Chapter Sixty-Four Lucifer
Chapter Sixty-Four
Lucifer
The evening before the wedding, when I return from picking up my tuxedo, my wife is wearing nothing but one of my dress shirts and is already on her knees for me.
My cock stiffens.
“What a good, good girl you’re being, little dove,” I purr, stepping toward her.
She glows from my praise, lowering her head for a moment and blushing prettily. “Is it time to play, Daddy?” Her long lashes flick up at me hopefully.
She’s a complete hellion.
She knows exactly what she’s doing to me.
And I cannot resist her.
I hang my tux on the valet stand, unbuttoning my cufflinks as I ease toward her. She’s a picture, the image of sin, sitting there like that. Everything I want and more, and yet . . .
Something, or someone rather, is missing.
I pause, noting how her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Give me a color, Charlotte.”
She stiffens, knowing I’ve seen right through her. “Green, sir,” she says, but I can taste the lie easily.
I step closer.
She tracks me eagerly, waiting to see what I’ll do. She wants this, that much is clear, but our play, my punishment, isn’t what she needs.
I shake my head. “No.” I turn away from her, stripping off my suit coat. “No, not tonight.” I glance over my shoulder at her, and the look she gives me is devastating.
Heartbroken.
I can hardly deny her.
What in God’s name has she done to me?
I chuckle. “After all this time, you cannot possibly think I’m saying no because I do not want you.”
She glances down at her hands uncertainly. “I can, sir.”
My expression softens.
Releasing her rage upon her father may have begun to heal her, but the scars will remain for some time. I remove my shirt and brush my fingers along the ridges on my spine—raised, uneven, a map of the wound He left behind.
I know that all too well.
I cross the room to her in two quick strides, gently leading her by her collar to her feet.
“I want you, always. I can hardly stand the moments I’m without you, the ache it creates in me, and I will never say no because I do not want you, little dove.
But I will when there’s something more important I can give you.
” Slowly, I tangle my hand into the base of her hair, drawing her up onto her toes as I kiss her.
The world narrows to the space between us, quiet and reverent.
I tilt her chin up with care, my lips brushing over hers like a vow—slow, lingering, full of the things I haven’t yet found the words to say.
She leans into me, soft and trusting, and I kiss her deeper, trying to memorize the shape of her mouth, the way she sighs into the moment like it’s home.
When I pull back, her gaze flits to mine uncertainly. “Sir?”
My thumb traces across her collar affectionately. I reach for the fastener, unbuckling it as I whisper, “Inferno.”
Her eyes widen.
It’s the only time I’ve ever used our safe word.
The only time I’ve ever put a stop to one of our scenes.
“This isn’t what you need right now, is it, little dove? What you really want? You’re just hiding in it.” I pull her closer, knowing she understands what I mean.
My punishment isn’t all that I can give her.
Right now, it’s my love she needs.
She stares up at me, eyes shining with unshed tears, at the way I see her, know her, intimately. “You’ve never told me no before.”
Never been the one to demand she join me in our shared vulnerability.
Outside of one of our scenes.
“Some things don’t change.” I hold up her collar, a reminder that she is and always will be mine as I lay it out upon the bed.
“But others can. Like you’ve done for me.
” I pull her into my arms, pressing her against me.
“You loved me, trusted me, even when I was at my most monstrous. Woke up parts of me no one else could. It’s high time I care for you as you’ve always cared for me. ”
A tear slips down her cheek. “You already have, Lucifer. You already have cared for me.”
When I kiss her then, it feels nothing like it did the first time—it’s a soft brush of tongue and lips and teeth.
I kiss the tip of her nose, then her temple, her cheeks, suckle upon the hollow of her throat until she’s panting, writhing beneath me, and only then do I claim her lips.
It’s a thousand times better than it was at the start, infinite and unending.
She and I may die tomorrow, may greet Death readily, but this, the way she’s changed me, loved me, humbled and broken open parts of me I would’ve never dared to look at, that will remain long after we’re both gone.
I lead her down onto the bed with me then, catching her in my arms as we both fall. Our hands rove over one another in a desperate need. I nip at her collarbone, and she laughs when I growl, tearing my shirt from her so readily one of the buttons pops free.
The love I make to her is slow and reverent. Soul shattering. Life ending.
Charged with all the hope she’s given me.
When she lies in my arms sometime later, naked and spent, my hands tangled in her hair, her curved frame soft and sated against me, I realize that this is what I will miss the most.
The moments where she unravels me.
Makes me soft in ways I didn’t think were possible.
“Do you think it’ll hurt?” she whispers, lazily tracing a finger over the scarred sigil on my chest.
Dying, she means.
I shake my head. “No. I don’t think Azrael will let it. Not for you, anyway.”
At the mere mention of his name, she stiffens slightly, glancing away.
But I don’t want her to hide from me. Not tonight.
Gently, I grab her by her chin, turning her to look at me. “You miss him, don’t you?”
She nods. “Don’t you?”
I inhale a deep breath. There could never be anything more sacred, more holy, than the trust she has placed in me, in our dynamic, than what she means to me, but I don’t have it in me to lie anymore.
To myself. To her.
“I do,” I confess. “I’ll admit having him around was a bit fun, perhaps, but I suppose it doesn’t make any difference now.”
She smiles, though there’s a bit of pain in it, before she suddenly separates from me, wiggling her way toward the end of the bed.
When she returns a moment later, my collar is in her hands, and she’s looking at me expectantly, a hopeful gleam in her eyes. “Please, sir? I . . . don’t like being without it now.”
“Still as eager to be mine as the day you first walked into my boardroom, I see.” I chuckle. “All right, darling. Turn ’round.”
She kneels upon the mattress, her supple back facing me, and I brush some of her golden hair over her shoulder. Slowly, I fasten it at her throat, before I kiss her neck. She tilts her head to the side as my tongue caresses over her pulse, and she shivers for me.
“Why did you choose to put it back on, little dove?” I ask her, whispering across her skin. “Before everything.”
She sighs softly, melting into my touch.
“I wanted to be yours again. I’ve always wanted to be yours.
” She turns and places her hand on my cheek.
“I was just afraid of losing myself in it, in you. I thought I needed to have all the answers, figure out who I was, but I think deep down, I was really afraid of how exposed it made me to you.”
My pulse quickens.
She takes my face in her hands. “I love you, Lucifer Apollyon. I love you with an ache I can’t hide from, an ache that reminds me I’m not whole, but you give me hope that I could be.”
I smile, the words wrapping around my heart, sealing every fracture I once thought permanent. In her smile, I find the best of me. “I love you too, little dove”—I kiss her—“and at the end, there’s no one else I’d rather have beside me.”