On those last sweet words of goodbye, she shifted back into her human form and licked the blood from her fingers as she marched over to me without so much as a glance back.
“Let’s go. I’ve had enough of this heat.”
I gapped at her, trailing a few feet behind her as I struggled to find the words. “That— That was…Hot. Kitten has claws.”
She grinned at me, looking pleased with herself. Her smile slipped when she twisted around to see the hole her tail had ripped through her pants, giving me an after-show encore that was almost as pleasing as the first. “Damn it, I’m going to have to sew these up. One of the many reasons I hate shifting.”
“Don’t fix it. I like it,” I said with a mischievous chuckle.
She glared at me, but she couldn’t reign back the smile on her lips. Her torn clothes aside, she was proud of herself for moving past her hatred for her beast in order to protect herself. And I was proud of her too.
“And how you made him wear his own intestines like a necklace? Bleeding brilliant.” I pressed the flat of my palm against my heart, grinning ear to ear. “I think I’m in love.”
Her gaze snapped to mine, her expression all serious. ”Really?”
I laughed off the question as if it were a joke and left it hanging in the torrid air of the Fourth Circle.
Coward, my beast grumbled.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jessica
The Inferno Elevator – Present
Instead of taking the elevator, we had driven through the Mire of Gluttons on the third floor, the entire trip downhill, and when Lucifer’s memory of the Fourth Circle ended, we were already on the outskirts of its deserts.
The car came to a stop at yet another parking garage, this one completely empty. It looked eerie standing in the desert with absolutely nothing around it, save for the stretch of sand below it and the blanket of sunless red sky overhead.
Lucifer guided the car into the first level and pulled into the middle of the garage, ignoring the painted parking slots. Not that it mattered. There was no one else here. He cut the engine, and the doors of the DeLorean slid open.
I got out, refusing to meet his eyes. My heart was pounded hard in my head, and it was all I could do to keep from screaming. So far, his memories had been a rollercoaster of emotion for me.
Was I really Lilith?
Could I possibly be this demon queen he’d loved so long ago?
Had we really trudged through Hell together, rebuilding it as we went? Despite his inability to trust everything his instincts were telling him, he loved Lilith dearly, even before he claimed her as his own mate. It was hard to fathom that such pure, raw, blistering love might have once been mine.
Losing something that was such an integral part of my being would have left a giant fucking hole in my heart. Whether I remembered it or not.
Maybe that was the void Reckless Jess was always on a mad search to fill.
No.
It was something I still refused to accept. I was just a nurse, a human. A girl trying to live her life and pay her bills and hold onto her dad as long as possible. I wasn’t a queen.
No matter how much Lilith reminded me of myself, I couldn’t be that woman. I couldn’t dare dream that this man she had conquered Hell with could also be mine.
My emotions were a heady mess. Even though it was Lucifer’s memories, I was somehow feeling her emotions. I knew her joy, her pride when she’d taken Abaddon down, her excitement every time Lucifer looked at her with something akin to love glittering in his beautiful golden eyes.
And in that moment, above all, I felt her anger. I had seen some fucked up shit in Lucifer’s memories. But none of it surprised me. I hated to admit it, but it almost felt like I had seen it all before. It was the same sensation I got when I rewatched a sitcom rerun that I was sure I had seen before, but it had been so long since I’d watched it that I forgot all the details of the plot. Still, I knew the characters and their flaws, and I knew what couple I was rooting for even if I had already seen the episode where they got together. Going back and watching the important parts of their relationship was…nice. It made me feel closer to them even though the characters were fake and there was no hope of me ever meeting them.
Even though they existed in someone else’s mind, it still felt like they were a part of me.
I could still cheer for them. Still cry for them. Still hurt for them.
And at that moment, I was hurting for Lilith. Abaddon had hurt her in the past, and seeing the heinous demon he once was struck a soft part of my being that I didn’t even know was there. Yeah, so he was a raging asshole. I knew that from the second I saw him outside of Siren’s. Maybe it was the fact that he flirted with me, especially after he shared Lucifer’s belief in thinking I was Lilith. He’d smiled and called me his queen and took pleasure in watching me squirm under his comments.
