Chapter Fifty-Two Charlotte
Chapter Fifty-Two
Charlotte
I surge forward, gasping for breath as if I’ve been underwater and I’m just coming up for air.
“Breathe, Charlotte,” Lucifer growls, his voice a harsh command that vibrates against my ear.
Reminding me of the last time he said it to me.
That first night in his penthouse. After the foundation opening.
The night I fell in love with him.
Though I was already falling from the first moment we met.
After all, temptation is kind of his thing. But so is loving me, which is even harder to resist.
My gaze darts toward him, taking in his appearance. Even with the flecks of someone else’s blood coating his face, he’s still beautiful. Exactly the same as he was only moments ago, and yet it ... feels like a lifetime since I’ve seen him.
Or at least, my last lifetime, anyway.
I glance down at my body, no longer broken and bruised, even if still a bit sore, before I take in the setting around me. We’re still in the abandoned office inside the old Brooklyn shipyard, but the early morning sun has begun to creep in. Mark’s body lies a short distance away, and yet ...
“Who’s he?” I say, watching the angel leaning against the far wall. Based on the massive pair of white-feathered wings that have unfolded behind him, he’s clearly one of Lucifer’s siblings, but not one of the Originals. I’d recognize them.
“Gabriel,” Lucifer says. “One of your numerous future brothers-in-law.”
“Dad is going to be so pissed at you for this,” Gabriel mutters.
I glance between him and Lucifer, my mind struggling to process what’s happened. A manic wave of horror at what I’ve taken from him rolls through me as I desperately touch my lips, mouth, and face as if to check that they’re still there. The last few minutes come back to me, like my life flashing before my eyes. Or the end of it, anyway ...
The train station. The choice I made. That pulsing beam of light.
And the burning sensation that followed ...
Like I was being torched from the inside out.
I lift my shaking hands tentatively, examining them.
But there’s not so much as a scratch on me.
“Your redemption?” I finally breathe, my mouth falling open.
Because what else could it be?
I glance between Lucifer and my now-healed body as if in search of answers. “You ... gave it to me?”
Lucifer shrugs. “Not exactly what Father had planned, I think, but I never was one to ask for permission.” He smiles first. “I take first and ask for forgiveness later.”
Exactly like he did when he sent my press release.
The sparkle in his eye, his happiness, soothes me.
“And I’m asking for yours now, Charlotte.” His voice grows softer. Like he’s less sure of himself.
I smile at him then. Unable to stop the wide, goofy grin that crosses my face at the euphoric tingling in my head, the surge of joy that starts in my chest and spreads outward, before I’m kissing him. Kissing every part of him I can get my hands on.
Anything and everything.
“Ugh. Someone gag me.” Gabriel makes a disgusted choking noise before the whoosh of his wings marks his exit.
Not that I bother to look in his direction.
Lucifer snaps his fingers, and suddenly we’re inside the penthouse. In his bedroom.
I’m still too busy kissing every inch of him to be surprised.
He pulls his mouth from mine momentarily. “Had I known that’s all it took to get you to ravish me this way, I might have done it a bit sooner,” he says, gripping a bit of my hair in his hand as I feel him nod to his lower half. “Though move south a bit more quickly, darling. I’m an impatient bastard.”
“Lucifer.” I pull back from where I was busy kissing his neck, gripping both sides of his face. “Lucifer, you did it, don’t you understand?” I can’t stop myself from beaming at him. My eyes fill with tears. “You let me choose. You were selfless. In your love for me.”
I kiss him again before he can protest, though he still purrs against my probing tongue, his fangs nipping at me.
“Don’t you understand what this means?” I whisper against his lips.
“That I’m going to get to sheathe myself inside your delicious cunt?” His voice drops low, instantly making me wet as I climb onto his lap, pulling him down and onto the floor on top of me.
“No,” I say, at first.
He pulls back only to lift a brow at me. “That’s not our safe word, Charlotte,” he reminds me before his hands and tongue start exploring again, making their way down to where I truly want him. “And I’m not asking.”
“No, well, I mean ... yes. Yes, that, too, of course, but ...”
He glances up from where his head’s now positioned between my knees and looks at me.
“You said you poison everything you love, but that’s not true. You can change. You have already,” I whisper to him. Like him realizing the goodness that’s still inside him is the deepest longing of my heart.
And it is. Teaching him all that love can be. Exactly as he did for me.
“And if you can change, you can still be ...”
“Redeemed?” he asks, finishing the words for me. His forked tongue probing my pussy is what stops me from finishing them myself.
“And if the devil can be redeemed ...,” I say, sighing as his tongue starts to circle my clit.
“Well, then I suppose humanity can as well,” he says, hitting that spot deep inside that he knows makes me come.