Abaddon was right. I was eager to offer myself up to Lucifer. Why? I hadn’t the slightest idea. And that in itself was terrifying. And it turned Reckless Jess on.
It was Sane Jess who would quite possibly be selling her soul to the devil to save her dad.
And it would be my impulsive side who would willingly give her body to him because of whatever dark chemistry that was insistent on binding us together.
Chapter Eight
Jess
“Where are we going?” I demanded after a few minutes of driving in silence. With every mile we came closer to wherever it was we were going, nervous butterflies turned to angry hornets in my stomach.
“Canlis,” Abaddon grunted, not taking his eyes from the road.
“Canlis,” I repeated in disbelief.
He arched a brow, his piercings glinting in the light of the Bentley’s LCD console. “Is that not to your liking, Little Queen?”
“Stopcalling me that. I’m not marrying your king. It’s just dinner.”
The demon snorted.
I blinked at him, crinkling my brow in confusion. “What?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head, his gaze simmering with something dark and secret.
“Right… Anyway, Canlis is fine. I’m not normally one for something so fancy, but hey, better than what I was expecting.”
Canlis was the fanciest fine-dining restaurant in the Pacific Northwest. Like, suit and tie sort of fancy with portions so small you’d need a magnifying glass to see them. At least, that was my assumption of snobby places like that. I was far too poor to have ever been. I certainly felt dressed for it tonight, but I had built up someplace far more ominous in my mind.
“And what did you expect?” he muttered with a scoff. “An exotic night spent in the Seventh Circle of Hell? Perhaps a romantic picnic by the river of boiling blood, feasting on the corpses of the violent to the ambient screams of the minotaur’s victims?”
“N–no,” I balked. I snuck a sideways glance at the demon in the driver’s seat, who was grinning maniacally to himself. “Is Hell really like that?”
“Not anymore. Ever since Lucifer stole Hell from me, it’s been downright boring.” His brow slashed with a deep frown, and his tattooed fingers flexed around the steering wheel.
“Wait. Lucifer stole Hell from you? You mean you were—”
“I was the King of Hell before his dear daddy gave him the boot from Paradise, yeah. He stole Hell from me, among other things, and now I’m his little bitch.”
My brows popped. “Salty much?”
“It’s fine.” He gripped the steering wheel so hard, his knuckles went white. “It was a long time ago. Anyway, admittedly there’s less chaos among the native demon shifters of Hell and the exiled celestials shifters from Paradise now that they have a more welcoming place to call home.
“By celestial shifters, you mean the fallen?”
Abaddon’s face piercings jingled with a sharp nod. “Celestial beings born in Paradise, assigned as guardian class. Those are the poor fucks assigned a mortal to protect, and if they break any rule whatsoever, they get their wings torn out.”
“So Lucifer… He fell because he broke the rules?”
Abaddon nodded. “He and his brother Michael were the first-ever guardians. And they were assigned to the first two humans their father created. Lucifer got the better end of the stick because he was assigned to a fine piece of ass named Eve. Michael was given some asshole named Adam.”
“What crime could Lucifer have committed that was so heinous his own father ripped out his wings and sent him to Hell?”
Abaddon slid me a salacious smirk. “Three guesses.”
“Oh.”
I hated the fist of jealousy that clenched at my heart. There was no reason for me to be envious of the first woman to ever live. That was eons ago. Besides, Lucifer wasn’t mine.
