“I shall prepare your bath.” He put his knife and fork down and went to the bathroom.
He had an eternity to hunt down Ashe, but Bianca’s time on this plane was short.
Bianca allowed Lucifer to bully her into a steaming, jasmine-scented bath. Allowed? That implied she had some choice in the matter. When she’d balked, he’d threatened to strip both of them and climb in with her. She’d believed him.
The hot water unraveled some of the tension in her muscles, and the glass of wine Lucifer had left beside the bath certainly helped. The problem with relaxing was that it gave her mind time to roam. She couldn’t afford that. Bianca was holding on to control by a rapidly fraying thread. If she allowed herself to think about those bodies, then that hideous fight, she would crumble, and she didn’t want to do that in front of Lucifer.
When she was home again, she could collapse, but for now she needed to keep it together.
“Bianca?” Lucifer knocked on the door. “Cover yourself.”
With a squeak, she gathered bubbles around her bits and yelled back, “Don’t come in, I’m naked.”
“I guessed as much,” he drawled. “And as far as deterrents go, you being naked is hardly effective.”
The door opened, and Lucifer strolled in as if it was a cocktail party. He held up the wine bottle. “Refill?”
“We really need to talk about boundaries.” She grabbed a facecloth and covered her breasts. The rest of her was concealed by bubbles.
“Boundaries?” He raised an eyebrow as he topped up her glass. “Like summoning a being, rendering them powerless, and then blackmailing them into helping you.”
“Well…”
“Now, I’m no expert on human boundaries, but would that be an example of a boundary violation?”
He made a point—a one-sided one—but a point, nonetheless. She concentrated on maintaining body coverage rather than trying to formulate a response.
Lucifer sat on the bench at the vanity. “Raphael is concerned about how you are feeling. He believes I should talk to you about today.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She sank lower in the water, tempted to sink beneath and escape him and this conversation entirely.
Lucifer studied her face. “Are you thinking about it?”
“I’m trying not to.”
“Is that healthy?”
“Really?” Just when she thought he’d gotten as infuriating as he could, he went and proved her wrong. “You’re going to sit there and tell me what healthy human behavior looks like. You don’t even like humans, and you certainly don’t like me.”
He grinned. “I have come to tolerate you, and I definitely enjoy our little battle of wills.” He pursed his lips. “You will ultimately lose, but I do admire a spirited effort.”
“Fuck off.”
“That’s my haglette.” He winked. “Raphael says it’s healthy for humans to talk about their concerns and emotions.”
In a few minutes she’d gone from wanting to drown herself to wanting to drown him. “Then maybe Raphael should be in here.”
Lucifer stilled, and all humor disappeared behind a hard mask. “Raphael has no business being anywhere near you when you’re naked.”
A visceral reaction to that possessive, raspy tone shuddered through her. It felt embarrassingly like arousal, but it had to be stress. They were more or less the same sensation. Right? Right! “And you do?”
Heat blazed in his onyx eyes. “That is a conversation for another day.”
Chapter Sixteen
Staring over the night view of Toronto as Bianca slept, Lucifer did not like the direction his thoughts were taking.
He should be out there hunting for Ashe; instead, he was stuck here serving a blood oath. Blood fucking oath! He snorted. As if a clever hell prince couldn’t make his way around one of those. There was always a loophole—always. But was he looking for one?
No. He was sipping admittedly fine single malt and listening to Bianca’s deep, even breathing. Even more telling, he had no desire to find the loophole.
Two human witches had him tied in knots. The first was understandable. What being could look into the soulful, innocent eyes of eight-year-old Emma and not want to bring back her mother and restore her childish joy?
His entanglement with the second witch was much more perplexing.
Bianca was outspoken, audacious, impertinent, disrespectful and showed an alarming penchant for wearing only black. Even worse were her ugly boots, which would look more appropriate on a steel worker. He had never been tempted to lie with a human, but if he had, it would have been with one of those sophisticated, urbane, witty women who were impeccably groomed and knew not to shoot single malt.
His haglette also had no tendency for self-preservation, acted first and thought later, and seemed to live by the credo “she who dares.” And she dared much.
He couldn’t fathom how a woman such as Bianca had thrown herself away on Weaz-adj. It was inconceivable to him that she’d allowed that oxygen waster near her.
A soft noise from the bedroom made him listen closer.
Raphael would be informing the others about the pendants and how the witches were creating them. Finally, the archangels were taking a more active role in this cluster fuck and had agreed to discover where else the witches had been taken from. If they weren’t aware of the danger already, those covens needed to be warned. And Ashe and his deadly cohorts needed to be cut off from the source of the pendants.
In his long years, he’d seen countless atrocities perpetuated on humans by each other, but what they’d found in that lair was demon against human. In a showdown of human versus demon, the result was predetermined. Hell princes were meant to control demons and prevent such iniquities from taking place. They’d failed—him, the other hell princes, even the archangels.
Guilt was not an emotion he was familiar with. If guilt was what had him twisted up and was muddling his thinking, he didn’t care for it.
Bianca made that distressed noise again and he moved to her open doorway.
She lay on her back, one arm bent at the elbow and flung above her head. She’d eyed the pajamas he’d bought for her from the hotel gift shop with suspicion when he’d presented them to her. Of course she had. They were pale blue and silk, and her system had probably gone into shock about them not being black and cotton.
She whimpered and turned her head. Her eyes shifted beneath her lids, and she moaned.
He took a step closer. Something was disturbing Bianca’s dreams.
Her head lashed to the other side, and she keened a low, “Nooo.”
Lucifer found himself in a quandary. He didn’t, as a rule, hesitate to do exactly what he wanted, when he wanted. He’d wanted to refill her wine, and it hadn’t given him a moment’s pause that she’d been naked and in the bath.
Hindsight being as infuriatingly accurate as it was, he should have thought that action through. Bianca’s dewy, ivory skin peaking above the water had affected him far more than he was comfortable admitting to himself. Scrubbed free of makeup, her face was vulnerable and much younger than her formidable personality suggested.
“No, no, no,” she murmured. Tears tracked from the corners of her eyes into her hairline. Her face contorted in pain.
