Nina dragged her gaze away from the bulge and fixed it on his hands, watching as he nimbly lifted the silver teapot in his left hand and pressed the fingers of his right to the lid as he tilted it, pouring a tall stream of golden liquid into the waiting white cup. Steam swirled from the hot liquid as it rose towards the brim. With an equal measure of care and perfection, he slowly righted the teapot and set it back down on the tray.
Golden eyes slid across to meet hers. “Milk?”
Nina nodded and he picked up the small china pot and began to pour, his gaze constantly on hers. She held her hand out when the tea was golden, not too pale nor too dark for her taste. When he reached for the sugar, she shook her head.
“Sweet enough as you are?” he said with a wide smile that made her heart thump ridiculously against her chest.
She opened her mouth to bat the comment away, but he rose to his feet, coming to tower over her. Something about him standing over her like that, the warmth draining from his eyes as his smile faded, set her on edge. She wrapped one arm around her waist and reached for her cup of tea with the other.
“I make you nervous.” He backed off a step and then another, and she wanted to tell him that it wasn’t him, but she couldn’t bring herself to voice that lie.
He did make her nervous.
He made her nervous when he was close to her, when he was kind to her, when he asked her things about what had happened to her.
When he looked at her as she knew he was looking at her now when her gaze and focus was on picking up the tea he had poured for her.
She could feel the heat of his gaze on her, knew if she lifted hers to meet his that there would be a touch of hunger in his eyes, desire that she had spotted in them before and that left her feeling breathless. The room closed in on her and she struggled to breathe as she reached for the cup. Her fingers shook against the delicate handle and she closed her eyes to shut out the room and everything in it, hoping that it would help her steady her nerves.
It didn’t.
She could still feel his eyes on her.
She pulled down another steadying breath and focused harder, pushing aside the fierce sensation of his eyes on her as she opened her own and settled them on the cup. She gripped the handle and lifted it away from the saucer, bringing it to her as she leaned back. Her hand remained steady this time and she managed a few sips of the hot tea. The comforting taste of it settled her nerves even further.
It might have helped that he stopped looking at her in that instant and moved off towards the fireplace.
Nina studied him as she sipped her tea, taking in the elegant line of his back and how his shoulders tapered but were broad. His black hair was shorn around the sides and back of his head, but left longer on top, groomed back away from his face. She grew bolder the longer he remained looking away from her. Her eyes drifted down the straight slope of his nose, took in the high contours of his cheekbones, and even the tempting soft curves of his lips. Ridiculously handsome.
She could almost believe he had been made to tempt women into sinning.
He exuded wickedness and sensuality, and she felt the full force of it as he turned his head towards her, his golden eyes locking with hers before she could glance away and holding her immobile.
“Is the tea to your liking?”
He may as well have asked whether she wanted to climb him like a tree and kiss the living daylights out of him, because her heart did a stupid fluttering thing in her chest and her belly heated in a way she hadn’t experienced in a long time. Desire flared hot inside her, burning through her veins, and for a moment she wondered whether he had drugged the tea.
It would have been the perfect excuse, if not for the fact she had reacted to him in exactly the same way when she had awoken to him yesterday.
Nina blamed whatever drug the shadowy man had used on her. It obviously hadn’t worn off as much as she had thought.
“What’s your name?” She blurted the question and his left eyebrow arched, a flicker of surprise crossing his features. “If I have to stay here, I at least want to know where I am and who you are.”
“Lucifer,” he said it with such a deadpan expression that she didn’t have the heart to ask whether he was joking and had just pulled a name out of his head that suited the dreary house around her.
“You must have loved your parents for that one.”
His expression darkened. “I do not have parents.”
That explained a lot, but also left her with a heck of a lot more questions. Had her previous assumption been correct and he had been raised in this house?
God help him if he had. The poor bastard. It was little wonder he was so pale and looked so cold and emotionless most of the time.
Except when he was looking at her.
Sure, he had looked at her with cold, cruel eyes from time to time, but there were those times when they held banked heat, desire that had shocked her the first time she had noticed it.
“Nina.” She offered her free hand but he only looked at it, keeping his station near the fireplace opposite her, with the table neatly positioned between them.
Like a barrier.
Nina lowered her hand to her lap and his eyes followed it, his irises darkening once more as his pupils dilated.
There it was again. That heat that stirred the same in her, breaking through the hard emotionless cold that normally filled the space in her chest. Was it the same for him?
Or was she being ridiculous?
The heat inside her grew as he lifted his eyes, slowly tracking the length of her arm upwards and over her shoulder, and the hunger in them grew with each inch higher he roamed. He sucked her awareness to him, pulling it away from the room until she was conscious of only him and how he was looking at her.
Of the way his golden eyes seemed to brighten as they lingered on her face and then fell to her lips.
