She smiles against my lips. “The moon is beautiful, huh, Maverick?”
It sure is, Ella.
Chapter Three
Lucifer is the first person I see when I carry the girl back into Liber. He’s standing in the back doorway with his arms crossed, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. His dark blue eyes narrow on me, and then go to the girl.
Ella.
“Get out of my way,” I growl at him.
In the light, Lucifer sees the blood on her mouth, and the handprint across her face. His eyes widen as he yanks the cigarette out of his mouth and straightens, but he doesn’t back up. “Did you do that?” he asks me in his raspy voice.
It seems whatever the fuck he was on earlier has more or less worn off. Lucky fucking me.
Ella’s eyes are closed, and her breathing is slow and even, but I felt the subtle tense in my arms at his question. She’s not asleep, but she’s probably about to be. She told me she took a handful of Xanax from Natalie on the way here.
Good thing I got to her before it kicked in, or she wouldn’t have felt anything I did to her. I wonder if that’s why she asked. I wonder if I should feel guilty about it.
I wonder if I need to tell Natalie she isn’t a fucking pharmacist.
“I said get out of my way.”
Lucifer’s eyes shift from the girl to me. “You hit her.” It’s not a question.
I frown. “Would you like to call the fucking police? File charges against me? If not, get the fuck out of my way.”
“I don’t know, Mav, I don’t think the police will care too much about some consensual roleplaying, but fucking murder?” His eyes narrow, and the cigarette in his fingers snaps in half. “They might give a shit about that.”
I snort, shifting Ella in my arms. The wind blows and I clutch her tighter against my chest. Lucifer sees the movement and a smirk turns up on his lips. I want to strangle him.
“Wanna send your wifey to jail?” I taunt him, since Sid clearly told him about Pammie. “By the way, did you tell her about your dick being two seconds away from being inside another girl?”
I don’t wait for an answer. I push past him, elbowing him out of my way. He backs up, slams the door closed behind me.
I take the deserted back hallway, dim lights from sconces on the wall. I hear Lucifer’s footsteps behind me, and I’ll deal with his ass when I set this fucking girl down. I head up the stairs at the end of the hall, the music dying as I walk up one flight, then another, and finally, on the third floor, the music is just a dull thud.
I shift Ella in my arms, and Lucifer gets the door, then follows after me like a bad dream.
I head to my room at the end of the hall, and once again, good ol’ Lucy Boy opens the door for me.
What a goddamn gentleman.
I grunt my thanks and walk into the frigid room, hear the door close at my back. The lights automatically flick on, and I take Ella straight to the King bed, laying her down on the grey sheets.
“Get the lights,” I tell Lucifer without looking at him.
He dims them down, and I glance down at her in the remaining light, taking her in fully for the first time.
She’s gorgeous.
Pale skin, vivid freckles and my handprint against her face, blood dried on her lips. And there’s that other mark, that looks like someone else might have hit her.
This time I feel my chest tighten at the sight of it, and I don’t like that feeling.
Her eyes are still closed. I take in her long, dark lashes, thick, auburn brows. And her tits…I’m regretting not having slapped them, too, but at least I got to taste them. They’re big, straining against the dress under her leather jacket. I slip off her thigh-high boots, which takes a lot of fucking effort, and drop them to the floor. She turns onto her side, curling up into a ball. I grab the comforter that’s folded down on the bed, pull it from underneath her and cover her with it.
“We need to talk,” Lucifer says in my ear, like I don’t fucking know it.
I flex my jaw, run my cold hands down my jeans, and then walk out of the bedroom, into the adjoining sitting room, shoving open the heavy curtains as I do. I see more fireworks going off far away from here. I step out onto the balcony, take a seat in one of the iron chairs.
I don’t want to get too close to the edge.
It reminds me of things I’d rather never think about again. It reminds of Malachi.
Let it go.
Lucifer slides the door closed behind him, stands at the balcony railing with his hands clasped, elbows on the iron railing.
“Who is she?” he asks, not looking at me.
I stare at the back of his head, think about him with Ezra and that girl. I think about pushing him over the side of the balcony. Hearing his head crack against the concrete below.
But I know what that sounds like.
Do I really want to hear it again?
I grip the wrought iron edges of the chair, force myself to look up at the moon instead. It really is beautiful. “I don’t know.” It’s not a lie. “Natalie brought her.”
“You hit a girl you don’t know?”
“She asked me to.”
He spins around, his hands gripping the edge of the railing so hard his knuckles blanch. “She asked you to?”
I stand to my feet, cock my head. “Yeah,” I say, “just like Sid asked me to take her to help kill your fucking stepmom.”
His jaw clenches, his dark blue eyes narrowed into slits. “If Sid asked to suck your dick, would you let her do that, too?”
Oh, he really shouldn’t have asked me that. I smile at him, slip my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “Actually, yeah. Now that I know you don’t mind playing around without her, why the fuck not?”
He’s barely hanging on by a fucking thread, his hands gripping the railing so hard they’re shaking. “She’s your fucking sister and my fucking wife.”
“I guess Jeremiah Rain and I have that in common. Incest?”
I know I shouldn’t have said that. I know it, but it’s too late to take it back, and I don’t really want to anyway. But then again, I don’t want to talk about this fucker again, and I know I just invited that in.
If I had never heard the name ‘Jeremiah Rain’ in my fucking life, I think it’d add a full ten years to my life expectancy. As it is now, I’ll probably die within the next ten years because of that narcissistic sociopath.
Because he’s fucking my sister.
He just fucked up my new sister.
And Lucifer won’t shut the fuck up about killing him.
“Yeah, another thing we haven’t discussed enough.” Lucifer stretches his neck, then turns away from me. “Tell me again,” he says quietly, “why, exactly, you walked into a burning building and saved that piece of shit’s life?”
Goddamn, I really need a joint. It’s nearly one in the fucking morning and I’ve got a much bigger problem on my hands right now in the form of an unstable teenage girl that I just came inside of.
But in the few times Lucifer and I have seen each other in the month since Sacrificium, he hasn’t gotten off my ass about this shit.
I sit back down. Clasp my hands together, elbows on my knees. I close my eyes; I’m fucking tired.
“If I hadn’t saved his life, you wouldn’t be calling Sid your wife right now. She wouldn’t even be here right now. She might’ve even killed you, which at this point, I might be happy about because it’s one in the goddamn morning, Lucifer, and I want to go the fuck to sleep.”