“What— Why are you laughing?”
I looked down with my arms splayed wide. He followed my gaze and his panic melted into horror. One hand was cleaning up my breasts while the other was between my legs.
Andrew yanked his hands back as if he’d been caught fondling the Virgin Mary. “God I really fucked this up.”
“You haven’t fucked anything up.”
A waitress came by with a pile of towels and I wrung the water out of my shirt, stealing glances at Andrew. He watched in horrified silence. The genuinity I found there called to my impulsive nature. Without regret, I touched his shoulder and asked, “Do you wanna get out of here?”
A familiar tune rode in on an icy wind, skating down the column of my neck and tickling my collar bone before pulling me from the depths of memory. I groaned as I roused, my body feeling like it had been put through a meat grinder and then pieced back together on a grill. Killing was hard on a girl.
I wiggled my numb, frozen toes that still hung off the bed, and wiped at the massive string of drool strung across my cheek. When I tried to sit up, tiny daggers embedded into my skin through the towel.
“Jesus,” I groaned. “Get off of me.”
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t listen.
“You’re quite hideous when you wake, you know.”
I froze, blinked the coma crust away from my eyes, and tried not to shiver against the ice that had started to cling to my heated skin. Maybe if I ignored him hard enough he’d go away.
Lucifer continued to hum his tune somewhere to my left. A tune that, after crawling back to the land of the living, made me shove up onto all fours, scaring Jesus into a screech of fury as I searched for the intruder in my bedroom.
“Are you singing Purple Rain?”
I honed in on the massive presence suffocating the room. He made the air feel thicker, charged with an electricity that shrunk the room to where it felt like it couldn’t hold us both. It was an awareness that made my skin tingle.
“Lucifer?” I moved slowly, sitting back on my ankles so as not to cause the sparks to ignite and consume us both.
Red light filtered in through my blinds from the stoplights below. In the corner, narrowed eyes glowed like blood diamonds in the dark.
The king of Hell sat in the lounge chair next to my bed with one leg crossed elegantly over the other as if he were sitting on a throne. He continued humming as the weight of his gaze pressed against me, flowing from the bridge into the chorus that made Prince famous.
The sight of him in my room was a heady euphoria that muddled my brain beyond comprehension, stirring a primal sort of need inside that made me want to crawl onto his lap and become the definition of obedient.
That thought, however, snapped his hold over me like a rubber band.
Obedience was never in my repertoire, and I’d be damned if it started now.
“Oh my god!” I exclaimed a little too excited to cover my lapse in bad-bitch fortitude. “Youweresinging Prince! Oh, Luci.” My deep throated giggle resonated between us. “You literally never cease to amaze me. Who knew you were such a romantic?”
“You test the limits of my patience so recklessly, Dany,” he tisked.
I crawled toward the edge of the bed thinking that maybe if I could convince him I was unfazed by his presence, I’d convince myself too. “Did Prince go to hell?” I gasped a little too enthusiastically.
Yeah, I scoffed and slapped my proverbial forehead at my poor performance.Now he’s really convinced you don’t have a lady boner. Fucking idiot.
Jesus took that moment to jump into his lap and purred as Lucifer stroked his back.
My suspicions of the cat grew.Traitor.
Not only that, but I was maybe a little jealous of him. I watched Lucifer’s long, languid strokes against the cat’s back and, as an icy shiver erupted along my spine, could almost swear I could feel his musician’s expert touch on my own skin.
“All of the greats go to Hell, Dany,” he answered in a voice as smooth and alluring as a Siren’s. “You should know that.”
I pulled my attention away from his hands just in time to meet his pointed, accusatory gaze. Or maybe, it was less accusing and more… laudatory?
Only one way to find out.
