He flashed a grin that was all shiny white teeth and pressed a button on the fob. The doors folded upward, just like the classic DeLorean, only this particular model actually looked like it had come straight out of the future.
“You’re not the only funny one, Kitten. Get in.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Lucifer
Gluttony – Past
When you’ve spent eons with wings, you get pretty damn used to flying. Wings have their uses, like being able to fly over oceans, deserts, volcanoes, piranha-infested swamps. When you’re slowly crawling you’re way out of Hell with two bleeding wounds where your own father ripped out your wings, you have to walk.
We’d finally made it to the Third Circle. I knew pure misery was in store for us when Greed ended up being fairly easy to weather. There was a pattern. Each floor seemed to alternate in how difficult it was to get through it. The River Styx on the fifth layer had been one long nightmare I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Before that, the Sixth Circle had been one sweltering cemetery. It stunk, and the screams just bled to white noise after a while, but overall, it had been tolerable. Now, what were Lilith and I reduced to endure? Wading through shit-filled mires that stretched on for fuckingever.
My legs were stronger than most mortal men’s, but they still screamed in agony with every step I took and with every step, I had to pry myself from the mud. I glanced over at Lilith, who was much shorter than me, the filth all the way up to her thighs. She was covered in a thin layer of mud butblood and feathers, how she managed to still look beautiful. Maybe it was the flicker of defiance that burned in her gray eyes, spurring on her aching muscles.
I could only venture a vague guess as to how long we’d been walking.
Too long. Too damn long.
The days bled into weeks and the weeks into months. It could have been years. We didn’t need to sleep or eat to survive, but it sure would have been damn nice to have those things. But no, we had to keep going.
I had to make it out of here to get to Eve.
For whatever reason, the thought of her made me think of Lilith instead. I guess it was hard to think of anyone other than the demon queen, who had basically been my only companion in my travels since I landed in the Ninth Circle.
She caught my gaze. Maybe it was just my delirium, but it was almost like she had been renewed with a bit of energy when she looked at me, her spine straightening and her short legs continuing to weed through the sludge-like mud even though her every muscle had to be on fire.
“You’re staring again.”
“What else am I supposed to look at,” I scoffed, stretching my arms out to gesture at the horizon, where there was nothing but endless planes of mud and the occasional dead tree or clump of long-dead grass.
“If you take your shirt off, then I’ll have something to keep me entertained.”
I laughed when her cheeks flared with heat. She looked so good in red. I simultaneously loved and hated that color on her. It was the perfect shade against her pale flesh. It made my beast whine with the need to take her. And I hated him for it, the lustful monster inside me making me think dirty thoughts about her. About a woman who wasn’t mine.
Mine, it moaned like a petulant child.She is mine.
That part of me kept whispering those words all the fucking time. It never shut up. But it was only saying those things because the beast inside me was weak to temptation.
That’s what Father had always said. He’d always said to find Eve if I wanted to get back on the right path. Eve. The woman with whom I had succumb to temptation would somehow be my salvation.
It didn’t make any damn sense. Despite that, that’s who Father told me to turn my attention to. Make her fall in love with me. If she could fall in love with a monster like me, he could make it, so this whole thing had never happened.
Eve was my quest. Not Lilith. So why was it always wicked thoughts of Lilith that tormented me? I couldn’t shake the fantasies. With her naked body stretched out for me, her lips flushed red with desire, her nipples peaked and red, her pussy raw and red from my affections, and her eyes, red with tears of unadulterated ecstasy.
All I could see was red, red,red.
Mine, mine, mine, my beast gritted.
“You’re pretty flirtatious for a male with a mate, you know,” she mumbled, pulling me from my own mire of devilish thoughts.
I shrugged, trying not to look her in the eye. “I was sent here on account of my favorite sin, lust. I’m still faithful to my mate.”
Her eyes turned to slits. “So are we still not talking about when you kissed me on the River Styx then? Or when you resonated—”
“Who knows how long we were on that river,” I snapped. I didn’t let her finish. I didn’t want to hear it. Meanwhile, I turned my gaze back to the empty horizon so she couldn’t see the conflict banked in my eyes. “I would have kissed Charon if he’d asked. That’s how damn bored I was.”
“Ididn’t ask you to kiss me.”
