Page 158 of Hell Bound

“You may be enamored with your cesspit queen, but tonight, you will understand: you belong to me now.”

Her hand slammed into the middle of my chest, powered by my own blood.

If it hadn’t been for the days of starvation and the blood deprivation, it would’ve been like a fly trying to knock me over.

But she’d stolen me, used my own essence against me.

I stumbled backwards, the back of my knees hitting the velvet divan.

Sameera was on me in a heartbeat, straddling me once more. She gripped my jaw in one hand.

“Was she worth your kingdom?” she asked, seeming almost truly contemplative. “Your freedom?”

Claws traced down my chest, opening minute slices.

“I regret that you have to see me like this.” Sameera tilted her head, watching me with that predatory gaze. “You and I… we could have ruled Tainted and Fallen together, become a power to rival the Infernal Court, if you hadjust listened!”

Hellfire.

A vague memory from the time before Lilith swam up to the forefront of my brain. One of my Fallen courtiers, bringing me a crimson envelope from the Tainted Court…

I’d tossed it away unopened and unread. Only later had I found out that Queen Akeldama had been vying for an advantageous match with my own court.

It had been Sameera’s proposal outlined in that letter. At the time, I hadn’t cared a damn for settling down or marrying.

I’d been too busy working my way through every demoness in Hell, full of arrogance I hadn’t realized would be ripped from me the day I mether.

Lilith. The untouchable. The tormented queen of the Infernal Court.

The one I couldn’t have, and yet the one I wanted above all else in Hell.

Another laugh spilled out of me, and Sameera scowled.

“Is that funny to you?” she purred. “That you didn’t even give me the courtesy of considering my proposal… it would have benefited us both. And you would not have become a mongrel.”

She moved against me, her hips grinding in an almost mechanical way.

I was utterly dead inside, my body incapable of responding to any gesture she made.

“ButIget the last laugh here, Lucifer. You are a dog now, and your punishment for your conceit is well-deserved. Perhaps you will take satisfaction in knowing our offspring will rule the Fallen Court one day—on my sufferance, of course. They will be born from your seed, but they will always be their mother’s creatures.”

She reached down, wrapping her claws around my cock and squeezing.

“Or perhaps not. Either way, your court and your lineage will be mine.”

Nothing happened. I didn’t even need to will myself not to respond; I despised her on such a visceral level that it was impossible.

She tried to ease herself onto me, the way she always did before she poured the potion down my throat—and then I saw it.

The small vial on the side table that would allow her to use me as she saw fit.

I remembered all the visits in the past. The parties, the balls, ending the night in her dark, humid chambers.

The potion that tasted of nothing, but sent fire through my veins. The sickening sensation of Sameera lowering herself onto me, using me like I was a breathing statue.

The emptiness of knowing that this was what my life had become. That I had nothing, and no one, left that was worth fighting for.

But things had changed. That emptiness was gone, because Lilith was back. She had given me something to fight for again.

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