Chapter 6 Lucifer #2
Lucifer raised an eyebrow, surprised that she’d told them even a version of the truth. Her friends exchanged looks, then screamed in delighted unison, jumping on the bed with Galilee.
“You did what?”
“Girl, tell us everything!”
“Where did you even fuck him?” The last question was from the princess, frowning as if she was running through the layout of the
wing they’d been in. “A bathroom?”
Galilee blushed. “First of all, we didn’t have sex. And yeah, kind of.”
An annoyed rumble started in Lucifer’s chest. They had absolutely had sex, and Galilee was evading her friend’s question.
“We just fooled around, but it was kinda intense so I dipped out. That’s it.”
Oh, she was a liar. He would have to punish her for that later. It was his job, after all, to punish people for their sins,
and Galilee Kincaid was a liar. It didn’t matter how many thin truths she used as a veil, nothing she was saying was whole. She’d broken it into fragments
that she was spoon-feeding them, and they were lapping it up because they were human and humans bought stories so easily.
“He’s so fine,” the storyteller was saying. “I don’t blame you for getting overwhelmed. Was he a good kisser?”
Galilee’s blush darkened, but Lucifer also saw her hackles rise at the implication that he had overwhelmed her. She hid it
well, tucking a coil of hair behind her ear.
“He wasn’t bad,” she said, with a small secretive smile. It wavered as Gali looked over to the princess, and Lucifer made
note of how true she made the performance seem. “I felt weird, with him working for your dad and all, you know? I’m sorry
if it was inappropriate to do that in your house. I just got carried away.”
She was a good liar.
Lucifer knew damn well that Galilee didn’t give a fuck about his false position as head of security, and she certainly hadn’t cared how her friend might have felt back when she was grinding on his face.
She’d also been painfully deliberate about everything she did, from cutting a deal with him to offering him her silk-wrapped cunt.
The princess shrugged. “It’s my dad’s house, not mine. You’re good.” She smiled, and mischief lit up her eyes. “I’m glad you
had some fun, even if it was with that asshole.”
Galilee’s smile hardened slightly. “Yeah, he was kinda an asshole, wasn’t he?”
“Ah, the bad-boy type.” The storyteller sighed. “They’re a classic.”
Galilee shook her head like she was dispelling a hovering nightmare. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter.” She tossed
her head and grinned at her friends. “You know, I actually feel much better now. Thanks for pushing me to talk about it.”
They smiled back and wrapped each other in hugs while Lucifer frowned on the windowsill. He didn’t matter? He had begged his princes, racked his mind trying to come up with a way to save her life, and she was telling her loved ones that he didn’t
matter? His winged form roiled in outrage. He should let her die. He should kill her himself, twist her pretty head and pop
out her spinal cord, and maybe then she would feel something, enough to admit that he was more than just a quick face-fuck
in a corridor.
Before he could talk himself out of it, Lucifer was gliding in through the open window, letting the glamour slip a fraction
at a time. From the girls’ perspectives, it would have seemed like he had melted into the room out of thin air, all deadly
swagger and unholy sex appeal. Something wild and hungry flashed through Galilee’s eyes when she saw him, but then the other
two girls were screaming, and the princess was pulling a gun out of her purse, leveling it at him with surprisingly steady
hands.
“How the fuck did you get in here?” she yelled, fear thickening into rage on her tongue. Both Galilee and the storyteller snapped their heads toward her, their eyes round and wide as they stared at the gun in her hands.
“Oriak?, since when you carrying?” Galilee asked, her eyebrows pulling together.
“Since always,” the princess snapped back. Her eyes were trained on Lucifer, and no one in the room was moving a muscle.
“Well, I’ma need you to put it away. Bonbon doesn’t like guns.”
Lucifer glanced at the storyteller, and sure enough, blood had drained from her face, leaving it pale. “Galilee is right,”
he said. “Besides, guns can’t harm me.”
Oriak? sneered. “Excuse me if I don’t listen to you, Helel, until you explain why the fuck you’re in Gali’s apartment.”
Bonbon finally looked away from the gun. “Are you stalking Gali?” she asked, and Lucifer paused. Did this count as stalking?
Climbing up the side of her building and through her admittedly open window?
Oriak? disengaged the safety on the gun. “Nah, see, you just took way too long to answer that.”
He rolled his eyes. “Put that away before you hurt one of your friends. I’m just here to speak to Galilee.”
