I open my eyes and see bright white.

I blink, focusing on the wall a few feet away, seeing the tiny imperfections in the plaster with a sharp clarity that seems almost too real.

Then I notice the warm body pressed against my back and forget all about the walls.

Lucifer's arm is slung around my waist, and his hand presses against the curve of my hip, the touch feeling possessive and more than a little distracting. I shift and feel his grip tighten momentarily before relaxing.

“How do you feel?” His low voice murmurs in my ear, and I don’t try to hide the shiver that goes through me.

The memories of the hours alone in this room drift over me, hazy as a fever dream. I paced, circling the spacious room like a penned in animal, the foreign sensations twisting through my body making me want to climb the walls like a strung-out junkie.

More than anything physical, the mental effects were terrifying. The droning buzz in my ears had slowly formed into words, thousands of garbled tongues speaking over each other in a dozen languages, turning into a relentless wall of sound that clamping my hands over my ears did nothing to dampen.

I lost track of time after that, collapsing onto the long white couch and trying desperately to will myself sane again, all the while repeating the mantra of Lucifer Lucifer Lucifer in my mind, begging for his return.

I thought he was another hallucination when he walked in, but once he touched my hand it all went silent. The fear and the pain drained away, replaced by Lucifer’s iron control, and it was just him and I and our mutual desperate need to get closer.

Even now, we can’t seem to keep from touching each other. Lucifer's fingers toy with the tangled mess of my hair, and I feel his breath on the back of my neck.

How did I feel? In the space of little more than a day, I had discovered I was the last in a line of cursed women that stretched all the way back to God’s own daughter. Angels killed my parents and were still hunting me. I had actual supernatural powers. On top of all that, I’d just had the best sex of several lifetimes with the Devil.

“Grace?” Lucifer prompts, drawing me back to the present.

I twist in his grip to face him. Reclined in the jumbled mess of white sheets, his dark hair tousled, Lucifer looks calm, but I can sense the almost immeasurable well of strength that surrounds him. And despite knowing who he is and what he’s done for thousands of years, I feel no fear.

"I feel different," I say, my voice sounding altered to my ears. The hesitance is gone, the small quaver that always warns every female to stay quiet and not take up too much space in the world. I stare at Lucifer, and for the first time I can see beyond the handsome face he wears. I remember the wings surrounding us; their feathers burned the color of soot and ash. I don’t need to ask if they'd been white once.

The girl who worked at a shitty bar with dead parents and too much student loan debt is gone, and the past few years already feel like a memory of someone else’s life.

“I feel strong,” I add, opening and closing my hand and feeling the muscles and tendons stretch and move with a level of awareness I’ve never known. “I feel awake. Ready. I’m not afraid anymore.”

The old Grace was waiting for someone to rescue her. But as I watch Lucifer’s lips curl into the grin that’s rapidly becoming familiar to me, I realize that he and I might just save each other.

“Read her soul.”

The midday sun filters through the thick branches and glossy leaves of the magnolia tree above our heads. The honey-sweet perfume of the blossoms mixes with the scents of dark coffee and frying beignets in the square. Even surrounded by people, my mind keeps slipping back to the room we just left.

It took the better part of two hours for us to make it out of the suite. Lucifer pulled me into the shower with him, pressing my back against the cool glass as the water poured over our skin in torrents. His hands mapped every inch of my flesh under that warm spray, his mouth endlessly searching for mine as steam surrounded us.

“Mind wandering?”

I come back to the present, and my cheeks flush at the memory. Lucifer's dark eyes hold a glint of amusement at that. He knows exactly what I was thinking about.

“Not that I can blame you for being a bit. . . preoccupied,” he drawls, one long finger idly tracing the back of my hand, the feather-light touch making me shiver. “But we need to figure out the extent of your abilities and how to control them.” Lucifer sobers immediately, the teasing tone disappearing from his voice. “You were very very lucky with Michael last night. You caught him by surprise when your powers manifested, but he won’t allow that to happen again. And if I hadn’t found you when I did, I doubt it would have mattered.”

