“Shh,” Lucifer murmured to her, easing her fear as her heart rate doubled.
When it had settled back to a regular rhythm and she was breathing easier, he pushed a little, forcing her to focus on Mihail in that moment.
The angel pressed his palm to her forehead and the memory cut out. The next one was of himself in the room where he had taken her after his men had brought her in from the courtyard.
Lucifer frowned.
Mihail hadn’t implanted any order in her.
Lucifer had placed orders into enough mortal minds to know that it had to be done before manipulating their mind to render them unconscious and scrub the memory of him from them. It didn’t work any other way.
So if she hadn’t been sent to him with orders unknown to her, why was she here?
He carefully released his hold on her as he pondered that.
Nina began trembling, running her hands up and down her arms as if she was freezing, her teeth chattering as her eyes darted around her.
“I hate this place,” she muttered and shook her head, causing the tangled strands of her fiery hair to sweep across her slender shoulders. “It’s like a prison cell. No light. No windows. It’s horrible.”
She ran both hands up her arms and clutched her temples, clawing her hair back from her face as she stared at the floor by his feet, still shaking her head.
Perhaps he had been a little hard on her, pushing her too much in order to sift through her memories.
“I need to get out. I need air. I need to breathe.” Her gaze leaped up to his face. “I have to get away from him.”
Him.
Lucifer canted his head and studied her. The same him that he had detected in her memories before when she had lied to him? A male who wanted to harm her and who she believed was behind her abduction?
He needed to know.
He couldn’t deny that need any longer.
“Does someone want to hurt you?” He practically growled the words and she froze, her skin paling and her eyes growing enormous.
Her reaction gave him the answer he desired, but it didn’t prepare him for the wave of emotions that hit him when she spoke.
“He’ll stop at nothing… I said no… but it won’t stop him. He sent that man… I know it. He sent that man to take me back… but I won’t go back. I won’t go through that hell again.” She narrowed her eyes on him and bared her teeth as she almost snarled. “He won’t hurt me again.”
Lucifer stared at her, empathy rocking him back on his heels as the strength of her words struck him, her obvious desire to protect herself from suffering at the hands of this male again striking a chord in him.
Deep in his heart.
“I need air,” she whispered and clawed at her hair. “God, I need air.”
Lucifer growled at her, his fangs flashing as he bared them and his eyes burned red briefly before he regained command of himself. She didn’t seem to notice his reaction to the word she had so callously used in his presence and for the first time in a very long time he was thankful for something.
The last thing he needed was her seeing him as he truly was.
A monster in the guise of a man.
She would never understand.
No one did.
“Please… I need air… I can’t stay in here. It’s too confined… too dark…” Her eyes unfocused and he was by her side in an instant, catching her arm to keep her upright and steadying her as she wobbled on her feet.
He had been wrong. He hadn’t pushed too hard. He had come close to breaking her. If he had realised the pain she held in her memories, the fear she had locked in her heart, the darkness that now consumed and terrified her, he would never have forced her to recall Mihail.
Lucifer paused and stared down at the delicate female he held by the arm.
What the fuck was she doing to him?
He wanted to cast her away, to let her fall in a heap on the floor and suffer, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, not when every fibre of his being said he had the power to end her pain.
He had the power to give her the air she needed, the light she craved, and the freedom she desired.
But it meant taking her to a place he hadn’t ventured in a long time.
A place that only brought him pain.
CHAPTER 6
Nina gradually became aware of Lucifer where he stood right in front of her, so close that she could feel his breath on her face as she stared up at him, her hands still clutching the sides of her head. A head that felt foggy again and ached so fiercely that she was on the verge of asking him for some painkillers when he silenced her by slowly raising his hands towards hers.
He didn’t hesitate or show any sign of emotion as he placed his hands over hers and carefully brought them away from her temples. His golden eyes remained impassive, unreadable even when she longed to decipher the feelings they were hiding from her, feelings she felt sure were there, locked deep inside him.
Her pain faded as she lost herself in those beautiful and striking eyes, her fear and her thoughts flittering away as she recalled how they had looked when she had caught him staring at her.
How fiercely they had burned with passion and need.
Desire that had filled her with an ache to feel his lips capturing hers and the firm press of his hands against her overheating flesh.
His pupils expanded a touch, a brief flash of hunger surfacing in his eyes before it disappeared again and he cast his gaze away from her. He released one of her hands but kept hold of the other as he stepped past her.
