Chapter 34
Lionel
The bed I was lying on seemed to be moving, like a life raft on the high seas. That probably wasn’t the case, but nothing would stand still, not the bed, not Lucifer close to me, his handsome face floating in and out of my field of vision.
“How much did you drink, Nelly?” he asked. I couldn’t decide what to make of his tone. He wasn’t angry or annoyed; at least, I didn’t think so.
“I had champagne. It’s from France. Did you know, there’s a place in France that’s called like the drink, and when they ship the drink from the place to us and put it in a cocktail for us, it’s called that. Not France. Champagne.”
I smiled, deciding to let him chew on what I had learned while out on a date with Sexy Mitch, who was… I turned my head, but Sexy Mitch wasn’t there. That made sense. This was Lucifer’s bedroom.
The Devil frowned. His hair looked off, but then I realized he was just leaning over me and his bouncy waves were askew.
“There is a region in France where the drink is produced, Nelly. Can you see me? I know humans are susceptible to alcohol poisoning, and it can turn you blind.”
I giggled. He was hilarious, always thinking I was broken. “That’s methanol poisoning, silly. I just had a drink. Two drinks! I ordered another, but…” I gestured, imagining reaching for a glass, but there wasn’t one. Sad.
“Fine. In that case, you’re a lightweight who cannot manage two drinks. Or you failed to keep a close eye on your two drinks. Either way, no more champagne for you today.”
Lucifer’s head floated away again before I could complain about the injustice of him cutting me off from France. He was working my shoes off, I realized. Correction, I was shoeless. His hands went to the front of my pants, and I gasped as I felt him open that button, then move on to the zipper.
That was bad. I knew it was bad. I had an erection.
Which…surely there was no way he would’ve seen?
I wasn’t even sure why I was hard; Lucy wasn’t that hot.
Just sorta, kinda hot-ish. I knew I needed to tell him to get off or get me a towel I could use to hide my boner, but…
His fingers brushed my erection, and it was as if a flutter of grave-dirt-dark wings stirred deep inside my chest.
Not that he was hot or anything.
“A shame,” said the Devil in his smooth obsidian nightmare voice. “You’re almost hard, and I would have liked to make you feel me tonight.”
Was he going to…? He was going to, right? Right?
I replayed his words in the spinning auditorium of my mind. Had he said…a shame?
He continued stripping me naked, and I just lay there, mulling over the meaning of it all. Meanwhile, the world was still moving more than it should have been.
With a sudden flash of magic, the lights went off, leaving the room mostly dark. I couldn’t see too well, but once I was completely naked, I heard him gather up my clothes and leave. The bedroom door remained open behind him.
Faint slivers of silver light snuck in, swirling into the maelstrom of vertigo that had me fully in its grasp.
I could’ve left and found my way back to the cocktails.
Instead, I curled up on my side and sort of wrapped a sheet around me to hide my arousal and the general state of nakedness Lucifer had left me in.
Then I thought hiding was actually fucking stupid, and I turned around again, sat up, and swung my legs out of bed.
I would leave, because that was the smart thing to do.
Going back to my dragon fins—well, not to the actual dragon fins I’d thrown up, but to Mitch—that was the smart move.
Mitch was good for me. Mitch would undress me more tenderly than the Devil ever could, and he would smile at my knowledge of French wines and compliment me.
My head, hell, my entire body, was not on board with leaving.
Not only would nothing keep still, not even the ground, but I was also beginning to feel the champagne take a hammer to my temples.
Not just a regular hammer either, but one of those with long, curved teeth that break the bone and poke straight into the gray matter underneath.
Still, I was accidentally aroused. I wasn’t sure by what.
I really shouldn’t stay here with this boner I was having though, I knew that.
It wouldn’t end well with an immortal, no matter how good-looking, good-smelling, or good at magic.
I forced my feet to take my weight and took a step away from the bed even as my vision blurred.
“What do you think you’re doing, Nelly? Need to go to the bathroom? I didn’t think you had any more in you to throw up, but humans are ever surprising creatures.” Lucifer. He’d drifted back into the room like smoke, or maybe he had teleported here. Someone should fit him with a bell.
“Fuck you,” I told him, my voice rough enough to grate some primo Parmesan. “I need to pee.” I didn’t really, but I wasn’t going to tell him I’d decided to leave. Heavens knew what he would do.
I heard him rattle around the room and put something on the bedside table.
Then he wrapped his arms around my waist and walked me around the bed.
His fingers were cool against my skin, but they still filled me with searing need.
I shouldn’t have craved him like this. After throwing up like I had, I shouldn’t have been craving anyone. It was probably just the alcohol.
“Need me to hold something for you?” Lucifer’s voice was full of teasing as he switched on the lights in the bathroom.
They were bright, even if I got the sense that the illumination would feel soft if I were any less drunk.
The wall that had overlooked the lake and woods earlier was now milky and opaque, meaning this was fancy smart glass, not just your average window wall.
The added privacy was great, but being alone would have been better, especially since the glass wall facing the dressing room was still transparent.
“I can fucking manage holding my own dick while I pee.” Damn it, I had meant to snap, but it just came out as a weak statement, possibly halfway to a question.
Lucifer chuckled. “Whatever you say, Nelly.”
Right. I took a step away from him and into the bathroom. There were no real doors, just as I had seen earlier in the day.
I looked over my shoulder, and sure enough, Lucifer stood there, blue eyes sharp as cut diamonds and all over me. Right, because I was naked. At least my erection had gone down, thank all the gods except the one who called himself the Devil.
“Turn around. Or just leave,” I said.