Lucifer keeps his voice carefully measured as he talks about just how close I had come to my own death last night, but I don’t miss the flicker of something in his eyes at that admission. Neither of us are willing to name whatever is growing between us. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“How did you find me?” I ask, remembering the overwhelming feeling of relief that had flooded me when Lucifer found me hidden between the graves.

“My sigil. Your fondness for carrying around that coin lead me right to you. I doubt we’d need it now though,” he adds, voicing the thought that has been nagging the back of my mind since I woke up beside him. “We’re bound, you and I. I don’t understand the intricacies of it myself, but it’s there.”

I nod. I can feel it too, an awareness of Lucifer that has nothing to do with the strength of the most powerful fallen angel that radiates from him. Instead, it feels like the warm press of sunlight across my skin, heat that can sustain you or burn you alive.

“Now,” Lucifer says, the silken tone of his voice turning serious. “Read her soul.”

Lucifer doesn’t elaborate on just who I’m supposed to read, so I scan the crowd, discounting person after person until I pause on a woman in a cream-colored business suit staring at the screen of her phone with a bored expression. Somehow I just know she’s the one Lucifer means.

I narrow my eyes, staring at her from across the square and try to see beyond the surface to pluck details from her soul with the ease Lucifer does. Slowly, images start to coalesce in my mind, and the whispers that Lucifer's presence had silenced awake.

I search for her sins, sifting through the details and images that threaten to flood me, ticking off wrath and pride and lust like a grocery list, but they stay insubstantial as smoke.

I shake my head. “It’s just a jumble,” I mutter, rubbing my eyes as though they’re the problem. “I can see the sins, but it’s like they’re muted somehow.”

Sighing, I try again, forcing my perception beyond the suit and the designer handbag, beyond the dark hair pulled back into a severe bun, and the downturned slash of red of her painted lips. Her story is just that of another person out of billions, but to her it’s everything.

Forgiveness. Sitting in the back of the basement room with a crowd of strangers, watching while her father accepted a chip announcing five years of sobriety and hugging the man who once terrified her.

Pride. But not for herself. For him overcoming his demons. It would have been easy to walk away, to keep hating him. Letting the hurt go took work, but it was worth it.

I feel Lucifer’s touch on my arm, drawing me back from the woman’s mind. I blink my eyes, the images of her life receding into something manageable.

“Her name is Tara.” I speak haltingly, slowly sifting through everything I had seen. “Her father was an alcoholic. She was afraid of him when she was younger. She hated him then, but he turned his life around.” I stop, remembering the glow that surrounded the memory of that basement room. “She was so proud of him. She forgave him.”

“Forgiveness.” Lucifer echoes. “Of course. You can see their virtues. And their sins are just dust and smoke to your eyes, aren’t they?” Lucifer glances back at the woman, and I wonder if the good in her is something he sees as flimsy and half-hidden by sins and transgressions.

"Of course," he says again. "You are your Father's daughter after all. It's not surprising you can only see the good in them. It's a family trait." Lucifer does nothing to disguise the bitterness in his voice. He pulls his hand back from where it rests on my bare arm, and I can feel him shuttering himself against me as though I’m just another angel, toeing the line of holy obedience.

As though I don’t still have the image of his wings burned into my memory with the same clarity as his touch.

"Lucifer." I lean across the small table that separates us, focusing on the sun-warmed iron under my hands to keep from reaching for him. "I'm not Michael. You couldn't corrupt a truly virtuous soul even if you wanted to, right? That means they exist, but that doesn't mean I'm going to turn into some holier than thou asshole who thinks humans are perfect." I settle back into my chair, warily gauging Lucifer's reaction as I add. "Considering what I've experienced from the hosts of Heaven, I'm a lot more inclined to side with Hell, whatever my abilities might be."

