Fire & Brimstone: A Neighbor from Hell (7 page)

Chapter 11

              “Rebecca, Dr. Bradford is here,” Melanie announced, sounding amused which she found rather annoying first thing in the...umm, afternoon? Evening? She really had no freaking clue how long she’d been asleep.

              “What?” she groaned unhappily as she shifted and realized that something very bad had occurred while she’d slept.

              Was that a hand on her ass?

              Yes, yes it was, she realized with a resigned sigh as she cracked one eye open and confirmed her suspicions. Not only was she using Lucifer, who was still sound asleep, as a mattress, but at some point while she’d slept she’d apparently felt that it was necessary to snake her hand beneath his shirt and feel up his six pack.

              Or maybe this should be considered an eight pack? Yeah, definitely an eight pack, she decided, tempted to find out if his muscles dipped into that “V” shape that she was a sucker for, but that would be wrong, very, very wrong. Granted, having her leg thrown over his probably was wrong too, yet here she was, practically straddling him.

              This wasn’t the worst way to wake up, but it was definitely something that the bitch standing over her bed, taking pictures with her phone wasn’t going to let her forget.

              “This is my new profile picture,” Melanie said, sounding happier than she’d ever heard her before.

              “Mine, too,” Aidan, Lucifer’s brother, said as he angled his phone to get the perfect picture.

              For a few seconds, she simply glared at the duo who were smiling and comparing pictures, noting that while Aidan was an incredibly handsome man with an easy smile and vibrant green eyes, he wasn’t as striking as his brother. Maybe that’s because Lucifer gave off that homicidal vibe that tended to make men sexier, she mused for a few seconds even as she considered the pros and cons of killing them and destroying their phones before they could upload those pictures.

              “Are you caressing his stomach?” Melanie asked as she took another picture.

              “No!” Rebecca snapped a little too quickly as she forced her hand to ignore temptation and remain still.

              “Uh huh,” the traitorous bitch said, snapping yet another picture.

              “Are you done yet?” she asked, acting like she could care less that she’d just been caught groping her boss.

              “No,” Melanie said with a shake of her head as she continued to take pictures.

              “Evil bitch,” Rebecca muttered as she pulled away from Lucifer and sat up.

              “Umm, his hand is still on your ass,” Melanie pointed out with a slight nod and another freaking picture!

              Blinking, she looked down and yup, there was his hand, curled around her ass. She looked back up at the duo, who looked like they’d just won the lottery and said, “Can you blame him? It’s a really nice ass.”

              Melanie nodded as she solemnly agreed, “It really is.”

              “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier,” Aidan said with a smile that said it all.

              Lucifer was probably going to kill him before the day was over.

              “Why don’t we get this over with?” she suggested as she climbed off the bed and headed towards the living room, knowing that there was no point in trying to put this off any longer, especially since she already knew how this was going to end.

*-*-*-*

              “Do the tests again!” a woman screamed, waking him up from the first nap he’d taken since he was a kid.

              “No!” Lucifer heard his brother yell as he rolled over onto his back and rubbed his hands down his face, wondering what time it was.

              “Do them again!”

              “No!”

              “They’re wrong! Do them again!”

              “No!
Oh, my God, stop going for my nipples
!” Aidan screamed, hitting all the high notes and making Lucifer shake his head in disgust as he reluctantly got up and headed for the living room where all the screaming was coming from.

              “What the hell’s going on in here?” he asked as he stepped into the living room.

              “Take it back!” Melanie demanded as she gave up her hold on his brother’s nipples and decided that the best approach to making him change his mind was to start throwing pillows, blankets and basically everything soft enough that it wouldn’t leave a mark at his brother’s head.

              “What the hell is wrong with you?” Aidan demanded as he tried to duck out of the way of an extra firm pillow.

              Many things, Lucifer thought with a yawn, admittedly already bored with the scene before him. He shifted his attention to the woman sitting on the couch, looking as though she’d just been hit by a freight train. Fucking Aidan, he thought walking over to the fridge and grabbed two Cokes. He’d given his brother one fucking job and he’d fucked it up miserably.

              She was sick. Anyone with two working eyes could see that, but these fucking doctors didn’t know how to do their fucking jobs. He’d thought that his brother was the exception, but he’d been wrong, because there she sat on the couch with her arms wrapped around her indrawn knees, looking completely broken.

              “Nice job, asshole,” he said as he passed his brother, deciding that he’d deal with him later.

