Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set (72 page)

“I am sorry,” he whispered and they only grew wider. “I need to borrow you as a vessel.”

Fire blazed through him and he cried out in time with Erin. Black lightning zinged through his bones, crackled through the link between his palm and her brow, and then consumed him. The darkness faded and he opened his eyes.

He stared right back at himself through wide eyes.

“What the fucking hell?” His body snarled the words in his voice and turned on the spot, horror crossing his face.

Mortified was not a strong enough word to cover how Lucifer felt, especially when his body turned back to glare at him, his eyes glowing crimson as he snarled and his black horns flaring further forwards like twin dangerous daggers.

“What the fucking hell, indeed,” Lucifer muttered and covered his hand with his mouth when his words came out in Erin’s voice.

He hadn’t anticipated that she would swap places with him too, occupying his body. He had thought that she would remain in her own body, her soul subdued by the strength of his.

“You took things too far this time, you bastard!” His body went from glaring at him to looking down at itself. “Oh, God, this is wrong. So… so… wrong.”

Lucifer roared on hearing that word and lashed out. His arm moved ridiculously slowly, feeling sluggish and weak, and he stopped before he was even close to hitting himself across the face. Nothing seemed quite right.

He looked down at himself and his eyebrows shot up. He should have considered that he really would be inside Erin’s body. She was right.

It felt wrong.

So, so wrong.

He shuddered and considered switching back with her, but Nina popped into his head. His beautiful Nina. He had to see her again and explain. He needed to know that she was safe.

“I am sorry.” He was heading for the world record on the number of times he had apologised in one day but Erin looked as if she was considering grievous bodily harm and it was his body that she was occupying. “I will explain when I return.”

“When you return?” she screamed in his voice and lurched forwards, towards him. “What the fuck? Don’t you bloody dare!”

She snagged his arm before he could teleport to London, and he could only stare at her as he remained where he was rather than disappearing from her grasp. She had grown more powerful than he had ever expected, because no matter what he tried, he couldn’t teleport while she was holding him. Or perhaps it was because she occupied his body, and he hers. It was weak, and he could feel it inhibiting his powers, dampening them to a degree. It would have irritated him if he hadn’t been about to venture to the mortal realm, where his powers normally caused havoc even when he tried to contain them. With Erin’s weaker body inhibiting them, there was a chance he could reach Nina without causing mass destruction.

If he could convince Erin to let him go that was.

He looked down at the hand on his slender bare arm and realised she wouldn’t release him unless he did things her way.

He would have to explain things to her now, but it was going to be the short version of events. He wasn’t sure where Mihail had taken Nina, but he needed to find her before something happened to her. There was every chance that Heaven would order her death if she had already fulfilled whatever purpose they had given her.

He couldn’t let that happen.

“Mihail left a mortal female in my courtyard and I believe she was meant as bait.”

His body raised an eyebrow at him. “Why?”

Lucifer wished that he had an answer to that question. “I do not know.”

His body folded his arms and frowned, a very unlike him huff leaving his lips. “Did you do anything with this woman?”

The look in his golden eyes said that Erin was thinking badly of him, and that she believed that he had mistreated the female. He hadn’t, but her question did make him realise something.

Something that chilled him to the depths of his soul and ignited a fear that he knew why Mihail had brought the woman, and why he had taken her from Lucifer.

Lucifer had played his part.

And the angel had played him well.

But he wouldn’t get away with it.

Lucifer wouldn’t allow Heaven to get their hands on his unborn child.

It explained why Mihail had returned to Hell, only to leave again when Lucifer had attempted to destroy him and had almost destroyed himself in the process. Mihail had believed that Nina had been with him long enough to be seduced by him. The angel must have had a way of discovering whether she had slept with him or not, and had left her in Hell when he had realised that Lucifer hadn’t seduced her.

Because he hadn’t wanted to seduce her.

Because she was more to him than a mere conquest.

