She wasn’t wrong. But I shot her a disdainful glare anyway. “You heard him. Out.”
As soon as the door shut behind the last of them, Drystan rounded the desk and snagged me by the nape. “Never do that to me again,” he growled.
“Or what?”
His nostrils flared at the challenge in my voice.
“Bend over the desk and I’ll show you.”
“Is this supposed to be a deterrent?”
“Not even close.”
I wouldn’t typically let him take the lead, but he’d been genuinely concerned for me, and now that he wasn’t wearing my collar, all bets were off. So I did as he told me, offering him my leather-clad arse.
“Are you going to spank me, Drystan?”
“I should.” He ran his palm down my back until he circled one of my toned arse cheeks. Then he leaned over me until his lips were at my ear. “But I think I’ll edge you instead. Brats don’t get what they want.”
And then he was gone, his warmth and weight an unwelcome absence as the door opened and closed behind him. Now I was alone, turned on beyond belief, and uncharacteristically frustrated.
“Bloody hell, you do one good deed . . .”
Chapter
Twenty-Four
MERRI
Iswirled my fingers in the hot water, bubbles breaking with the contact as I settled into my bath. There was nothing better to do here in my Lucifer-made prison, and I wasn’t in a state to talk to him again.
For the hundredth time, I wished I were the sort of supernatural who might stand a chance against him in a fight. Not that I knew of any offhand strong enough to withstand that sort of physical confrontation, but it didn’t stop me from wishing it was possible. I despised the idea of being stuck here, like a fly in a spider’s web.
I didn’t let myself think too hard about how Lucifer knew what scents I liked or the fact that I preferred bubbles to a bath bomb, even though deep in my heart I knew. I’d handed it over freely during one of my chats with Cole. The depths of his manipulation were staggering when I allowed myself to dwell on it, which was part of the reason I couldn’t. I was in survival mode. Processing would come later. Assuming there was a later.
So, I laid my head back and breathed in the scents of strawberries and champagne, let the luxurious bubblessoften my skin, and tried not to think about my precarious predicament.
I was supposed to dreamwalk tonight. Sin made it clear to me that they were all expecting me to visit Grim. If we set everything aside for the moment, I understood why. Splitting my feeding between all four of them was the safest for all involved.
At least, that was our working theory.
Sin still maintained I could feed from him every day and it wouldn’t cause any lasting harm. The biggest issue he wasn’t focusing on was that my body craved them all. It had to be because we were bound to one another. The magic connecting us made us stronger in some ways, more stable, but needed to be fortified regularly.
Which meant avoiding Grim would create ripples, the effects of which I could only assume would grow exponentially the longer I did so.
But I just wasn’t ready to face him.
The others were complicit, sure, but he was the one who took my heart and stomped on it without a second’s hesitation.
“Ugh,” I groaned, taking a hot washcloth and plopping it over my face in yet another effort to distract myself. “Don’t think about them. It’s fine. You’re fine. You don’t need them right now. You’ve gone days and days without feeding before. Everyone deserves a night off, especially from heartbreak.”
Even as I said the words, I didn’t fully believe them, but I clung to the excuse anyway. Two things could be true. I could need to feed, but also not want to. And I didn’t owe anybody explanations. It was my body, my power, and only I got to decide the whens and hows of what they did and didn’t do.
In what had become a bit of a habit in the last few days, Andi’s voice floated through my mind.Amen, sister.
I wasn’t sure if this was a Jiminy Cricket sort of thing, and she was now the voice of my conscience, or if it was simply acoping mechanism to deal with my current isolation from any kind of support system. Either way, I’d been through hell in the last few weeks, or was it months now since I’d been thrust into this apocalypse? I’d more than earned a littlemetime.
With a heavy sigh, I sank deeper into the hot water and let it soothe my tense muscles. It wasn’t long before I drifted into a fantasy with no one around me. Not overbearing horsemen, not a world on fire. Just a beautiful garden at night, the fresh, clean air, and a sky filled with countless stars.
