Chapter Twenty-Seven - Evie
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Evie
MALACH LEFT A few minutes later. Luc called a service to hire a nurse.
She arrived an hour later, clearly human and not knowing what she was in for.
She set up a little station in the hallway and stayed just outside the bedroom door, posted there.
She was supposed to come in every two or three hours to check on me while the IV kept dripping into my arm.
The plan, apparently, was to keep me on fluids and around-the-clock anti-nausea meds for the next day or so.
So for now, I was trapped with an IV and strict instructions not to do anything interesting.
When we were finally alone, I looked at him.
He was still standing near the bed, one hand braced on the footboard, as if some part of him were still beside the ultrasound machine, staring at those two tiny shapes on the screen, trying to understand how the world had managed to be cruel and miraculous in the same breath.
I sat up and tugged lightly on his arm. “Come here.”
His eyes dropped to mine immediately. “What do you need?”
“Lay with me.”
Something in his face softened so fast it made my chest ache.
He kicked off his shoes and climbed into the bed carefully, moving with the kind of caution that would’ve annoyed me if I hadn’t been so wrung out.
He settled beside me and drew me into him, slow and deliberate, one arm sliding around my back while he made sure not to catch the IV line.
He tucked me against his chest like I was something precious and breakable and maybe a little unreal.
I let him. God, I let him.
I curled closer, breathing him in, his scent wrapping around me like the only safe place left in the world. Then I took his hand and guided it down, lower, resting it gently over my belly. He went still under my touch, almost stunned, as if even that much contact meant something bigger now.
It took me a minute, and for one brief, ugly second, the memory of The First Light slid over me, and I shivered.
Luc felt it immediately, and his hand started to lift.
“No,” I whispered, catching it there. “Don’t.”
He looked down at me. “Evie.”
“It’s okay.” My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. “Just… give me a second.”
He stayed still after that. Didn’t press. Didn’t ask. He just let me breathe through it with his hand warm and steady over the place where our babies were, where my body was suddenly not only mine anymore, where everything had changed without either of us noticing until it was already real.
I closed my eyes and breathed him in again. And slowly, mercifully, those memories loosened their claws. Then, all I could feel was him. The solid weight of his hand. The careful shape of his body around mine. The way he kept holding back just enough to let me choose every inch of this.
I turned my face into his chest and let out a long breath. “I don’t want to be anywhere else,” I murmured.
His arm tightened around me.
“Good,” he said, and his voice was rough in that way it got when he was trying not to feel too much at once. “Because you’re not going anywhere.”
I laughed, just a little. “Careful,” I said. “That sounded almost sweet.”
“It was not sweet.”
“No?”
“No.” He bent and pressed his mouth to my hair. “It was a threat. Stay in this bed, or I’ll have the nurse chain you to it.”
I smiled against his shirt. “I’d rather you do it.”
“I’m sure you would.”
That got me to laugh again, weak but real.
For a minute after that, neither of us said anything. We just stayed there, his hand over my belly, my body fitted into his, the IV dripping its cold little lifeline into my arm while afternoon light softened across the room.
I should have been thinking about the danger of this pregnancy. And I was thinking about it. But underneath the fear was something else now. Something that terrified me.
Two. There were two babies. We were going to have two babies. Twins. Ours.
I tipped my head back enough to look up at him. His eyes met mine instantly.
“Are you still mad?” I asked softly.
A line formed between his brows. “At what?”
“At the universe. At Heaven. At me for not realizing. At…” I swallowed. “Everything.”
His expression changed, some of the steel in it giving way.
“I’m furious at Heaven and that Fucking Asshole,” he said.
“That you were sick in that place and I wasn’t there.
I’m furious at myself because I waited around for three days while you threw up until you could barely stand before I finally called someone.
” His thumb moved once, very lightly, against my stomach. “I’m not angry at you.”
My throat tightened, so I looked down at his hand where it rested over me.
“Father,” I said quietly, trying the word on him again.
He made a face that was almost a smile and almost disbelief. “Don’t start.”
“You said it first.”
“I know.”
“You looked like your soul left your body.”
“It may have.”
I laughed, and he closed his eyes briefly like the sound itself hurt him in a good way.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
I sighed against him. “Me too.”