Bonbon moved to block Galilee from his view. “Definitely sounds like you’re stalking her, dude.”
Lucifer snarled. He didn’t mind them being a little afraid—it was a scent he was familiar with from humans, sour and clinging.
But Galilee? She didn’t smell anything like that. She smelled just like she had the night before, like immortal armies marching
through firmament, like the baying of hellhounds, like bark floating in rushing water, like soil and blood and splitting worlds.
Her honeyed face peered around Bonbon, and those sharp dark eyes he couldn’t purge from his memory stared up at him from the
bed.
“How did you get in here?” she asked, sounding just curious.
Oriak? waved the gun. “Doesn’t matter. He’s fucking elite secret forces or something. Dad only hires creeps like him, but none of them have ever taken it this far.”
Lucifer held out his hand. “Give that to me,” he said mildly. “Don’t make me ask again.”
“Fuck you.”
“If you’re going to be that way . . .” He injected a ribbon of compulsion into his voice, dark and pulling. “Just hand it over.”
Oriak? blinked, and the gun lowered a fraction as her eyes began to cloud over. Galilee’s gaze immediately narrowed, and she
glared at Lucifer in accusation. “Stop that,” she growled. “She’s my friend.”
Lucifer took his eyes off the princess to give Galilee an outraged look. “She’s aiming a gun at me!” he pointed out. “Exactly
how little do I matter to you again?”
In that brief moment of his distraction, Oriak? snapped back into focus, bared her teeth, and pulled the trigger. Sound blew
through the room, and Bonbon screamed, throwing herself to the floor. Galilee flinched, and Oriak? exhaled roughly as the
echo of the gunshot faded, finally lowering the gun to her side. Galilee slid off the bed and gently took the weapon out of
Oriak?’s hand, putting it down on her dresser.
Lucifer touched the torn edges of his shirt, an inch over from his navel. There was a neat bullet hole in the cotton and a
faint wisp of smoke drifted from his punctured flesh. He raised an eyebrow at Oriak?. “A gut wound? Seriously?”
She frowned and took a step back, her eyes fixed on the hole in his shirt. “You’re . . . you’re not bleeding. Why aren’t you
bleeding?”
“You could’ve shot me in the heart, even in the head,” he continued, ignoring her. “But the stomach? Were you trying to torture me?”
“Gali . . .” Oriak?’s eyes were so large, they were about to fall out of her head. Lucifer could see her pulse slamming in
her throat. “Gali, he’s not bleeding. He’s not bleeding.”
Bonbon was huddled on the floor with her arms over her head.
She looked up at Lucifer’s perfect bullet wound and his faintly irritated expression, and then she started screaming.
Galilee’s head whipped back and forth, panic blooming in her eyes.
Lucifer noted with interest that she didn’t seem to have a problem with him both still being alive and very inconveniently not bleeding, but more so with her friends seeing these truths about him.
“What the fuck are you?” Oriak? asked, a scream building behind her words.
Lucifer grinned and sketched a bow. “I’m the Devil,” he answered casually, letting a little of the black bleed into his eyes
and enjoying the naked terror that slammed into the girl’s face.
Galilee jumped to her feet and slashed the edge of her hand through the air. “Enough!” she yelled, and her voice was an avalanche, an order, a biting command.
Time . . . stopped.
Lucifer stared at her, at the fury burning in her dark glowing eyes, at the burnished hair in tight curls against her neck.
Both her friends were motionless, trapped in the air, pinned by her demand. Galilee was breathing heavily, her chest rising
and falling as her eyes darted around. Her face fell into confusion.
“What the fuck?”
Lucifer stretched out a hand, testing the air, then stepped closer to her friends to inspect them. They were alive, just stopped,
like everything around him and Galilee. He let out a low whistle and turned to her.
“Impressive,” he said, even as suspicion crawled over his spine. What was she? “You stopped time, little demon.”
There was no way he could report something like this to his princes. The burning was bad enough, but the ability to manipulate
time like this would simply be a nail in Galilee’s coffin and Levi would hammer that shit in with his bare hands.
Galilee reached down hesitantly and brushed trembling fingers against Bonbon’s skin. “I didn’t know I could do that,” she
said, her voice low and wondering.
“You certainly are full of surprises,” Lucifer agreed, stepping closer to tug on one of her curls. “I look forward to unveiling even more.”
