Chapter 7 Galilee #2
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he replied, and foolishly, Gali felt her eyes sting.
“Wrong answer, asshole.” She forced the unreasonable sense of betrayal back, replacing it with useful anger, righteous anger. “You supposed to say, No, of course not, I would never hurt you.”
Lucifer sighed and looked away, reaching out a long arm to drag a chair over to him. He sat heavily in it and rubbed at his
forehead. “You know, contrary to popular belief, I don’t lie.”
“That’s not the same as telling the truth,” Gali shot back, echoing her cousin. Celestial had been right all along, dammit.
“I would tell you the truth if you would just sit down and listen!” The gold in his eyes flared for a heated moment, but then he took
a deep breath and forced it away. “I can’t promise not to hurt you because I don’t know what you are, Galilee. I don’t know why you’re here or what you want. Which leads me to believe that you could be a threat to the work I’m currently doing.”
Gali sat down at the edge of the bed, her jaw falling open. “I’m the threat? I hate to break the news of our power dynamic to you, Lucifer, but you’re literally the Devil.”
He glared at her. “I’m aware.”
She laughed, and the sound was derisive as it came up her throat. This wasn’t making any sense. “How the hell am I the threat?
Shit, you could kill me in a heartbeat right now.” Saying it out loud should have made her afraid, but there was something
reassuring in the helpless, futile truth of it. Besides, he didn’t seem like he wanted to kill her, though that wouldn’t be much of a consolation if he did it anyway. “And what’s the work you doing?”
Lucifer’s eyes shuttered, going flat and cold. “Don’t ask questions like that, Galilee. They don’t help.”
Gali tilted her head and frowned, letting the irritation color her voice. “You acting like I’m some spy or criminal. I’ve
been minding my own business and living my life until you waltzed into it, and now I’m a threat? For what? For being alive and unfortunate enough to be breathing in your proximity?”
Lucifer leaned forward. “What are you, Galilee? That’s all I’m trying to figure out. Just tell me that and everything could be fine.”
An old, old fear coated the back of her mouth. “Why wouldn’t everything be fine?”
He didn’t take his eyes off her. “I’m here with my princes, Galilee. We’re protecting something important. They don’t trust
you because you’re not human and you’re more powerful than you should be, and it’s a bit too much of a coincidence to have
you show up just now. I’m trying to figure out how to keep you safe, but I need you to answer my questions. I need you to
tell me the truth.”
The room felt like it was tipping off-center, tipping into a wrong world, one full of secrets and lies and Celestial’s pitying eyes weighed with too much knowledge and Gali waking up screaming with light searing out of her hands.
She wrapped an arm over her stomach. “I’m just Galilee Kincaid,” she said, keeping her voice leashed and flat, as hard as the blade of an ax. “I don’t know nothing else.”
“You were just joking about not being human,” Lucifer countered. “Just now, when we were in the sky.”
“I was playing along with the shit you were saying!”
He shook his head. “You know you’re different, Galilee. Don’t lie to me.”
Gali’s fingers dug into the bunched folds of the robe. “Of course I’m different. I’m a fucking Kincaid.” The fear felt ancient,
but Gali would be damned a thousand times more before she let the Devil touch it. “We’re all different, we’re all touched.”
Lucifer was watching her carefully. “Your whole family is like you?”
Gali paused. “Not . . . not entirely like me.”
She hated how this felt, like the floor was dissolving under her, all because he was touching on the one thing she’d spent
years avoiding, the thing even Celestial slid away from, the gaps in who Gali was, the blank spaces. A creek was roaring in
the darkness, punctuated by the sound of running feet as blood ran down small, soft cheeks. Gali had spent her whole life
believing in her family with all her might, trusting them entirely, and yet there was a void where a linchpin ought to be.
If Celestial was telling the truth—which she always did—then it meant that Nana Darling and Collette had kept this linchpin away from Gali, had made her incomplete, unwhole, and confused and incapable of answering this very basic question
the Devil was asking her. Who are you, Galilee Kincaid?
“I’m different,” she admitted. “I know I am. But I don’t know why and I don’t want to know why, so please stop asking me about this!”
Her voice broke even as it lashed out, and quicker than her eyes could follow, Lucifer was kneeling by her, coarse black curls tumbling over his face.
He didn’t touch her, and Gali could tell he was being careful, but she was glad for his closeness.
