22 Ariuk
Ariuk
Something thick and throbbing was pressed against my belly when I woke up, Zel’s heavy arm locked around my waist and one lazy curl of his tail tangled around my calf. I would have loved for the thing against my stomach to slide a little lower, but my bladder had other priorities.
I shoved at his shoulder until he grunted and rolled far enough away for me to escape, then stumbled toward the bathroom and parked my ass on the toilet with a sigh so dramatic it probably counted as prayer.
By the time I washed my hands and wandered into the kitchen in search of food, the apartment had gone quiet again.
The early hours of the morning had brought on a conversation none of us really wanted to have, mostly because Nick and Luc were still trying to process the fact that a lot of what they thought they knew about Dante might have been carefully curated bullshit.
Zel knew more about impossibilities than they did, but even he didn’t have enough answers to make any of us feel better.
Something vibrated across the counter. I grabbed the phone before checking who was calling and answered it, only to hear Dante’s voice spill through the earpiece.
“So? Any news for me?”
My eyes drifted to the clock above the stove. “It’s four in the morning. Why are you calling?”
Where I had found the balls to speak to the most powerful demon in existence like that was beyond me, but apparently being banished had done wonders for my attitude.
“Testy in the mornings, are we?” Dante sounded far too entertained. “Is it Gluttony?”
Of course he knew. My shallow lies hadn’t thrown him off before, and I was starting to realize they had probably amused him more than anything.
At first, I had convinced myself he only knew about Luc and Nick.
Now I wasn’t even sure how much of that surprise had been real.
If whatever was happening with Zel happened again with another Sin, Dante might already be waiting for it.
“Uh, yeah. I mean no. Not him either. He’s really big and mean, not quite my type.” Lying so easily made my skin prickle but I ignored it.
Dante made a low sound that might have been a laugh. “And you? Anything else changing? Feathers, essence, inconvenient new urges?” He sounded almost giddy, which was an impressive feat at four in the fucking morning.
I stomped one foot against the kitchen floor. “No. I have questions. It’s my turn. Why are you sending me through all seven of them? What are you actually testing?”
A brief silence answered me before Dante said, “You seem… angry.”
“That isn’t an answer.” I lowered my voice even though everyone else was asleep.
“I know an impossibility can happen when somebody fucks with balance badly enough or breaks some rule they weren’t supposed to break.
Fine. I get that part. But the Sins are all impossibilities, aren’t they, Dante?
There are seven of them.” I tightened my grip on the phone.
“How the fuck did you make seven? What did you screw up badly enough for that to happen seven separate times?”
His chuckle came softer this time, almost tired. “You’re assuming it happened seven separate times.”
I went still before continuing. “And Zel thinks creating even one impossibility should have cost something,” I said. “So, what did it cost you? What loophole did you find? What did you break?”
“What makes you think I didn’t pay my price?”
That answer bothered me more than if he’d dodged the question entirely. He had paid something. The problem was I had no idea what, and the quiet certainty in his voice told me I wasn’t getting the rest out of him at four in the fucking morning.
I sighed, tightening my hand around the phone. “Did you know I was going to bond with them?”
Dante was quiet just long enough to piss me off.
“Dante.”
“I knew putting you together would cause a reaction.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“No,” he said mildly. “It isn’t.”
Fucking riddles. I rubbed my forehead and dragged us back to the question he’d started with before I threw his phone through a wall. “We’re all good and just a little weirded out by the big guy. He eats like a pig.”
And I absolutely did not mean food. My thighs still remembered his mouth, and apparently my body had no objection to him deciding he wanted another taste whenever he woke up.
Dante laughed, but there was something missing from it this time. “I suppose that means it’s time to find the next one. Asmodeus. He works at one of the clubs down the street. Pretty in Pink.”
The first time I walked into Pretty in Pink, I had been completely unprepared for half-naked men shaking their asses onstage while escorts moved through the room offering every variety of entertainment I had previously been told was sinful enough to damn a soul.
It had definitely been an eye-opener. It had also been fun enough that I kept going back whenever I wanted somewhere loud enough to make me forget Heaven existed.
Which meant there was a very real chance I had seen Asmodeus before without knowing who—or what—he was. I tried sorting through old memories of the club, faces and bodies blurring together beneath pink lights. “Wait. Isn’t Asmodeus Lust?”
“You know some of your history.”
I knew enough about Lust to be nervous, but apparently not enough to know what meeting him would actually do.
Zel had already made it pretty clear that the Sins were deeper than the cheap human version of their names, which meant Lust probably wasn’t as simple as a demon who wanted to fuck everything that moved.
Somehow, that knowledge did absolutely nothing to reassure me.
“Lust and Temptation in the same room sounds like a terrible fucking idea,” I muttered.
Dante hummed. “And yet you’re still going because you’re a curious little angel. I’m giving you a name and an address, Ari. What you do with that is your decision.”
“That is such a bullshit distinction.” I hated him. Mostly. “Yeah, we’ll check it out.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “I just want my soul back.”
There was the smallest pause before Dante answered. “Complete what I asked, Ari, and our arrangement ends.”
