Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set (74 page)

“Do not tell anyone,” he said without looking at Nina.

The back of her hand brushed his and he looked down at her. She shrugged. “Who do you think I’m going to tell about any of this? Everyone would think I’d gone crazy. I still sort of think I’ve gone crazy.”

He reached up and swept his fingers across her cheek, clearing the rogue wavy strands of her auburn hair back behind her ear.

“You have not gone crazy, Nina.” He feathered his fingers down her cheek again, along the line of her jaw to her chin, and pressed his thumb there, keeping her looking up into his eyes. “But you have driven me crazy.”

She hesitated, a war erupting in her eyes, one that made him want to take back his words because he was pushing her too hard again. He had promised to give her answers if she came with him, and he meant to do just that. He had to confess everything and then it would be down to her to make a decision that he knew would be difficult for her.

“I have realised why Mihail chose you, Nina, and what his plan was for you.”

Her cheeks paled, her green eyes growing enormous as her fear trickled into him through the point where they touched.

“What?” she whispered, her voice shaking so much that he ached to comfort her, even when he knew that what he was about to tell her would only scare her further.

But he needed to be honest with her, because he wasn’t sure what he was going to do if he was right.

He feared the first woman to steal his heart would end up stolen from him and he would be left with nothing but a solemn yet beautiful reminder of what he had lost.

He lowered his free hand to her stomach, denied the urge to use his powers to seek an answer to the question burning in his heart, aware that it might hurt Nina and any child she carried, and held her gaze.

“They wanted you to have my child.”

Nina stared up into Lucifer’s golden eyes, sure that she had heard him wrong. Her hand fell to her stomach and she tensed when it touched his where it rested over her belly button. It wasn’t possible. Maybe Heaven didn’t know that.

She shook her head at such a ridiculous thought, sure that whatever higher powers existed in this world, they knew what they were doing and they had chosen her for a reason.

Lucifer frowned at her, his head tilting to his right, and searched her eyes. “You do not believe me?”

“I’m not sure what I believe anymore, Lucifer.” She stepped back, needing the space and some air. Her stomach turned when she sucked down a sharp breath, getting a hit of thick, moist and rank air rather than the clear crispness that she needed. Her throat tightened and a weight settled on her chest, pressing down on it harder the longer she stared into Lucifer’s eyes.

The more she saw the belief in them.

Mihail had called him a liar, but the only one she knew had lied to her was the angel himself. Lucifer hadn’t been honest with her, but when she kept her head and tried to look at it from his perspective, she could understand why. He had known that she would freak out and run away from him, rushing headlong into what she felt sure was a very dangerous realm and into the arms of an even more dangerous man.

That man was an angel, with the white wings to prove it in every clichéd way possible, but she hadn’t felt safe with him. Her heart had warned her not to trust him and her instincts had told her that he was dangerous, out to get something from her and poison her against Lucifer for some reason.

Was it really possible that that reason was the fact that she was pregnant?

“I can’t believe it,” she muttered and kept shaking her head, struggling to believe that there might be life inside her already. “Why would they choose me? I don’t understand why they would choose me. It doesn’t make any sense. It just doesn’t… and you already have a daughter. Why would they want you to make another one?”

He moved a step nearer to her and she resisted the urge to back off another one, torn between allowing him to close the gap between them so she could draw comfort from his proximity and pushing him away so she could have the space she desperately needed.

The air grew thicker and she wheezed as she tried to pull it down into her lungs.

Lucifer’s expression darkened, he caught hold of her arm before she could move, and suddenly it was dark and she couldn’t see anything. She tried to wrestle free of him but his grip tightened and he tugged her against his hard body, his arms wrapping around her to pin her to his chest. When the darkness receded, she found herself standing in the apartment he had given her during her stay.

She hadn’t really had time to process the fact that he could apparently teleport when he had taken her from London. She wasn’t sure she’d had enough time to process anything that had happened since she had awoken on his chaise longue in that gothic room to find him watching her. It had all been a whirlwind of craziness that still challenged her to a degree, muddling her emotions and leaving her unsure of what she was doing and whether she had actually lost her mind.

His fingers brushed her cheek, the caress so light that it wreaked havoc on her strength, tearing it away from her until she wanted nothing more than to lean into his touch and allow him to be strong for her.

She couldn’t do that.

She had done that before and it had only ended with her hurt and alone.

She pushed his hand away and paced across the room, breathing deep of the fresher air and using the time to clear her head so she could at least think straight and ask the right questions. Lucifer’s gaze tracked her, heating her as it increased in intensity, threatening to wreck her focus. She tossed him a glare, one she hoped warned him to give her some space and time.

“I will explain everything. I do not expect it will do me any favours, but I have made a promise to be honest with you, and that is what I will be.” He leaned his bottom against the back of the couch, pressed his palms against the black wooden frame and curled his fingers over the red velvet.

A single glance at him was enough to tell her that he expected whatever confession he was about to make to do far worse than paint him in a slightly bad light.

He expected her to despise him, and it was clearly hurting him.

And that messed with her head worse than anything up to this point.

He was the Devil. The original fallen angel. Ruler of Hell. A very bad person if the stories were anything to go by. If bad person was a way of saying the most evil being in the world.

But as she looked at him where he leaned opposite her, a look in his golden eyes that spoke of fear and resignation, laced with a touch of defeat and a dash of hope, she couldn’t see a monster.

He had been cold and distant at times, but he had been warm more times than that. He had been kind and considerate, affectionate even. She had seen a man who clearly loved his daughter and who was pained by the thought he wouldn’t be allowed to see his grandson. She had been with a man who had been gentle with her, had sought to please her and had protected her. Everything she knew about him went against the picture of the Devil she had grown up with.

But she wasn’t about to let that fool her into believing that all of it had been real.

