Page 13 of The Cruelest Chaos

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. “Sheasked 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 yourfucking sisterand myfucking 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, Idon’twant 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.