“Don’t be so quick to throw away Heaven, Grace. You don’t know what you’re giving up.”

“Then explain it to me.” Lucifer doesn’t reply at first. I sit back in my chair, the rickety iron creaking under my movement. The square around us teems with life - the raucous voices of vacationers who began the day with a few too many mimosas, the chatter of the street vendors hawking t-shirts and jewelry to anyone who walks by, the distant sound of horns as a jazz band tunes up a few streets over. It all fades into a faint background hum around us, discounted and forgotten.

“Tell me about it.” I don’t elaborate beyond that, unsure myself if I’m asking for the truth of Heaven or Hell.

Lucifer’s muscles are rigid as he sits, his mouth stretched in a close-lipped smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “You want me to tell you about Heaven.” His voice is flat, devoid of its usual animation and I instantly regret ripping open millennia old wounds, but the deed is already done. “You can’t begin to understand it. Divine blood or not, it’s not something that can be explained in words that your mind can process.”

Lucifer tips his head back, the bright sun illuminating his features. His eyes close as he draws up memories he spent thousands of years repressing.

For me.

When he speaks again, his voice somehow sounds younger, lighter, as though the weight of his choices and punishment has eased for just an instant. "It was warmth. Comfort. Security. At least it was in the beginning." His face darkens, and it’s like a cloud has blocked out the sun. "It was perfect, like being wrapped in a blanket of our Father's love, safe in the knowledge that we alone were first in that affection. But it wasn't free. Your kind came along, and I learned quickly enough that His love came at the price of complete obedience." Lucifer opens his eyes, fixing that dark gaze onto me. "That's the great cosmic joke of it all. My Father made me what I am. He gave me the will and the desire to wonder. To question. To say no."

Lucifer pinches the bridge of his nose, his face twisting into a pained grimace at his next words. “But however much I saw Heaven’s flaws, it was all I knew. It was my home. Imagine being ripped from that and thrown into a prison of blood and pain and regret, and knowing, absolutely knowing that He was well aware of exactly what it would do to me. What it would turn me into.”

Lucifer's breath catches, and I reached across the table without thinking, wanting to give him whatever comfort I have to offer. He tenses at that first touch before tightening his fingers around mine as he continues. "Hell is just a word to all but a few zealots now, but it's Heaven's dark mirror. I challenged my Father because I didn't believe humans were worthy of the favor He bestowed on them, so as punishment He tossed me down to spend eternity with the worst creatures humanity had to offer. I may have been Hell's warden, but that doesn't mean I wasn't in shackles too."

“But then how were you able to leave?”

Lucifer blinks, before letting out a bitter laugh. "Another one of Dad's great jokes. You can leave Hell anytime. You just have to believe you don't belong there anymore." Lucifer pulls his hands back from mine, drawing back into himself. "Some of the Fallen have been able to come and go since the beginning. Phenex is one. He never really belonged in Hell, and even he knows it. But I never could until Michael started his little project unless I was summoned. I guess I should thank him for that, at least right before I gut him."

"You don't have to go back," I say, giving voice to the question hovering at the edge of my mind. "Do you?"

Every part of Lucifer seems to deflate with the question. “I don’t know. You’d think I’d have a better answer than that. Hell was a well-oiled machine when I left. The demons and the lower-level Fallen do most of the dirty work punishing the souls. I make an appearance with those that are a bit more. . . high profile.” Something in Lucifer’s voice changes as he pulls the mantle of torturer back on. “Mass shooters. Clinic bombers. Those that kill for the fun of it.” His voice oozes contempt. “I made time for them. But I don’t know if Hell will slip into entropy if I’m absent too long.”

Lucifer shakes his head, looking disgusted at himself. "It's my kingdom. It's all that I have now. All that I am."

“It doesn’t have to be.”

My words hang in the air between us, and I can see him building up the walls between us higher, appalled at showing me the chinks in his armor. I can’t blame him. It’s much simpler to be the Devil, to ignore any emotion deeper than lust or fear and keep anything real locked away.

