“You don’t have to stay here and look after me,” Eddie said with a glaring lack of conviction and even less enthusiasm.
Face softening, he stared down at her. “Yes, I do.” He tugged her closer and kissed her temple. “It is my honor to watch over you, Eddie.” He smirked. “And being in my demesne would be a serious crimp in my efforts to woo you.”
“Why?” The question burst out of her. She didn’t get his attachment to her. He could have anyone and everyone else.
Shade stopped them outside Mack’s butchery and put his hands on her shoulders. “Why am I wooing you?”
She appreciated that he understood what she meant, and she nodded.
“Because you’re all that I never knew I wanted or needed.” He cupped her face between his palms. “Because I love you, Edme Ward.” Her joints melted under the blaze of heat that enveloped her. None of the weirdness or her nagging insecurities mattered anymore. They had no place between them. This incredible, beautiful, powerful being loved her, Edme Ward. It suddenly didn’t seem to matter how or why. The only thing that mattered was getting closer to him.
His eyes burned molten as he dipped his head toward her. He’d kissed her before, but that had been when he was using his lust powers against her. This kiss would be real, and Edme wanted it like she wanted her next breath. The world stood still for her, confined to his mouth so close to hers and the constant ache in her body for him.
Shade’s lips touched hers.
Eddie closed her eyes against the onslaught of sensations: the heat of his body, the soft press of his lips, the strength of his chest against her palms, the heady honey and musk scent of him.
His tongue touched her bottom lip and requested entry.
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.