He clenched his fists, Erin’s longer nails biting into his palms, and stared at his body, trying to shake the other fear that grew inside him.

Fear that Nina had played him too.

What if it had all been an act and she had been in league with Heaven and their plans?

The darkness in his heart exploded as those words rang in his mind, filling his chest and bleeding through his veins. It seeped from his fingers and lashed at the black ground around him, snapping and cracking as it struck like lightning, sending shards of rock flying in all directions.

He gritted his sharpening teeth and snarled, his eyes blazing crimson and a red veil descending.

Poisonous words whispered in his head, driving him onwards, until the darkness had consumed him and he could think only of seeking out the mortal female and making her pay for what she had done to him.

She had betrayed him. Played him.

For the first time in millennia, he had trusted someone again and they had turned on him.

His chest ached, the fragile organ that he had fought to protect for centuries shattering within his breast.

His body reached for him, the compassion in his golden eyes only worsening his need for violence, his urge to lash out at everyone and everything around him until he was so exhausted that he was numb to the agony writhing inside him like a living thing.

Devouring him.

He tore his arm free from Erin’s grip.

“You dare disappear with my damned—”

Lucifer teleported before she could finish, reappearing on a rooftop in London. It had changed dramatically since the last time he had set foot in the mortal realm, but he wasn’t here to sightsee. He was here on business.

Somewhere in this city was a female, a viper that had poisoned him with emotions and then used them against him to get what she wanted.

He threw his head back and roared, the sound more beast than the feminine body he occupied, and shadows streamed from him to blanket the city, driving it into darkness as they devoured the light. Shrieks rose from the streets far below him, a cacophony of fearful cries that only delighted him. He grinned as he sensed their fear, tasted their despair, and struggled to focus on his target.

Just the sound of her name in his head was enough to have him moving.

He spread his shadow wings and beat them hard, following his ribbons of darkness as they homed in on the mortal female.

His grin widened as they found her.

The angel had been a fool to leave her unguarded.

Lucifer teleported to a small terraced Victorian house in a quiet street, landing outside under a lamp that glowed orange. It flickered, crackled and exploded. Along the street in both directions, the other lamps did the same, causing darkness to race outwards with him at its epicentre.

He stared at the only light remaining in the street.

The light in the white sash window above him.

He growled and teleported inside the room.

Nina gasped and whirled to face him, her hand coming up fast in a silver flash. A knife. She stared at him in silence, her shock echoing through him. She stood in the middle of a group of beige couches in the centre of a cream drawing room, her back to an open door that revealed a tiny kitchen. A flicker of curiosity bolted through him. Why did she have a knife when she was far from the kitchen? Did she feel she needed protection?

That tempered his anger a little, making it fade a touch as a need to ensure she felt safe raced through him. Before that need could take hold, the darkness within him surged back to the fore, reminding him why he had come. He hadn’t come here to protect her. He had come to make sure she knew the full extent of his wrath.

The ground trembled with it, sending her staggering back a few steps and struggling to retain her balance.

Fear washed across her face.

“Who the hell are you?” she snapped and brandished the knife.

It seemed the little mortal had already forgotten just who she had betrayed.

He stepped forwards and the awkward jiggling of his body dragged his focus downwards. To breasts and flared hips. Perhaps she hadn’t forgotten who she had pissed off, but he had definitely forgotten that he wasn’t himself.

The knife shook in her hand. “If you’re with those angels… you can leave me the hell alone too. I’m warning you. Get out.”

Lucifer canted his head, his short black bob brushing his neck in an irritating fashion.

She was trying to protect herself from the angels? Had she fought Mihail and that was the reason the angel had left her unguarded? Had he been wrong about her?

“I am not with the angels.” He held his hand out to her, slender and feminine, tipped with long black nails. This would have been so much easier if he had his own damned body. Nina regarded it with cold eyes that burned in their depths, lending her a defiant and dangerous air that he found too damn alluring. “You know me.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck is going on anymore. One moment I’m with this great guy and the next I’m feeling like an extra in a zombie movie and I don’t know what the heck my body was doing, but it wasn’t doing what my mind told it to do. There was an angel, and I swear to God that—”

Lucifer roared at her, his eyes blazing crimson, and she paled and tensed.

