Fire & Brimstone: A Neighbor from Hell

by R. L. Mathewson

Maybe she should look into obedience class again, but at nearly two years old he was probably set in his ways. Maybe if she promised to let him have all the leftovers in the fridge he’d let her have the bed? It was worth a shot, she decided as she mentally prepared herself for the grueling task of crawling off the bed and walking the thirty or so feet to the kitchen and back.

  She really needed to look into getting a mini-fridge for her room.

  Groaning, and no, she really didn’t care how pathetic she sounded at the moment, she opened her eyes and tried to roll over onto her back, but Mojo’s massive paws stopped her. Deciding that it was just too much work after all, she closed her eyes, curled back onto her side and tried to think about anything other than how much her stomach hurt.

  “Mojo, move,” Lucifer, a man that she was pretty sure that she hadn’t invited into her bedroom, never mind her apartment, said.

  Too sick to open her eyes, she grumbled, “He’s not going to listen,” just as she felt the massive dog that clearly didn’t understand the meaning of loyalty, move away from her. A few seconds later, she heard Mojo grunt as he climbed off the bed.

  “How did you get in here?” she asked, although she had several questions, she decided to ask the only one that mattered at the moment.

  “You left the door unlocked,” he said as she felt the bed dip next to her, which of course led to her next question.

  “Tell me that you didn’t just climb in bed with me,” she said, praying that she was mistaken.

  “Fine. I wont,” he said, but she knew that the large son of a bitch had done exactly that.

  “Get out,” she said, too tired to play this game with him.

  “Can’t do that.”

  “And why’s that?” she asked, wishing that she’d trained Mojo to attack, but with her luck, he probably wouldn’t listen to her anyway.

  “Because I’m not done with my pie yet,” he said around a mouthful of her pie.

  That would teach her for sharing, she thought bitterly with a wince as her stomach cramped up, forcing her to wrap her arms around her stomach and try to breathe through the worst of the pain. You’d think that she would be used to this, but every time the pain hit, it felt worse than the last time. The only thing that even remotely helped was a hot bath, but right now it would hurt too much to try and climb into the tub right now.

  Besides, she was saving all of her energy to throw her unwanted guest out.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him not to bother only to gasp in pain as the move caused more pain to tear through her stomach. Okay, so maybe right now was not the best time to kick him out, she decided as she squeezed her eyes shut tightly and pressed her arms more firmly against her stomach to stop the pain from spreading.

  “Here,” Lucifer said, taking her hand and placing it on something cold, but more pain instantly shot through her stomach. Shaking her head, because she thought that she was going to be sick again, she pulled her hand back and placed it on her stomach.

  She heard him mutter something and then, she felt him climbing back on the bed and-

  “What the hell are you doing?” she asked, going completely still as she told herself that she was imagining this.

  “Is it helping?” he demanded instead of explaining why he’d thought that it was a good idea to climb in bed with her and spoon her, wrapping his arms tightly around her and pulling her closer.

  “It’s definitely creeping me out!” she snapped, because she couldn’t tell him that it was actually helping her and that some of the pain was subsiding.

  “That didn’t answer my questions,” he said, adjusting his hold around her and making the pain bearable.

  It didn’t go away, but at least she didn’t feel like she was seconds away from screaming in agony anymore.

  When she didn’t answer him, because she stubbornly refused to admit that anything he did was helping, he started to pull his hand away. “I guess if it isn’t helping…” he said, letting his words trail off as he continued to pull his hand away.

  Glaring at the wall and hating the bastard for toying with her like this, she grabbed his arm and yanked it back in place. “It’s helping! Are you happy?”

  “Overjoyed,” he said with a chuckle that she refused to find pleasing as he wrapped his arms back around her and held her close.

  “Asshole,” she mumbled even though it delighted her to hear him chuckle again. It was definitely something that he didn’t do often, but when he did, she couldn’t help but smile even when all she wanted to do was cry.

  *-*-*-*

  “Do you want the Coke I brought you?” he asked, noting that she’d tightened her hold over his arms before he had a chance to finish that sentence, letting him know just how much pain she was in.

  “Do you have to let go in order to get it?” she asked after a slight pause.

  “Yes.”

  “Then no,” she said, shifting against him to get more comfortable.

  He sighed as he glanced over at the alarm clock on the nightstand. He really should be downstairs preparing for the dinner rush and looking into hiring a new waitress, but here he was holding the biggest pain in the ass that he’d ever known. He still wasn’t sure what had possessed him to come up here and check on her in the first place. She wasn’t his responsibility, but for some reason he felt protective of her and he couldn’t quite explain it.

  “Do you want anything?” he asked, hating to see her in this much pain and wondering what the fuck was wrong with all those doctors that told her that this was all in her head.

  He wasn’t a fucking doctor and even he could see that there was something wrong. She was always exhausted, sick and in pain. He felt like an ass for even thinking that she was faking. She never tried to get special attention or used it as an excuse to get out of doing something. In fact, she usually got pissed if someone pointed it out and always tried to pretend that she wasn’t sick even when it was more than obvious to everyone around her that she was.