I certainly understand the impulse. I’ve cultivated it myself for years and the last twenty-four hours has peeled away the protective layers I’ve encased myself in, leaving my psyche one raw nerve. Every touch, every look seems magnified a thousand times as seven years of numbness thaws.

“It’s easier, isn’t it?” I ask, looking around the square, my eyes flitting from person to person, wishing that I could see what he sees for just a moment. “I get that. Believe me, I get that.” I pause on a man in a business suit, gesturing wildly as he talks into a cell phone.

Charity. He was rich. Richer than one person needed to be. He’d grown up with every privilege handed to him, moved into the family business and made a veritable killing, and he gave most of it away. He was on the phone arguing with a contractor trying to cut corners on construction for the school he was funding.

So much good, but for so long I hadn’t been able to see any of it.

I’d been lost. So lost I didn’t even realized it until now.

“Grace.”

Lucifer pulls me back to the here and now, and when I turn to him, the words tumble from me. "After my parents died-" Were killed, my brain corrects. They didn’t just die. HE killed them. "After they were killed, everything changed. I don't mean that in the ‘everything was different because they weren't here' way. I mean something changed in me.”

I don’t look at Lucifer, knowing that if I see pity for the poor broken human from him, I won’t be able to stand it. Instead, I develop a sudden fascination with the iron tabletop, tracing my fingertips over the simple diamond pattern of the metalwork. "Once the first excruciating wave of the grief was gone, it was like someone flipped a switch inside me and everything just shut down. It wasn't just shock or loss. I was completely numb to everything and everyone."

I laugh soundlessly, nothing more than a puff of air that has nothing to do with humor. "I actually snuck into my Uncle's office to flip through his old psych textbooks because I was afraid I might be a sociopath. Though, I guess, afraid wasn't really the right word because it still wasn't enough to make me care.”

I finally look up at Lucifer, his complete silence getting to be too much for me to stand, and far from studying me with pity, he looks like he understands. "I made the mistake of mentioning it to my guidance counselor, and I ended up in therapy for six weeks. After that, it just became a lot easier to smile and pretend that I was processing everything in a healthy manner." Scorn drips from my voice at that memory. I'd hated the weekly sessions I'd been forced into at the time, hated the exhausting act I'd had to put on to get out of them even more.

"I didn't understand it then, and I still don't, not really. It couldn't have just been grief. I was normal before. I was a person, and afterwards I was a shell. A shell that couldn't bring herself to care that she was a shell." The highs and lows of the last few hours have almost left me feeling hungover, emotional pathways that atrophied for so long finally springing back to life. And I may not know why, but I do know how.

Or who.

"The first time I felt anything real in seven years was when you kissed me."

“It makes sense.” The surprise I expect at my admission isn’t there. He understands. Even in this, he understands.

It may just prove that I’m even more screwed up than I originally thought, but the understanding of Hell sounds a lot more appealing than the judgment of Heaven.

“If it makes sense to you, please, share with the class.”

“Walk with me.” Without waiting for my agreement, Lucifer takes my hand and pulls me down the street, weaving through the crowds in the square.

“Where are we going?” I ask, speed-walking to try and keep up with his long strides.

“Nowhere,” Lucifer replies, slowing his pace to match mine. “Everywhere.” At my confused look, he continues. “Angels feel things differently than humans. Most are soldiers. Explaining human emotions to them is like trying to teach calculus to a dog. And then some of us feel far too much.”

An impromptu art show has sprung up outside of one of the cafes. Dozens of brightly colored canvases line the street, abstract slashes of greens and blues morphing into a sketch of Bourbon Street and finally the swirling purple and black of the sky after a storm. Lucifer pauses, scrutinizing the last painting with the sudden surge of curiosity that seems to be fueling him.

And somehow my fingers are still twined with his.

