Page 80 of Wicked Believer
As if he heard the unspoken words inside my head, he goes still beside me. It’s the one thing he’s still not fully certain how to do. Not completely.
Love requires vulnerability. Honesty.
A vulnerability that’s hard to come by when you’rethefallen angel.
We both fall quiet then.
“Have you been in Hell?” I ask a few moments later.
“Mostly.”
“Will you take me?”
“To Hell?” he asks, his voice holding a bit of confused disbelief at the end, like he can’t possibly understand why I’m asking.
I nod vigorously, and he chuckles at me before smoothing a hand over my hair.
“I think I need to see it, your kingdom. If I’m supposed to be its queen,” I say.
He lays a soft kiss on my cheek, my shoulder. “Soon, little dove. Soon.”
“And your siblings?”
I’m not sure whether it was one of them or someone else who killed Olivia, who sent that anthrax to hurt me, but if they did, I’d imagine he already has an idea which one of them was behind it by now.
“They’re curious, you see.”
About me. About my newfound powers.
The memory of how Azmodeus cornered me last week is still fresh in my mind.
I frown. “Well, they’ll just have to put up with me.”
“Charlotte.” Lucifer grips my chin, turning me in his arms so he can look at me. We’re skin to skin. “You are bone of my bone. Flesh of myflesh. I’ve been waiting for a more opportune time to present itself, but I think you might prefer something more private these days anyway.”
Before I can understand what he’s getting at, he’s out of bed and down on one knee in front of me, pulling a medium-size jewelry box he must have stashed beneath the bed. Immediately, I sit up, my hands flying up to cover my mouth.
Lucifer kneels for no one.
No one except for me, it seems.
An unexpected tear slides down my cheek, and the desire to throw myself into his arms and tell him “I will” a thousand times over—before he’s even officially asked me—is nearly overwhelming. He opens the box, and I can’t help the sharp inhalation of breath that escapes me.
A Tiffany diamond collar.
Hiscollar.
Not my training collar or the one I wear in the playroom.
One to wear for all the world to see.
Lucifer takes my left hand in his gently, grinning at the sight of the sixty-carat black diamond that’s already there. “Charlotte, my dove, will you be my collared sub? Will you marry me? ‘For real,’ this time?” He smirks irreverently, teasing me with the words I said to him back at The Rainbow Room. “Will you spend your immortal life with me? For now, and the rest of eternity? The choice is yours this time.”
I nod vigorously, suddenly unable to speak as I watch in shock while Lucifer’s eyes get a little misty. I launch myself into his arms with such divine force, we’re both nearly knocked back onto the bedroom floor. But Lucifer catches me, lifting and spinning me in his arms before he pulls us back down onto the bed together.
I climb on top of him eagerly.
He laughs, the sound uncharacteristically light and unguarded as he holds me. “Darling, eventually you’re going to have to—”
