He tapped the side of his skull with a long finger and winked. “Believe in angels now? I sure hope so. If you believe in my existence, you’ll surely want the arms of your guardian angel wrapped around you at night to chase away your nightmares of me.”
His maniacal grin stretched wide, too wide. I stumbled back, prepared to run but crashed back into another body.
“Woah there. I told you those heels were too high for you,” Jess said from behind me. “Were you just going to leave me at the table while you kept the bartender all to yourself, Melanie?”
“Jess!”
“Well, hello there, beautiful.” Lucifer’s gravelly purr rumbled deep from his chest. So low yet loud enough to make every woman within proximity, dancer and otherwise, look in his direction. It was like he was some sort of snake charmer, only he was the snake, and he seemed to hold some sort of spell over anyone with a vagina.
“What brings a piece of Heaven like you to this sad corner of Hell on Earth?”
“Rumors, mostly,” Jess said through a smirk that would charm a cat.
“Ah. Rumors and hearsay. Two of my favorite things. Does wonders for business. Can I get you a drink? Let me guess your poison. You’ll take a cosmopolitan.”
Her attention flicked back to me as Lucifer grinned like the smooth, evil bastard I was now convinced he was. Shit, shit, shit. There was no way, no way.
“Jess, we gotta go.”
“Like hell we do.”
How was I supposed to convince her that she was flirting with Satan?
He began to fix her cosmopolitan. While he was distracted, I pulled on the elbow of her scrubs. “Jess, let’sgo.”
My voice began to crack with panic. Every cell in my body was screaming at me to put as much distance between me and this… I couldn’t even admit to myself who this actually was.
“Lucifer. My name is Lucifer,” he said through a melodic purr, so low and gravely it scraped over the skin. He was answering my thought but looking directly at Jess, making it seem like an introduction. At that exact moment, the pulse of the synth music playing from the club’s speakers died down to be replaced with the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” Jess was too entranced by the man to register the irony.
“I know who you are,” she said with a smile. “I’m J—”
“Jessica,” he answered.
Her eyes moved to me, clearly assuming I’d introduced her.
I asked her again to leave, but she wasn’t listening to me. She wasn’t having any of it. Her attention was back on Lucifer, almost like she was in a trance. Before, I’d just brushed it off simply as an attraction between two good-looking people. But now, I wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t casting some sort of spell on her.
At this, he laughed, shaking his head like myprivatethought was a stupid one. Asshole. Oh God, I just called the devil an asshole.
“Take another drink,” he said, nodding to my Manhattan. “It will help you calm down.”
I didn’t want a drink. I wanted to leave.
“That’s not how you make a cosmopolitan,” Jessica said, her gaze fixed on the glass on the bar between them.
He arched a brow at her. “No?”
“No. You’re crushing the ice too thin, which will water down the drink, and you used a lime twist. It’s supposed to be lemon to garnish. No wonder humans aren’t really coming to your bar. You can’t make a drink to save your soul.”
My stomach withered in on itself, hearing the way she spoke to him. If only she knew. Every deep-seated survival instinct was telling me to flee. But I had to foist all those down because I couldn’t leave Jess alone with him.
His lips thinned with a frown, clearly offended though I wasn’t sure if it was from my thought regarding his honor or lack thereof or Jess’ statement regarding his inability to fix a drink. Probably both.
“Well, fortunately for me, Jessica, I’ve got no soul that needs saving.” He gestured behind the bar. “But by all means, show me how to make a proper cosmopolitan.”
“Jessica, don’t.”
She ignored me, hopping down from her stool and crossing over behind the bar like she owned the place. Lucifer leaned back against the bar, his arms folded over his chest as he watched her with intrigue flickering in his molten orbs. The expression he wore would make any girl stop and drool, so I commended Jess on her focus when she centered her concentration wholly on her task at hand. Which meant she wasn’t being hypnotized. There was a small relief in that, I guess, even though it was frustrating that she was straight up ignoring me.