Her breath came quicker, heart racing as she fought the effects of his eyes on her and tried to shake them off.
It was impossible.
She felt as if she had fallen under some sort of spell and he was the one casting it on her by merely looking at her as if she was beautiful and he couldn’t go another second without crossing the room and touching her.
A flash of him doing just that filled her mind, a stolen moment in which his hand would catch her cheek and flutter downwards to her jaw to tease her head back so his lips could taste hers and steal her breath from her.
Every inch of her trembled in anticipation, aching for that even when it scared her a little.
She couldn’t remember the last time a man had looked at her the way he was staring at her right now.
She could.
And it was enough to throw a bucket of icy water on her libido and kill it.
Nina averted her gaze.
The spell shattered.
She felt it break, felt his eyes leave her as he shifted back a step, one that lacked confidence and felt uncertain to her. He lingered a moment, nothing more than a heartbeat, and then the sound of his shoes clicking on the cold stone floor broke the silence. The door slammed and she flinched, spilling her tea on the floor by her bare feet.
Nina sat there in silence, her eyes closed and her heart racing.
What the hell was she doing?
She placed the cup down on the tray and wrapped her arms around herself as she stared at the closed door.
Whatever had been happening, she wasn’t alone in her reaction to it.
It had rattled Lucifer too.
And Nina had the feeling that was a rare thing.
CHAPTER 5
What the fuck was he doing?
Lucifer stormed down the hall, shadows streaming from his fingers as he snarled through his fangs, torn between seeking out something to take out his anger on and returning to the room where Nina waited for him.
He reached the towering vestibule of the fortress before stopping dead.
The floating staircases that connected the floor
s of his home blurred and his fingers relaxed, uncurling to hang limp.
She had said her name was Nina.
He’d had many women as guests in his castle, but never once had he known their name. It felt dangerous. Intimate.
With nothing more than a single word, she had entranced him.
Enslaved him.
He had stood there staring at her, pondering her name and running it around his head, discovering it had a pleasing ring to it.
One he could imagine uttering at the height of pleasure, when he was lost in the heat of passion with her, entangled and entwined in his bed.
Another growl curled from his lips and he managed another step before stopping again, his feet refusing to cooperate.
Refusing to take him another inch further from her.
Fuck, he had never thought anyone or anything could have power over him again, but it seemed that single innocent word and the female it belonged to had somehow mastered him.
He snarled and forced himself to take another step, increasing the distance between them and denying the pressing need to turn around and go back to the room where she waited. He wanted to watch her, study her, until the end of time. As dangerous as it was to admit it, she fascinated him.
No female before her had captivated him as she did.
No female had a perfect blend of light and darkness inside them as she did.
Both the light and the dark pulled him towards her and he was powerless to resist. His feet shifted, not forwards this time but back a step, bringing him closer to her again.
He cursed, spitting the vilest one imaginable in the demonic tongue, and the ground shook. The gilded bone chandeliers hanging from the staircases that cut across the enormous space in the vestibule trembled, causing the light to flicker and even fade in some places.
What the fuck was he doing?
Was this all part of Mihail’s plan?
Had the bastard tracked down the most beautiful, pure yet tainted female on purpose?
The angel must have known that she would lure him to her, that the seed of darkness that lived within her, the pain that had left its mark on her soul, would be irresistible to him.
But Lucifer had slept with many females who had been tainted by darkness, and he had never felt a pull towards them. He had never desired them.
They had been a means to an end, a method of producing an heir, a vessel that he could use to leave Hell and wreak havoc on Heaven without risking releasing the princes from their prison.
Nina was so much more to that.
He pressed a hand to his chest, clawing at his suit jacket as a weight settled behind his ribs, an aching heaviness that he hadn’t felt in a long time.
An emotion he had never wanted to feel again.
Even a king could know loneliness and despair born of fear that he would forever be alone, and it was a bitter and cutting sort of loneliness. It was a loneliness experienced even when surrounded by those who served him. It was despair that ate away at him even when he wasn’t aware of it.
And he had never been aware of it before now.
He had always believed himself happy here, in his kingdom, a ruler of all that he could see. An entire realm was under his command and every creature in it bowed to him. He had a million under his yoke, willing to die for him.
A million servants.
Not one equal.
How long had he felt this way? How long had this feeling been festering inside him like a disease, creating a rotten core?
Lucifer looked back over his shoulder, down the corridor towards Nina’s room. How was it he felt as if she could cure him, could scrape out the parts that had gone bad and replace those that had wasted away inside him?
That tiny flicker of light in his soul mocked him with the answer.
Because he was feeling again.
Erin had been the catalyst, the one who had reawakened emotions in him, and he had tried to keep them under control and vanquish them. She had made him weak and he hadn’t fought hard enough, and now he was paying for it. He was paying for allowing them to gain a foothold inside him once again.
He should have put an end to them when he had first become aware of them rather than letting them grow.
