Morning descends with all the intensity of a freight train slamming into my chest at full speed. My lips part beneath a groan first, cracked and painfully dry. My eyes blink themselves open next, to a stained, grimy ceiling illuminated by a swath of gray daylight.
My brain is mush, my skull composed of a million bricks that clatter together when I try to sit up. I barely lift my head clear of whatever lies beneath it, only to fall right back down. It takes three attempts before I can roll over onto my hands and knees. I’m shaking, forced to rock back and forth just to stay upright. The world spins when I finally manage to lift my head and focus on the shadowy figure watching me from across the room.
“Get up,” Lucifer commands. His tone is clipped with impatience. How long has he been waiting? How long has he wondered whether or not I’d survive my little brush with a powerful opiate? His eyes reveal nothing as I scramble to remember how to control my limbs. It hurts when the muscles in my legs contract in order for me to stand. They shake too badly, and I flop back onto the mattress, clinging to handfuls of the comforter for balance.
Panting, I glance at him through the wild, tangled mess of my hair. “Help...help me.” I hold my hand out, gauging his reaction to the request. His eyes narrow, but before I can even guess whether or not he’ll move, he approaches me and snatches for my wrist.
I cry out when he pulls me to my feet. The bastard isn’t gentle. I stagger forward and have to clutch at the wall for balance. Clinging to it, I tremble, every nerve loose and unstable.
“Look at me.” He’s at my shoulder and grabs for my chin himself when I don’t obey quickly enough. The breath catches in my throat as he manipulates my body against the wall, pressing me back while he steps in closer. His scent sneaks into my lungs, sweat, and blood. He hasn’t washed yet. Bruises paint his jaw and discolor the center of his chest. Battle scars.
I can’t stop myself from reaching out to trace the mark just above his right pec. He stiffens at the contact, but I doubt that it’s out of pain. His grip over my chin tightens, craning my neck back so that my eyes return to his. They peer deep down, searching me. At first, I think he’s checking to see if I’m fully free of the aftereffects of the drug. Then he steps closer, pinning me against the wall with his bulk and I realize his true intention.
Do I remember? If so, how much? How much of Lucifer’s dark, dirty secrets still taint my skin?
I school my expression into revealing nothing and he grunts in frustration, his nails digging in. He won’t break me though. Vinny taught me well how to wear a mask—but beneath it, I peer over what snippets I do recall. Just who hurt him as a child? His father?
The devil gives me no answers when he finally lets me go. It’s only as he jerks out of my reach that I realize my fingers had never left his skin, stroking absent patterns against his bruised flesh. Letters. D A N N Y...
Lucifer knew my own dark secret. Now I have one of his.
But there are no winners in his game. Just bitter round after bitter, brutal round. Which one of us would finally leave the cage as the victor? Would we ever leave at all?
Lucifer gives away nothing of his battle plan as he retreats down a narrow hall. He doesn’t command me to follow, but I do anyway, bracing one hand against the wall.
This apartment is even smaller than the last one. In just two steps Lucifer enters a tiny kitchen. There’s a bathroom to my left and to creep inside it, I would simply have to shuffle two inches sideways.
“Here.” Lucifer snatches a plastic cup from a cupboard above a metal sink built into one of the countertops. He runs the faucet and fills it with water from the tap. “Drink,” he commands, slamming it down on the counter closest to me.
I reach for it, only to flinch as pain sears through the center of my palm. It’s a shock to find blood pooling there, seeping from a gash that I don’t remember causing. Then like the scattered fragments of a nightmare, I remember...him. My eyes seek him out, and I realize that I’d left blood over his chest, the real reason he pulled away.
“You cut me.” He doesn’t appear ashamed, but then I realize that I’m not exactly angry. I remember. The words he’d said drip through my ears in a distorted melody. It feels good now, he’d told me while I’d been swept under the heroin. But it won’t last. It never does. I wonder if he’d spoken from experience. His face reveals nothing, and I don’t ask.
Instead, I lift the cup and drain it dry. My head swims when I set it back down and swipe at my mouth with the back of my uninjured hand. Lucifer’s searing eyes miss nothing. “If you haven’t thought of a plan for taking down Stacatto,” he starts, “now is the time.”
“P-Plan?” Still dizzy, I shift so that my back rests against the wall, and I brace my good hand against it.
“To take him down,” Lucifer clarifies, his voice hard and unnerving.