She was determined to keep her head, view things objectively, listen to everything he had to say and think everything over before she made any move of her own.

Lucifer glanced down at his polished leather shoes, his handsome face settling in sombre lines that made her want to go to him, sweep her fingers across his sculpted cheek and make him look at her. She wanted to ease his pain, and it took all of her willpower to remain where she was and deny that need.

“You know who I am… and I am sure you can guess what that means. I am by no means a good man, Nina. I was shaped by circumstance into what I am today. I was used, my loyalty betrayed, and I was weak when I should have been strong.” He frowned at his shoes, the black slashes of his eyebrows dipping together above eyes slowly turning red. Fangs flashed between his lips as he spoke, and as she stood there watching the changes happening, she realised that she no longer feared him when he looked like this. He flicked a glance at her and she schooled her features, hiding her feelings from him. She built a wall around them, shielding them from his steady gaze, unwilling to reveal them to him when she was still uncertain of everything because she feared he would use them against her somehow.

She had been manipulated too many times to count and she had made a promise that it would never happen again.

Her mind supplied that it was too late and that promise was already broken. The angel had manipulated her and, for all she knew, Lucifer had too.

Her heart rebelled against that. Lucifer had said that she had seduced him, and deep in her heart she knew that it hadn’t been a lie to convince her to come with him or make her believe him.

“Go on,” she whispered when he didn’t look as if he had the heart to continue.

“I swore vengeance against those who had betrayed me, Nina. I turned my prison into my palace and I reigned with an iron fist.” He lowered his eyes to the floor at her feet. She could believe that he had plotted revenge, because hadn’t she done the same when she had been hurt? She had tried to lash out at her ex-husband by showing him how wonderful her life was without him when his had gone to hell. She had wanted to hurt him. Lucifer had wanted to do the same, only his plan for revenge was far bigger than hers and she had the feeling the consequences of it would be far greater. “As part of my plan, I have spent millennia attempting to… sire offspring.”

Nina didn’t need to see his eyes to know what he meant by that. “You seduced women… angels?”

He shook his head. “There are no female angels. I… only mortal females can carry my offspring.”

Cold slithered through her veins and she curled her fingers into fists as a viper hissed in her heart, whispering words that stoked her anger and made her want to back another step away from him, because she felt he was going to hurt her. The urge to lash out and deal the first blow was too strong, overwhelming her as it had always done since she had left her ex-husband, keeping her closed off from the world and protected inside her bubble.

A bubble that had begun to feel lonely, but still felt like a necessity to her.

It saved her from being hurt by others.

And Lucifer was going to destroy her when he realised that Heaven had brought him the wrong woman to knock up.

“So you’re saying you’ve been sleeping with every woman available in order to make yourself a child… bringing them to this place… probably to this room right?”

“No, Nina.” He pushed off, rising onto his feet, and shook his head. She shook hers right back at him and held her hand out, silently warning him to keep his distance. Devil or not, if he came near her, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from slapping him right now. “I never brought them here.”

“Well, that’s comforting.”

His jaw muscle twitched. “I know it does not sound good. I am confessing that I have slept with many women, but I have not been with a woman in months.”

“Months?” She barked out a laugh. “Wow… way to hold yourself back. So because you’ve been keeping it in your pants for a few months, Heaven just decided to stick me in your path… knowing you’d be horny… and that makes me what… just another inevitable notch on your bedpost?”

Her heart hurt and she pulled down a deep breath, resisted the temptation to rub her chest, and refused to let the tears stinging the backs of her eyes make an appearance. She should have stayed in her apartment in London. She shouldn’t have let Lucifer sweep her up in everything again, making her foolishly believe that somehow everything would miraculously end up perfect for her.

There was nothing perfect about this situation.

She had fallen in love with the Devil.

It didn’t get more messed up than that.

She folded her arms across her chest and began pacing again, needing the automatic motion to give her something to focus on so she could clear her head.

“Nina,” Lucifer whispered but she refused to look at him, fearing that if she did, she would lose her fragile grip on her heart and it would betray her and leap the gap to him. “There is something different about you. You are the first female I did not want to sleep with.”

Nina turned on him with a glare, her blood catching fire on hearing that. “Well, that’s lovely. How noble of you to sleep with me when you didn’t want to.”

He flinched away from her and then rallied, reaching his left hand out to her. She scowled at it, turned her nose up and resumed pacing. Faster now. Her swift agitated strides carried her back and forth across the expansive room, her trainers squeaking occasionally on the obsidian stone floor.

Lucifer raked his fingers through his black hair, messing it up as he tugged at the lengths and gritted his teeth. Frustration flashed in his eyes as she glanced at him, but other emotions shone in them too, ones she had never seen before and gave her pause.

Where was the confident man he had been around her for most of the time they had been together?

He had shown her a vulnerable side of himself, but there had always been a sliver of confidence remaining in his gaze, as if he was sure of himself despite allowing her to see his weakness.

His weary sigh kept her gaze on him and her pacing slowed, concern beginning to outweigh the other emotions in her heart.

“It was not an act of nobility, Nina. You were the first woman I did not want to sleep with because I feared…” He gritted his teeth again, growled through them, and clawed at his hair. “Fuck… I fear… so much that you are in on this plan and that you will leave me… and that… that would… I have survived atrocities… torture so vile… but nothing I have suffered… none of it broke me… but if you left me… that would destroy me.”

Her vision blurred as hot tears filled her eyes, causing Lucifer to wobble out of focus. She scrubbed them away and looked at him with clear eyes and an even clearer heart. His heart was in his eyes for her to see, every emotion that had been in his words as he had laid that fragile part of himself on the line, and no matter what she told herself, she couldn’t bring herself to believe what Mihail had told her.