Page 105 of Pray for Scars
“Please,” I scream as we step outside into the cold night. Cold, save for the fire in front of me. “Please save him!” My throat is raw with those words.
Lucifer sets me on my feet, wrapping his arms around me, my back to his chest. He leans in close, his mouth caressing my ear.
“No,” he whispers softly. “No.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I seeit more clearly in the flames from the warehouse as Lucifer backs me against a tree. The blood on his hands, flecks of it up his wrists, a streak of crimson on his forearm.
“Lucifer,” I breathe out, “what have you done?”
All those men.
He glances down at his hands, seeing my eyes there. Then he meets my gaze. “What I had to do.” He smiles, but there’s no warmth in it. My knees tremble beneath me and I grip the tree behind me. “Isn’t that what we all do, Lilith?” he asks me, cocking his head. “Don’t we all just do what we have to do?”
“Did you know?” I ask him, swallowing, my bare feet on the cold ground. The fire grows higher, and I try not to think of Jeremiah, my eyes darting around the parking lot of the warehouse.
No one is coming.
Why is no one coming?
Lucifer laughs. “You think so little of me, Lilith. Even after everything we’ve been through.” He slips his hands into his pockets, shrugging. “I found the records this week. I knew someone hurt you. I fucked them all up. But do you think I’d haveletmy father lay a hand on you?”
I cross my arms, some of the fear leaving me, anger replacing it. “Actually, yeah. I do think that. I think you’d let him do whatever he wanted to me. Hurt me, fuck me, kill me. So many options.” I glance at the blood on Lucifer’s hands. “Like father, like son, huh?”
Like father, like son.Jeremiah. Lazar.
“I fucked you in that house in Raven Park because I wanted to protect you.”
I swallow, eyes darting to the fire behind his back. He looks like his namesake right now, the devil in front of his house of flames. Dark and dangerous, and ready to fuck me up, one more time.
Jeremiah is in there.
“Lucifer,” I start, “don’t give me some bullshit about how I was so irresistible that you just had to save my precious little life—”
He crosses the space between us until we’re toe-to-toe and he doesn’t touch me, but I see his fingers flex at his sides, like he wants to. “You weren’t precious, Lilith,” he says cruelly. “You weren’t fucking precious. You were dressed like a demon and you had a gun on your hip and defeat and excitement mingling in your eyes.” He steps closer, crowding my space, but I don’t back down. “You were going to hell that night, and fuck if I wasn’t gonna come with you.” He grabs my hand, pulling me into his body. I inhale his scent, cigarettes and fucking pine and I wish he smelled like anything else in this moment. “You weren’t precious and you damn sure didn’t need saving. But I did.” He puts my hand over his heart, and I feel his pulse racing beneath his shirt.
His eyes are wide as he looks down at me, those fucking beautiful blue eyes beneath long, dark lashes. If Satan was a wild boy with a hot temper, come to earth to fuck us all, he would look just like Lucifer Malikov.
“I did,”he says again. “And you saved me that night. And every night after. I didn’t know why my father wanted you. But I knew, after I met you, he never would get you. Because I’d fucking break his neck myself if he ever tried to hurt you.” He smiles. “And I did.”
“You let him,” I counter, but my voice shakes. “You took me to the church and let him—”
He presses my hand harder against his chest, cutting off my words. “I was playing the long game, Lilith. And the long game includes you and me, side by side, against the fucking world. Against the 6 and the bullshit and every goddamn billionaire in this fucking country funded by their rituals and blood and fucked-up beliefs.” He leans down, his eyes searching mine. “It means you never leave me, and I never leave you, and I don’t care if you hate me right now, I don’t care if you’d rather suck Jeremiah’s dick for every night of your fucking life.” He smiles coldly. “Because you’re mine, and you were born for me. So we could end this. And you can get the fuck over whatever you think you feel for your brother’s burnt corpse, because you’ve never been for him.” He takes a deep breath, his other hand winding in my hair, tilting my throat up. “You’ve always been for me.”
Her lipstremble while she watches me, the fire growing hot at my back. I don’t miss the way her beautiful eyes keep darting to the warehouse, watching her brother’s life go up in fucking smoke.
Only he’s not her brother.
He’s mine.
And he deserves to burn.
“We have about five minutes before the rest of the whole goddamn cult gets here, and by then, it’ll be too fucking late. So please, Sid, for the love of God or fucking Satan or even your own very real, very alive brother, just do what I say.”
She opens her mouth and I think she’s about to argue with me so I go to put my hand over her lips but then she spits on me before I can. In my face. Spit from her pretty little mouth that’s been all over so many dicks, I’m sure she’s lost count, is on my fucking face.
I close my eyes, feeling the warmth and wetness of her.
