So her name is Lucifel. Just like he said, it’s different from the name everyone knows.
Her heart began to pound like it had in the Bell Chapel, skittish with fear and shock. Kim’s voice was low and earnest, but he could have been screaming, her nerves were fraying so badly.
“You and Nina can’t stay here anymore, Angela. It’s not safe.”
The final nail in the coffin. Her throat went dry.
“Then where?”
“Anywhere but here.”
So I’m officially homeless again . . . and this time, because someone actually wants me dead.
Angela sat up, her arms wobbly. Kim helped her, steadying her by the shoulder—until she accidentally pulled him down, and they ended up pressed together, his handsome features blurred by their closeness. Angela’s mouth was right against the curve of his neck, and without even thinking, she pressed a light kiss to it. Her whole self was succumbing to their proximity, and she could sense his own desire in the firm grip of his hands, and the hungry light of his eyes.
He was more like Troy than he realized.
“No,” she said, angry at herself. “We shouldn’t.”
Kim leaned over her a second longer, but the instant he pulled away, she guided him back.
Why can’t I make up my mind?
Part of her wanted to forget everything, but the other half couldn’t stop remembering that Nina was unconscious in Sophia’s bed, that they were both waiting for her, and that Kim’s cousin was a devil from Hell, eating one of his students like a midnight snack.
Her beautiful angel gazed back at her from one of his portraits, smiling in his ambiguous way, like a celestial Mona Lisa.
Angela tried to shut out the idea that he didn’t approve.
She glanced at the door, noticing with gratefulness that it was shut and locked, and that Kim wasn’t stupid enough to let someone walk in on them alone.
Without a word, Angela put his hands on the buttons of her blouse, telling him with her eyes to begin. Just as silently, he worked at the shirt from the bottom up, relaxing her more with his warmth and a gentle kiss here and there. When it came to what they were about to do, it seemed understood that discussion wasn’t necessary. And Angela had more important questions anyway. “Why is Naamah working for Stephanie?” she said when he’d undone the last button. “Stephanie couldn’t have forced her into it.”
Yet it was difficult to believe she’d summoned a demon to Luz and that was that.
There was more to their relationship than a working one. It only made sense.
So why Stephanie, out of all the blood heads in Luz?
“Oh, a demon’s definition of loyalty is nothing like ours,” Kim said. He kissed her bare shoulder, starting to work on her skirt. “In the end, she’s here to answer other kinds of questions, and she’s hoping Stephanie has the answers. Or that you do,” he said ominously, “if Stephanie proves to be a waste of time. The demons want the Book of Raziel opened, but as I said before, only the Archon can do that. So Naamah’s biding her time, going along with Stephanie’s games . . . waiting for the second to decide when she’ll have outlived her usefulness.”
Angela opened her mouth to ask another question, but Kim covered it with his own quickly. Immediately, it began. A repeat of all the fire she’d felt the other night, though even more intense, because there was nothing to keep them in check anymore.
Kim kissed her until it was a pleasure to be exposed, to feel the coolness in the air. So often—too often—she was head to toe in tights, fabric, anything to hide the scars.
With Kim, things were different.
With him, in a strange way, she was free to be whatever she liked, and she had the peace of knowing that he didn’t care one way or the other.
She stared up at him, aching with the sight of his angular face and strong body, enamored by the thin line of his lips. Locked together like this, the rest of the world swiftly melting away, Angela wasn’t aware of how much losing her dreams had hurt, until she lay against his chest again, and by listening to the rapid beat of his heart, felt how empty her soul had suddenly become.
There was nothing left to live for right now.
“What is it?” he whispered, even gentler than before.
Angela buried her face in his neck.
But she knew he could feel her tears.
After that, she instinctively understood the urgency in them both was partly from guilt and partly from loneliness. She had to bite her lip so hard that it bled, desperate to keep Sophia from hearing them, and when it was all over, and his telltale shudders began, she collapsed against him, letting him kiss the sweat off her skin.
Kim ran fingers through the red stripe in his bangs, sitting up on the bed. He was so pale and unearthly. Yet he was also too human for her to fear the hunger hidden behind his smile.