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Naamah asked if I was okay. I remember hearing Lucas answer her question, and the memory causes a warm feeling to spread through me. She wouldn’t deliberately put me in danger. She’s had my back ever since I started working for this man, so maybe I should trust her, even if I’m not sure I can trust him.
That thought is enough to tip the scales, and I pick my way over the uneven forest floor, falling into step beside Lucas as I walk with him in the direction of the light pollution I pointed out earlier. I would have ended up doing it regardless, I know that. No matter who or what he really is, I feel safer with him than without him.
He might be a monster, but he’s the monster who killed an even worse monster that was trying to attack me. That has to count for something.
Right?
Chapter16
Lucifer
The house isn’t fancy,but it’s sturdy and virtually invisible by association. It sits in the middle of a neighborhood, in the middle of an executive development that contains dozens of nearly identical houses surrounded by identical stone walls, tall enough to give the illusion of solitude. The houses are squat two-story numbers, short and wide enough to allow the forest to be a picturesque backdrop without allowing the reality of it to creep into the perfectly manicured, identically isolated worlds.
It’ll do.
The key is exactly where Naamah said it would be, tucked up on the thirty-second stone of the left side pillar by the door. The light is on in the tiny foyer, and two others burn in the kitchen and a room off to the left. The master bedroom, I assume.
“Is this one of your places?” Sophia queries, looking around with a puzzled frown.
“No, Naamah pulled some strings to get us a safehouse nearby.”
Her frown deepens. “How?”
I shake my head and start off toward the master bedroom, expecting her to follow. “I don’t ask those questions. I expect my people to use their power effectively to handle whatever needs handling. It’s what they do. It’s what I pay them to do. I get what I need when I need it. I like it that way.”
I don’t know if anything I’m saying is registering with her. She looks shell shocked and keeps glancing at me with wide eyes. The dirt and soot all over her make her already pale skin look like porcelain.
So vulnerable and frightened.
The urge to protect her is strong, sending ropes of murderous energy through my body with nowhere to go. She needs to get cleaned up before I decide to end the thing that’s scaring her—
Because I’m pretty sure that thing is me.
“Go shower,” I tell her, indicating the bathroom with a nod.
She blinks a few times, furrows her brow, then nods vaguely and drifts into the bathroom. As soon as the door is closed, I sit down heavily on the edge of the bed, curling around the pain still radiating across my torso. I was injured worse than Sophia is aware of during the fight with that demonic dragon, but my body’s quick healing abilities are already hard at work repairing the damage. The pain will pass quickly, and even more quickly if I deny that it exists at all. Deception is one of my more practiced skills—self-deception, however, is a skill I have struggled with recently.
A text from Naamah gives me a shortcut in that department. When deception fails, distraction can frequently succeed.
NAAMAH:I hope I got her sizes right. Check the closet.
I toss the phone on the bed and walk to the closet, deliberately moving my body the way I normally would. There are clothes for both of us, as expected. A few comfortable pieces for sleeping and clothes for us to wear tomorrow. It seems Naamah doesn’t anticipate us making it to the meeting we had originally planned to attend. Neither do I, frankly. An unprovoked attack of this magnitude takes precedence over everything else.
I pull clothes from the closet as I mull the problem over. The dragon would not have taken the initiative to attack me like that unless it was sent by someone else. Dragons are beasts, virtually mindless, driven by only the basest, most primal instincts. They aren’t trained so much as contained, restrained, and deployed. Someone was controlling this attack from afar.
But who? And more importantly, why?
My train of thought comes to a crashing halt as Sophia exits the bathroom wrapped in a dark green towel. She holds it up over her breasts with one hand, cinching it closed around her hips with the other. Her thighs, glowing pink from the shower, brush against the hem of the towel as she moves, and my mouth goes dry at the sight.
Fuck. I’ve never envied a towel before now.
Desire ripples through me as my eyes wander over her body, her bare shoulders, her throat, her hair. My gaze locks on her eyes. The part of me that is still capable of thinking in words rather than wanton images registers that she looks a little steadier now.Good. The rest of me wants to know what those eyes would look like heavy and dark with desire, wide with pleasurable shock, squeezed closed against an irresistible orgasm.
Shoving those thoughts away, I hand her the clothes, keeping my eyes on hers.
“These should fit,” I tell her.
Too much of what’s inside my head makes it into my voice and she reacts, blushing prettily and breaking her gaze. She takes the clothes from me quickly, careful not to touch my hand.
