Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Lothar
Music throbbed through the night as we strode up to Asmodeus’s keep. There was a party in full swing by the sounds. From what I’d heard, there weren’t many nights that he didn’t have a party.
As we reached the wide doors, Roxy handed me her pack, pulled the tie from her braid, and shook out her long, dark hair.
I frowned. “What are you doing?”
Rox ignored me.
“Just watch our little master at work,” Ursula said. “Give her thirty seconds and Asmodeus will be putty in her hands.”
Roxy gripped the door handles, plastered on a wide smile, and shoved the double doors wide. “Call this a party!”
Urs chuckled beside me as the demons in the room turned to her and erupted, cheering and greeting her like a rock star.
“Will me and Loth be welcome here?” Gus asked, scanning the room heaving with demons.
“You’ll be fine,” Urs said.
My lips peeled back, a rumbling growl shaking my chest. The beast didn’t like this, not at all. “What the fuck is this?”
Ursula smirked at me. “Asmodeus is hard to deal with, arrogant, reckless, an all-round giant fuck-stick, so Lucifer sent Roxy in to win his trust. She succeeded, epically. Now she keeps an eye on things in his quadrant and uses her charms to keep the lord in check.”
“Her charms?” I snarled. “Lucifer fucking pimped her out?”
Ursula’s green gaze sliced to me, and the promise of pain burned from her eyes.
“Roxy is a warrior. She could slit your throat and slice off your junk before you realized you were wearing your own balls as earrings. You ever imply otherwise again, and you’ll be choking on your severed tongue before you finish the sentence. ”
No one could make you feel more like a fucking asshole than Urs. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”
She huffed a harsh laugh. “Sure, you didn’t. Now, how about you stay out of the way and let her get the info we need.”
“Roxy, baby!” A booming voice echoed through the room a moment before the lord of lust, chaos, and destruction strode into the room, arms spread wide.
He was wearing leather pants and boots, no shirt.
His face was all sharp angles, long nose, square chin, and cheekbones like blades.
A wide smile spread across his face, flashing a row of pointed teeth, while light from the wall sconces glinted off the ram’s horns that curled back from his broad forehead.
Roxy squealed and ran at him, jumping into his arms and giving him a tight hug before pressing a smacking kiss to the leathery gray skin of his cheek.
His hand dropped to her ass, and he squeezed it, hard.
I stepped forward, a growl rolling from me before I knew it was coming—Ursula’s hand slammed into my chest, stopping me from taking another.
“Slow your roll, Loth, seriously. She doesn’t need your protection. Let her do her thing. You need to find Beelzebub, and if Asmodeus knows something, Roxy will as well by the end of the night.”
I shook my head. “I’m not fucking okay with this.”
“You don’t have to be. You just have to suck it up and let her work.”
A demon approached, carrying glasses of pomegranate moonshine, and handed them over. Urs gave me and Gus a shove toward a table at the end of a raised stage, where barely dressed female demons danced.
We sat and I scanned the room, keeping my eye on Roxy and the slimy motherfucker with his hands all over her.
Asmodeus was a piece of shit and wasn’t good enough to look at Rox let alone anything else.
A demon sauntered up to me, and she was obviously terrified, which was to be expected.
Demons had a natural fear of hellhounds, but still, despite that, she tried to get on my lap.
I waved her away, and she changed direction and approached Gus, who immediately sat back and let her climb up.
“I won’t hurt you,” I heard him say to her.
His eagerness and obvious inexperience instantly put the demon at ease, and she actually smiled.
Fucking hell, the pup looked like the cat that got the cream.
The song that was thumping through the speakers stopped suddenly, and a moment later, the opening notes of a new song started.
The room erupted, and they started chanting Roxy’s name.
Rox laughed, protesting as several demons tried to pull her toward the stage.
I stood. Ursula grabbed my wrist, shaking her head at me.
Fuck. I dropped back in my seat and watched as Roxy, still shaking her head, laughed. They got her to the edge of the stage, and she tossed her hair, then jumped up and threw her hands in the air.
The cheering erupted and the feet stomping got louder as they continued to chant for her.
Rox strutted to the middle of the platform, then stilled, her head lowering, her hair covering her face. The cheers were deafening. On the next beat, she tossed all that long dark hair back, shoved her leather jacket off one shoulder, and shimmied it in time with the music.
Ursula threw her head back and laughed, then jumped to her feet, calling Roxy’s name with everyone else in the room.
What the fuck was going on?
Roxy spun, then, tugging off her jacket completely and flung it at me. I snatched it out of the air and sat there stunned, watching as she strutted and shimmied and clapped, hyping up her audience.
She threw out an arm and a bottle of moonshine was tossed at her from somewhere in the crowd.
She snatched it out of the air as a flaming wooden torch flew at her from someone else on the opposite side of the stage.
She caught it with ease, spinning it expertly.
Then swigging a mouthful of moonshine, she held the flaming torch in front of her and blew out the liquor, spraying fire in a huge arch.
Holy fuck. I shot to my feet. The song they were blasting was “Fire Woman” by The Cult, and now I understood why.
The demons and Asmodeus were eating it up, watching rapt as she danced, spinning the torch like a pro before slugging more moonshine and spitting fire.
She flipped like a fucking circus performer, doing a routine that looked like something that would need years to perfect, and I couldn’t look away, just as rapt as everyone else in the room.