Me “take down” Vincent Stacatto. When said out loud—by such a serious man—I can’t help but laugh just once. Lynn might have been able to entertain the notion in her head, but putting it into practice? I shake my head. “I...I can’t—”
“You don’t have a fucking choice.” Lucifer steps out from around the counter, and within seconds he closes in on me. “Think.” I jump when one of his hands finds the center of my chest, the thick fingers pointing toward my throat. He makes a show of pinning me flat against the wall and leaning in, his breath hot on my skin. “What are his weaknesses? His businesses? Who are his allies?”
I’m still shaking my head. “He didn’t tell me—”
“Bullshit.” His fingers flex, hard enough to send tiny jolts of pain exploding throughout my ribcage. “You’ve dreamt about it. Don’t tell me that you haven’t spent every waking moment fantasizing as to how to bring the bastard down...” His voice rumbles through my ears and resonates down my spine. I shiver, and my tongue shoots out to wet my lips, tasting blood.
“He...he deals drugs—heroin and cocaine,” I say, wracking my brain for the snippets of conversations that I hadn’t been meant to hear; the words I used to drown out whenever he’d force me to play during a torture session; the little bits and pieces of information that I’d gleaned on my own. “He owns a taxi company—Sunshine—and uses the drivers to distribute the supply throughout the city.”
Lucifer nods, accepting the information without comment. The pattern of his breathing changes, striking the side of my neck at a slower pace, but he still isn’t satisfied, and a silent command is conveyed when his hand presses a little harder against my chest. Go on.
“He...he deals in women.” I cringe, picturing the girls he gave to me as “gifts.” Anger mingles with the heat of Lucifer on my skin. I shrivel and burn beneath both, and it’s easier to get the words out. “They have accents. He must get them from overseas. I don’t know where he keeps them.” Apart from my maids, I only knew of the women from the scattered conversations his men would have in the suite when they thought I wasn’t listening. Do good tonight, and we might stop by and see the new girls. Sate your cock for once. “And as for allies...” My recent thoughts hold nothing. I have to dig deeper into an older store of memories that make me almost grateful for Lucifer’s brutal strength to hold me up. “I just know one. A detective.” Lucifer perks up. I don’t know if it’s because of the hatred in my voice or the mere irony that a crime lord cavorts with an officer of the law.
“His name?”
“Detective Andrew Sosa.”
“Sosa.” He frowns. Apparently, the name didn’t ring a bell. Regardless, he’s satisfied by the information, and he steps back, pulling his hand away, my chest expanding greedily. “I’ll look into it.”
“It would have to be quick,” I say, “whatever we do. Vinny will—”
“Vinny.” Lucifer scoffs and then releases a full chuckle that drips out through his teeth. “No matter what. You still call him that.”
“W-What?” I’m thrown off by his line of attack.
“Vinny,” the devil snarls. “You have yet to call the fucker by his full name.”
His full name. Vincent. It strikes me that the devil thought I was weak for still calling my tormentor by a nickname. I see it in the way he shakes his head, still laughing, his eyes narrowed over my body like the barrel of a gun, but I don’t shy away.
If only the bastard knew.
I’m the one to enter his personal space this time. Just a single step that takes me no farther from the wall than where I can still cling to it. Lucifer stiffens regardless, his mouth caught mid-chuckle.
“His...his name...” I have to lick my lips to find enough traction to speak. I’m too tired to reign in my accent, and it takes over, mangling each word. Lynn’s crisp voice is dead. For the first time in fifteen years, Daniela fully rears her head. “His name is the only bit of power that I’ve ever held over him,” I admit. “I call him Vinny, and I never forget everything else. Ever.”
Lucifer holds my gaze for so long that I lose track. The disgust lurking over the irises gives way to something else, though I’m not sure that I can name it. Describing him requires an arsenal of words that I have yet to master. Guilt? Respect? Acknowledgement? I can’t decide which is which before he finally nods once in a grim apology.
Without another word, I turn and stagger toward the bathroom. There’s only a sliding wooden door to fasten shut with a metal latch. Then, in private, I reassemble myself the only way I know how. I wash my face with my hands and scrub at my teeth with my thumb and a streak of bar soap. Using my wet fingers, I comb through my hair. When I finish, I eye my reflection and try to find some semblance of my old self lurking beneath this stranger’s gaunt features.
