We did it. We crossed the intimacy Rubicon. There’s something to this metaphor business, because I don’t feel the least self-conscious. I’d be perfectly content to stay here in Luke’s arms and bed without a stitch of clothing on.
We can’t do that. We have to get going. It’ll be a genuine miracle if Saraya hasn’t murdered Sean or come up with an elaborate plan for the guardian version of torture. (Is there a guardian version of torture?) And I still want to know if Sean shoved Luke on purpose or if it was an accident. Luke is even more precious to me now that I know what it would feel like to lose him. I will not let Sean hurt him.
Luke has his arm around me, but I crook my neck to look at him. His ridiculously gorgeous face gazes back at me. He’s warm and breathing and that is everything I need in this moment.
“I know,” he says. “We can’t take our time.”
I like that he feels the same regret I do about that. “Yeah. Alas, alack, as they say.”
Not the faintest hint of a smile in response. My nerves pick back up. Maybe the intimacy level has changed for me, but not for Luke? Is that possible? Even though we said we loved each other? My other relationships have never felt like this, serious and meaningful, and so sex never felt like that big of a step. Half the time with those two guys, it felt more like an awkward box I needed to check off. My body enjoyed it, but not like this. My heart beat harder due to exertion, but it wasn’t involved in the outcome. I usually got dressed afterward as fast as I could without seeming rude.
I’m trying to figure out how to ask Luke if we’re okay without just blurting out the words when he speaks.
“Father told me something,” he says.
It’s not us, then. That’s a relief.
He’s plainly troubled by whatever it is. I can see it in the furrow of his brow. He also lifts the arm that’s not supporting me and strokes the bandage on his leg, making me think whatever wound it hides does hurt.
“You’re sure you’re feeling all right?” I ask. “That demon dog medic looked pretty serious.”
“I was out for a good bit,” Luke says. “The cut is from Saraya the Rude’s arrow. It didn’t kill me, so I assume it’ll make me stronger. Did it work…” he lifts a single eyebrow, “in bed?”
“Are you really trying to do sexy fortune cookie talk to distract me from the fact you’re hurt?”
He oozes heat in my general direction. I’m not immune, but it confirms he’s trying to distract me. Like that’s possible. I sit up and hesitate. I want to remove the bandage and check the wound, but Luke says, “Don’t worry about it. That’s not the problem.”
“What is?” Because I’m still worried about the injury.
Luke breathes out a sigh. “The thing Father said to me is that … Sean’s my brother.”
I blink and do a double take. Whatever I expected, this wasn’t on the table. His brother? Luke’s brother is Sean? Sean is Luke’s brother? “What?”
“My thoughts exactly.” Luke says this in a way that doesn’t reveal his actual feelings on the subject. I bet they’re more complex.
I don’t know how to take this revelation, but then I remember how Luke has grown up—isolated with tutors, one good and one terrible that I know of—and with a mother and father who treat him like a chess piece—an important one, but nonetheless—in their games. When we met, one of the words I’d have used to describe him would be lonely.
“But this is good, right?” I ask carefully. “You have a brother! Another family member.” For all I know, Lucifer spreads it around. I’ve never gotten that impression, though. “Wait. You don’t have any other brothers, do you? Or sisters?”
“I don’t think so.” Luke searches the air like there’s an answer to be found there. “But Callie, Father called Sean ‘the good son.’”
“Maybe it was ironic?” I pause. “No, your father doesn’t do irony.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Luke’s brain is working so hard, I can practically hear it.
This changes everything. I want to get back to Sean to confront him and get his perspective on this. It might make him easier to work with. “We’d better get cleaned up and go. We need to tell him.”
“He knows.”
“He does?” I don’t get Lucifer’s play here. Or Sean’s, keeping this to himself. He could’ve told me after Luke was injured. This must also explain his ability to travel with ease. I pry myself out of the sheets. “We should hurry.”
“Now, now. Back to this cleanliness business.” Luke gives me a wolf’s smile, relaxed on the bed like an invitation. “I mean, we could leave now and everyone we see will know exactly what we just did…”
I don’t blush. Though I am thinking about it. “To see your mother probably and your dad definitely. No thanks.”
“Well then, we’d best get into the shower.” His fingers drum on his bare stomach and it’s a mouthwatering sight.
I pretend it’s not and put my hand on my hip. “You never take a shower. You’re a bath guy.”
“I’ll make an exception, in the interest of you and time.”
I envision what he means. Yes, we’re in a hurry. But this is a stolen moment. We can stay here on the other side of the Rubicon’s banks a little longer, hidden from our troubles and whatever it is about having Sean as a brother that is making Luke’s mind work overtime.
“Can you make it so no one interrupts?” I ask.
“Jeannie blink,” he says, and I catch the reference to I Dream of Jeannie—one of my mom’s TV Land favorites—and marvel once again at the wide range of learning down here in Hell.