  “I’m fine,” she said tightly and he knew just like always that she was trying to hide how much pain she was in.

  God, he was a fucking moron.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  Sighing, he shifted behind her so that her head was right beneath his chin and found himself giving her an honest answer. “I don’t know.”

  “You do realize that you’re ruining your reputation as an asshole, don’t you?”

  “Not if no one finds out,” he said, hoping to tease a smile or a laugh out of her, but instead she simply yawned.

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” she said around another yawn as he debated leaving her to nap so that he could get some work done, but the way she wrapped her hand over his had him accepting the fact that he would be here, at least for a little while longer.

  He’d wait until she fell asleep and then he’d go downstairs and make sure that everything was taken care of so that he could be here when his brother delivered the test results, confirming that he really had been an asshole.

  Chapter 11

  “Rebecca, Dr. Bradford is here,” Melanie announced, sounding amused which she found rather annoying first thing in the...umm, afternoon? Evening? She really had no freaking clue how long she’d been asleep.

  “What?” she groaned unhappily as she shifted and realized that something very bad had occurred while she’d slept.

  Was that a hand on her ass?

  Yes, yes it was, she realized with a resigned sigh as she cracked one eye open and confirmed her suspicions. Not only was she using Lucifer, who was still sound asleep, as a mattress, but at some point while she’d slept she’d apparently felt that it was necessary to snake her hand beneath his shirt and feel up his six pack.

  Or maybe this should be considered an eight pack? Yeah, definitely an eight pack, she decided, tempted to find out if his muscles dipped into that “V” shape that she was a sucker for, but that would be wrong, very, very wrong. Granted,
having her leg thrown over his probably was wrong too, yet here she was, practically straddling him.

  This wasn’t the worst way to wake up, but it was definitely something that the bitch standing over her bed, taking pictures with her phone wasn’t going to let her forget.

  “This is my new profile picture,” Melanie said, sounding happier than she’d ever heard her before.

  “Mine, too,” Aidan, Lucifer’s brother, said as he angled his phone to get the perfect picture.

  For a few seconds, she simply glared at the duo who were smiling and comparing pictures, noting that while Aidan was an incredibly handsome man with an easy smile and vibrant green eyes, he wasn’t as striking as his brother. Maybe that’s because Lucifer gave off that homicidal vibe that tended to make men sexier, she mused for a few seconds even as she considered the pros and cons of killing them and destroying their phones before they could upload those pictures.

  “Are you caressing his stomach?” Melanie asked as she took another picture.

  “No!” Rebecca snapped a little too quickly as she forced her hand to ignore temptation and remain still.

  “Uh huh,” the traitorous bitch said, snapping yet another picture.

  “Are you done yet?” she asked, acting like she could care less that she’d just been caught groping her boss.

  “No,” Melanie said with a shake of her head as she continued to take pictures.

  “Evil bitch,” Rebecca muttered as she pulled away from Lucifer and sat up.

  “Umm, his hand is still on your ass,” Melanie pointed out with a slight nod and another freaking picture!

  Blinking, she looked down and yup, there was his hand, curled around her ass. She looked back up at the duo, who looked like they’d just won the lottery and said, “Can you blame him? It’s a really nice ass.”

  Melanie nodded as she solemnly agreed, “It really is.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier,” Aidan said with a smile that said it all.

  Lucifer was probably going to kill him before the day was over.

  “Why don’t we get this over with?” she suggested as she climbed off the bed and headed towards the living room, knowing that there was no point in trying to put this off any longer, especially since she already knew how this was going to end.

  *-*-*-*

  “Do the tests again!” a woman screamed, waking him up from the first nap he’d taken since he was a kid.

  “No!” Lucifer heard his brother yell as he rolled over onto his back and rubbed his hands down his face, wondering what time it was.

  “Do them again!”

  “No!”

  “They’re wrong! Do them again!”

  “No! Oh, my God, stop going for my nipples!” Aidan screamed, hitting all the high notes and making Lucifer shake his head in disgust as he reluctantly got up and headed for the living room where all the screaming was coming from.

  “What the hell’s going on in here?” he asked as he stepped into the living room.

  “Take it back!” Melanie demanded as she gave up her hold on his brother’s nipples and decided that the best approach to making him change his mind was to start throwing pillows, blankets and basically everything soft enough that it wouldn’t leave a mark at his brother’s head.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Aidan demanded as he tried to duck out of the way of an extra firm pillow.

  Many things, Lucifer thought with a yawn, admittedly already bored with the scene before him. He shifted his attention to the woman sitting on the couch, looking as though she’d just been hit by a freight train. Fucking Aidan, he thought walking over to the fridge and grabbed two Cokes. He’d given his brother one fucking job and he’d fucked it up miserably.

  She was sick. Anyone with two working eyes could see that, but these fucking doctors didn’t know how to do their fucking jobs. He’d thought that his brother was the exception, but he’d been wrong, because there she sat on the couch with her arms wrapped around her indrawn knees, looking completely broken.