              “Are you going to help me?” Aidan demanded, sounding desperate as Melanie continued with her attack.

              “No,” he said, already dismissing his brother’s cry for help as he sat down on the couch next to Rebecca and handed her a Coke.

              Without a word, she took the Coke. She popped the top and took a sip as he did the same. What the hell was he supposed to say to her? He’d promised her answers and nothing had changed. They still didn’t have any idea what was causing her to be sick and worst of all, she probably believed whatever bullshit his brother had told her.

              “I’m sorry, Rebecca,” he said when he couldn’t figure out anything else to say to her. She didn’t respond as she sat there, taking another sip so he didn’t say anything else.

                “The tests were wrong!” Melanie yelled as she gave up throwing pillows at his brother and settled on beating him with a particularly fat throw pillow.

              “Look,” Aidan said, looking just as pissed and taking Lucifer by surprise, because he couldn’t remember a time when his normally easygoing brother lost his cool. “I ran the tests myself and I even had my father double check the results. You may not like them, but they’re accurate. So, get the fuck off my back!”

              Melanie opened her mouth, no doubt to tell his brother where he could shove those tests, but Lucifer had had enough. “Get out.”

              Melanie snorted at that. “This is my apartment, buddy. I’m not going anywhere,” she said, but one look from him had her rolling her eyes, calling him an asshole and dragging Aidan out the door behind her.

              Within seconds they were alone and Rebecca still hadn’t said anything, making him wonder how badly he’d fucked up. It looked like his tenth grade science teacher had been right, he really was the devil reincarnated. He should have never stuck his fucking nose where it didn’t belong. She’d accepted things the way they were, but he hadn’t been able to let them go. He had to push her into doing something that she didn’t want all because he had to know the truth and now look at her.

              Broken, depressed and-

              “I have Celiac’s disease,” she said with a watery smile that quickly disappeared as she lost it.

              “Christ,” he swore, reaching over and pulling the sobbing woman closer so that he could wrap his arms around her and hold her while she cried.

              “It’s not in my head,” she said, wrapping her arms around him and holding him tight. “It’s not in my head!” she cried on a broken laugh as he sat there, smiling, holding her tightly and not really giving a damn that he had absolutely no idea what Celiac’s disease was, not while she was holding onto him like this.

              “Thank you, Christopher,” she whispered as she pressed a soft kiss against his cheek and it was in that moment that he realized that he really didn’t mind being called by his real name.

              Well, he didn’t mind when she called him Christopher, but if anyone else called him that he would make them wish they’d never been born.

Chapter 12

              He needed to leave before she died of humiliation. Then again, if he so much as thought about taking his hand away from her stomach she was going to have to kill him, she decided as she lay on the couch, breathing slowly through her mouth as her stomach continued its violent assault, threatening to send her running for the bathroom or a trash can.

              She wasn’t picky.

              She was however, a moron, she thought, cringing as she continued to pretend that she was asleep, but the death grip that she had on his hand most likely gave her away. What was wrong with her crying like that in front of him? It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t also decided to crawl onto his lap, wrap her arms around him and sob against his shoulder for an hour.

              Okay, so it was probably more like five or ten minutes before her stomach had started to act up again, reminding her that her stomach wasn’t happy with the food choices that she’d made earlier. When she’d been forced to wrap her arms around her stomach and curl up onto her side, Lucifer had laid down behind her, placed his hand on her stomach and somehow made everything worse.

              She’d tormented this man for her own entertainment for the past five years, taking great joy in seeing just how far she could go before he lost his temper and released one of those ferocious little growls that she thought was so cute. She’d purposely screwed with his head, simply because she hadn’t been able to help himself. There had just been something about him that drew her in and made her want to see just how far she could push him and that was the guy that had dropped everything to help her.

              There was absolutely no doubt about it…

              She was a complete bitch.

              God, she just wanted to curl up into herself and disappear, but the strong arm wrapped around her wouldn’t let her do that. He was keeping her safe and protecting her when she didn’t deserve it. He’d gone out of his way to help her when they both knew that he would have probably given anything and everything that he had if he never had to see her face again.

              She should apologize, but honestly, how do you apologize to someone for everything she’d put him through? It didn’t matter that she hadn’t done it out of spite or because she hated him, which she didn’t. She’d done it, because…

              Well, she really wasn’t sure why she’d toyed with him. The only thing that mattered was that she felt like a complete bitch now that he’d done everything within his power to help her. She should make things easier on him by telling him goodnight, that she was going to be okay and didn’t need him, but she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth, because she honestly wasn’t sure that she could handle being alone right now.