I’m still not sure who this new Daniela is when I finally turn to the door, my fingers fumbling with the latch. By the time I get it open, I’d been too distracted to notice the heat wafting from the other end. One tug on the sliding door and Lucifer’s presence fills the narrow gap. I stagger back instinctively, and just as my back strikes the glass surface of a tiny shower stall, he’s already wrenched the door fully open. One of his hands goes to the buckle on his jeans, wrenching on the fly and revealing the shape of his cock through his boxers.
I swallow hard, my fingers catching against the frosted glass behind me. I should look away when he steps up to the toilet, blocking the doorway in the process. I should force my way past him. I definitely shouldn’t stare as he tugs his boxers down his hips, revealing his semi-hard cock and...blood. Sloppy streaks of it paint his hips, obscuring the row of his scars. Some drugged worshipper left her scarlet fingerprints all over the priceless statue in the church garden. Gritting my teeth, I start forward and snatch a wad of toilet paper from the roll. Before I can even touch him, Lucifer catches my wrist with his free hand, still guiding a stream of piss with the other. He shakes out the few last drops but doesn’t let me go while he shifts over to the sink.
He wets that one hand beneath the faucet and then shuts it off. His pants are still down around his ankles while he eyes his reflection. The devil isn’t alarmed by the bruises earned during his battle. He wears victory like just another scar, and my stomach twists while I trail my gaze over him. The places where I’d touched him during the night glow more vibrantly than the bruises or cuts left over from his fight with Mack. They adorn him like the medals on a general, but my blood... It clashes with his olive skin. My fingers twitch, aching to wipe it off, but his grip tightens, and he turns, steering me back against the shower stall with every step he takes. When I have nowhere left to go, he herds me inside of it, watching as I press myself beneath the showerhead.
Once he’s just inches away, he lifts my hand by my captive wrist, his eyes on mine. “Drop it.”
His tone is jagged glass. I obey, and the wad of toilet paper strikes the tile with barely a sound to its name. Lucifer doesn’t release me, however. He merely shifts his weight to block me in, his gaze unreadable. I don’t know what to think when he reaches down, pulling my hand along with him, and rummages through the puddle of his jeans, eventually withdrawing a knife. It’s the dull kitchen one that he let me keep.
Rising fully, he waits until he’s sure that I’m watching—so that I don’t miss a single detail when he holds out the flat of his hand and starts to cut. With barely a wince to show for it, he gauges out a single line similar to the mark he made on me. Once finished, he lets the knife fall, its blade gleaming beneath my blood and his. I don’t react when he reaches for my hand pressing our bloody palms together. Clasping our fingers, he raises them both above my head, his expression penetrating me deeper than any knife ever could. “You wanted me to promise,” he says gutturally.
Apparently, this is how un-owned men cement said promises. Not with handshakes or simple words...but this. Blood against blood. Eternal.
The muscles in my arm burn as I force my grip to tighten, grinding my open wound against his despite the sharp throb of pain it triggers. Droplets of red escape, striking the cracked tile beneath my bare toes. A drop lands on my ankle, and I shiver, but not out of disgust. Only Lucifer could turn blood into a weapon. The tiny droplets sizzle, searing his claim into my skin. My veins hum, surging with the hazy memories of violence—him down in the arena, fighting for me. Punching, kicking, striking for me.
My body is a fool, still thrumming on the edge of the high. I haven’t fully come down when I feel searing heat creep between my legs, or when my nipples tighten against the coarse fabric of my sweater. I blame the heroin for the need that makes me shudder and clench my thighs together. I blame...everything and anything but him. Those eyes don’t affect me. Not the way they narrow over my throat as if he can sense every reaction sparking beneath my skin.
When he finally releases me, I can’t silence a sigh of relief. I want him to leave. I need him to drag the wooden door shut. I need to shove my own hand between my legs and ignore the things my fingers will have to do in order to ease this ache. I wait, shame a painful ball at the back of my throat, eager to be swallowed down. Lucifer makes me wait.
Then, he takes a step back, and air trickles into my lungs in one greedy breath, only to escape just as quickly when he raises his uninjured hand and...he palms his cock. No. My head falls back against the stall, hard enough to make sparks appear before my eyes. I squeeze them shut. I don’t look. I don’t listen to the slick wet sounds as his own fingers glide up and down the ridge of his shaft. I don’t let myself dwell on the fact that he’s pleasing himself right in front of me, completely unashamed by the act. He’s a beast, after all, merely giving into a beastly, primal urge. The devil is selfish and bold in fulfilling his own needs, and I need...I need...