He lunges forward out of bed and he must think he hides his wince from me. He doesn’t.
“Come here,” he says, and I extend my hand because he’ll hate it and overexert himself if I ask if he’s up to this. He kisses me, open-mouthed and hot, and I’m ready for this shower adventure in seconds, worry be quite literally damned.
When Luke presses back from my lips, he leads me forward into his ridiculously large and luxurious bathing chamber. The obsidian shower with the rainfall fixture overhead in what’s probably a ridiculously valuable metal.
“It still seems weird to me that demons have bathrooms,” I say.
“It’s a choice. Is there anything better than a steamy shower after a day in a sulfurous hellscape? Or a nice hot bath to wash away the sweaty fruits of labor in be…”
“Don’t say it.”
I might not be embarrassed around Luke, but I’m not as comfortable where this stuff is concerned. I’m working on it.
“Your wish is my command.” He waves a hand and the rainfall showerhead comes on and we are doing something of a dance to get into the water and it feels so nice for a second. I lean against the wall.
Which is a wall. A hard, rock wall.
I search for a better spot as Luke kisses my neck and I capture his mouth and things get steamier—by which I mean actual steam surrounds us.
The problem is, there’s really no comfortable place on this wall. And being damp in addition to, well, wet is just making me feel like I’ve entered a naked figure skating competition. The obsidian floor is slick under my feet and Luke catches me against him when I almost fall.
I clutch his shoulders and laugh. “I don’t think I’m a shower sex type of girl,” I manage to get out.
Luke looks dismayed for a moment, but then our eyes meet through my laughter and he loses it too. “One of those things that seems like a better idea in theory than in practice,” he says. “Got it.”
I have another idea. My heart is fully engaged here. Body too.
“I’ve got an alternative,” I say.
“Bed?” he asks.
I’ve got the prince of Hell all to myself for a little while longer. I thought I’d lost him and I’m not done yet, I want to say. But I say, “Not yet.”
“I’m intrigued.” He raises his eyebrows.
I lean forward and press a kiss to his pec, which jumps at my touch. I place my palm there. I do the same with the other. “Turn off the water,” I say.
He does, and I push him back into the shower, slowly, guiding him against the wall that made me awkward. By contrast, he seems completely at ease.
“Towel?” I ask.
He frowns with curiosity, but produces a fluffy black towel from the air. I shimmy to dry off and then I ball it up and he watches me place it on the floor of the shower in front of him and lower to my knees.
He watches me like he couldn’t look away if the apocalypse came. Again.
I reach out to stroke him and say one more word. “Wings.”
They stretch out from his shoulders in seconds. I miss that they’re not mine anymore, but I love knowing how it will feel when I reach up and caress one of the feathers.
Luke’s wounded leg bends at the knee, but he moans in absolute pleasure. “Callie…”
Yes, I do like it here on the other side of the intimacy Rubicon.
After another, faster, more frenzied round of—ahem—sexytimes, I take a quick shower and leave my hair wet. Despite the fact whatever we’re about to face is not going to be fun—a Lilith who’s been kept from her son, angry med demons, and Lucifer (snarl), the rest of it—I feel infinity better walking out of here together.
I’m not sure what all of this means exactly.
And I haven’t mentioned the whole not-really-entirely-human business either. Luke’s dealing with enough. He’ll have some guilt about it, until I can prove that this means I fit here. I’ll tell him when the time is right.
What a pair we are.
I leave the bathing chamber and find Luke waiting patiently, dressed and ready to go.
“Fresh as a daisy, or a bundle of cloth daisies,” Luke says, and gestures to the neatly folded stack of my jeans and GREAT ESCAPE game T-shirt on the corner of the bed. “What does that mean, I wonder, the daisy business?”
I cross over and drop the towel I’m wearing to change. I pull on my underwear and jeans, trying to remember what I read in a book on idioms. “In Old English daisy was something like day’s eye,” I say and pull my shirt on, “because it opens and closes with daylight. And it looks like the sun. Or it might be something else. It’s one of those tricky ones.”
I glance over to find Luke shaking his head and beaming at me like I’m up in the sky burning at 28 million degrees, give or take.
“You would know that,” he says.
“I would,” I agree. “We’re still trying to save Sean’s soul?”
“I suppose so.”
“Lucifer thought, what, you’d kill each other?” I ask.
“I wish I knew,” he says. Evasively. I don’t like it. “I’m dropping the Jeannie blink,” he says. “Say your prayers.”
He’s still distracting me, but I play along for now. Having an unknown sibling and being embroiled in your father’s game with them—that “good son” business—is heavy. And I don’t know if he means that final part literally. Probably best not to pray too loudly here, so I lift my hand and cross my fingers.
Luke snaps his.