His face was luminous, and old flaking secrets fell aside as she gazed into the radiance of his eyes.
Gali brushed away a curl that had fallen over his eyebrow and watched as he shivered at her touch, his lashes fluttering.
“Galilee,” he said, and his voice was softer, more hesitant than she’d heard it before. “When you touch me . . .”
Gali couldn’t resist stroking her fingers over the sharp edge of his cheekbone, just to see him shiver again, the black bleeding
softly into his eyes this time.
“What happens when I touch you?” She was grateful for the change of subject, and the topic of their hands on each other’s
skin was a direction she’d happily follow for now.
“I burn.” He was looking at her like a supplicant, like she was the sun, and it made Gali feel a little drunk. He was the
Devil, and he was looking at her like she was God. “When you touch me, I burn all the way to the bone, Galilee. It sears through
my flesh; it boils my blood and singes my marrow.”
She smiled at him, amused. “You poetic, huh?”
Lucifer blinked. “No, actually, I’m being quite precise. Your touch incinerates me, Galilee. It’s how my princes and I know
you’re a threat—there’s no way anyone should be able to do that.”
Gali snatched her hand away from him as the blood drained from her face. “I’m hurting you?” She combed through the last day,
and a wave of nausea washed over her. “Every time I touched you, I’ve been hurting you?” When he hesitated, Gali felt her stomach sink and turn over. “Oh, God . . . I’ve been torturing you this whole time.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes. “Don’t start the dirty talk if you say you’re not in the mood.”
“This isn’t funny!”
She sprang up to her feet and stepped away from him, putting space between them as she shoved her hands deep into the pockets of the robe, where they wouldn’t be tempted to reach out to him and that glowing skin, that lush mouth.
Amid all the emotions raging up in her, Gali felt a spike of sadness pierce through.
She’d never be able to touch Lucifer again.
She’d never feel him hold her or kiss her again, and she’d never be able to take his clothes off piece by piece like she’d dreamed about.
That sucked, but only marginally less than realizing she was toxic to him.
Gali almost laughed. Of course something would go horribly wrong, and of course it would be her fault. Maybe she didn’t want
to find out who she was because the answer would just be a fucking curse.
“I’m so sorry, Lucifer,” she said. “You shoulda told me. I would never have touched you if I’d known. I don’t want to hurt
you.”
Even as she said the words, sourness filled up underneath her tongue. He hadn’t shown this much reluctance to hurting her—in fact, he’d left it firmly on the table. But that didn’t matter, because Gali wasn’t him, and she was proud of who she
was, someone who didn’t want to put pain into anyone’s eyes, even if those eyes were demon black and belonged to, well, the
King of Hell. She wasn’t going to be all resentful because the Devil hadn’t balked at hurting her—he was the Devil, after
all. She was Galilee Kincaid.
Lucifer stood up slowly, faint confusion across his face. “You’re upset at the thought of hurting me.”
Gali glared at him, still feeling slightly sick. “Yeah, asshole. That’s a normal reaction when someone tells you that you
been burning them alive.”
He paused, and a small smile tugged at his mouth. “Not among my circle, no. Most entities I know would be delighted to know
they could do that to me.” He took slow, casual steps toward her. “Power over the Devil is no small thing, Galilee.”
She didn’t even have to think before replying. “That’s not the kind of power I want over you.”
Lucifer’s smile widened. “And what kind of power would you like to have over me, Galilee?”
He was getting too close, so she took a step back and then another. “Does it burn when you touch me?” she asked, flailing for details. “Or only when I touch you?”
“Either way.” He shrugged, as if he was indifferent to it. “Answer my question.”
“Then the answer doesn’t matter.” Her next retreat brought her against a wall of the room, and Gali pressed her palms against
it. He didn’t look human as he prowled toward her, and she shouldn’t have liked it so much. “Stay where you are. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
Lucifer ignored her command until he was a breath away from her. Up close, the gold in his eyes shimmered against the consuming
black.
“What if I want you to?” he whispered, and air skimmed over his tongue to lick against Gali’s skin. She dragged in a breath
and closed her eyes, forcing her hands to stay still on the wall even as she felt herself get wet. God, he was making this
so hard, and he wasn’t making sense.
“What if you want me to hurt you?” she asked.
“Yes, Galilee.” His voice slithered with amusement, sending goose bumps flickering over her flesh. “What if I crave it, what
if I touch myself remembering it, what if I think I might die for it?”