Chapter 21
RHI
I should probably add ‘death by orgasm’ to my tombstone.
Nick hasn’t stopped worshipping me, taking short breaks in between to either relieve ourselves or pick at the food that mysteriously replenishes itself on the massive dining table behind us.
“What is this place?” I ask after my fifth—no, sixth—orgasm.
I lie with my head on Nick’s chest as his fingers twirl in my hair.
My eyelids start to droop, heavy with exhaustion—we’ve been awake nearly twenty-four hours at this point—but there is still a small kernel of fear seeded within my heart that if I close my eyes, none of this will be real.
“A respite of sorts,” he answers, fatigue blanketing his tone.
“The doors appeared one day when I was feeling overburdened, and from the moment I stepped inside, I knew I created this place. Every time I wanted silence or to be left alone, which was often, I’d think of them, and they would appear.
No one else even knows this place exists—except for Baal, but he’d never be able to find it. ”
Frowning, I glance up at him. “But I found the doors that day. I saw them. It’s how I saw you—” I pause for a moment, swallowing softly. “Do you remember that?”
His golden eyes are drowsily dimmed yet stare at me with adoration. “I remember everything that happened, Rhi. I am Raphael. It was only Nick’s memories they kept from me. They knew I’d never accept reigning as King if it meant leaving you behind.”
Nick shifts so he faces me, his head supported within his palm and propped up by his elbow.
“And as for you being able to see my secret hideaway, I suppose it’s because of the same reason you can command Hell Beasts.
As Baal once said, you are an extension of me.
You are the other half of my soul; the power within this realm rests in your hands as much as it does mine.
Besides,” he moves a wayward lock of hair from my face and places teasing kisses along my jaw and down the column of my throat, “the Beasts, as well as the other demons, will smell me on you, inside you, and know to stay the fuck away.”
Despite the heat again pooling low in my belly, I place a hand on his chest and gently push him back. “You said the power within this realm rests in my hands as well as yours. What does that mean?”
“It means you can rule this Kingdom alongside me as its Queen.”
“You already have a fiancée,” I tease.
His eyes darken, and he dips his chin to nibble on my right index finger.
“Ouch!” I glare at him.
“Watch it,” he warns. “You know of my arrangement with Isadora.”
“So what then? It’s now null and void? What of her father? Of your promise to protect her?”
Nick exhales roughly through his nose, anger practically radiating from him in waves. I’m surprised smoke isn’t pouring from his nostrils.
“I’ll figure something out,” he says.
I reach for him, drawing him down so his head lay on my chest. “I don’t want to be Queen, Nick.” I feel him tense on top of me. “I won’t leave here without you, but if there is any way we can go back, I want to try.”
As soon as Nick had said he was incapable of leaving, I’d made up my mind to stay.
My frustration came when he said he wouldn’t force me to stay—not that I assumed he would, but after everything I have gone through, could he really expect me to return and exist in a world he wasn’t a part of?
It was why I had to get through to him, had to fall apart so he would understand there is no version of reality where I can live without him.
Nick sighs and sits up, holding his arms out for me to take. He pulls me up with him so we sit face to face, still naked since the moment we tore off each other’s clothes hours ago.
“In order for me to leave, I’d have to get dispensation from my father, Lucifer. He is the only one who can relinquish my claim to the throne and free me, which he will never do, because someone must sit on the Throne of Hell, and he no longer has the desire to do it.”
“Surely there has to be someone else who can hold the title of King. I’m sure half your Court would kill each other over the chance to rule.”
Nick laughs darkly. “The next in line for the Throne after me are my uncles. Satan rules over his kingdom in the South with his mortal wife and is content there. My uncle Belial would sooner live in the Black Woods with the Hell Beasts than reign anywhere.”
“So there is no one to take your place?”
“Well, there is one another person in the immediacy, and someone else who could reign years from now.”
“Who is the first?”
“Argos,” he replies with a look of intense disgust I feel in my bones.
“Which I won’t allow to happen. He’ll kill Isadora in a heartbeat and then turn Hell into a savage wasteland.
” Nick picks up my foot and begins massaging it, to which I moan softly.
“I know the legends say Hell is fire and brimstone, but that is what it will actually be reduced to if Argos has his way, and he wouldn’t stop there.
” His gaze turns serious. “Our world would be next.”
“Ok, so Argos is out,” I reason. “Not that it helps us now, but who is this other person you mentioned?” Nick hesitates to answer, and at first, I think he doesn’t understand who I’m referencing. “The one you said could reign years from now?”
He pauses the massaging of my feet, shifting uncomfortably, as though contemplating his response. Finally, the left side of his mouth lifts upward in a sly smirk. “Our heir.”
It takes me a moment to register what he’s implying, coupled with the grin that now stretches fully across his mouth. “You want a baby?”
“With you? Of course, I do.” Hurt flirts with the surprise in his tone, as if he wasn’t expecting my reaction. I feel a bit bad about my delivery, but at twenty-one years old, I wouldn’t have expected he’d want a child, and I say as much.
