Chapter Thirty-Seven Charlotte
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Charlotte
It’s the middle of the night, several hours later, when I wake from my dream. Not the one where Mark chases me into the forest, into the shadows of the trees that shelter me, hide me from view. I’ve been reliving that memory-turned-nightmare since long before I ever met Lucifer, though the shadows now take on a new meaning.
No, this time, the dream is different.
When I reach the forest, the darkness no longer feels threatening.
And instead of the gnarled shadows cast by the moonlight chasing me, I see a small, fresh-faced little girl.
“I forgive you, you know,” she says to me, giggling.
Though I can’t begin to place where exactly I know her from.
“ He would have made a horrible daddy. ”
It’s only then that I recognize the similarities in our features.
Suddenly, she disappears, the uncanny sight of her there and gone instantly, leaving my womb feeling unexpectedly gutted and empty.
In her place, a familiar figure steps forth.
Her dark skin seems to blend into the night so that the whites of her eyes and teeth gleam viciously, and when she speaks, her voice sounds like a shrieking chorus of a thousand furies made one. Of every woman who’s ever been scorned.
“ His is not your child to bear. Daughter mine. Bride of Lucifer. ”
Her head snaps to the side like someone’s calling her.
“Lilith,” I hear a sharp, echoing voice hiss.
I wake with a start, rolling onto my side as I place a shaking hand over my belly. Hoping I don’t find a generous curve there.
But there’s no curve. Other than the normal slope above my mons.
I heave a huge sigh of relief. Grateful that, now that I’m on birth control, when someday I do get pregnant, for the very first time, it’ll be by my own choice.
With someone I want to spend my life with.
Not someone who’s been forced on me.
Even if that ... woman in my nightmare continues to haunt me.
She’s a figment of my own guilt, my own fear, I guess.
I glance over to the other side of the bed, searching for Lucifer, but in all the weeks I’ve been with him, fake relationship or not, I’ve never once seen him sleep.
At least, not beside me.
It isn’t until a moment later that some deep instinct tugs at me, urging me from the bed. I tell myself it’s in search of food, but that’s not really the whole truth. I grab the silk Ralph Lauren night-robe I now like to use from where I left it at the foot of the bed after my shower and wrap it around myself. The halls of the penthouse feel particularly dark and eerie in the middle of the night, and none of the automatic lights switch on for me, thanks to their programming.
It isn’t until I reach the second floor and have my head buried in one of the many industrial-size fridges in the kitchen that a noise carries to me.
The distant sound of a piano.
Casting a wistful glance at the leftover piece of chocolate cake I was about to devour, I head toward the sound. The soft melody seems to lead me.
Silently, I pad toward the first floor, trying not to alert him that I’m here.
I want to hear Lucifer play, unaware that I’m listening, for as long as I can.
By the time I reach the first floor, I recognize the song.
The sheet music. The composition he was writing.
There are more layers to it now, though it’s still just as haunting and desolate as when I hummed the notes that first morning. The first morning after we’d slept together.
I can’t help but hope that maybe there’s a bit of meaning in that.
I tiptoe closer as he plays through it a few more times, looping it and changing some of the notes slightly, like he still hasn’t gotten it exactly how he wants it.
But to me, it’s perfect.
Even more so because of the voice that accompanies it.
Lucifer sings like an angel, his voice deep and throaty. He doesn’t hold anything back as he belts out the words, though they’re ... in a language that’s unrecognizable to me. But my heart understands it clearly.
This is the language of his Father.
The tongue God speaks.
Goose bumps prickle across my arms, raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck. It isn’t until he’s finished, his hands coming to rest on the final chord before he releases the keys, that I step out of the shadows, clapping quietly.
“I thought I felt you there,” he says, the shadows that hid me for only a moment twisting around me like a caress before they slowly retreat.
But I know now that it’s really the light he’s moving.
The shadows are only the result of it.
He pats the bench beside him, and I sit down tentatively.
“Do you play?” he asks.
I shrug. “A little. But I sing. In the church choir. Or I used to, anyway.” I glance down at my hands. “I’m sorry I hurt you. Tonight, and that day when you left me alone in the playroom.”
“You never need apologize to me, Charlotte,” he says.
Not acknowledging if what I said holds any truth.
But I don’t need him to say it to know that I hurt him. Deeply.
He may be a former angel, but Lucifer’s far more human than he gives himself credit for.