The doors to the bed chamber fly open immediately and Lilith is in the lead with Porsoth right on her heels, black robe like a sail behind him. The moth that led me to Luke flutters in the air excitedly.
“I would never have helped you if I’d known how selfish you would be,” Lilith says. “It reminds me of myself, and that is not a compliment. And you, son, to dally when your mother needs to ensure you are whole and healthful.”
Luke gives me an amused look and then rises. He lifts his hands and spreads them out. “As you can see, I’m fine.”
Lilith’s eyes narrow and she rakes over him. He’s dressed in his usual uniform of black, leather jacket and all. There are tired smudges that don’t usually exist in the hollows under his own eyes. But otherwise he looks normal.
Which is to say gorgeous and untouchable and I love him all the more knowing he may have powers but he’s not invulnerable. Not to me. I want to protect him. I’m his, and he’s mine.
I’m disappointed Lucifer isn’t with them. I’d like to get a glimpse into the gears turning in his clockwork heart. I’ll settle for Porsoth’s insights.
“Can I speak to you privately?” I ask him, my voice low.
Porsoth’s beak inclines.
“Be right back,” I say to Luke, who’s trying to hold off a rare charm offensive from his mother.
Luke says, “Callie, don’t leave me. Please tell Mother that I’m fine, that I proved it already in—”
“No,” I say. “I will not be saying whatever comes next and neither will you.”
“I’m still furious with you,” Lilith says, though she sounds somewhat eased by seeing that Luke is more or less his same self and not dying. “Both.”
I tug Porsoth’s arm and tow him out to the antechamber. Three ghoulish tusked demons wait in the corner, but Porsoth flaps a wing and says, “You may go.”
“Did you know?” I ask. “About Sean?”
Porsoth reaches up to fuss with his collar. “I do apologize, but I was prevented from saying anything. I didn’t put it together until I saw the two of them side by side in Lexington. I knew there had been … an experiment earlier. I did not know Sean had been in Hell. I still can’t find any record of his death.”
“He wasn’t dead. He snuck in.”
“Oh.” Porsoth flaps his wings. “The master will not have liked that. I feel somewhat responsible—I, I was the one who suggested Sean’s mission be revealed to him on his seventeenth birthday. He … didn’t take it well. Our lives are so long, and then Luke came under my tutelage and … I forgot about him.”
I frown. There’s no way the Porsoth I know has ever forgotten anything or anyone so important. “Or you were made to forget,” I suggest.
Porsoth’s beak opens and closes, opens and closes. He doesn’t say anything, which is confirmation and agreement. Lucifer didn’t want Luke finding out from anyone but him. Why?
“Lucifer will fear the strength they might have together. One must be the heir,” Porsoth says.
“What is this, Succession? What are you saying?”
“That this deadline is serious. I don’t know what he means to do at the end, but I fear for our prince. He has already been at death’s door. My lady—”
“Callie,” I correct automatically.
“Callie, I would not be a good friend if I did not warn you that Lucifer is against your match. He is focused on Luke … But I fear part of his aim is to split the two of you apart.”
“Nothing I didn’t already know.” Lilith being angry at me too is not a comforting fact. Speaking of … “Lilith told me that I’m becoming immortal? You knew that too, didn’t you? You said I was stronger than we knew when Lucifer gave me Luke’s powers.”
“Again, I am sorry, but we thought it would be better for you both to discover in your own time. It’s similar to what happened with Lilith herself. Crossing the boundary between your world and Hell so frequently, it has an effect.”
“We?”
“Rofocale and I.”
I can’t believe this. “I guess Agnes knows too. You’re as bad about keeping secrets as Luke can be. Knock it off. It’s not helpful.”
Porsoth is quiet, chastened. I don’t feel bad this time. It needed saying.
“I should get back in there,” I say.
Porsoth raises a wing. “One more thing…”
“Yes?”
“Try to keep him safe.”
My throat tightens with emotion. I’m back to my usual skill set, which is mostly summoning random facts and thinking my way out of problems. Coming from Porsoth, what he’s asked is an honor.
“I promise I’ll do everything I can.”
We return to Luke’s bed chamber. I cross to stand by Lilith’s side, where Luke is waiting patiently and being fussed over. He smiles at me.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come get you,” I tell Lilith. “Thanks for the moth help.”
The moth bobs and weaves around us.
“Apologies are so pedestrian,” she says. “There’ll be a time to repay me.”
I exchange a look with Luke. “We’d better get going,” he says. Then, he adds, “Where are we going?”
Porsoth and Lilith wait with expectation.
Luke picks up on my hesitation. “Now I’m intrigued. Where?” he asks.
“Guardian City,” I say.
Luke’s smile fades. Lilith gasps. Porsoth’s wings draw tight circles of panic, the hands at the ends of them wobbling. He collapses onto the floor in a heap of wings and scholar’s robes.
That went over well.