Page 39

Chapter 38

An Unnecessary Attachment

SJ

W hen she was tucked safely into bed with me, I let myself breathe again. Seeing her leap out of bed and dart from the room, only to tell me she was bleeding, had made my chest spasm painfully. But it was normal. Human fertility cycles were mostly a mystery to me, but if I wanted to be with her, I would have to learn hers.

And oh, after this night, and her confession that she, too, had … feelings … for me, I wanted it. I had no idea how I could make it happen, but I desired it desperately.

I began to plot. I was good at that.

Step one … find a way to return that piece of her soul to her body without endangering her.

Step two … and this was where I came up short. Because what could I do? Defect from Hell? Abdicate my role as Crown Prince? Hellen would hunt me down, slice my testicles out of their sack and feed them to me if I tried while telling me she’d always known I would never have been a worthy king.

And if she even got the slightest inkling that I’d done it for Jemma … I had to ensure her safety from my family, too …

But if I couldn’t get past step one, there would be no step two. I had to find a way to release Jemma from her contract to me.

“What’s ticking away in that blond head of yours?” she asked, nestling closer to me. “You get all stiff when you’re thinking.”

I tried to chuckle. “I get all stiff when I think about you.” It was nothing more than the truth, although a clunky deflection on my part.

But she accepted it. Perhaps tonight was not the night to be worrying about these enormous problems between us. Perhaps tonight would be better spent just enjoying having her in my arms. The problems would still be there in the morning, nothing I could do about them tonight would change that.

“Why Beezle and Bub?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

She turned to lay on her back in the circle of my arms. Her breasts slipped free from the covers. Home’s bones, they were perfection.

“I mean, why the names? It’s Beelzebub, isn’t it? Not Beezlebub?”

A wry chuckle bubbled up my throat. “You are right, Mouse. But when I was a little devil, I couldn’t quite wrap my mouth around the word. No matter how hard I tried, I could not pronounce it correctly. Besides, I thought my way sounded much better than the name the stuffy governesses who rapped my knuckles when I repeatedly got it wrong tried to force upon me. So, when I was presented with two puppies all of my own, being a … rebellious little tyke, I named my two new pets after my great great grandfather … Beezle bub.”

Jemma giggled, her breath fanning against my chest, right where it thrummed with a beating pulse. “That’s quite adorable … well, except for the corporal punishment, that is. Was being a child in Hell awful?”

I shrugged. “Mostly it was just lonely. Spawn of the Lucifer line never know their mothers. We’re left with our father as foundlings so that we don’t form unnecessary attachments. My older sister is an awful creature, resentful of the fact that I was born with the correct anatomy to rule. My father is … shall we say, he values his own pleasure above anything else, even his responsibilities as the king, and … those of a father.”

“Oh, SJ.” Her lips came up to brush my cheek. “That makes me so sad.”

“It was what it was.” I pulled her closer to me, my hands finding the small of her back. “I … I do not wish you to feel sad about my childhood when yours was so much worse.”

She tilted her head to meet my eyes. “Have you had anyone who … who cared enough to feel sad for you before?”

I shook my head. “Empathy is not the Lucifer way.” But even as I said the words, I wondered. Because I felt empathy. I felt it so strongly with her. And I wondered, did Hellen or Father ever feel it? Had my mother, whoever she was, ever felt it?

“You must not be a Lucifer, then,” she murmured against my collarbone, then stifled a yawn. “Because you’re full of empathy. And I’d kind of like to think that you and I … we’ve formed an unnecessary attachment.”

I nuzzled my nose into her hair, inhaling deeply. “No, we have not … this attachment is entirely necessary.”

I felt her smile against my skin. “It feels that way, doesn’t it?”

I kissed the top of her head. “It does.”

With her nestled safe in my arms, we both drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Her wet mouth, descending my stomach. Leaving little damp kisses on each bump and ridge of muscle as she went. I shuddered under the hot press of her lips, and my cock strained, desperate for that wet heat around it.

I clutched a fistful of the sheets as she tugged the covers down, her eyes sparkling with delight and mischief as she watched my erection bob and jerk.

“Do I need to ask, SJ?” she purred, sliding her delicate fingers up the inside of my thighs. Home’s bones, I was leaking already, just from her hungry eyes on me. “Do I need to say, ‘Please let me suck your big cock’?”

“Please don’t let me wake up,” I moaned, spreading my knees wider, giving her better access. “At least not until this happens.”

She licked her lips, her mouth getting closer to where I was desperate for it. Just shy of her mouth making contact, she grinned up at me.

“You’re not dreaming, big boy.”

“I’m not? Oh … Oh fuck!” I groaned as her tongue—her real-life tongue, not the stuff of my subconscious fantasies—traced the slit of my cock, circled the tip, and then her mouth closed around me, wet and hot and perfect.

“Mouse, you lovely, dirty girl!” I hissed. In response, she took me as deep as she could, her tongue working the ridged underside of me, her cheeks hollowing with perfect suction. Her hand gripped the base, stroking in time with her bobbing mouth.

She moaned, and the sound vibrated all the way into the very core of me. “I’ve dreamed of how well your mouth would take me, but …” My eyes rolled back as her other hand fondled my bollocks, her nails scratching over the sack, and it drew tighter, and heat blossomed deep within, and it was expanding, and she mewled, sucking me deeper, gagging a little, but not stopping, and I was so close, I was almost?—

“Oh God, so sorry to interrupt, but … I think there’s an emergency in Hell!” Ezra’s voice barked through the door.

“It can wait!” I snapped.

Jemma released my cock with a wet pop, but her hand still fondled the length of me, holding me right on the precipice of utter pleasure.

“What do you mean?” she called back, her hand stroking through the slipperiness of her saliva. My jaw ached from holding it so tightly shut, my fists clamped in the covers. I was not going to climax while her roommate was shouting at us through the door.

“There’s a black Hell Hound nose sticking through a … what looks like a tear in the space-time continuum out here in the living room, and it’s shouting at me to ‘Get Boss! Get Boss!’ and something about, ‘Yellin’ Hellen’?”

“Shit,” I grated, sitting up and wrapping my hand around Jemma’s, stilling her. “My sister. I’m sorry, Mouse. I know I promised not to run, but …”

“It’s okay, SJ. You go deal with Yellin’ Hellen. Just come back here after, okay?”

I nodded, unable to trust words. Jemma’s lips twitched downwards, and my chest panged with the knowledge that I was making them that way. I wondered just how much the Soul Token would be pulsing right now, absorbing yet more misery I was dealing her, however reluctantly.

“Fuck!” I cursed, realising that I had come through a portal naked with her. Which meant the Soul Token was still back in my breeches, wadded up on the floor of my bedchamber.

Where Hellen, with her greedy obsession with the power stored in the Token, was no doubt storming about at that very moment.

“What’s wrong?” Jemma asked, dragging a pair of underpants and a T-shirt on over her head.

“Nothing,” I lied, widening the portal seam that I thought might need to permanently remain in her bedroom for ease of access. “I’ll sort out whatever drama the hounds are howling about, and I’ll return … as soon as I can.”

“Because I need to finish what I just started,” she murmured, and her lips were a sly grin, but her eyes were tight with worry.

I reached out and squeezed her hand. “I need that, too.” That, and so much more, when it came to this little, pink-haired human.

And then I stepped through the portal, prepared to meet whatever was waiting for me. Or, as prepared as a naked devil in a human disguise could be, in any case.