29 Ariuk
Ariuk
By the time the bathwater stopped feeling hot enough to cook me alive, I had lost track of how long we had been in the bathroom.
Not all of us were technically in the bath.
There were limits, apparently, even to whatever madness my life had become.
I was stretched out beneath enough bubbles to hide most of me, my head tipped against the edge while Deus sat on the floor beside the tub with one arm draped over the rim.
His fingers moved slowly through my hair, nails tracing lightly over my scalp before sliding down the back of my neck, and every pass seemed to loosen another part of me I hadn’t realized was still tense.
Zel had somehow turned the rest of the bathroom into a picnic.
I cracked one eye open when I heard another plate touch the counter.
He had claimed most of the vanity, laying out sandwiches, fruit, bottles of water, and something chocolate I couldn’t quite identify from where I was sinking into the water.
Nick stood beside him looking personally offended by every crumb that landed within six feet of the toilet, while Luc had taken the closed lid and was eating like sitting in a bathroom with four other demons and one half-asleep impossibility was a perfectly reasonable way to spend the night.
“This is disgusting,” Nick muttered, staring at Zel as he cut another sandwich in half.
Zel didn’t bother looking up. “Then don’t eat.”
Nick grumbled something before I heard him take one of the plates.
I smiled, letting myself rest completely.
Deus’s fingers moved from my scalp to the base of my neck, pressing into a knot there with exactly enough pressure to make my shoulders sink lower beneath the water.
A quiet sound escaped me before I could stop it.
“God, does your touch always feel that good?”
Deus’s hand paused just long enough for me to feel his amusement before he started again. “I am a man of many talents, Sweetness.”
I expected the usual rush after that, some spark of heat sliding beneath my skin because apparently touching Lust came with its own set of consequences, but what spread through me was softer.
The ache in my muscles eased beneath his palm.
The oversensitivity that had made even the sheets feel like too much earlier had dulled into something pleasantly distant, and for once his touch wasn’t trying to pull more from me.
I turned my face slightly against my arm. “You can do this without making me want to climb you?”
“I can do many things without making you want to climb me.” His fingers slid across my shoulder. “I simply don’t understand why I would.”
Nick snorted around a bite of sandwich before dragging the small stool closer to the tub. His gaze moved over my face, lingering long enough that I knew exactly what was coming. “You actually okay?”
I opened my eyes properly and found him watching me with none of the sharpness he usually wore when he was trying to irritate someone.
“Yeah.” I shifted beneath the water, taking inventory because Nick would absolutely know if I answered too quickly.
My body was sore in several places and exhausted everywhere else, but nothing felt wrong.
“I’m tired. My legs may never work correctly again, and I’m pretty sure Deus rearranged something important, but I’m okay. ”
Deus looked far too pleased by that assessment.
Nick ignored him. “Not what I meant.”
“I know.” I reached over the side until Nick gave me his hand, then curled my fingers loosely around his. “I’m okay. Really.”
His thumb moved once over my knuckles before he let the subject go. Zel appeared beside him a moment later and held out half a sandwich wrapped in a napkin.
I stared at it. “You expect me to eat in the bath?”
“You’ve had stranger things in your mouth tonight.”
Luc choked on whatever he was drinking. I slowly turned my head toward Zel, who looked completely sincere until the corner of his mouth betrayed him. “You’re all terrible.”
“You’re eating it anyway, Angel.”
I was, mostly because I was starving. Zel waited until I had a decent grip on the sandwich before returning to his collection of food, and for a while the bathroom settled into the kind of comfortable quiet I still wasn’t used to having around other people.
I had nearly fallen asleep again when Luc said, “We should probably talk about the others.”
My eyes opened. “No.”
Luc blinked. “I didn’t say anything yet.”
“I know exactly what you mean, and no.” I sank farther into the bath until the water reached my chin. “I need a break.”
That earned a laugh from somewhere behind me. Deus’ fingers slipped beneath my hair again, and even Nick’s mouth twitched.
“I’m serious.” I lifted the hand holding my sandwich and pointed it vaguely at all of them. “Levi. Mammon. Belphegor. Whoever else Dante plans to throw at me next. They can wait. I have met enough demons for one week.”
“One week?” Nick asked.
