I froze before I could nudge her thighs apart. Her terror beat against me. River hadneverbeen scared of anything, not even when she should have been. She’d never feared me, but then she may have sensed from the beginning she was to be mine.
“Do not fear him.” It came out as more of a command than I’d intended.
“I’m not afraid of him,” she whispered. “I’m afraid he’s right. I am his offspring. You all claim he’s my father. He was once an angel, and now he’s a monster. I am no angel, Kobal. I’m no saint. What if my future is what he predicted? He said the more my powers grow, the more they’ll eat at me until I’m twisted like him, and then I would bring you down with me! He said the stronger the bond becomes between us, the more it will endanger you. Angels and demons don’t see the world in good and evil, and because of that, he said he was born to set you all free, andIwill be standing at his side when it happens.”
“River—”
“He told me what is inside of him is also inside ofme. He expects me to help him take down the only one who has managed to elude him,you!” she cried as her eyes became more turbulent.
My breath froze in my chest, and my body stiffened against hers as her words sank in. I didn’t believe for one second anything he’d told her, but his words had taken root within her mind. She had asked before if she could be evil, but I’d believed it to be a concern of the past; I knew now I was wrong. Lucifer had been able to detect her worries and turn them against her.
“He’s a master manipulator, River. None of what he said is true.”
“You can’t know that,” she whispered, “not for sure. He said I amhischild and that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You all consider me his child too. He also said he’d be sending me a gift and to look for it.”
Tears!The sight of them shimmering in her eyes tore at my heart. What had that prick done to her?
I had always known I would one day kill him, but now I would make Lucifer’s death an excruciating experience that would make all the tortures of Hell look like a day in Heaven in comparison. Unlucky for him, I had over a millennia of torture and suffering to draw on once I had him in my grasp.
“He’s lying to try and keep you from growing stronger, to keep you from learning more of your powers, and to get between us. He knows demons become stronger when they find their Chosen.”
Corson’s words from earlier drifted through my head,‘But with more power comes new weakness.’I shoved them aside. They may be true, but in no way or in any dimension could River ever become like Lucifer. She would strengthen me more than she weakened me. I would not lose her.
“He knows both of our powers will only increase because of our bond,” I told her. “It was a ploy. He pulled you in to implant these doubts in your head. He can’t find you, so he found another way to attack you. Discovering you were my Chosen only made things easier for him to manipulate.”
“I’m the one who drewhiminto my dream. I didn’t mean to; it’s certainly not something I planned to have happen. But I did it somehow and for somereason.”
I brushed the tears from her cheeks as I leveled my body over hers. I used my thigh to nudge hers apart as I contemplated her words. She bit her lip as her hips instinctively rose toward mine.
“You’re about to start a journey that’s going to take you toward him; of course you’re curious about what you will face. Unlike the humans, you have the ability to ease some of your curiosity. We’ll have to try and shut that down from happening again,” I said.
“Itwillbe shut down.”
I smiled at her as I brushed a kiss over the tip of her nose. Her legs lifted so her knees pressed against my sides. Her distress continued to beat against me, but her body instinctively sought to ease it. Her eyes remained latched on mine as I slid into her wet sheath.
“Do you feel me?” I inquired as her muscles gripped my aching cock.
“Always,” she whispered.
“What this is between us is stronger than him,” I told her as I nuzzled her neck. “Stronger thananypowers.”
“He’ll come for you,” she whispered, “or for me. What becomes of you if something were to happen to me?”
“That won’t happen,” I told her as I moved deliberately out and then back into her, allowing her body to ease the burning need to kill something her words had awoken in me. She was everything I had ever needed or wanted in the world. She was my heart and I would not let her go.
“But if it did, what would happen to you, Kobal?”
I smoothed the hair back from her pale face before bending to kiss her lips. I refused to entertain the possibility of anything happening to her. I was strong enough to keep us both alive. “A Chosen is left broken and hollow without their other half,” I told her. “But that will never be us.”
She paled further as her hands rested against my cheeks and her gaze latched onto mine. “I can’t be used against you; I won’t allow it.”
I smiled at her as I drove into her, causing her to cry out in pleasure. “Neither will I, Mah Kush-la, but you have no reason to worry about any of this.” Taking hold of her wrists, I gripped them in my hand before dragging them over her head. “Now, I’m going to make sure you’re too tired to dream again.”
A small smile curved her lips, but sadness remained in her eyes. I couldn’t help but feel like something had changed, as if she were pulling away from me even as she gave herself over to me.
CHAPTER 41
River