Then his hand flexed once over my belly, and his whole face softened into something I don’t think I’d ever seen before. It wasn’t fear or even happiness, but something bigger and more helpless than both. I covered his hand with mine, and for a moment we just stayed that way.
The room was quiet except for the soft, steady rhythm of his breathing beside me. His palm was warm through the thin fabric of my shirt. Luc’s gaze lifted from my stomach to my face. Whatever he saw there made his expression shift.
“Evie,” he said softly.
I hated the way my eyes burned at the sound of my name in his mouth. I had missed being with him so much. And it was like he knew exactly where I was, even when I didn’t.
I leaned closer before I could talk myself out of it. My fingers slid up his wrist, over the tendons there, then higher, curling into the front of his shirt.
His body went rigid, waiting. For me. Always waiting, now. Like I had become something breakable, sacred, and dangerous all at once.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I whispered.
His jaw tightened. “Like what?”
“Like you’re afraid I’ll disappear if you touch me.”
Something dark moved behind his eyes. “I am.”
My fingers tightened in his shirt. The honesty of it went straight through me.
I should’ve said something. Anything. Soft or reassuring. But there was a hollow place in me that words couldn’t reach, a place filled with those awful, lingering memories of being handled like I had no say at all. Like I was an offering. Like my body had belonged to someone else.
I swallowed hard. Luc noticed. Because he noticed everything.
His hand left my stomach and came up slowly, giving me every chance to stop him before his knuckles brushed my cheek. I closed my eyes. That touch was so gentle it almost hurt.
“Tell me,” he said.
I shook my head once, but my hand was still fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer instead of pushing him away.
“Evie.”
I opened my eyes, and his face was inches from mine now, beautiful in a way that felt unfair. Those blue eyes. Ruined and divine and mine, even when the universe kept trying to take him away from me.
“I just…” My voice broke, and I hated it. “I just want to forget His touch.”
Luc went utterly still. But he wasn’t angry. He was… controlled. Like every violent thing inside him had gone down on one knee and waited for his permission to rise.
I thought he was going to pull away. Instead, his hand slid behind my neck, careful of tangling the IV line, careful of everything, and he rested his forehead against mine.
“You don’t have to use me to erase Him,” he said, voice rough.
“I know.”
His thumb brushed the side of my throat. “You don’t owe me this.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to prove you’re all right.”
“I’m not.”
His eyes closed. The words sat between us, brutal and honest. But I breathed through them.
“I’m not all right,” I whispered. “But I want you. Not because of Him. Not because I’m trying to pretend it didn’t happen.” My fingers loosened against his shirt, then curled again, softer this time. “Because I want to remember this is still mine. My body. My mouth. My choice.”
Luc’s breath left him like something had been cut out. When he opened his eyes again, they were darker.
“Then tell me what you want,” he said.
The question should have embarrassed me. But it didn’t. It steadied me.
I looked at his mouth. “I want you to kiss me. To touch me.”
He didn’t move right away. Lucifer, the King of Hell, ancient terror, ruin of Heaven, was now suddenly the most patient creature in existence because I had asked him to be.
So I pulled him down against me. His mouth met mine softly at first, almost unbearably softly, like he was afraid even kissing me could leave a bruise.
The tenderness of it made something crack open in my chest. I made a small sound against him, and his hand tightened just a little at the back of my neck.
There. There he was.
I kissed him harder.
Luc made a low noise, somewhere between restraint and surrender, and the sound moved through me like heat. His other hand braced on the bed beside my hip, careful not to put weight on me. Always careful.
I loved him for it, and at the same time, I hated needing it.
I opened my mouth beneath his, and whatever control he had left frayed at the edges.
His kiss deepened, slow and devastating, his tongue brushing mine like a vow he couldn’t say out loud.
I felt it everywhere. In my spine. In my shaking hands.
In the empty places The First Light had tried to hollow out.
I slid my fingers into his hair, and he shuddered. The great Devil himself, undone by my human hands. It should have made me laugh. Instead, I nearly cried.
Because this was not that honeyed golden light. This was not tricking me into obedience. This was Luc. With trembling fingers because I touched him first. This was his mouth asking and asking and asking again without words. And this was all mine.