Fire & Brimstone (Neighbor from Hell #8) - R.L. Mathewson Page 0,24

kiss against his cheek and it was in that moment that he realized that he really didn’t mind being called by his real name.

Well, he didn’t mind when she called him Christopher, but if anyone else called him that he would make them wish they’d never been born.

Chapter 12

He needed to leave before she died of humiliation. Then again, if he so much as thought about taking his hand away from her stomach she was going to have to kill him, she decided as she lay on the couch, breathing slowly through her mouth as her stomach continued its violent assault, threatening to send her running for the bathroom or a trash can.

She wasn’t picky.

She was however, a moron, she thought, cringing as she continued to pretend that she was asleep, but the death grip that she had on his hand most likely gave her away. What was wrong with her crying like that in front of him? It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t also decided to crawl onto his lap, wrap her arms around him and sob against his shoulder for an hour.

Okay, so it was probably more like five or ten minutes before her stomach had started to act up again, reminding her that her stomach wasn’t happy with the food choices that she’d made earlier. When she’d been forced to wrap her arms around her stomach and curl up onto her side, Lucifer had laid down behind her, placed his hand on her stomach and somehow made everything worse.

She’d tormented this man for her own entertainment for the past five years, taking great joy in seeing just how far she could go before he lost his temper and released one of those ferocious little growls that she thought was so cute. She’d purposely screwed with his head, simply because she hadn’t been able to help himself. There had just been something about him that drew her in and made her want to see just how far she could push him and that was the guy that had dropped everything to help her.

There was absolutely no doubt about it…

She was a complete bitch.

God, she just wanted to curl up into herself and disappear, but the strong arm wrapped around her wouldn’t let her do that. He was keeping her safe and protecting her when she didn’t deserve it. He’d gone out of his way to help her when they both knew that he would have probably given anything and everything that he had if he never had to see her face again.

She should apologize, but honestly, how do you apologize to someone for everything she’d put him through? It didn’t matter that she hadn’t done it out of spite or because she hated him, which she didn’t. She’d done it, because…

Well, she really wasn’t sure why she’d toyed with him. The only thing that mattered was that she felt like a complete bitch now that he’d done everything within his power to help her. She should make things easier on him by telling him goodnight, that she was going to be okay and didn’t need him, but she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth, because she honestly wasn’t sure that she could handle being alone right now.

Twenty-nine years of hell and it all came down to a grain. She still couldn’t believe that the solution to her own personal hell was eliminating one food source out of her diet. All those years thinking that there was something seriously wrong with her, secretly terrified that she was actually dying of cancer or something more horrifying if that was even possible and all this time the pain, exhaustion and believing that she wasn’t going to be able to make it through another day was all because of something she’d ate.

She felt like an idiot.

“Is your stomach worse?” Lucifer asked, sounding genuinely worried about her as he pressed his hand against her stomach a little more firmly.

She really wished that he’d stop being so nice to her.

“It’s fine,” she said, giving up the pretense of sleeping and opened her eyes so that she could stare at the blank television screen. “You don’t have to stay. I’ll be fine,” she said, not entirely sure that was true.

“When’s your evil twin coming back?” he asked, shifting behind her so that he could hold her more tightly against him.

“She’ll be back soon,” she said, having absolutely no idea if that was true or not since Melanie wasn’t exactly