Page 172 of Boy of Ruin
This room is full of pain.
Sex can heal.
And even if it can’t, it fucking feels good trying.
Before I can think too much about it, Maverick’s fingers are at the edge of my tank top, warm against my smooth skin.
But I freeze, the second I think to lift my arms over my head.
The scar.
The fucking J.
“Aw, don’t be shy, Angel. I know how you really are,” Mav whispers in my ear. I hear footsteps, light and hesitant, and I think it’s Ella, but Mav is still trying to pull my tank top over my head, while Lucifer’s eyes seem to be burning a hole in his fingers just under my shirt.
“Why you so scared, Angel?” Mav asks me quietly, but then he stills behind me, his body radiating tension.
Because he knows too. He changed me that first night.
Saw me naked.
He clears his throat, doesn’t let go of my shirt, but he starts to speak, and I know he’s talking to Lucifer. “Why don’t you hit that DMT?” he asks quietly. “Might make this more fun for you.”
I tense but Lucifer has his fingers around that pipe, and he glances down at it in his hand, then back up to me. “No.”
Mav laughs. It’s carefree. He’s convincing. “Come on, bro. We have to set everything up anyway, and I need to ask my wifey for permission before I can play.”
Cain’s dark rumble comes from behind us. “Sorry, Ella. Doesn’t matter what you say. Ignis is for the fire.”
Lucifer ignores Cain, but his eyes dart up, just past me, and I know he’s looking at Ella. That familiar feeling of anger starts to swell within me. He didn’t bother asking my fucking permission. But I push the anger down. I don’t want him to see J’s initial.
After a moment, Lucifer sighs, brushing his hand over his curls, then picking up the little baggie. He jerks his head. “She doesn’t need to see this.”
I hear someone laugh. I think it’s Cain, and before I can twist in Mav’s arms, music starts to play.
Kid Cudi. The Mood.
Mav’s fingers trail up my arms, goosebumps forming in the wake of his touch, and he says to me, “Let’s get you some water,” then pulls me to my feet after he stands, too. I glance back at my husband, see him watching me as Atlas comes to sit beside him, a hand on his knee.
His eyes don’t leave me until Mav, Ella, and I are in the kitchen.
The same song is still playing.
I smell something like burnt plastic, but Mav assures me it’s the DMT. As if that’s an assurance.
The lights are off, and it takes me a second to even find Lucifer.
But I see him, because those red candles are in silver holders in a circle in the center of the floor, enough room for someone to lie down inside with space left over. The flames flicker and dance along the walls, over the pale planes of my husband’s face
His back is against the wall, outside of the circle. He’s near the front door, the pipe beside him, his shirt off, legs to his chest and his wrists on his knees. Atlas is still beside him, and the rest of the boys filter in behind me, Ella, and Mav.
No one is touching me.
I didn’t talk to anyone since I left this room, but Mav and Ella had a whispered conversation, I assume about this initiation.
I know what DMT is. I assume Lucifer has done it before, because he used to talk to me all the time about psychedelics. How they could change the world. Heal people. I always found it ironic, because of all the times he’d done them, he hadn’t seemed healed.
But when I mentioned that to him before, lightly, he told me, in all seriousness, that drugs couldn’t heal him.
