooked up with Samael, they punished her.

Every child Lilith spawned from that point on was a monster—succubi, incubi and just about every other demonic creature you could think of. Worst of all, she’d birthed the Lilin, a race of demons who could steal souls with a single touch. They were her first and most powerful children. Around that time was when the first generation of Wardens appeared, created by the Alphas to battle the Lilin. They managed to wipe out the Lilin and capture Lilith. Texts claimed that Lilith had been bound to Hell by one of the Wardens, chained down there together with him for all eternity.