Page 170 of Hell Bound

Every noble I’d met so far seemed to be a piece of shit, and I wasn’t expecting her to be any different, no matter her feelings for Asmodeus.

“Here, rest and let me remove the debris that’s stuck to you.” He laid me beside the stream, and my heart was torn between beating its way straight out of my chest or stopping completely.

It’s just water, it’s fine. You’re okay.

Yeah, my anxiety wasn’t listening.

Lucifer gathered my face between his hands and rested his forehead against mine. “In.” He demonstrated, drawing in a deep breath and holding it for several seconds. “Out.” Exhale, long and slow. “In.”

This time I mimicked his breathing, and gradually, my heartbeat returned to a pace that wasn’t going to induce cardiac arrest.

He pulled back and searched my gaze. I nodded, shaky, but calmer.

Not letting go of my cheek with one hand, he dipped the other into the running water. Carefully, he brought it over and let it drip from my knee down to my foot, leaving clean tracks down the dusty flesh. For just having been drowned, I was a dirty mess.

So was Lucifer, I noticed. He must have been kicking up one hell of a dust cloud as he beat feet for our freedom.

“We look like shit.” His eyes snapped to mine, widened in surprise. “What? We do. We look like we just climbed out of a pigpen.”

“Pigpen?”

“Holy shit, do you not have pigs in Hell? That means you’ve never had bacon!”

He chuckled, the small grin threatening to fuck up my heartbeat all over again.

“I have, actually. You can thank Deasley and his human obsession.”

“That man is an angel, not an incubus, and I’ll never believe otherwise.” I’d been leaning on my elbows, but I shot upright in horror. “Deasley!”

“Shhh, easy, Lily. He’s alright.”

“How do you know?”

“Jovran helped me get you off the palace grounds and he told me what was happening inside. Deasley and Pypentha created a distraction that held Asmodeus’s attention long enough for us to escape.”

“But—”

“There’s nothing we can do. He knew the risk, and they both made the choice to initiate the distraction so we could make our getaway. We’ll come back for them. When we can.”

I wanted to argue, to scream, to demand that we go back now and find a way to free the people we cared about.

But in truth, I knew it was useless. It was a miracle of the highest order that we’d survived this long.

Going back was a death sentence for all involved.

“They love you, Lilith.Welove you. It’s what gave us the strength to do what needed to be done.” He’d been gently swiping away the grime on my skin, and I hissed when he pinched my flesh together and pushed out a small rock that had embedded itself in me.

“How did you do it?” I asked through clenched teeth, distracting myself from the pain as he found another pebble that needed removal.

“I was withSameera.” He said her name like it was a curse of the vilest degree, and I was inclined to agree. I wanted a solid twenty minutes alone with her to show her what I thought of how she’d treated my man. “She forced me to… well, um—”

He cleared his throat, and I wanted to pluck every one of that bitch’s black claws from her fingertips one by one as I put it together.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” I wished he would, but I could only imagine how hard it was for a demon like this, a prince of one court and the alpha wolf commander of another, to have his will taken in sexual matters.

Speaking it aloud would be even harder than simply enduring it.

“She bled me. Drank from me until I was so weak I didn’t even have the will to fight her anymore.” His stare went distant as he re-lived his awful time with that pasty bitch. “She tried to fuck me, but I couldn’t let her do it. Not again.”

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