Time... stopped.
Lucifer stared at her, at the fury burning in her dark glowing eyes, at the burnished hair in tight curls against her neck. Both her friends were motionless, trapped in the air, pinned by her demand. Galilee was breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling as her eyes darted around. Her face fell into confusion.
“What the fuck?”
Lucifer stretched out a hand, testing the air, then stepped closer to her friends to inspect them. They were alive, just stopped, like everything around him and Galilee. He let out a low whistle and turned to her.
“Impressive,” he said, even as suspicion crawled over his spine. Whatwasshe? “You stopped time, little demon.”
There was no way he could report something like this to his princes. The burning was bad enough, but the ability to manipulate time like this would simply be a nail in Galilee’s coffin and Levi would hammer that shit in with his bare hands.
Galilee reached down hesitantly and brushed trembling fingers against Bonbon’s skin. “I didn’t know I could do that,” she said, her voice low and wondering.
“You certainly are full of surprises,” Lucifer agreed, stepping closer to tug on one of her curls. “I look forward to unveiling even more.”
Gali pulled back and slapped him across his face, her palm tunneling fire straight to his jaw, fire around his teeth, fire against blood on his tongue. He hissed a breath and forced the black to stay out of his eyes even as his body sang from the punishment of her touch.
“What was that for?” he managed to ask calmly, though all he wanted to do was shove her down on her bed and do things to her in this pocket of interrupted time.
“Why the hell would you show up here?” she yelled, her hands gesturing wildly. “You piss her off enough to shoot at you, and then you got the goddamn nerve to not bleed in front of them? Andthenyou showed them your eyes? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
He smiled. “You sound just like Belial.”
Galilee snapped her teeth together, then forced in a long breath. “I don’t know who that is and I don’t care. You’re messing with my friends, and I don’t fuck with that.”
Lucifer folded his arms and frowned. “I was just being honest.”
She glared daggers at him, thousands of tiny needle-sharp daggers that sang all the way to his numb heart. “They’rehuman, asshole.”
Before the last sound left her mouth, Lucifer was against her, pulling her close and snarling with a mouth full of too many teeth. “Then what areyou, Galilee? Hmm?” He licked her cheek, marveling at the lightning shooting up his tongue. “Because you’re not a fucking human either, and you smell like the end or the beginning of a world, I can’t quite decide.”
Galilee had gasped at first, but now she was just staring up at him, her dark lashes fluttering with shock and her pupils already blown. Lucifer fought back a groan as his body registered the softness of her body flush against him, the way her lips had parted, as if inviting him to slide something, anything, between them.
“Never mind,” he bit out. “We have to go, or else I’m going to fuck youright here in front of your friends until time starts back up again, and maybe I won’t even stop then.”
Galilee made a small hungry sound, then tore her eyes away from his, glancing over at the other girls. “Are they okay?” she asked, her mood ricocheting from anger to desire to concern. “Did I hurt them? I don’t know how to turn it off. Can you fix it, please?” She looked back at him, biting her lip with worry. Lucifer watched her teeth dig into the soft flesh, and he swallowed a curse as his erection turned iron. He wanted to eat her alive.
“They’ll be fine. It’ll probably wear off since it’s your first time. I can leave a small glamour over their memories, and we can clear it up later.”
Galilee was about to argue, but Lucifer shot her a cutting glare.
“Don’t play cute with me,” he said, sliding an edge into his voice. “You want me to release them now so they can, what, get back to screaming? Galilee,you’re not human. You know about the other worlds, and you know what the fuck I am. You’re just worried that your friends will find out. Soyeah, we’ll clear it up when you’re ready to start telling some fucking truths, and I’m guessing that’s not right now.”
He watched as blood drained from her face and fear bled in. She was a liar because she was terrified, he realized, truly terrified of having them find out that she was anything other than normal. That could be good. She absolutely should be afraid—shit, he was afraidforher, and he’d never known fear before this, before Levi’s sword pronounced itself hungry for her blood. Belial would use her teeth, would tear and tear at Galilee’s skin and muscles and bone and spine until the separation was complete. Hecouldrestore the flow of time in this room and alleviate Galilee’s concerns, but her fear was more useful. Fear would make it easier for her to understand what she needed to do, why she needed to cut another deal, why she needed to hand over her soul into his safekeeping.
And yet, Lucifer disliked seeing her eyes dim in any way, so he pulled her even closer until he could feel her nipples tight and scraping againsthis chest. He slid his palms over her ass and lowered his mouth to her neck, dropping kisses against her skin, burning his lips. Gali melted into him, a rough moan spilling out from her throat.
“I hate that you make me feel like this,” she bit out, her voice unsteady and still angry.
“Tell me why,” he replied, scoring his teeth gently against a tendon in her neck. Her head fell back. She tasted like the core of the earth, and it made him drunk with darkness. “What’s so terrible about wanting me?”
Galilee writhed against him as his mouth worked on her throat.“Lucifer...”
Pure electricity sang through him at the sound of his name in her mouth, earth cracking open and spilling boiling magma into the endless void of his chest. It had been a mistake to come to her in this form, with his control so precarious. For a brief moment, Lucifer’s mind simply splintered, usurped by the all-encompassing desire to hear her say his name over and over, softly and in terrible wails of delight, with fury and want and tenderness, and he knew only a small miracle would stop him from cracking her open on her bed just to spill his name from her lips again.
So the Devil gathered her up in his arms, summoned the willpower for a miracle, and he threw himself out the window.
7.