His chuckle sounded like fire crackling in the darkness. “It’s sweet how shy you are, Nelly. I’ll train that out of you eventually. Hmm. Or maybe I’ll grow to like it. I think I prefer you shy rather than trying to get some random human to fuck you.” He turned around. I ground my teeth.
“Mitch isn’t random. I like Mitch.”
The john was tucked away behind a low wall that offered at least a modicum of privacy. I decided to sit, because standing was hard right now.
Lucifer, for once, didn’t say a fucking thing. Oh, the bliss. Maybe it was getting through his head finally that I wasn’t his boyfriend and never would be.
Done peeing, I flushed, stumbled to the sink to wash my hands, then rinsed out my mouth.
I probably should have brushed my teeth with a finger, but the thought of putting anything into my mouth right now nearly made me hurl again, so that was a hard no.
I gulped down a few handfuls of water. Hydrating was probably good, but bending forward made me ridiculously dizzy again, and my stomach wanted back in on the action as well.
“If you crack your head open on that sink,” Lucifer said, suddenly appearing at my side, where he steadied me with a hand on my elbow, “I will not ever hear the end of it.”
He pulled me up against his chest. Then he grabbed a washcloth from a neatly folded stack on a shelf, ran water over it, and gently dabbed my forehead, my cheeks, my chin.
It felt good, both the tenderness and the cool water against my skin.
I hated it so much. Almost as much as his radiant eyes staring at me in the mirror over the sink.
Lucifer’s hands on my hips kept things from spinning out too much, right up until the point where he stopped wiping my hot face and turned me around in his arms.
In a low voice, he said, “Don’t ever tell me you like another man in that way. Never again.”
The fuck?
Before I could say that out loud, Lucifer bent his head toward me, and the cool press of his lips against mine added more vertigo on top of everything else being unmoored already.
The fuck?!
I’d thrown up for approximately half an hour, and here was the Devil, kissing me. Okay, he wasn’t Frenching—thanks for nothing, champagne—but still. I had to be dreaming.
My lips were hot and tingling as he pulled back. In one quick movement, I found myself back in his arms, being carried to the bed with minimal jerking or swaying.
“Here, I got you a glass of water with ginger juice. Trony made it. Because she cares.” He put it in my hand. I drank it under protest, and only because I was still thirsty. The ginger was sharp on my tongue, but it felt better than Lucifer’s lips on mine. That was what I told myself.
While I drank, I heard him stripping. He was taking off his clothes.
Fuck no. I should have drawn on my magic then and there, should have raised something from his backyard, because, fuck, he was the Devil, and he was bound to have some bodies buried out there.
They would have made a good distraction.
From his body, which probably wasn’t all that nice a body anyway.
My focus was too fickle though, so I just…I finished the water, and he took the empty glass out of my hand, and put it back on the bedside table. The sheets slithered over his skin, and I caught a whiff of him. More than a whiff. Spices and darkness and hot, hot flames.
For some inexplicable reason, in that moment, my champagne-addled mind felt it right to suggest that maybe the best way to get the Devil out of my system was by just letting him pass through like a warm summer breeze through the clothing on your heated skin.
Also, I was drunk. People did unreasonable things when they were drunk off their asses, so I would always be able to tell myself that was why this had happened.
At the end of the day, Lucifer would fade from my present and become a part of the past—a one-night stand and nothing more.
Yes, I could let Lucifer fuck me like this, I decided. Once, and then never again. It would be like tasting a dish before deciding you really didn’t like it. It was only reasonable. It made sense.
“Here, let me move you up and get a pillow under your head. Humans can suffocate quite easily in the state you are in.” Lucifer’s cool hands maneuvered me on the large bed.
He dragged a sheet around me after he’d settled my head on a pillow.
“I would, of course, give you CPR if that happened.” He pulled the high-thread-count sheets around us both like a cocoon of silk.
I expected him to roll me over and get started, but instead he just…lay down next to me, gently pulled me into his arms, and that was it. I waited for a few seconds. His hands didn’t move an inch toward my butt, although he was naked too, no doubt about it.
“Why aren’t we fucking?” I asked. I probably could have phrased that better, but I was drunk. Blunt was what Lucifer got for dragging a drunk necromancer into his bed, thank you very much.
Lucifer mumbled a curse that deeply insulted humans and sheep in one single statement. “You’re drunk. I’m not fucking you when you’re drunk, Nelly.”
Wait, what? Lucifer had a moral bone in that very hot body of his? I mean, his body wasn’t that hot. Medium hot at best. But the moral boner—bone. Focus, Nelly. Fucking hell. Focus, Lionel.
“You mind that I’m drunk, but you didn’t care that I told you to back the fuck off yesterday?”
He laughed with the sound of fire eating spring-green branches. “Yesterday? Did I touch you in any way that made you feel things you didn’t want to feel?”
That fucker. “I—you—you—you’re really not all that hot, you know.”
I wasn’t drunk enough to think that would take the smug out of him. The Devil next to me had the audacity to lean over me and kiss me. On the mouth. Again.
“Be quiet and go to sleep, Nelly. This is not an argument you want to have.” He looked down my body, and despite the sheet, I felt exposed. “Nor is it one you could win.”
“Fuck you.”
“I like it better the other way around, and so will you.”
My brain shorted out for a moment. The nerve of him! I had more things to say, but sadly my stomach sort of rebelled again. I didn’t puke, but I had to do some deep breathing, close my eyes, and count to five.
Lucifer stroked my chest, fingers tender as catkins. “Go to sleep, Nelly.” His voice was more force than words, more felt than heard.
I didn’t obey him, I merely made the executive decision to rest my eyes until my head felt better, that was what happened. That was exactly what happened.