Gali pulled back and slapped him across his face, her palm tunneling fire straight to his jaw, fire around his teeth, fire
against blood on his tongue. He hissed a breath and forced the black to stay out of his eyes even as his body sang from the
punishment of her touch.
“What was that for?” he managed to ask calmly, though all he wanted to do was shove her down on her bed and do things to her
in this pocket of interrupted time.
“Why the hell would you show up here?” she yelled, her hands gesturing wildly. “You piss her off enough to shoot at you, and
then you got the goddamn nerve to not bleed in front of them? And then you showed them your eyes? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
He smiled. “You sound just like Belial.”
Galilee snapped her teeth together, then forced in a long breath. “I don’t know who that is and I don’t care. You’re messing
with my friends, and I don’t fuck with that.”
Lucifer folded his arms and frowned. “I was just being honest.”
She glared daggers at him, thousands of tiny needle-sharp daggers that sang all the way to his numb heart. “They’re human, asshole.”
Before the last sound left her mouth, Lucifer was against her, pulling her close and snarling with a mouth full of too many
teeth. “Then what are you, Galilee? Hmm?” He licked her cheek, marveling at the lightning shooting up his tongue. “Because you’re not a fucking human
either, and you smell like the end or the beginning of a world, I can’t quite decide.”
Galilee had gasped at first, but now she was just staring up at him, her dark lashes fluttering with shock and her pupils
already blown. Lucifer fought back a groan as his body registered the softness of her body flush against him, the way her
lips had parted, as if inviting him to slide something, anything, between them.
“Never mind,” he bit out. “We have to go, or else I’m going to fuck you right here in front of your friends until time starts back up again, and maybe I won’t even stop then.”
Galilee made a small hungry sound, then tore her eyes away from his, glancing over at the other girls. “Are they okay?” she
asked, her mood ricocheting from anger to desire to concern. “Did I hurt them? I don’t know how to turn it off. Can you fix
it, please?” She looked back at him, biting her lip with worry. Lucifer watched her teeth dig into the soft flesh, and he
swallowed a curse as his erection turned iron. He wanted to eat her alive.
“They’ll be fine. It’ll probably wear off since it’s your first time. I can leave a small glamour over their memories, and
we can clear it up later.”
Galilee was about to argue, but Lucifer shot her a cutting glare.
“Don’t play cute with me,” he said, sliding an edge into his voice. “You want me to release them now so they can, what, get
back to screaming? Galilee, you’re not human. You know about the other worlds, and you know what the fuck I am. You’re just worried that your friends will find out. So
yeah, we’ll clear it up when you’re ready to start telling some fucking truths, and I’m guessing that’s not right now.”
He watched as blood drained from her face and fear bled in. She was a liar because she was terrified, he realized, truly terrified
of having them find out that she was anything other than normal. That could be good. She absolutely should be afraid—shit,
he was afraid for her, and he’d never known fear before this, before Levi’s sword pronounced itself hungry for her blood. Belial would use
her teeth, would tear and tear at Galilee’s skin and muscles and bone and spine until the separation was complete. He could restore the flow of time in this room and alleviate Galilee’s concerns, but her fear was more useful. Fear would make it
easier for her to understand what she needed to do, why she needed to cut another deal, why she needed to hand over her soul
into his safekeeping.
And yet, Lucifer disliked seeing her eyes dim in any way, so he pulled her even closer until he could feel her nipples tight and scraping against his chest. He slid his palms over her ass and lowered his mouth to her neck, dropping kisses against her skin, burning his lips.
Gali melted into him, a rough moan spilling out from her throat.
“I hate that you make me feel like this,” she bit out, her voice unsteady and still angry.
“Tell me why,” he replied, scoring his teeth gently against a tendon in her neck. Her head fell back. She tasted like the
core of the earth, and it made him drunk with darkness. “What’s so terrible about wanting me?”
Galilee writhed against him as his mouth worked on her throat. “Lucifer . . .”
Pure electricity sang through him at the sound of his name in her mouth, earth cracking open and spilling boiling magma into
the endless void of his chest. It had been a mistake to come to her in this form, with his control so precarious. For a brief
moment, Lucifer’s mind simply splintered, usurped by the all-encompassing desire to hear her say his name over and over, softly
and in terrible wails of delight, with fury and want and tenderness, and he knew only a small miracle would stop him from
cracking her open on her bed just to spill his name from her lips again.
So the Devil gathered her up in his arms, summoned the willpower for a miracle, and he threw himself out the window.