“Who are you?” she whispered but he wasn’t sure how to answer that.

He wasn’t sure he could think to explain it, because he was still stuck on what she had said when she had been babbling.

This great guy
.

Him?

It didn’t really seem plausible, but he had been the only male with her during her entire stay, and he had shared things with her that he had never shown to anyone. He had felt close to her in that time, and the hurt surfacing in her eyes and in her feelings said that he wasn’t the only one who felt betrayed.

He stared into her peridot eyes, seeing the pain in them and the suffering, the agony that he felt in his heart.

“Nina,” he murmured and reached for her, wanting to pull her into his arms and comfort her, needing to feel that she was still the woman he had fallen in love with and that she hadn’t betrayed him.

Just as he hadn’t betrayed her.

They had both been played.

“How do you know my name?” She shoved the knife towards him and he kept his distance, aware that if he harmed Erin’s body, he would never hear the end of it.

He was never going to hear the end of it as it was.

“Because… I am Lucifer.”

Her jaw dropped.

She rallied and shook her head. “No. I think I remember what he looked like. If that was even what he really looked like. He’s a liar, right? He manipulates people and makes them do stuff. He made me—”

“No,” he interjected and stepped towards her, deciding to close the distance a little at a time so he didn’t scare her. “I never seduced you, Nina. I never used you. Whatever Mihail told you, it was a lie. He was the liar.”

“Mihail?” she whispered, a distant look in her eyes, and then dropped the knife and clutched her head.

Her whimper tore at him and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching for her, catching her arms and pulling her into the safety of his. She curled into him, shaking like a leaf, and he stroked her back and pressed a kiss to her ear when he had wanted to kiss the top of her head. Erin was too damned short too.

“I have you now. I will never allow anyone to hurt you. I swear that, Nina.” He went to kiss her again and she jerked out of his arms, shoved him in the chest and pushed him away.

Lucifer gritted his teeth and rubbed his chest. Damn, that had hurt. Female bodies were strange. They experienced pain in places he normally didn’t. They were weak.

The ground rocked again, and he couldn’t curse the weakness of Erin’s body. It was the only thing stopping that gentle trembling from becoming a devastating quake that would tear everything asunder, destroying the city.

“I told you, I don’t know who you are.” She clutched the sides of her head, her face screwing up, and then glared at him. “Leave.”

“No.” He wasn’t leaving without her. He was staying where he was until she believed him and heard him out. He had to convince her that while his body was feminine, he was the man she knew inside.

How?

He didn’t have much time. By now, Heaven would know he had escaped his containment and angels would be coming. Mihail would be among them, and he wasn’t strong enough to fight the bastard and keep Nina safe, not in this body. He had to get her back to Hell. He smiled as it hit him.

“I can prove to you that I am Lucifer. I can tell you things that only you would know.”

She stooped, scooped up the knife and scowled at him. “I highly doubt that.”

“I made a valley, and I took you there when you were unwell. I wanted to make you feel at home.” He drew down a deep breath and sighed it out when she looked sceptical still. This had to work, even when he knew it was only the first step. Even if he convinced her that he was who he said he was, it didn’t mean she would return to Hell with him. “You complained about how static it was, and I said that it had changed you.”

Her eyes slowly began to widen.

It was working.

“If you’re Lucifer, then tell me what you said to me when I asked if it could grow dark?” she said and stared deep into his eyes.

He nodded. “Why would you desire to see the darkness?”

She looked away from him, beyond him to the window, her green eyes gaining a distant look. “At the time, I thought it was strange that I wanted to see it too. I thought about it a lot after that, and I realised that it was because you seemed to belong in the darkness. Now I guess I understand why that is.”