"When your mother lived, you weren't the Last. The divinity in your blood was shared between the two of you. Whether she did it consciously or not, she shielded you. When she died, that protection was gone, and everything that had been dormant for your entire life rushed to the surface and blotted out who you had been."

"She would have liked this one," I whisper, thankful for the distraction of the paintings and the crowds and Lucifer's long fingers still laced through mine. I follow Lucifer to the edge of the exhibit where a lone painting hangs like an afterthought - an overgrown landscape of tall grasses and wildflowers dotting the green-gold grasses with spots of purple and orange. “She was protecting me. Is that what you’re doing now? Is that why things feel real again?”

"Yes." A quick tug of his hand and I’m stumbling into Lucifer's chest, his free hand curling around my waist and pulling me flush against him. He releases my hand and brushes his fingertips across my forehead, twirling a few strands of hair around his finger. "I'm sure it has something to do with that damned prophecy."

My gaze drops to his lips. Is there anything about this man that isn’t pure temptation? A cabbie lays on the horn a block ahead of us, the noise jolting me back to reality and out of the cocoon of Lucifer’s presence. “Is any of this real? Is this bond just another way to control you from your father?”

Lucifer’s hand tightens around my waist, his fingers digging into my hip as he says “No” with such vehemence that I can’t doubt him. He takes a breath before adding, “I lost everything for free will, Grace. I don’t manipulate. I don’t force any actions onto anyone that they haven’t already completed a thousand times in their hearts. Whatever this is, it’s not an illusion or a spell. It’s real.”

Standing on my toes, I kiss him. There is no uncertainty when Lucifer kisses me back, his tongue sweeping over my lower lip as he draws me impossibly closer, Heaven and Hell forgotten for now.

Lucifer kicks open the door, the whisper quiet hinges no match for the Devil. The door slams into the wall, the knob denting the plaster before closing with a soft click.

It has barely been two hours since we’d left the suite for my impromptu training session, but that doesn’t stop the heat from pooling in me at his touch. And touch he does. Lucifer’s hands are everywhere at once, skimming over my hips and rucking my dress up my thighs, crumpling the blue fabric that impedes him from his goal.

The back of my legs hits the edge of the couch, and gracefulness definitely is not one of my new abilities. Lucifer catches me, saving me from the indignity of ending up sprawled on my back. He lowers me to the long white couch with a surprising gentleness before pulling my sundress over my head with a look on his face that’s almost reverent.

I don’t want reverence. I don’t want to be treated like something holy and breakable. I don’t want to think of virtues and divine blood. I want to bite the forbidden fruit and taste the juices until they drip down my chin. After so many years of living in solitude and detachment, I want every messy emotion. Whether he will admit to it or not, some part of me knows Lucifer feels the same.

I want to show Lucifer that I’m not His.

I’m his.

Instead, I slither out from under him, grasping a handful of the dark fabric of his jacket and steering him down to the couch. Lucifer allows me to manhandle him, looks of amusement and hunger vying for dominance across his face as I take control. I smooth my hand over the wrinkled lapel, the fabric soft, no doubt made by someone expensive and Italian, before pushing it off his shoulders.

“Off. Now.”

“Bossy. I like this,” Lucifer says, stripping off the jacket and tossing it aside, waiting expectantly for my next move.

Since he’s already ceremonially divested me of my dress, I’m left in nothing but a pair of skimpy white lace panties and a pair of black flats (because when you might have to run for your life from a murderous angel only an idiot wears heels). My hair hangs down in its usual mane of curls, alternately obscuring and revealing my breasts as I move. Lucifer’s eyes track my movements as I kick off my shoes and settle onto his lap.

His hands go to my waist, the electricity that always crackles between us making me shiver as he touches my bare skin, but beyond those feather-light strokes, he is content to sit back and watch what I plan do.

“I always seem to end up naked before you.”

Lucifer’s eyes meet mine, and I can already see the molten red fire smoldering underneath the deep ebony of his irises. I wonder if I’m the first person to look at that burning gaze without a spark of fear.