  “Nice job, asshole,” he said as he passed his brother, deciding that he’d deal with him later.

  “Are you going to help me?” Aidan demanded, sounding desperate as Melanie continued with her attack.

  “No,” he said, already dismissing his brother’s cry for help as he sat down on the couch next to Rebecca and handed her a Coke.

  Without a word, she took the Coke. She popped the top and took a sip as he did the same. What the hell was he supposed to say to her? He’d promised her answers and nothing had changed. They still didn’t have any idea what was causing her to be sick and worst of all, she probably believed whatever bullshit his brother had told her.

  “I’m sorry, Rebecca,” he said when he couldn’t figure out anything else to say to her. She didn’t respond as she sat there, taking another sip so he didn’t say anything else.

  “The tests were wrong!” Melanie yelled as she gave up throwing pillows at his brother and settled on beating him with a particularly fat throw pillow.

  “Look,” Aidan said, looking just as pissed and taking Lucifer by surprise, because he couldn’t remember a time when his normally easygoing brother lost his cool. “I ran the tests myself and I even had my father double check the results. You may not like them, but they’re accurate. So, get the fuck off my back!”

  Melanie opened her mouth, no doubt to tell his brother where he could shove those tests, but Lucifer had had enough. “Get out.”

  Melanie snorted at that. “This is my apartment, buddy. I’m not going anywhere,” she said, but one look from him had her rolling her eyes, calling him an asshole and dragging Aidan out the door behind her.

  Within seconds they were alone and Rebecca still hadn’t said anything, making him wonder how badly he’d fucked up. It looked like his tenth grade science teacher had been right, he really was the devil reincarnated. He should have never stuck his fucking nose where it didn’t belong. She’d accepted things the way they were, but he hadn’t been able to let them go. He had to push her into doing something that she didn’t want all because he had to know the truth and now look at her.

  Broken, depressed and-

  “I have Celiac’s disease,” she said with a watery smile that quickly disappeared as she lost it.

  “Christ,” he swore, reaching over and pulling the sobbing woman closer so that he could wrap his arms around her and hold her while she cried.

  “It’s not in my head,” she said, wrapping her arms around him and holding him tight. “It’s not in my head!” she cried on a broken laugh as he sat there, smiling, holding her tightly and not really giving a damn that he had absolutely no idea what Celiac’s disease was, not while she was holding onto him like this.

  “Thank you, Christopher,” she whispered as she pressed a soft kiss against his cheek and it was in that moment that he realized that he really didn’t mind being called by his real name.

  Well, he didn’t mind when she called him Christopher, but if anyone else called him that he would make them wish they’d never been born.

  Chapter 12

  He needed to leave before she died of humiliation. Then again, if he so much as thought about taking his hand away from her stomach she was going to have to kill him, she decided as she lay on the couch, breathing slowly through her mouth as her stomach continued its violent assault, threatening to send her running for the bathroom or a trash can.

  She wasn’t picky.

  She was however, a moron, she thought, cringing as she continued to pretend that she was asleep, but the death grip that she had on his hand most likely gave her away. What was wrong with her crying like that in front of him? It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t also decided to crawl onto his lap, wrap her arms around him and sob against his shoulder for an hour.

  Okay, so it was probably more like five or ten minutes before her stomach had started to act up again, reminding her that her stomach wasn’t happy with the food choices that she
’d made earlier. When she’d been forced to wrap her arms around her stomach and curl up onto her side, Lucifer had laid down behind her, placed his hand on her stomach and somehow made everything worse.

  She’d tormented this man for her own entertainment for the past five years, taking great joy in seeing just how far she could go before he lost his temper and released one of those ferocious little growls that she thought was so cute. She’d purposely screwed with his head, simply because she hadn’t been able to help himself. There had just been something about him that drew her in and made her want to see just how far she could push him and that was the guy that had dropped everything to help her.

  There was absolutely no doubt about it…

  She was a complete bitch.

  God, she just wanted to curl up into herself and disappear, but the strong arm wrapped around her wouldn’t let her do that. He was keeping her safe and protecting her when she didn’t deserve it. He’d gone out of his way to help her when they both knew that he would have probably given anything and everything that he had if he never had to see her face again.

  She should apologize, but honestly, how do you apologize to someone for everything she’d put him through? It didn’t matter that she hadn’t done it out of spite or because she hated him, which she didn’t. She’d done it, because…

  Well, she really wasn’t sure why she’d toyed with him. The only thing that mattered was that she felt like a complete bitch now that he’d done everything within his power to help her. She should make things easier on him by telling him goodnight, that she was going to be okay and didn’t need him, but she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth, because she honestly wasn’t sure that she could handle being alone right now.

  Twenty-nine years of hell and it all came down to a grain. She still couldn’t believe that the solution to her own personal hell was eliminating one food source out of her diet. All those years thinking that there was something seriously wrong with her, secretly terrified that she was actually dying of cancer or something more horrifying if that was even possible and all this time the pain, exhaustion and believing that she wasn’t going to be able to make it through another day was all because of something she’d ate.