I shove my blood-stained fingers into my mouth and bite down while my other hand bolts to the front of my jeans. I attempt to suck in my stomach and shove them beneath the waistband, but in the end, I have to undo the clasp one-handed and kick them down, leaning against the glass behind me for leverage. Any embarrassment flies out of the window as I take two fingers and...yes. My gasp nearly drowns out the sound he makes: part inhale, part growl. It reverberates off the glass, adding a delicate chime to the harsh slick of his stroking hand. He’s moving faster, I think. Tightening his grip, getting off on watching me listen to every sordid little sound...
And then even that isn’t enough. My eyes open, boldly drinking him in. His cock is thickened steel. His eyes are an inferno; I swear I can even see sparks of orange mingling with the bright blue flames now. Less than a foot apart, we watch each other. We touch ourselves. Daring. Taunting. Drips of silvery fluid weep from the tip of his cock when I finally crook a thumb and force it inside of me.
My bloody fingers aren’t enough to smother a cry. I have to bite the inside of my cheek and choke down a gasp while my hips buck, unsatisfied by the partial fullness. With a terrible sense of desperation, I know that I’d have to use my whole hand to mimic the fullness of his cock—and even that would be a poor imitation. It’s like the bastard reads my mind. He grits out a broken sound and gives up, his hands falling open at his sides, his stance predatory. I’m still stroking sensitive bundles of flesh when he approaches and gathers up the material of my sweater in both hands. One harsh yank and the wool parts, revealing my breasts, already swelling, aching for his touch.
Lucifer is a cruel tormentor. He stands there and merely waits for me to arch my spine, presenting myself to him. He doesn’t touch me until I do, and only then it’s to drag a thumb over one nipple, clenching his jaw at the sharpness. My fingers cease their maddening circles—it’s oddly more satisfying to watch him. To see him devour my body through his vision alone. He shows me no mercy, the same demonic creature he’d been in the ring, searching out every weakness to exploit. He finds one in the letters of Vinny’s brand, and he vandalizes the mark with a single, bloodied handprint that presses me back against the wall of the stall.
His finger returns to my nipple, teasing it into a throbbing point before he turns to the other and gives it the same brutal, lavish attention. Then he tugs on my hips, spinning me around until I have no choice but to brace both palms against the frosted glass while he muscles in behind me.
He doesn’t bother to be gentle with the first thrust. He slams into me, forcing my hands to inch higher and higher above my head, leaving a bloody streak that dribbles down while he pulls back and enters me again. Again. More. He doesn’t stop until he’s in to the hilt, his balls slapping the backs of my thighs with the final harsh jerk of his hips.
Then, the devil switches tactics, and he goes slow, consuming me in tendrils of hellfire that lick at my spine. Back and forth. Harsher. Slower. Like a true sadist, he takes time to build up friction that I can taste as each carnal sensation ricochets through me, drawing out whimpers from my lips. Heat. Hot. Fire. My nails rake the glass, my breasts swaying with the steady rhythm, my body at his mercy.
He counters every hit he took in the cage by grinding himself into me, making sure I feel every ridge, every ribbed curve of his cock. I did this for you. I shift, sore and greedy. I’ll remember every inch of him no matter what happens the moment we leave this stall. I let him fuck his victory into me. I wait until he grits out curses and increases his pace. Then I move, letting myself fall back, forcing him deeper. Harder. Faster.
My mind drifts. I’m higher than I could ever reach with only a narcotic. I’m in the heaven that kicked him out, floating high above the hell that Vinny made of my life. Every harsh, brutal thrust takes me even higher...higher still.
But the stall is too small. He’s too big. His body is forced to bend over mine to find the right leverage, and he slips out so suddenly I can’t silence a whine. Panting with lust, he’s clumsy when he palms his cock and tries to dive back in. The head of his cock bats between my legs, but when he starts to thrust, it’s against the wrong opening, and my body clenches against him.
I cling to the stall, panting. Even Vinny never touched me there. It was the one part of me he never seemed interested in claiming—not even on the women he forced me to watch him violate. Lucifer’s presence inspires an entirely new fear. And I want him to vanquish it.
