me because he’s paranoid that someone will get to me again. The fact that I don’t do anything without him; that I can’t, because he won’t allow it. I know it’s wrong, and toxic, and it’s driving me up the fucking wall, but I love him.
I fucking love him.
He just can’t see it. And his love? It’s suffocating, stealing my breath, my choices, trying to stifle my pain. It only lets me discuss what he wants to hear.
Jeremiah? Those wounds? He doesn’t want to hear it, even though it’s ripping me apart. How do I explain that I need to know that my brother is okay, because he was always the one making sure I was okay? That he was the only one I ever had to love me, before Lucifer. And just because I chose him, just because I never want to leave my husband, that doesn’t mean I don’t still love the boy I always believed to be my brother.
But Lucifer doesn’t want to discuss it. So, I swallow it down. Just like I do waking up with his hand around my throat, the sheer terror that comes with thinking your own husband is going to kill you because he’s fighting against ghosts.
Even though I accept the fucked-up parts of him that are stupid and foolish and piss me off, he doesn’t want all of me.
He brushes my hair from my face. “I love you, baby girl.” He tilts his head, his lips over mine. “So fucking much.”
But do you really, I want to ask? Do you love me, or do you just love the idea of me? A broken soul as fucked as yours, is it just the shared pain we have, from your family, that you love?
He’s a good man.
I know it.
Even though he’s an asshole and controlling and a dick, he’s so good. With Julie and the baby, and the fucked-up shit, at his heart, he’s good. He’ll be a good dad. He’ll love me in this wicked way, too, and he won’t let anyone hurt us.
But even as I think it, there’s that sense of foreboding. That this ceremony—Noctem—is going to break us apart.
I try to shake it off. Maybe it’s the hormones. The knife wound above my brow.
“I love you too,” I tell him. And with that, he kisses me, passionate and raw and full of just what he professed. Love.
His hands tangle in my hair, then one slips down to my ass as he squeezes me. I laugh against his mouth, feel him growing hard between us.
I feel how much I want him, too, but with Ella here, and Maverick and the rest of his brothers waiting outside, I know we can’t fuck again. Besides, we did half a dozen times today.
I swear, the one good thing about our relationship is the fucking sex.
“I’ll be back soon, baby girl, I promise you.” He kisses me again, grabs my ass, and pulls me to him, groaning.
Finally, he breaks away, and I try to catch my breath as he adjusts the skeleton bandana around his neck, pulling it over his mouth.
He winks at me, one deep blue eye glinting under the lights of the foyer.
Then he’s gone.
I don’t listen as Ella gushes about the hot guy in the movie they’re watching. She’s started talking a lot more now that she’s with Mav, but the guy she’s gushing about looks bland to me; blond and boring. There’s no devil in his brown eyes. No anger beneath the surface of his flawless face. Nothing to draw me in. Nothing to scare me away. Mesmerize me.
He’s nothing like my husband.
I pull my knees to my chest, tugging the black velvet blanket up to my chin as I let my eyes flutter closed. It’s late, and I want some cereal. Lucifer keeps an endless supply of it in our cupboard, but I’m too tired to walk in there and get it.
I wish they didn’t leave so late.
I wish he didn’t do these fucking rituals.
But I know it’s important. I know that whatever most sane people think holds the world together…they’re wrong.
It’s not the presidents or prime ministers. It’s not the governments at all. Governments have to follow laws.
The 6 and organizations like them? Not so much.
He’s told me about some of the shadowy things that occur in his world, the one he tries to keep from me because we both know how much I despise it. I know there are things he doesn’t like either, but he swallows