              Twenty-nine years of hell and it all came down to a grain. She still couldn’t believe that the solution to her own personal hell was eliminating one food source out of her diet. All those years thinking that there was something seriously wrong with her, secretly terrified that she was actually dying of cancer or something more horrifying if that was even possible and all this time the pain, exhaustion and believing that she wasn’t going to be able to make it through another day was all because of something she’d ate.

              She felt like an idiot.

              “Is your stomach worse?” Lucifer asked, sounding genuinely worried about her as he pressed his hand against her stomach a little more firmly.

              She really wished that he’d stop being so nice to her.

              “It’s fine,” she said, giving up the pretense of sleeping and opened her eyes so that she could stare at the blank television screen. “You don’t have to stay. I’ll be fine,” she said, not entirely sure that was true.

              “When’s your evil twin coming back?” he asked, shifting behind her so that he could hold her more tightly against him.

              “She’ll be back soon,” she said, having absolutely no idea if that was true or not since Melanie wasn’t exactly what she would consider a night owl.

              Melanie was usually home, in her pajamas, devouring a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and designing websites around this time. She was probably out devouring baked goods or crying over that asinine promise to go through this with her. As much as she appreciated the offer, she wasn’t going to let her best friend give up her precious baked goods.

              “Listen,” she said, placing her hand over his as she told herself that this was for the best and moving it aside so that she could sit up, “I really appreciate this, but I’ll be fine. I’m going to call it a night and get some sleep.”

              Throwing him a warm smile, she said, “Thank you for everything,” as she headed for her room, hoping that he understood just how much everything he’d done for her meant to her.

              “You’re welcome,” he said absently with a nod as he stood up.

              Returning his nod, she headed towards the hallway that would take her to her bedroom, not bothering to show him to the door since he already knew how to find it. On her way to the bathroom she grabbed an old tee shirt and a pair of shorts so that she could change out of her clothes, which sometimes helped when her stomach hurt like this.

              Coke and a warm bath helped too, but since she was now out of Coke and too lazy to draw a bath, she was going to settle for sleep. That is of course, if she was able to fall asleep. With the way that her stomach felt right now she’d probably be up all night until she finally said the hell with it and either got off her lazy ass and drew a bath or walked down the street for some more Coke.

              Then again, if she was going to be up anyway, maybe she should consider making Lucifer breakfast as a thank you for everything that he did for her. It really was the least that she could do for him was the last rational thought that went through her mind as she walked back into her bedroom and spotted the large, and apparently half-naked, man in her bed.

              Frowning, she paused by the door and ran every word they’d exchanged in the last twenty minutes, which really hadn’t been that many, through her head. But, as hard as she tried, she just couldn’t remember inviting him to strip naked and take over her bed. Just in case she was wrong, she did it again, but nothing changed.

              “Would you hurry up? Some of us have to get up early in the morning,” Lucifer, who was clearly in the middle of some sort of mental crisis, said as he gestured for her to get her ass moving and join him in bed.

              Yeah, that really wasn’t happening, she thought as she reached behind the door and grabbed the baseball bat she kept for just such an occasion. Instead of jumping out of bed and apologizing for being an asshole as he ran for the safety of the door, he simply cocked a brow and waited.

              “Feel free to leave now,” she said, hoisting the bat up against her shoulder to show him that she meant business.

              “And feel free to stop being a pain in my ass and put the damn bat down before you hurt yourself,” he said, sounding a little too cocky for her peace of mind. So, she hefted the bat higher up on her shoulder before remembering that she was right-handed and swung the bat over to-

              “Ow!”

              Hit herself in the face.

              Sighing heavily while she gasped in pain, he threw back the covers, got up and headed for the door. Glaring at his back, she decided to put the bat down before she did any further damage and cupped her poor jaw.

              “Cocky bastard,” she mumbled grumpily as she walked over to her bed, climbed in and closed her eyes as she pretended that she’d meant to hit herself in the face so that she could get him out of her bed.

              It had given her a tactical advantage to reclaim her bed from-

              “Here,” the man that refused to go said as he placed an ice pack on her face.

              “I’m fine,” she argued, as she grudgingly reached up and held the ice pack to her head.

              “Yeah, you’re doing great,” he said dryly as he crawled into bed next to her and without being asked, because at this point she felt that he owed her for all the bullshit that
he’d
put her through in the last ten minutes, placed his hand back on her stomach where it belonged.