Lucifer laughed at that.
There were a great many things he should have done differently in his long life, and none of them he could change now. The past was for angels as it was for mortals, an indelible path that nothing could alter. He had come to terms with that a great many centuries ago, but it still didn’t seem to stop him from dwelling on the mistakes he had made. As if mulling over them would fix them. It changed nothing. He could only move forwards, keep walking tall and keep fighting, and perhaps one day he would have the vengeance he desired and everything he had suffered, everything he had endured, would be worth it.
One day.
His lips curled into a wicked smile.
One day the entire world would tremble at his feet.
The ground shook beneath him, rattling the chandeliers again, the vibrations running up his legs as they grew stronger. Black shadows swirled from his fingertips and curled around his arms, and his shoulder blades itched, his wings desiring the freedom he rarely gave to them. He snarled as his mood blackened, pleasing thoughts of standing atop a mountain and seeing the puny mortals and the bastard angels quivering in fear as his legions decimated them running through his mind. The quake followed his mood, violently shaking the fortress, and he grinned as a crack forked across the floor of the hallway like a lightning bolt.
A shriek shattered the hold the darkness had on him.
The fortress settled and the shadows dissipated.
Lucifer was striding along the corridor in her direction before he even realised he was moving, his swift steps carrying him back to her. The floor repaired itself beneath his feet, the crack sealing and returning the stone to how perfect it had been before his temper had slipped its leash.
He focused on himself and employed a power he hadn’t used in millennia.
The ability to mask his presence, making him invisible to mortal eyes.
Fear flowed from ahead of him, rippling over him like a stream, and he almost cursed before he caught himself and told himself that he didn’t care that he had frightened the mortal female.
The door to her room was open and for a moment he feared she would have left her sanctuary, but then he reached it and spotted her inside the spacious apartment. Relief swept through him, a curious emotion he hadn’t experienced in a long time and didn’t want to experience now. He didn’t want to feel anything.
Yet he found himself standing on the threshold of her room feeling a myriad of emotions that tore him in a thousand directions, none of which he should have been contemplating. He should have been moving on now that he had seen she was well and unhurt. He should have been heading out to the prison to deal with his business there, using it to eradicate the feelings Nina stirred in him.
He shouldn’t be transfixed by the sight of her as she stood near the red velvet couch, her hands tucked against her chest, clutching the silky white material and pulling it tight across her breasts.
He shouldn’t be fascinated by how her heart settled as he stood there and her courage returned, bravery he had noticed in her when he had come to see her and bring her food, intending to question her again. She had been stronger, had radiated alluring confidence in his presence, and had even questioned him.
She had asked for his name.
No one had ever asked for his name before.
And he meant no one.
When he had served Heaven, all had known it. When he had been cast into Hell, none had cared about it. When he had risen to rule this realm, they had given him a new name. The Devil.
In all the millennia he had been alive, not a single soul had actually bothered to ask him for his name.
He cocked his head as he watched her moving around the room. Mortals were weak, but she had strength in her. It wasn’t physical. Sh
e was as frail as all mortals in that respect. It was emotional, and he had no doubt that it had been born from the ashes of her past and her pain.
Lucifer leaned against the doorframe, folded his arms across his chest, and studied her, the world around them falling away as he sought answers to the questions that refused to leave his mind.
What had happened to her?
What was it about her that fascinated him?
He had never really taken the time to study mortal nuances, not in all the years he had walked among her kind. They had never interested him before, and they shouldn’t interest him now.
Yet she fascinated him.
She carefully brought her tea cup to her lips, took a sip, and then lowered it again as she walked around the room. A drop of liquid remained on her lower lip, trembling there, luring his gaze to her mouth. He stared at it for long seconds, losing track of time, before he noticed something else.
A tiny streak of a pale silvery scar on her chin, close to the left corner of her lower lip.
The longer he stared at that little mark, the stronger his hunger to kiss that spot grew inside him, obliterating his awareness of anything but that scar and her lips. Fuck, he wanted to press a lingering kiss to that scar and breathe her in. He wanted to feel her tremble beneath his lips and sense the anticipation in her, the stirrings of desire and need, a hunger that only he could satisfy.
He wanted to take the bold and dangerous leap to kissing her.
He wanted her taste on his tongue, craved the feel of her under his hands as he clutched her to him, and hungered for the exquisite feel of her hands on him. He ached with a fierce need to feel her gripping him, her fingertips pressing into his bare flesh as she moaned his name and begged for more.
The feel of her gaze landing directly on him shattered his fantasy, dragging him back to the room.
He stared across the narrow distance to her, his heart pounding against his chest, his blood thundering with a need to surrender to his desire and act out that fantasy with her right now.
Because there was desire blazing hot in those peridot eyes that held his.
Hunger that matched the one raging out of control inside him.
Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 47