Nick runs a hand down his face and sighs. “Raph—” he starts then clears his throat. “I thought about it. A lot. It was Baal who initially suggested it, but once he did, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
“Having a baby?” Try as I might, I can’t keep the note of horror from my voice.
Nick nods. “With you. Which I suppose is natural, considering you’re my soulmate, but to say you seem…distraught at the idea is an understatement.”
“Nick,” I say softly, “I’m nineteen. I can’t fathom having a baby right now, and even if I wanted to, it still wouldn’t solve our problem in the immediacy.” His face falls, and I scoot forward to brush silky onyx strands from his forehead. “But I do want children with you one day.”
He lifts his head so his gilded gaze locks on mine.
“I understand. Sometimes, it just feels like after everything we’ve gone through, we’ve lived a lifetime together.
And,” he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the movement, “I saw something in Nyx’s cave, something I thought about every day until those memories were stolen from me, and now that I have them back… ”
Nick leaves his sentence unfinished, but I don’t press him to complete it.
First, the fact that I can see his heart in his eyes right now tells me exactly how he feels, and second, I know what he saw in that cave, because I saw it the day I took his life, when his memories flowed into me.
I saw our children. Still, I keep it a secret, because in a way, it feels like I’m prying.
I had access to a part of him he has every right to keep hidden.
I straddle him, ignoring the fact he had me in this position not too long ago, but now, the moment feels vulnerable and raw rather than remotely sexual.
Gabbing his face with both hands, I say, “I want everything with you, do you hear me? I want your last name, your children, your heart. I want your tragedies and triumphs, your Devil and your Angel. You’re my heart and my home, Nick Cervallos. I want it all.”
Nick kisses me, long, hard, and deep, his fingers digging into my waist. When he pulls back, he wears a familiar devilish grin on his face. “My last name, huh?”
I smile back sheepishly. “I might have accidentally called myself Rhi Cervallos.”
“Accidentally?”
“It was an intrusive thought.”
“Hmm.” Nick pulls his bottom lip between his teeth before his mouth drifts towards my ear. “Rhi Cervallos,” he purrs. “I love the sound of that.”
So do I. The sound of my name with his attached to it sends a torrent of shivers down my spine.
“That can definitely be arranged,” he says, nibbling on my ear. My lower abdomen tingles, and I place both hands on his chest to gently push him back.
“While your sexual appetite is something that should be studied by science, I regret to inform you, we are running out of time—” I thrust my wrist in his face, exposing the hourglass tattoo— “to come up with a solution to free you, and we also never addressed this little Jedi trick going on between us.”
His brows furrow. “The Jedi were telekinetic, not telepathic.”
“Whatever.” I wave my hand flippantly.
“Let’s try it,” he says, his fingers stroking my sides. “Close your eyes.”
I eye him warily. “No funny business. I mean it. We’ve wasted enough time already.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it wasting time. I’d call it fu—”
I silence him with my hand over his mouth. “I’m serious. Promise me you won’t try anything, at least until we figure this out.”
Nick smiles beneath my palm, and I remove it. “Ah. The light at the end of the tunnel.”
I attempt to playfully thwack his shoulder, but he catches my wrist in a soft grasp and places a kiss upon the tattoo. “I promise. Now, close your eyes.”
My eyelids drift closed, prompted by the seductive command in his voice. One hand again caresses the right side of my body, but true to his word, they don’t fall lower than my hip. His voice, coupled with the soothing strokes, lull me into a relaxed state of bliss.
“I want you to tune out everything except the sound of my voice and the feel of my fingers. Can you do that?”
I nod—at least I think I do, because I am suddenly melting into his touch, my mind completely at ease and under the enchantment of his voice.
“Reach deep inside yourself, Rhi, past that well of rage and grief, and find me. Find us.”
Find us. It’s a dark road I follow as I listen to his instructions.
I have made the well of rage and grief my home since the day he left me, so it’s certainly easy to find it.
My monster perks up, thinking she’s been summoned, and although it’s tempting to unleash her, I let Nick’s voice wash over me, guide me, and bring me back to myself.
Pushing past that place of discomfort, I reach deeper. Two shimmering lights flicker in the distance like fireflies, their luminescence there and then not.
“Keep going,” he urges, as though sensing my hesitation.
As I continue deeper, the sporadic flickers morph into something more solid and tangible before I realize exactly what they are.
Threads.
Entwined together, creating a scintillating harmony of onyx and gold, they embrace with a strength so powerful, I know without a doubt there is not a force in any realm that can tear them apart.
It’s me and him.
It’s us.
L’amor che move ‘l sole e l’altre stelle. Nick’s voice is unmistakable in my mind, but instead of shying away from it, I welcome it.
Tentatively, I reach toward the Threads, gently tugging on the onyx cord.
Nick?
A surreal sensation overwhelms me as my mind understands he is smiling. I can’t see it, but I can feel it.
You did it, baby. I’m right here. Always.