“You think I played you,” he said.
“I know you did.”
Lucifer’s damning stare was the kind that could start wars.
“I couldn’t take it,” he said, quiet now. Dangerous. “I tried. That night, you were begging me to.” His fists clenched and, for the first time in my existence, I saw the beginnings of a lonely, tortured man baring his soul to someone else. “Begging me to let you die. And I reached for it, Dany. I did. Like a selfish bastard, I reached and took your soul into my hands.” He reached out, mimicking the story he told with such ferocity it made my heart clench. Then, he ran both hands through his hair and turned away from me, his voice growing softer. “I know what Elysium feels like; to walk through the golden grace of God and be surrounded by the promise of an eternity free of feeling.” Lucifer glanced at me over his shoulder, his stare so full of longing and sadness holding me captive as he confessed. “But even heavenly grace couldn’t compare to the feel of your soul against my skin. It nestled itself against my own reprobate soul, making me feel for the first time in my miserable existence that I could be… Home.” His gaze lifted to the mural above the shattered throne of the broken angel, cast from the only place he’d ever known.
My throat burned. “You should’ve told me. All of this time. All of these stupid fucking games Lucifer, and for what? An eternal game of cat and mouse?”
“I wanted to see what you’d become when you thought you had nothing left to lose.”
I moved toward him, wrath and something gentler braided together, until we were so close I could see the fine golden hairs standing on end along his neck. He smelled like smoke ozone right before lightning strikes the ground. My heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of my chest and into his hands.
Then, just like the devil himself, I took that leap of utter faith.
“You fell from Heaven for me, and then you let me think that you owned me. That I was indebted to you, obligated to answer every beck, call and whim.”
His silence wasn’t empty. It rang like the frantic chime of bells, and when he finally inhaled to speak, I hung on every word.
Lucifer leaned forward, his breath rustling the wayward hairs on my forehead as he whispered, “You were never mine to own, dearest Dany.”
And there it was; the truth.
The confirmation falling from his lips landed harder than a meteor and left a crater larger than the one made upon his crash to Earth.
Lucifer gifted me a treasure that he was never thought good enough to receive.
Free will.
He let me choose whether to live or die. Pulled me back from the brink of death just so I could decide whether or not vengeance was a path I was ready to take.
That was only the surface level, though.
Lucifer gave me the opportunity to choose…
Him.
“Even heavenly grace couldn’t compare to the feel of your soul against my skin. It nestled itself against my own reprobate soul, making me feel for the first time in my miserable existence that I could be… Home.”
The epitome of sin, and yet for me, he never gave in to a single one.
I reached between us, pressed my palm to his chest and sighed as I felt the familiar heat of him there. Familiar because it lived in me too; the cracklingember of something that never truly belonged to Heaven or Hell.
We were the Unwanted.
“Take it,” I whispered.
Lucifer flinched. Just enough for me to see it. “I can’t,” he said, voice low and shredded.
I arched a brow. “Since when do you, King of the Unwanted, follow rules?”
“You don’t understand,” he replied with a tension filled groan as if he were a dam crumbling under the force of the current. “If I take your soul, it changes everything. You’ll never be able to walk away, Dany. Never be able to choose anything other than me; just as cursed.”
“Look at me,” I whispered. His body shivered, head hanging low as if resisting the urge to let me look upon sin itself. “Luci,” I tried again, half whispering, half pleading. His tension was palpable and I felt it with every cell of my being. Finally, though, he did as I asked. “Maybe,” I said, running my fingers down the angle of his cheekbone. “I don’t want to walk away.”
His jaw clenched. “Don’t say that.” Loathing was a venomous current running through each syllable. “You deserve more than damaged goods,Dany.”
The words he didn’t say spoke louder than those he did.
