Page 18 of Like Grim Death: Part One
“I’llfuck you,but you still aren’t running.”
I start to spin around to ask him who the fuck he thinks he is, but his hand comes to the back of my neck as he grabs me, and he leans down, his mouth over my ear. “Trust me, Lilith. This once, okay? It’s not to control you.”
Yeah, fucking right.
“Just let me keep you safe. Just for tonight, give into me.”
My chest tightens, my body warm all over. I’m not good at submission outside of the bedroom, but when he speaks like that, it makes the idea seem… appealing.
But I want to go for a damn run.It’s one of the only things that quiets my mind. I started well before I was supposed to, much earlier than the six-week postpartum mark. I’m slower than I used to be, and I walk more than I actually run sometimes, but I need to breathe out there when it feels like, sometimes, I can’t in here.
As if he can read my mind, as if he knows he needs to drive it in a little deeper, he says, “I spent tonight mutilating a man for an initiation ritual with the 6. Then I watched as our guards dug a hole for a teenager’s body.”
My mouth goes dry. It doesn’t surprise me exactly, but the fact he’s so candid about it is interesting. We usually don’t speak of hiswork.We have fundamental disagreements on what we believe our involvement should be with the 6. Initially, after Jeremiah vanished, Lucifer didn’t go to Council. He didn’t want anything to do with it. Them. But he changed his mind after we discussed it. I thought it would be best if we tried to intervene. To change things.
Nothing, however, has changed, and he’s a loyal, blind servant once more. Apparentlymutilatingpeople to have them join the ranks, and being literal gravediggers.
“Whose body? Whose initiation?” Perhaps they’re the same. My own initiation was far less violent and intensely more sexual than winding up…dead.My face warms, thinking of fucking every single member of the Unsaints, and the heat in my veins expands with my fear.
Lucifer skims his teeth over my exposed shoulder. “It seems Atlas Medici has fucked up.” He whispers the words across my skin, and I think of unassuming, cherubically handsome Atlas.What secrets are you hiding, pretty boy?“I don’t know the initiate, but it’s almost as if the 6 expect one of us to…” Lucifer licks a line along the side of my throat.“Fucking die.”There’s a harsh venom in his voice that reminds me just how ruthless Lucifer can be. “Why else would they want to train a replacement?” His breath glides across my neck, and it’s as if he asked the question out loud for the first time, here, with me.
Despite—or maybebecauseof—the words, shivers run down my spine, and I feel warmth pooling in my low belly for him. Motherhood has zapped my energy, my mind, made my breasts rock hard and painful since I decided not to breastfeed, but it didn’t take my sex drive. We started doingthatbefore the six-week mark, too. The first time, I was anxious.
Would it feel the same for him? Would he get off? WouldI?Do I look different? Feel different?
But he finished faster than he ever had, and I helped him bring me to an orgasm, too, and ever since then, it’s been like it was before for us.Fucking like demons.
I wonder if I’ll evernotbe horny. It fucks with my own mind, my inability to decipher feelings from fucking. It’s like something is snarled inside my brain.
“It won’t be me. I promise you won’t get rid of me so easily.” He laughs, a raspy sound that has me curling my toes. “You’re not going for a fucking run, Lilith. I don’t regret much of anything I’ve done, and I won’t start with you. I don’t care if you fucking hate me for protecting you, but I’m never going to stop. I’mnevergoing to let up.”
That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.I don’t say it though. I’m too tired to fight.
“I meant what I said in Rainy’s room.”Rainy.My heart flutters when he uses the nickname he reserves for our son. “I would doanythingfor you.” He kisses me, open mouthed along my shoulder blade, his fingertips pressing into the side of my throat. “Even tie you up in our bed and fuck you until you forget you ever wanted to go on a goddamn run, baby girl.”
I turn my head then, my heart racing in my chest as I push past lust. “A teenager?” I whisper it, thinking of Rain. “What does Atlas have to do with it?”
“It was Natalie’s brother.” His words glide over my skin.
My stomach tangles into knots. That’s too close to home.
“Why?” Even as I ask, I know I won’t get an answer.
There’s a moment’s silence. Then, in a way that seems truthful, my husband says, “I don’t know. And I’m not so sure it matters.”It isn’t our family, so I don’t fucking care,he means. And because maybe I’m not so different from the 6, because Natalie and I have never really been great friends I let it go. Just like that.
Or at least, the part about Natalie’s brother, because in this, we’re united.I can’t find it in me to care either.Atlas is whole and alive, that’s what matters. But the initiate… “What if you’re being tested?” I ask him quietly. “What if the initiation is a hoop to jump through? Why didn’t you meet him? What happened to him?”
He is perfectly still behind me. For one second. Another.
Then he curls his fingers into my hair, tugging me toward him, and a second later, his mouth is fucking devouring mine. He spins me around, pushing me back, and back, and back, until my spine hits the counter of our bathroom.
His mouth is slanted over mine as he says, “I did what I had to do. I don’t know anything else. But you’re so fucking smart, baby girl.”
The breath leaves my lungs as he pulls away, his hands needy as they come to the waistband of my sleep shorts. I glance down, between us, and in the dim light from the far end of the bathroom, I see something flecked on the back of his pale hands.
I did what I had to do.
He glances down, inky lashes sweeping over his cheekbones as he sees it too. He furrows his dark brows, fingertips still curled in the hem of my shorts, his knuckles grazing my skin. “I wore gloves,” he says, like he’s disappointed.
