Chapter 25
Lionel
I woke to the sound of chirping birds and a growling canine. Soul. I wasn’t allowed pets in my apartment, and I’d have to give her back to Lucifer.
Wait…birds? There were no birds near my place, at least not enough to make this sort of noise. I cracked my eyes open. I was lying on my side, close to the edge of my bed, and Soul was sitting on the floor, a string of drool hanging from her mouth. She growled up at me, staring with her beady eyes.
Like a chair falling apart under your ass, the events of last night came back to me with a creaking, sinking sort of feeling.
Oh, fuck. Fuck. Last night… This was not my bed, and I was naked under the covers. Too-soft covers. No. Nooo. Please, no. I felt like I’d been on my feet for days, and moving was hard, but while I wasn’t dressed—not a fucking stitch on me—I also didn’t feel as if I’d…as if he’d…as if we’d…
Well, there was definitely no we.
I turned onto my back and lifted my head off the soft pillows in their high-thread-count pillowcases. I dared a glance over to the other side of the bed, which was blessedly empty.
Wait. I was naked, swaddled in disgustingly soft sheets in the Devil’s bed.
Last night… Yeah. I had sort of come. In my pants.
And now I wasn’t wearing any, and I certainly hadn’t taken them off, so someone else had.
There was no feeling of any kind of grossness or dried cum flaking off me either, so someone had cleaned me up.
Someone. Lucifer. Lucifer? Nooo, he wasn’t the cleaning kind of Devil, and I didn’t want to think about how he might have washed my dick with a sponge.
I looked at Soul. “Did you lick me clean? You did, right? Good dog. Very good, cursed poodle dog.”
I sat up and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. Sunlight poured in through the large glass wall that overlooked a forested area to my left, but
the curtains were partially drawn, casting the bed in shadows as if whoever had left me here had wanted to make sure I didn’t get hit in the face by the burning rays of the angry sky fireball.
I met Soul’s beady eyes again. “You closed the curtains, right? You’re such a clever, clever dog, Soul. Good dog.”
She growled on, tilting her head. I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was judging me.
Not as harshly as I was judging myself, but more than a cursed poodle had any right to do.
Not that I’d argue. After all, she’d licked my dick clean and closed the curtains to let me sleep in, so I wasn’t going to complain.
My clothes were nowhere to be seen. I listened intently for any other noises in the cavernous house—running water, a toilet flushing, conversation. Apart from the birds, everything was silent, and with any luck, Lucifer had gone out to do whatever it was the Devil did to amuse himself.
That was good. Obviously, nothing worth seeing had happened, so this wasn’t technically going to be a walk of shame, but it didn’t hurt that no one was here to see it. Other than Soul, and Soul was one of the least judgy dogs I’d ever seen. At least, that was what I chose to believe.
The next time I happened to run into the Devil his own damn self, I’d simply act as if last night had never happened. He thought I had amnesia half the time we met anyway, so giving him a taste of the thing couldn’t hurt.
Yeah, that was the right thing to do if you woke up naked in the Devil’s bed: Pretend it hadn’t happened and move on with your life.
First things first, I had to get out. I tried to gather the sheet around me, but it was heavy and outrageously sized to fit the similarly outrageous size of the bed.
“Fancy shit. Why does everything about him have to be fancy, huh? His stupid hair, his stupid jeans that make him look hotter than he is, and that uber-fancy silly voice of his. Who the fuck needs that, Soul?”
The poodle gave a low bark and took a few steps back so as not to get caught in the crossfire of my wrestling match with the sheet. One of us was smart. Holding my breath, I gave up on the sheet and got up and out of bed naked as I was.
I’d gotten a pretty decent view of the bright and airy room last night.
There was a fluffy carpet to the left of the door that I’d noticed yesterday, and the throne-like reading chair angled so it overlooked the forest outside.
There wasn’t a wardrobe to be seen though, and that posed a potential problem.
Exploring wasn’t my first choice, but I had no other options.
Ideally, I’d find some kind of blanket I could wear toga-style.
I walked around the freestanding wall to check out that part of the room.
I gasped. “Wow. So this is how immortals live.”
This section was as large as the area with the bed, maybe even larger.
A bathroom lay on my right, partitioned off from what was an oversized dressing room by just a glass wall.
There was a half wall that looked as if it was allowing some privacy while using the toilet, but you’d be able to look at whoever was showering in there while you were getting dressed, and vice versa.
From the bathroom, you had a view of the grounds, where the tree tops thinned to reveal a lake large enough for a small sailing competition.
It was a view you’d be able to enjoy while you did all the things one did in a bathroom, and it was just plain creepy, in my professional necromantic opinion.
No one wanted to interact with the outside world in any way in a bathroom.
I would have liked to take a shower, but there was no way in hell I was doing that here, not when Lucifer or whoever else was around might walk in on me any moment and see my bare ass.
“I’ll just shower when I’m home and I’ve had some coffee. Wash away all of this,” I mumbled. Soul barked. At least someone approved.
Clothes. I had to stay focused. I turned to the humungous wardrobe that took up the other half of the room. A brief hunt resulted in a T-shirt that looked like a cocktail dress on me in terms of size, and a pair of sweatpants I had to roll up a few times so they wouldn’t drag around my ankles.
The shoes didn’t fit at all, but I was okay fleeing the house barefoot, and that was exactly what I intended to do.
I turned to find Soul glaring and growling, but since it was the cursed poodle’s default setting, I just stepped around her and headed for the door. The knob turned easily, and the door swung open without a sound.
The second floor had been poorly lit last night, and I could see why now.
From up here, you could look down at what had looked like a huge ballroom to me yesterday.
In daylight, it appeared to be exactly that, and it was probably only lit for balls or whatever the equivalent was when the Devil was the host.
The balcony I stood on rounded the walls and spread off deeper into the building to my left. I could see two more closed doors opposite Lucifer’s bedroom, but from the quiet, the Devil liked his privacy and the ability to loom over people from up here. I was neither surprised nor impressed.
On bare feet, I turned right toward the staircase no doubt designed so Lucifer could impress the guests of whatever parties he might throw here as he strode down the steps.
I tried to make as little noise as possible, but Soul had hurried out the door after me, her claws clicking on the marble and wooden floors.
“Just go away,” I told the dog as I finally got to the first floor, and damn.
The ballroom had a few marble columns, and many statues.
One was Hekate, and I was pretty sure I could make out Atalanta and her bears, but I wasn’t going to linger.
I turned to the room with the big-ass fireplace and the suggestive painting.
I was almost at the front door, my non-walk of shame so close to complete, when Metatron stepped into my path from an archway to my right. She wore pink shorts and an equally pink crop top, displaying her runner’s physique. With her curls perfectly styled, the angel looked like candy.
“You cannot leave,” she informed me, her eyes narrowing as if she’d spotted a cockroach on her shiny floors.
I froze. I had to get out. There was an embarrassing moment in which I asked myself what a cockroach would do, but I got over that and instead met the angel’s unyielding gaze.
“Let’s be reasonable.”
She snorted. “What are you? A fucking comedian?”
I opened my mouth to argue with her, but unfortunately, no words came out.