Eddie surrendered to her need.
On a deep groan, Shade wrapped his arms around her and pulled her deeper into his embrace. His tongue breached her mouth, coaxing and demanding.
Her muscles softened, and there was no holding back for Eddie. Their kiss completed something inside her that she had never even known was empty. The sublime intimacy of his taste and feel engulfed her. She craved more of him. Needed all of him. The deepest part of her recognized its mate and wanted to complete the bond between them.
“Asmodeus?” A masculine voice intruded.
Eddie moaned. She couldn’t take any interruptions.
“Shade!” The man grew more insistent.
And then, despite her attempts to block out everything but Shade, the male’s power signature hit her—gentle, yet insistent beneath the pure, bright brilliance that signaled an archangel.
Shade pulled back reluctantly. “Raphael.”
The fog of need took a while to clear her senses as Eddie turned toward Raphael.
Tall, broad-shouldered, Raphael jogged toward them dressed in gray slacks and a white button-down rolled up to the elbows to reveal muscular forearms. He reminded Eddie of a hot banker.
“Lucifer is here,” Raphael said as he drew closer to them.
Under her palms, Shade’s muscles stiffened. “Lucifer?”
Up close, Raphael’s deep gold eyes contrasted gorgeously with his umber complexion. “I think he’s been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped?” Shade gaped at him.
Eddie was doing some gaping of her own. “Who would kidnap Lucifer, and how would they do that?”
Shoving his hands in his pockets, Raphael looked sheepish. “I understand. It seems farfetched. Impossible even. But I am certain a group of humans kidnapped Lucifer.” He winced. “In a wheelchair, and he was wearing gray sweatpants.”
Shade choked. “Impossible. Lucifer would never wear sweatpants.”
Chapter Five
He’d been kidnapped. By. Humans. Hell’s sweaty crotch but that was a bitter pill for Lucifer to swallow.
And that was merely the beginning of indignities in a whole crap ton of mortification. He’d been carted around in a wheelchair and then shoved in a van like a sack of grain. This demanded special payback. The kind of retribution he was uniquely qualified to perform. And Bianca sat firmly at pole position on his scorecard.
Throughout what felt like an interminable drive, his abductors remained mostly silent. Some inane pop star grunted and crooned their approximation of music from the radio. Good hells, but when had human music descended to this? They weren’t even trying anymore.
Weaz-adj and Carmen had their heads together in the seat behind him and were whispering. After Carmen launched into yet another ego stroke for Weaz-adj, Lucifer tuned them out. He knew who the real power player here was, and all Carmen’s sweet nothings didn’t change that fact. Bianca was the real danger, thus the one who would suffer his vengeance most.
Bianca.
A witch.
Fuck, he despised witches.
She kept her gaze averted from him. Even with her attention fixed outside the van, Lucifer could almost see thoughts churning in her devious, witchy brain. Witches were always thinking, plotting, conspiring, devising, and brewing up mischief without any thought for how their actions might affect others. This witch was no different.
As human women went, she was good looking. Silky, pitch-black hair in a jaunty ponytail had succumbed to her night’s activities and now canted to one side. Her pert nose turned up slightly at the end and softened the patrician severity of her bone structure. Thick, sooty lashes blinked as she stared at the dark countryside outside the window.
Several piercings dangled from the helix to the lobe of her ear. All predictably witchy—skulls, a black rose, a dangling onyx orb, and what looked like a tiny dragon. She was dressed in head-to-toe unrelenting black with only the skin of her hands, neck, and face visible. He’d lay money on finding tattoos under her tight black shirt.
She must have eased up on the compulsion because he could now operate his own head. He amused himself by imagining what tattoos he might find—triquetra, perhaps a triple moon goddess, definitely a crow or two, and some arcane symbols.
They had left Clayton and were now traveling down a rural road that cut through dense forest on either side. His sense of direction told him they were traveling west of the town. He’d bet his best pair of bespoke loafers she had no idea all flying beings had an innate sense of direction—particularly useful when you were winging above a landscape.
The pretty hag thought him weak and overpowered because she’d slapped a trashy bauble around his neck.
Humans! He barely suppressed a snort. Arrogance and willful stupidity had long been their downfall. You would think with all the thousands of years of evolution that they’d learn a thing or two. But no. They kept tumbling headfirst toward their own destruction. As hell prince for pride, he knew all about arrogance, and it was only justified when you could back it up.
Sweet little hag should have done her research before she’d tangled with him. Or as one rare and more enlightened human had said, “Know thy enemy and know thyself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated.”
Of course, terms like always and never were tossed about by humans as if they had even a glimmering of understanding of either of those concepts.
The van turned right onto an overgrown driveway, bumping them along like pennies in a pocket, until they came to a stop.
Lynn turned in the driver’s seat and looked at him. “Is he all right?”
“He is fine,” Lucifer said.
Bianca jumped and stared at him.
“Oh.” Lynn blinked. “Yes, of course, you can still hear.”
“And speak, apparently.” Bianca narrowed her eyes at him.
“Don’t.” He flicked a glance at the amulet. “You don’t have to render me mute and helpless. I can’t move much more than my head and neck.”
“See.” Lynn gave Bianca a look loaded with reproach. “He won’t give us any trouble.”
Bianca stared at him as she tried to make up her mind. “You planning on giving us any trouble, or do I make you a blob?”
So much trouble, sooo much fucking trouble, haglette, but not at this moment.
“Speak not to the prince of darkness,” Weaz-adj intoned from behind him.
“Jesus!” Bianca’s head snapped around. “Would you stop speaking like a B-grade fantasy movie?”
Lucifer was with her on that one.
“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Lucifer thought he might add his two cents while they were tossing around the quotes.
Weaz-adj gasped and ducked behind Carmen. “He threatened me.” He pointed a shaky finger at him. “You all heard him threaten me.”
