Galilee
Gali sat up slowly. “He wants tokillme?”
She’d caught only a glimpse of the man with yellow-gold eyes before Lucifer’s wings had snapped out around them, but it had been an unforgettable glimpse: a hard sculpted face, an unforgiving mouth, and spills of vitiligo paleness over his skin. He made her skin shudder.
Leviathan.
“Why does he want to kill me?” she asked, looking down at Lucifer, who was sprawled out naked on the sheets next to her. Her pulse was still thudding because, holy shit, she’d just fucked the Devil himself, but there was no time to process that. Part of her was trembling and overwhelmed, but right now, Gali couldn’t stop thinking about how cold the light pouring off Leviathan’s sword had been, how shocking it was in comparison to his beauty—nothing like Lucifer’s, but justdifferent.
Lucifer sighed and draped an arm over his eyes. “We’ve been over this, Galilee. You’re not human, you burn me; they don’t like it.”
Gali rolled over on her stomach, her forehead still wrinkling in a frown. “Yeah, but you said you believed me.”
Lucifer’s voice rumbled low in his chest. “I do, beloved, but they don’t.”
She shrugged. “So just call them off, right?” He was the King of Hell. He commanded them. He had all the power here.
Lucifer lifted his arm away with an exhale and pulled himself up till he was sitting next to her on the bed, his hair tousled and damp with sweat. Gali felt her body throb in response as she looked over his walnut skin, the dark hair curling on his thighs, his semi-erect cock lying slick across a hip.
“My princes and I don’t work that way,” he explained, absently sliding a hand over her back as if he couldn’t bear to not be touching her. It sent spikes of pleasure down Gali’s spine, and she wriggled a little, watching Lucifer’s eyes drift over to her ass.
“Don’t they obey you?” she asked.
Lucifer was still stroking her, his eyes now hot and distracted. “Wouldn’t that be nice,” he murmured. “Don’t worry about it, beloved.”
A gust of wind whirled in from the open balcony doors and fed Gali scents: lavender and salt, damp wood and pine needles. She pushed herself up, kneeling on the bed as she opened her senses wider.
“Galilee?” Lucifer was watching her, but she didn’t reply. The wind was warning her, and it felt like Celestial was standing right next to her, whispering in her ear. How could they have found her so fast?
“Lucifer, you got this house warded?”
He laughed softly. “It’s inhabited by the Devil and the princes of Hell. We’re the ones you wardagainst.”
Gooseflesh raced up Gali’s arms. The first thing she’d done when she’d moved into her loft was ward it very specifically against her own family so they couldn’t spy on her from afar, because the Kincaids were nosy as fuck. What people often forgot was that those women couldn’t have lived out that deep on the land for that long without becoming very,verygood at hunting.
Lucifer slid a hand around Gali’s elbow. “What is it, little demon?”
She sat back on her heels, her mouth twisting. “They know.”Goddammit.
“Who knows?” He sounded patient, and it made her heart plummet. She was going to have to beg him to spare them, and yet, she was still sure they could harm him in some way. She didn’t know how, exactly, but that didn’t stop the knowledge from sitting heavy and weighted behind her sternum.
“My grandma’s hunting you,” she said. “She’ll have my momma with her... and my cousins and aunts. They probably started when you took me from my apartment, and now...” A bitter hand clenched around Gali’s stomach. She hated how much information her family could steal about her,fromher. “Now they know we slept together.”
Lucifer leaned forward and pushed some of her hair behind her ear. “How do they know this?” he asked gently. “Because they are favored?”
He didn’t really understand, and Gali couldn’t start explaining the exact range of what Kincaid women could do. She didn’t even know the full scope of it herself, and she was fairly sure that was deliberate on her family’s end, so she simply nodded. “My cousin warned me. They’re afraid of you. Of who they think you are.” Gali met his gaze reluctantly and saw the moment when Lucifer understood at least a part of it.
“Ah,” he said. “I’m the monster.”
There was no emotion in his voice, but still, she reached out and cupped his jaw in her hand. It was easier to be touching him when she told him what he had to know, but God, it felt fucking shitty to say.
“They’re not gonna think it was consensual,” she said, hating the words as they fell off her tongue. “They’ll think you forced me.”
Depending on how much the wind had told Celestial, or how much Celestial had told Nana, or which aunt had divined what, it was possible that they could even know worse details, like how he’d come inside her or how she’d been crying first—fragments without context, but enough for the Kincaids to run bloody and amok with. Gali didn’t mention that part, though. A corner of Lucifer’s mouth had turned down, but he was still listening. He’d covered her hand with his, remaining quiet as he gazed at her, and Gali kept talking because she didn’t know what else to do.
“They see me a certain way, Luci, always have. They wouldn’t think... they don’t think I could—”
“They don’t think you could want me.” There was a sheen of sad amusement in Lucifer’s eyes, slicked between the flickering gold, but he didn’t sound sorry for himself at all. “They have no idea who you are, do they?”