“It feels like one.”
Luc leaned forward, forearms resting against his thighs. “Meeting them doesn’t mean anything has to happen.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, and he held my stare for all of two seconds before glancing around the bathroom at the four demons currently refusing to leave me alone.
Deus was still perched beside the tub with one hand resting against the back of my neck, Nick close enough that I could reach him without leaving the water, and Zel standing at the vanity with half our weird bathroom picnic spread around him.
“That sounded better before I looked around.”
“Thank you.” I took another bite of my sandwich, chewing slowly while I considered the four of them. “Because from where I’m sitting, meeting a Sin has had a pretty consistent outcome lately.”
Deus brushed his thumb beneath my ear, the touch sending another lazy ripple of pleasure down my neck without stirring anything more demanding. “You could meet the others and hate them.”
“That is strangely comforting.”
Zel handed Nick another sandwich without being asked, apparently deciding everyone needed to keep eating as long as he did. “No one’s saying tomorrow, Angel. Levi, Mammon, and Belphegor have survived this long without you. I imagine they’ll manage a little longer.”
“Good.” I let my head settle back against the tub while Deus resumed the slow movement of his fingers through my hair. “Because if another bond lights up in the next twenty-four hours, I’m throwing myself into traffic.”
Nick squeezed the hand I had left hanging over the edge of the tub. “You’d survive.”
I cracked one eye open at him. “I’d find faster traffic.”
His mouth twitched before the laughter spread through the bathroom, even Luc giving up whatever serious argument he had been preparing.
I smiled and let my eyes close again, sinking a little deeper into the heat.
The thought of the remaining three didn’t frighten me as much as it probably should have.
I was mostly exhausted by the possibility.
Whoever they were and whatever happened when I eventually met them, they could wait until I could cross a room without feeling every muscle Deus had introduced himself to.
Luc’s phone started vibrating against the counter, and nobody moved at first. Zel kept rearranging food that didn’t need rearranging, Deus continued working his fingers through my hair, and I seriously considered pretending none of us had heard it until Luc finally leaned over and glanced at the screen.
“Dante.”
I groaned and slid another inch beneath the bubbles. “Of course it is.”
“He’s been trying to reach me.”
“That sentence has never led to anything relaxing.”
Luc gave me a look that suggested he agreed before answering and tapping the speaker button. He set the phone on the counter between Zel’s abandoned plate and a bottle of water. “What?”
“Nice to hear from you too,” Dante answered, sounding far too pleased with himself for someone interrupting my bath.
Luc opened his mouth, probably to tell him exactly where he could shove whatever new plan he had come up with, when a second voice carried faintly through the speaker.
I couldn’t make out the words at first, only the familiar cadence beneath them.
Then something scraped across the other end of the call and the voice came through more clearly, sending me upright so quickly that water sloshed over the side of the tub and splattered across Deus’s pants.
“Is that Raphael?”
Deus looked down at the spreading wet patch and then at me, but even he seemed to understand there were more important things happening. The line went quiet for a moment before Raphael finally answered.
“Hello, Ariuk.”
I stared at Luc’s phone. I hadn’t heard Raphael’s voice since he brought me to Earth, and hearing it now, coming through Dante’s phone of all fucking places, made something tighten unexpectedly in my chest. Relief hit first, followed almost immediately by confusion because there was absolutely no reasonable explanation for why my former mentor was apparently hanging out with the king of Hell.
“Why the fuck are you with Dante?”
“I came to Earth.”
“I gathered that part, Raphael.”
A frustrated breath crackled over the speaker, followed by Dante saying something too low for me to catch. Whatever it was silenced Raphael for a second before Dante spoke clearly enough for all of us to hear.
“Sit down, Raph.”
I frowned at the phone. I knew Dante’s voices by now—the dramatic one he used when he wanted everyone listening, the smug one that usually meant he knew something the rest of us didn’t, and the sharper one that surfaced whenever one of his Sins pushed too far.
This wasn’t any of those. There was something gentler beneath the words, an ease that sounded far too practiced to belong to two men who supposedly hadn’t had anything to do with each other in years.
Raphael muttered something under his breath before Dante answered, “You’ve been pacing for twenty minutes. You’re making me dizzy.”