“N-No,” I choke out when he starts to head lower instead. “Here.” I take one hand from the wall and reach back, dragging his hand back up...
He stiffens. “F-Fuck...fuck no!” He jerks back, horror flashing through his eyes. He’s disgusted. He’s...terrified, but it’s a fear that I know well.
My fingers shake when I reach for him and grasp the tip of his softening cock. He doesn’t resist when I ease him closer, stroking the head with sloppy, unsteady motions of my thumb.
“Please.” My voice rings stronger than I’ve ever heard it—at least not since I’d been a girl of eight telling a cruel bully to go fuck himself. “Please. I need...I need you...”
It’s too sick of a request to put into words. Too selfish. I need him to claim me in a way that even Vinny wouldn’t. I need him to rip me open and leave his mark on the ruined flesh. I need.
But it’s only when the fear clouds his eyes that I remember what he’d told me when he thought I’d be too disoriented to remember. He fucked me like an animal. Something inside me breaks. My heart? Scarred and battered, it cracks open, and something slithers out, directed at him. Understanding? A fallen angel can only relate to another cast-down creature, after all. I may not have been an angel—merely a lost soul—but the fires of hell had burned us both.
“Please...”
Staring down at my still stroking fingers, Lucifer’s gaze darkens, fire and brimstone spilling out. “No lube,” he grits out, but apparently, he’s already thought of another makeshift substitute. Batting my touch away, he grips himself with his bloodied palm, painting himself with the result of the promise he’d swore he’d never make. His eyes meet mine, devoid of any compassion. He won’t make this easy. This will hurt.
But I don’t look away from him. I don’t grit my teeth and brace myself. I’m panting even before he finally eases the head of himself against me, testing the give of my body. One thrust and he can only ease the tip of himself inside, but he groans, his head shooting back against his shoulders. Pleasure thickens each beautiful sound that spills from his throat, enticing the heat building within me to burn even hotter. Two more thrusts and he’s forced an inch. Then he bucks, sinking deeper, thrusting harder. My body resists, fights...spreads...surrenders.
“Oh God.” I rock into the invasion, blinking back the tears that blur my vision. “F-Fuck. Jesus. Fuck!” My voice breaks, echoing off the walls, and then I can only moan when he sinks in fully. My body is on fire with the aftermath of every searing thrust. It’s too tight a fit. Too much. He’s too deep. Too big. Too hard. Too perfect.
I lose my voice when he starts to thrust in earnest. Bitter...burning...electric. The vicious friction makes it too hard to watch him. I have to brace both hands against the wall and press my cheek against the glass instead. His gaze burns the back of my neck. His blood paints my skin. His groans form a melody more haunting than Bach. I could never recreate it on my cello no matter how many combinations of strings I played. I’ll have to rely on memory...
So, I struggle to remember everything about the way he feels inside me, consuming me from the inside out. It’s too hard. My thoughts scatter as my head lolls, drunk on him. It’s only when he thrusts deep one last time that I realize the words leaving my throat are more than just inane nonsense. It’s a name. “Dante. Dante...”
His growl drowns me out, and then I’m flooded with his release. I feel it drip down my legs when he finally eases himself out of me, panting. He almost seems drunk as he staggers back against the wall of the stall, rattling the glass in its frame.
Boneless, I sink to my knees, my body aching, throbbing, burning and my heart bleeding and gaping. I’m not sure which feels more assaulted. More violated. I’m even less sure which pain frightens me the most.
I wait for him to leave me there, but when I finally hear him move, I don’t expect the grip on my forearm that yanks me upright. My strength is no match for his, and he pins me easily against the wall. Murder is written in his eyes, and I can’t fight when he lowers his head, his mouth crushing mine. He shoves his tongue inside me, forcing me to react and push him back with my own. Within seconds...I don’t know what’s happening. Vinny only ever kissed me on the cheek or closed mouth. Never like this. I never wanted him to kiss me like this. Hungry, violent, brutal—even harsher than the sex. He bites my lower lip until it bleeds, then he steals the droplets away and swallows them down.
I’m dizzy when he finally does pull away, dragging his pants up, and storms out of the shower, and then the bathroom...eventually the small apartment all together. The building trembles with the force when he slams the door shut.
Left alone, I can only trace my lips with my fingers and wonder why the hell the assault of his mouth pierces me deeper than the sensation of his cock. A beast could fuck anyone.
But not just anyone could get close enough to wound one...