“Will you play it again?” I nod to the keys. “For me?”
“You like it that much, do you?” He smiles, an amused little grin.
“Yes. Very much.”
“I wrote it about you, you know.”
The admission surprises me, so much that I feel tears well in my eyes, but I can’t bring myself to ask him to translate what any of the lyrics mean. My heart already knows.
Lucifer’s eyebrow lifts as his face scrunches into a look of confusion. “Why are you ... crying, Charlotte?” He says the word as if he recognizes the emotion that accompanies it, but he ... doesn’t fully understand what it means.
I can’t imagine he would.
He and the other Originals strike me as being, well, a little emotionally repressed, if I’m honest. I think it’s a part of being a celestial being. I can’t imagine God is the most present of parents, considering how he up and abandoned us all recently.
Lucifer most especially.
I sniffle, embarrassed by how I must look to him. My eyes sting. I swipe away my tears. “I’m just ... happy, that’s all.”
But it’s not the whole truth.
Not even half of it. It’s not even close to what I really want to say.
I don’t want this to end.
I don’t say it out loud, but something in the way he looks at me, his dark eyes softening, makes me think he feels it too.
The words that we’ve both decided are best left unsaid.
“I ... don’t particularly care for when you cry,” he says softly.
Which only forces a garbled laugh out of me. “Lucifer, I—”
“You don’t need to tell me, Charlotte. I already know.”
But we can’t possibly mean the same thing.
I don’t bother to tell him that before I lean forward and kiss him.
It’s soft at first. Nothing but a gentle brush against lips.
But then I deepen it. Teasing his mouth open.
And suddenly, he’s unleashed.
He tangles his fingers in my hair, gripping me and pulling me to him, as we both lay siege to each other’s mouths. Tongues and lips feverishly searching, like we’ll find both our last breaths there. A few moments later, he breaks the kiss between us, only to pull back and look at me. The fire in his eyes this time is different, unfamiliar. Unguarded and new.
And more terrifying than any hellfire I’ve ever seen there.
“Charlotte.” He whispers my name like a prayer.
I place a gentle finger over his lips as I slowly stand. I lead him by the hand toward the elevator with me. Once we’re inside together, he moves to press the button. For level five. The floor to his playroom.
But I block the button with my hand as I whisper, “Inferno.”
Lucifer’s gaze cuts toward me, and for a moment, he appears almost lost again, like he isn’t certain what to do, and I see the scared, abandoned angel he might have once been then, when he was cast from Heaven. “Please,” I say.
I hit the button for the floor where his bedroom’s located, taking him by the hand again. I lead him gently once the elevator doors open. I don’t stop until we reach his bedroom, where I seal the door closed behind us, releasing his hand.
“Charlotte,” he says again.
Soft and uncertain.
I step toward him and place another gentle finger to his lips. “You don’t need to say anything.”
He shakes his head, capturing my hand in his as I drop it from his lips. “I’m ... not certain I know how to touch you like this,” he admits, swallowing hard.
Without restraints to keep my hands from straying. To keep me from seeing the vulnerable parts of him he doesn’t want me to see.
I place my hand on his chest, above where his heart beats.
Immortal and unending.
“Then let me teach you.”
We fall into bed together a short while later, my hands still roaming and exploring as we kiss feverishly. I don’t think I could ever get enough of touching him like this. Exploring him of my own free will. Even if what we do in his playroom is also my favorite thing.
I have him naked and pressed back against the headboard, arms spread wide, as I climb on top of him, seating myself on his hard length. He slides into me with ease.
Both our breaths hitch.
“Whatever am I going to do with you, little dove?” he breathes into my mouth between kisses, the rise and fall of his chest slowly increasing. He brushes a reverent hand over my cheek. “You’ve ruined me.”
“Why do you call me that?” I whisper back. “Little dove?”
He smiles before he flips me onto my back suddenly, swallowing up my excited little squeak as he kisses me. He brushes my hair from my cheek. “Because it was a dove that brought Noah the olive branch. To show him he still had something to look forward to when my Father’s floods receded.” The longing in his eyes stops my breath short. “You’re that dove for me, Charlotte.”
He sinks himself inside me again.
Filling me with all the unspoken emotion he feels for me.
And as I come apart, the sound of his name like a chant or a prayer on my lips, I see a pair of shadowy wings cast on the wall behind him.
But this time, he doesn’t try to hide them from me.