The part of the song where the heavy bass eased up and the guitar took lead echoed through the speakers.
Roxy strutted toward me, spilling moonshine along one side of the stage as she walked, winked at me, then strode back, pouring more of the strong alcohol along the other side as she strode away, ass swaying.
She spun back, took another swig, and spat more fire, setting the stage alight on either side of her.
My fucking jaw dropped when she lowered to her hands and knees and started crawling toward me, flames dancing beside her on both sides, as the lead singer sung about a female coming close, that he could feel her getting close to him, and my heart pounded while the beast rumbled in my chest nonstop.
Roxy arched her back and flung her hair, then she was right in front of me. She reached out, grabbed the front of my shirt, and tugged me forward, coming so close I felt her warm breath tickle my lips—then she shoved me back, her eyes bright, fucking glowing.
I dropped into my seat, and fuck, in that moment, I was as seduced by her as everyone else in the room.
She shot back to her feet then and shook her ass, hair flying everywhere, jumping around and shaking her tits, looking so fucking gorgeous and sexy that I had to adjust my dick, which was now threatening to burst through the zipper of my jeans.
What the actual fuck was wrong with me? This was Roxy.
I wasn’t attracted to Roxy. Yes, she was gorgeous and sweet and hot, but she’d never made my fucking dick hard before this trip.
Right then, my dick was so fucking hard I could hammer nails.
Finally, she spun around as the song ended, taking her bow while everyone cheered.
She jumped down from the stage and strode back to Asmodeus, who ate up the sight of her as she approached, a huge smile on his face, laughing, fucking delighted as she took a seat beside him at his table.
He slid a drink her way—
“You’re staring,” Urs said. “Fucking stop it. She has a job to do.”
Logically, I knew what the handmaids were.
They’d been trained fighters, fucking assassins, warriors, whatever Lucifer needed them to be.
Some were experts in diplomacy, in torture, and yes, some in seduction, but seeing them in action like this—seeing Roxy in action like this, fuck, I didn’t like it.
“What’s Roxy’s specialty?” I asked, because I had no idea. How was it that I’d known her so long and I didn’t know that?
“Roxy is what’s special,” Urs said and sipped her moonshine.
“Her sweet nature makes her seem naive to some, and because of that, they underestimate her, and while they’re underestimating her, she’s manipulating their false idea of her, twisting her prey’s will, until they’re on their knees, willing to do anything for her that she asks, willing to tell her anything she wants to know.
That would be specialty enough for any handmaid, but not Rox.
When she fights, it’s like watching a dance, so fluid and natural, and it’s always been that way.
She can murder an entire hoard of feral demons on her own, without breaking a sweat, and her skills in the art of seduction are second to none.
Rox is one of Lucifer’s favorites for a reason, she doesn’t have one specialty, she is highly skilled in all areas.
” Urs winked at me. “Our sweet Roxy is irreplaceable.”
I swallowed thickly, a weird feeling swirling inside me. My chest ached and the blood in my veins felt scalding hot. “I didn’t know.”
She snorted. “Because you underestimate her like everyone else.” She shot the rest of her drink.
“Roxy is my sister, and I know her vulnerable spots, because you and I know, despite all I just told you, she has them.” She refilled her glass, took three vials from her bag, and added a drop from each to her drink.
“If anyone manages to find one of those spots and hurts her, every handmaid in Hell, including me, will be after blood. Roxy is not just irreplaceable to Lucifer, she is our sister and we will carve up any motherfucker who causes her harm.”
She held my gaze.
“You think I’d hurt her?” I growled. “I’d never fucking do that.”
“You might not mean to, Lothar.”
“I would never do that, Urs.”
One of her shoulders lifted and dropped. “I hope not. I’d really hate to have to slice you up.”
We stared at each other for long moments, and though there was no way in fucking hell I would hurt Rox, for some reason Ursula thought it was a possibility and I didn’t know how to convince her otherwise. So I gave her the reassurance she needed. “I give you my word.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” She swirled her finger in her glass, mixing it, then sucked off the liquid.
“What did you put in your drink?”
“Poison,” she said and downed it in one.
“The fuck?”
She grinned. “That’s my specialty.” She winked. “Among others.”
Well, fuck me. Again, I’d had no idea. “You’re Lucifer’s taster?”
“I am, and if you tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you.”
I watched as she repeated the process with three different vials. Micro dosing herself with different poisons, maintaining her immunity to them. “How do you detect the poison if you’re immune to it?”
“I can taste the smallest dose no matter how diluted. If any of Lucifer’s enemies slipped poison into his food or drink or any other way, I’d know.”
“What does he do while you’re away?”
“He stays close to home. Only handmaids will prepare and serve his food. My services are mainly required when we travel out of his quadrant anyway. He surrounds himself with only those he trusts implicitly. We also keep an eye on everyone who has access to Lucifer, until we’re positive of their loyalty. ”
Roxy’s laughter reached me from across the room, and my gaze slid back to her. She was on Asmodeus’s lap now, her arm thrown around his thick neck, while she ran the fingers of her other hand along one of his horns.
Another growl rolled out of me, and I had no fucking clue where it came from. It was as if the beast in me was acting alone. That wasn’t how it was for a hound, there was no separation between beast and man.
I was the beast, and the beast was me, but right now, the animal part of me was reacting in ways I had no fucking control over.