“Well, thanks to you, they’ll have a true paradise to call home. Free of rules and lies. Imagine Hell more like Heaven than the real thing.”
I turned my head to plant a kiss between her eyes, smiling against her. “No, Kitten. Thanks toyou.”
She let out a happy sigh, and we fell silent for another stretch of time, her mind alive with images of the future kingdom we were building together. A while later, she spoke again. “You know what would make Lust perfect?”
“Hmm?”
“A tavern at the top of this tower.”
“It’s just supposed to be an observation deck, a place where we can view all that we’ve built when we’re done.”
“But that’s boring. If you want this to be a true paradise, you have to think about all the little details.” She stretched her arms over her head, twisting to reach for something at the far end of the lumber pile and came back holding a shattered piece of pottery. It was a fragment of the soup jug that must have come down with her in her fall. “Soup. Put a tavern at the top. Serve soup.”
I chuckled, my lips splitting into a grin. “Soup? That’s your perfect paradise?Soup?”
“Mhm, it’s warm. It’s comforting. Besides, it will always remind me of you.”
Chapter Twenty
Jessica
Gluttony – Present
The elevator ride down to the third floor was a tense one. Lucifer and I hadn’t said a word to each other when he’d finished showing me his memory. I hadn’t been able to finish my minestrone, which I felt bad about because Cerberus asked three times on our way out if he’d put too much pepper into it. I reassured him that it had been perfect.
And that was the problem. It was too perfect. It tasted like absolute heaven. It tasted like comfort, like waiting out a storm while being snuggled up in the warmth of a lover’s arms.
It tasted like home.
Eating that soup felt like a memory that wasn’t mine. One that I now had all the details to, one that snapped together perfectly with the emotions I had experienced the moment I’d tasted the soup at Canlis.
Lucifer’s memory should have felt like a stranger’s in my mind. But it didn’t. It felt like it was every bit as much mine as it was his.
Their intimacy, it didn’t make me uncomfortable to see. It… It made me hot all over. Like I’d just seen the best porn ever, perfectly tailored to my tastes.
Lucifer was right, good-byePornHub.
Like Lilith, I loved rough sex. There was nothing better than being man-handled by a lover who knew how to properly fuck his woman to madness. If it had been Lucifer reading my mind, I would have been imagining something pretty damn close to what Lilith wanted. Scary close.
Almost like we were the same person.
Lucifer’s golden gaze settled on me, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I knew what the bastard was thinking. “You are the same person.” But he held his tongue. He could tell me that as much as he wanted, but I would need more proof before I could start believing it.
But little details were nagging at me. Lilith’s body language was eerily similar to my own. Through Lucifer’s memory, I was able to read flashes of her thoughts, and it’s not like I was an expert in the way other people thought, but fantasies of Lucifer, her hopes, even the way she organized her thoughts were almost uncanny to mine.
“Do you have any questions?” Lucifer asked, his attention now on the digital display over the elevator door.
“Why don’t you just look in my mind?”
His brow creased with the frown he wore. “You’re angry.”
“Yeah, no shit. It’s not like I want to be here.”
“You agreed to go on this little tour with me.”
“Youkidnappedme, asshole. You strong-armed me into it.”
“I don’t think you’re angry with me. I think you’re upset that what I’m showing you is making you uncomfortable.”