Same carefully constructed promise as before. He still hadn’t said yes, my soul or I’ll give it back, and now that I knew how much he liked hiding things inside exact wording, I couldn’t stop hearing every word he left out.
I narrowed my eyes at the phone even though he couldn’t see me. “You really are an asshole.”
“I’ve been called worse. Frequently by you.”
I hung up on the king of Hell before he could get the last word, which was probably going to get me in trouble eventually.
My thoughts shifted back toward the three demons asleep down the hall, and somewhere between Dante’s careful wording and the fact that I was apparently on my way to meet Lust, I decided I really needed to get better about names.
If I was going to keep letting these men become part of my life, I wanted names that felt like them instead of titles that made them sound like creatures I was supposed to fear. Luc was easy. Lucifer shortened neatly.
Nick was harder. I couldn’t exactly call him the Devil because we already had one of those downstairs being irritating before sunrise. Satan didn’t give me many options either.
Sat? No. Absolutely not. Sata? Ew. Tan? That sounds like a furniture color.
I was still muttering possibilities under my breath when two thick arms wrapped around me from behind.
Zel’s chest pressed warm against my back, his tail lazily curling around my ankle while his mouth found the spot beneath my ear like waking up hadn’t changed his need to taste whatever part of me was closest.
“Angel, what are you doing up?”
Heat flushed through me before I could stop it. “Trying to find nicknames. Nothing works.”
His mouth moved against my neck when he laughed. “That’s what you’re doing at four in the morning?”
“Yes. This is important.” I elbowed him lightly and kept going. “Sat, Tan, Sata. They’re all stupid. I can’t call Nick any of those. He’ll get mad at me and then I might not get his dick anymore.”
The words left my mouth before my brain had the good sense to intervene, and my cheeks burned.
Heaven would have had an entire fucking lecture prepared for that sentence.
Apparently, a few days away had turned me into the kind of woman who casually worried about losing access to Satan’s dick before breakfast.
Zel’s shoulders shook behind me. “You’re worried he’ll withhold sex because you gave him a bad nickname?”
“I’m exploring all possible outcomes.”
He turned me around and started walking me backward toward the bedroom. “Come back to bed. You can save Satan’s dick through the power of nicknames later.”
“Nope. I need this now.” I planted my feet as much as I could with him still moving me. “He needs something besides Nick. What if we’re in public and somebody hears me call him Satan?”
“They’ll probably assume you’re being dramatic.”
Zel laughed and leaned down to press a soft kiss to the bridge of my nose, and something in my chest went unexpectedly soft. Yesterday, I probably would have assumed wanting him meant wanting his dick.
I still wanted that eventually because I had eyes and the thing had spent half the morning pressed against me, but now I wanted this too. His arms around me. His sleepy kisses. The ridiculous tail that kept finding some part of my body to wrap around like it had developed attachment issues.
Seeing this side of Gluttony was nice. Sweet, even, which was not a word I expected to associate with a demon who had spent half the night treating my pussy like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
The thought brought Domiel to mind and soured my mood. I couldn’t remember him ever touching me just because he liked having me close. There had always been a reason attached to it, an expectation, some version of how I was supposed to behave afterward.
Zel had kissed my nose because apparently he wanted to kiss my fucking nose. “Breathe,” he murmured, his hand sliding down my back. “Just keep calling him Nick. It’s another form of the name, and everybody knows who you mean.”
“That’s boring.”
“It also works.” His mouth twitched when I made a face. “But if you really want my opinion, call him Satan in bed.”
My body shuddered before I could stop it, and Zel’s grin widened.
“Thought so.”
Then I realized the permission he had just handed me. I leaned back against the wall and let my voice drop. “You mean like calling you Beelzebub?”
His eyes darkened instantly. The tail around my ankle snapped tighter while the tips of his claws pushed carefully into his own palms instead of my waist. His grip on me tightened anyway, and the way his pupils swallowed the brown made a pleased little thrill move through me.
“Oh,” I whispered. “That works too.”
“Angel.”
I smiled and pressed my chest toward him. “Beelzebub, take me back to bed.”
“Gladly.”
He hoisted me over his shoulder before I could laugh and smacked my ass hard enough to make me yelp on the way down the hall.
“What the fuck?” Nick’s sleepy voice came from somewhere beneath the blankets when Zel shoved the bedroom door open.
“She was wandering,” Zel said as he carried me inside.
“I was peeing.”
Luc cracked one eye open from his side of the bed. “Dangerous hobby.”
I shoved at his shoulder when Zel dumped me into the middle of the mattress, but Luc only grunted and shifted closer.
Zel climbed in behind me and immediately wrapped himself around my back again, tail finding my ankle like it had somewhere specific to be.
Nick grumbled until I lifted the blanket for him, then slid in against my front with absolutely no shame about stealing the rest of the space.
Within seconds, I was trapped between too many limbs, one wandering tail, and three demons who apparently had no concept of personal space. I should have complained, but instead I tucked myself closer and tried not to think too hard about the fact that Dante wanted me to meet Lust next.