“I have no complaints about that.”

I laugh softly and shift forward, biting back a groan as his hardness presses against the heat pooling in my core. I kiss his neck, feeling the pulse flutter under my lips as he tilts his head back, baring his throat to me. I run one nail down the column of his neck to the second button on his shirt, pushing the little disc through the buttonhole to bare a bit more skin. My hand joins the other, making quick work of the shirt, pushing the black fabric aside to bare the smooth, strong planes of his chest and shoulders.

Like everything else about him, his body is pure temptation. The contours of his muscles look carved from marble, though the statues of angels I’ve seen never appear quite so debauched. I run my nails down his ribs, scratching just hard enough for him to feel it, the sliver of pain making his breath catch and his fingers tighten on my hips.

Harsh panting breaks the silence in the room as I tease the Devil, rocking my hips against his and drawing him into a kiss that leaves me breathless and shaking, this strange new bond between us letting me feel his reactions as an echo of my own.

I expect the arousal and possessive desire but not this lightness. I feel his lips smile against mine, and this man, this angel that is feared and reviled by the world can hardly kiss me because he’s smiling so hard.

He’s been alone for so long. The thought creeps up unbidden, a pang at our shared suffering twisting through me before I tamp it down.

I squeak in surprise as Lucifer stands up, his hands cupping my ass while he steers me towards the bed. I twine my hands around his neck, trying to get impossibly closer as he kisses his way across my collarbone.

"And they say I'm the master torturer." His voice is a low rumble against my skin. My back hits the window a moment later, the heat of the day warming the glass that stretches from floor to ceiling against my skin. I push his open shirt off his shoulders, my mind idly registering that that it isn’t black as I had thought. Instead, it’s a deep, dark red. Then Lucifer presses the full length of his body against mine, pinning me to the glass, and I forget all about the shirt.

My hands find his shoulder blades, fingertips searching for some indication of the black wings I'd seen, my hips moving against his in the frantic quest for more friction, teasing forgotten. I gulp down air like I’m drowning, my nails clawing little crescent moons into his back that would draw blood on a human.

I hear the rip of fabric as mass-produced lace gives way under preternatural strength, leaving me bare before him.

“Oops,” Lucifer says, sounding completely unrepentant.

I stand on my toes, curling my hand around the nape of his neck to pull him down for another searing kiss, teasing his mouth open and letting him swallow my moan as he cups my breast, his thumb tracing my nipple and drawing out the heady noise of my pleasure.

“How do you do this to me?” he breathes, pulling back just far enough to speak before claiming my lips again.

I wiggle my free hand between our bodies, impressing myself that I manage to keep my hand steady enough to unfasten Lucifer’s pants and reach inside, grasping his length in my hand, stroking him slowly to the sound of his ragged breathing.

With a dainty little jump, I wrap my legs around Lucifer’s hips, my heels pressing into the backs of his thighs and urging him closer. For the first time, I appreciate my diminutive height. Pinned against the glass, Lucifer holds me like I weigh nothing, and when he presses inside me, filling me achingly slowly, I forget about our pasts and the dangers bearing down on us.

There is just this – the slick slide of his cock inside me, the unbroken press of skin on skin while the sun beats down upon us. A dozen stories up, but it isn’t the altitude that has me feeling like I’m flying.

Every slow, measured thrust buries that lost, broken girl I’d been a bit more. Michael’s attack might have awoken my powers, but it’s Lucifer that’s awaking me.

“Grace.” Lucifer murmurs my name against my lips, so low I doubt if he even realizes he’s speaking. When I cry out a few moments later, shuddering against him with my release, he holds me tighter, his grip almost bruising as he comes with a muffled curse.

It takes several long moments for us to come back to ourselves. Lucifer steps back, one of his hands sliding around my back, holding me flush against him once the support of the wall is gone. A few shaky steps and we’re sprawled on the giant bed in a tangle of soft white sheets, curled around each other.