Page 39 of These Monstrous Ties

I only slow when I’m out of the forest completely, only look back when the lights of the city unfurl ahead.

They aren’t there.

I cross the empty street, jog slowly down the sidewalk, to the intersection where me and Lucifer first met. My old apartment complex, my old life, is just around the corner.

I put a hand to my chest, feel my heart slam against my palm.

That isn’t me anymore. Lucifer had kept a broken girl alive, only to turn her into a monster. He thought he was bad. He thought I was scared.

He has no fucking idea what I’ve done in the past year. What I’ve seen. What I’ve endured at the hands of my brother. He might fuck with me, but only one of us is going to get fucked. And Lilith is going to take back what’s hers.

Chapter Thirteen

Halloween, One Year Ago

Lucifer gets downon his knees.

He’d taken us down the staircase at the end of the hall, and we’re underground, in what looks like it might have once been a cell. There’s a wheelchair with a bottle of rum propped up on the seat of it, and a twin bed with a surprisingly white mattress. The cement floors are bare. There’s rope in the corner of the room. And somewhere beyond this cell, I can hear someone moaning, and the unmistakable rhythmic pounding of two people fucking.

Lucifer rips a hole with his hands through my stockings, and then he looks up at me from the ground, glancing at the blade in my hand.

“Do you like pain?”

I don’t know what to say. I can still taste him on my lips. On my tongue. I want more of that. More of him. But I want him to have me, too.

I nod, hand him the blade with shaky hands. I don’t know if I’m shaking from the vodka, from fear, confusion. Something else entirely.

His eyes hold mine as he puts the point of the knife against my skin. “It’ll only hurt a little,” he promises. And then, still looking up at me, he slides the blade across my skin.

It burns, but it’s more than bearable.

He drops the knife, and I open my mouth to protest. To tell him he has to taste me, like I had tasted him.

But I don’t get to say the words.

His tongue goes to my thigh, lapping up my blood. It stings, and I fucking love it. His tongue is hot, and his lips brush against my skin as he sucks more blood into his mouth, his hands gripping my upper thigh. So close to where I want his fingers to be. To where I wanthimto be. So close, but he won’t give me that.

Not yet.

He runs his tongue tauntingly back and forth over the wound, and then he looks up at me once more.

“Get down here,” he growls.

I do.

I fall to my knees on the concrete floor, and his mouth finds mine again. It isn’t a sweet kiss. It isn’t angry, either. It’s possessive. It’s dirty. Raw. I taste my blood on his tongue, and I bite his lip, hard.

He bites back, breaking the skin.

I whimper and he groans, his hands wrapping around my body. This is sin. And I never want to be good again.

His hands find my throat, fingers curling around me. He pulls back, then brings his lips to my ear. He kisses that sensitive spot between my ear and my neck, and then he bites me again, roughly.

“I don’t care what you’ve done,” he says, his words hot on my skin. “I don’t care who you’ve been with, do you understand?”

My breath catches. We’re talking about this again. I thought he would hate this part. I thought he didn’t want to hear it. No one else did. It’s why I never dated. And maybe he doesn’t want to hear it, because I didn’t want to hear about the pregnant girl. I don’t want to think one of his firsts, one of the big ones, won’t be with me. That might make me a horrible person. A crazy person. But I don’t care.

I understand.