Page 42 of Letters to Satan

“We got here, and everything was just so… innocent. Corruptible. You have to understand, in Hell, every soul has their own nefarious plans and hidden agendas… even the nice ones. Everyone is scheming and plotting, and there’s constant rebellion and fighting for the sake of conflict. Here at the North Pole, it was organized and, and…peaceful, and hundreds of years of instinct kicked in before I could stop it. There’s no excuse for my actions other than I saw a chance to cause chaos, so I did.”

“By hijacking my elves to make sex toys.” His voice rumbles deep from his chest, his anger escalating with each word as I slowly nod.

“But then we started spending time together, and you were… nice. You didn’t view me as The Lucifer, or a ruler to overthrow, or a tool to gain favor. I wasn’t an opportunity. For the first time in a very long time, you saw me as Damien. JustDamien… just me. And I was so fucking hungry for that, Nik. I was starving for someone to look at me and see the person instead of the position.”

His eyes soften a fraction as he leans back in his chair, his chest rising on a deep breath. “I never saw you for what you could offer me, Damien,” he says quietly, and my heart breaks a little further.

“I realize that now,” I whisper, biting at my lip to fight the sting behind my eyes. “The better I got to know you, the more ashamed I felt about what I was doing. You’re just so goddamnedgood, Nik. You’re good in ways I could never imagine… in ways I couldn’t accomplish if I dedicated a century to trying. But I wanted to try… I wanted to try foryou, and I went to shut it all down because I knew what the truth would do to you.”

Risking another glance at him, I find the same blank slate on his face, and that sting behind my eyes grows to a sharp ache. “You’d hate me, and I couldn’t stand that. I couldn’t fucking handle the idea of you hating me, so I went to put a stop to it, and it was too late. You were there, and you hated me.”

He tracks the rogue tear that’s slipped free, and I furiously wipe it away, unable to hold his intense stare. “I’ve never hated you, Damien.”

“You do,” I insist, despising the break in my voice as I scrub at my face. “You hate me and you’re going to tell me to leave, and I’ll never see you again.”

“You’re no longer The Lucifer?” he asks, interrupting my self-pity party as I glance up and shake my head. “Why not?”

I swallow hard, and slowly, I force the words out. “Because if I’m The Lucifer, I have to be in Hell… and if I’m there, I can’t be here with you.” His eyes land on mine, some of that fire igniting behind them. Rage and frustration or something else, something sweeter, I can’t yet tell.

“Here with me?” he repeats, and still, I’m unable to read him.

“My heart can’t be in the position if it’s trapped here with you, now, can it?” His only reaction is a slight lift to his brow, and he ignores me, which, I won’t lie, really fucking stings.

“If you are no longer The Lucifer, why did the demons follow you here and agree to work? What do they possibly gain from following a former leader?”

I mean, ouch.

Exhausted, a slow sense of defeat has washed over me, and I slump in my chair, giving a vague wave of my hand. “I have been in office a long time, Nik, and despite what you might think about me, I’ve always been a fair ruler. I listen to problems, and, when I can, fix them. The inhabitants of Hell hold a great deal of respect for me,formerleader or not.”

He stares at me for a while, face unyielding, and the last tiny spark of hope starts to die in my chest as he takes a breath and pushes out a drawn-out, heavy sigh.

Rejection.

This is rejection, and I can hear it in his breath and taste it in the fucking air between us. It’s rejection, and now… now I’ll have nothing.

Be nothing.

“Come here,” he finally says.

“What?” My head snaps up so fast I’m surprised it doesn’t bounce.

“Come here, Damien.” His voice is soft but insistent, and I force my shaky legs to stand and walk around the desk, never taking my eyes from his as he swivels in his chair to face me. “Closer,” he demands, and I step forward between his knees. He shoves myjacket off and tosses it away, and I somehow find the indignation to scowl. His hands wrap around my thighs, and I have to grab his neck for balance as he hoists me to straddle his lap.

“Look me in my eyes and tell me what you want from me.”

My hands tremble as they hold on to him, inching closer. “I don’t want anything from you, Nik. For the first time in my life, I don’t want to take. I want to give. I want to give you the entire goddamned world, and all I ask in return is that we go back to pretending you could ever love something as evil as me.”

“Pretending?”

“Just let me believe it, Nik… let me believe I’m good enough…”

“Damien,” he breathes, brushing my lips in a kiss. “You think I could fake this?” Sheepishly, I stare at him, before a very unmanly sniffle leaves me. Yeah, we’re going to erase that from this memory like it never happened.

Nik smiles. “Sweet Damien, I started falling in love with you the moment I first glimpsed that snarky smile and saw straight past that mask you wore. You might think you have the world fooled, but I’ve seen your heart. You have been it for me from the day we met.”

“But I fucked it all up,” I whisper, another stupid tear breaking free as my frustrated hand goes to erase it, only to be caught mid-air in his giant fist.

“You did,” he agrees, kissing the salty trail off my skin. “And now you’re going to have to work hard to make it all better.”

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