Page 13 of Midnight with the Devil

At this, Andras smiled. “It has been too long since either of us indulged.”

“Indeed.” Lucien could spend days in bed with women, taking them over and over, never tiring of it. Every position, every toy, every fantasy—he’d done it all.

Andras vanished.

Lucien slid his hands into his pockets and walked along the darkened streets. Night was a time of beauty, a time when shadows ruled and the chill of the breeze rustled the limbs of trees in a way that made one’s hair stand on end. Midnight was his favorite time, even though it was a few hours away. When clocks chimed away the twelfth hour, the battle between night and day was completely equal, giving the world a sense of balance, a sense of beauty, a sense of peace.

It had been so long since he had felt peace.

After the fall, he’d mistakenly thought that he would find it, but he had not. His shoulder blades itched, the knotted scars the only imperfect part of him. They always ached when he thought too long about the wings that had once been there.

You can never taste heaven again, not fully. He knew that, yet as he sealed the bargain with Diana he had tasted heaven.Herheaven. And he wanted more, was desperate to feel that peace, that bliss her lips had given him. If kissing her, merely kissing her, had been that strong, bedding her would be explosive. There was an irony to it all—the more he would take her to see heaven again, the more he would be condemning her to hell. But that was the bargain, and she had agreed.

He knew Andras would be waiting for him, but he didn’t return to the club right away. First he closed his eyes and honed his focus on Diana. He could see inside her apartment, her…cat? The white-and-orange creature stared at him, his ears flattened. People assumed cats were evil, familiars of the devil, but it wasn’t true. Cats were a bane to a demon’s existence, and they often didn’t like fallen angels. They could see and sense the unnatural presence of creatures like him.

“Seth, what’s the matter?” Diana came out of her bedroom dressed in boxers and a loose T-shirt.

The cat ignored her, his feline glare still on Lucien. Lucien flipped his middle finger at the cat, and it hissed and sprinted into the bedroom. Diana shook her head and sighed before she went to the kitchen. Lucien followed her, an invisible undetectable presence.

Diana put a kettle on her stove and prepared a tea bag in a mug. As she waited for the water to boil, there was a stark loneliness to her face that puzzled him. He honestly didn’t spend much time around mortals, not like this. He was either torturing them, making deals, or banging them in his bed.

She is to be my toy. I am allowed to watch her, to see what she’s up to when I’m not around to pull her strings and make her dance like a marionette.

The kettle whistled, and Diana turned off the stove and poured a cup of tea, and then she took the cup to the couch and settled in with a blanket and a book. He eased down onto the edge of the couch arm and leaned over to study the book she opened. He frowned. A vampire romance.

Ugh. There was nothing romantic about those bloodsucking, brooding immortals. Fallen angels were far more interesting. When they bit a lover in bed, it was for fun and not for sustenance.

“Don’t worry, Diana. I’ll show you how much fun we can have in bed,”he whispered. She shivered and pulled the blanket up tighter. She had heard him, the barest hint of his sensual promise.

“Sleep well,”he added with a low laugh and left her to dream about him.

He was there,in her room. A dark shadow in the corner with glowing red eyes. Diana tried to open her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. The shadow moved closer, manifesting itself into him, Lucien Star, in his black suit with a blood-red tie. He stared down at her on the bed, and then very slowly he reached for the covers, drawing them back to expose her. She was naked, her pajamas gone, and he was looking over her body with a satisfied smirk.

It was a dream, she knew it was, had to be…yet it felt all too real as his hand gripped her throat tightly enough to send new shivers of dread through her.

“Such a pretty little thing, and all mine.” Still grasping her throat, he leaned down and brushed his lips over hers. Heat exploded from that kiss, burning her up with an inner fire. Wetness pooled between her thighs.

“How will you resist me? When I fuck you into oblivion, little mortal? Will you shriek my name as I thrust my cock deep into you? Will you moan when I take your ass? I have a thousand ways I want to take you. And you will enjoy every second of it, won’t you?” He sank his teeth into her bottom lip hard enough that she tasted blood. He tugged on it while he continued to squeeze her throat just enough that she feared she wouldn’t be able to breathe.

“No!” she screamed and jolted up in bed. The covers fell down around her, and she reached to cover her naked body…but she wasn’t naked any longer. She was clothed again, and the shadow Lucien was gone.

I was dreaming. It was all a dream.She winced as she licked her lip and tasted blood.

4

“Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,” said then the lost Archangel, “this the seat that we must change for Heaven? This mournful gloom for that celestial light?” - John Milton, Paradise Lost

Wednesday came without much fanfare until it was time to take her father home from the hospital. The dreams of Lucien came every night, but that was all they were. Dreams. So she focused on her parents. Diana still couldn’t believe it—her father was really going home. He’d been given doctor’s orders that he rest, and now he was looking better than he had in years.

Diana spent the day with him and her mother, helping her father settle into his old routines. It was still instinctive for her to try to help her father climb the stairs to his bedroom, but he didn’t need her help at all. The ragged edge to her emotions from two years of worry was softening. Had he really been this healthy once? With a flush of color in his cheeks and a twinkle in his eyes? She’d forgotten the man he’d once been. It was hard to remember after so many nights in the hospital, so many tubes, tests, and machines all trying to keep him alive.

Diana waited outside his room for him to change out of his hospital sweatpants into jeans and a polo shirt. Then he returned with her to the kitchen, where her mother was checking on a pot roast she’d put into the oven that morning. Diana’s mouth watered, and she realized she hadn’t eaten pot roast in ages. It had been her dad’s favorite food because the smells would fill the house for hours while it cooked, and neither she nor her mother could stand the smell without him there to enjoy it.

“Everything okay?” Janet asked as they entered the kitchen.

Hal winked at her. “Everything’s great, hon. Smells fantastic. You know it’s so funny, after all that chemo, nothing smelled or tasted good, but damn if I don’t smell that roast now and it’s making me hungry.” Hal joined his wife by the kitchen counter and leaned in to hug her from behind, giving her a kiss on the cheek. Janet blushed and Diana turned away, smiling, but feeling a little shy at witnessing something so private between her parents. They’d been suffering together for two years, and now…now things were good again. She was terrified to believe it was all true, that her dad was healthy again, because if he wasn’t, she and her mother couldn’t go through that again.

“We have a contract, Diana. He’s safe as long as you abide by the terms.”Lucien’s voice stirred inside her mind, and she shuddered.

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