Nina frowned and turned with him, following him across the room. He paused in front of the massive worn tapestry that covered a large section of the wall opposite the one with the door and held his free hand out as if to touch the cloth and the dark threads that had been woven beautifully to depict a scene of war that included dragons and creatures straight out of a fantasy novel.
His hand hovered above the tapestry though, a bare inch from touching it.
What was he doing?
His eyes closed, his long black lashes coming to rest on his cheeks as he dipped his head and frowned. His mouth tightened.
Just as she was about to ask whether something was wrong, his eyes flicked open and he casually shifted the tall sash of material aside, revealing the black wall beneath.
And an arched door.
Nina raised an eyebrow at it and stepped forwards. Lucifer held his free arm out, blocking her path to the heavy-looking dark metal door. Several thick padlocks each larger than her fist secured the side of it closest to him. What was through the door?
The sensible part of her brain supplied that it was probably the route to a torture chamber or something infinitely worse than the room behind her that felt too much like a cell.
The curious part said to make him open the locks so she could see what was beyond such a heavily fortified door.
She didn’t have to ask.
Lucifer clasped each padlock in turn and she couldn’t believe her eyes as they opened for him. No key needed. Some sort of fingerprint recognition? The locks looked perfectly ordinary to her though. No sign of a pad on them that could read his prints. How was he opening them?
With each lock that clicked and opened, the anticipation built inside her and she found herself leaning towards the door, filled with an urgent need to see what was on the other side.
“You need space, and even I can understand such a desire,” Lucifer whispered in a low silken tone that seemed to swirl around her, leaving her hazy and feeling light inside, as if she might float away, high from the sound of his voice alone. He glanced across at her and the touch of wariness in his golden gaze grounded her for a moment before his voice worked its magic on her again. “I will show you to a place where only you will be allowed.”
She didn’t understand how that was possible. Did he mean that he would stop anyone from venturing into the place he was about to show her?
Lucifer grasped the elegant black metal h
andle on the door and pulled. A rush of cold air swept past her, stirring her hair, but it carried the scent of a summer meadow. She stared ahead of her, expecting to see an incredible vista, but there was only darkness.
A tunnel.
She couldn’t see the end either.
How was it possible that she had caught the scent of flowers in the air that had rushed into the room? She swore she had been able to feel the heat of the sun in the breeze too, even though it had been cold. It had carried the promise of sunshine and light, of nature and freedom.
Was she dreaming? The sense that she had stepped into some strange fantasy world only grew stronger as Lucifer marched forwards into the gently sloping tunnel, his left hand still grasping her right one.
“Mind your step,” he murmured gruffly and cold danced over her skin again, a chill that she felt sure had been born of the iciness in his tone rather than the cool darkness of the tunnel.
She peered up at him, wanting to catch a glimpse of his face to see if his expression matched his tone and he was angry about something, but she couldn’t see anything in the darkness.
How did he know where he was going? His steps were sure, radiating the confidence that hers lacked, and he never once bumped into the walls on either side of them in the narrow corridor.
The stone was freezing beneath her bare feet, damp and slippery. She skidded as she set her left foot down on a broad cobble and Lucifer’s grip on her hand tightened, keeping her upright.
A soft glow pierced the darkness, illuminating the roughly carved walls. Her surroundings held her focus for all of a second before something both incredible and impossible stole her attention.
Her eyes locked onto Lucifer’s right hand where he held it before him, his palm facing upwards.
Above it, suspended in the air, was a twisting orb of amber light.
She had to be dreaming. She just had to be. Everything before that she had felt was a fantasy suddenly looked normal, everyday run of the mill things. Lucifer’s ability to open locks with only a touch of his hand. Perfectly ordinary. A door hidden behind a tapestry. Normal as anything. A mysterious black tunnel that looked endless but carried the scent of sunshine and flowers. Utterly sane.
The fact that Lucifer seemed able to conjure a ball of light?
Freaked her the fuck out.
Nina managed to force her eyes up to his face. The golden glow played across his stern features, highlighting the coldness of his eyes and the hard set of his jaw. She had seen enough men looking irritated to know that he was upset about something, and she felt certain that her episode back in the room was the reason behind it.
She tried to take her hand back but his grip on it tightened and he looked over his left shoulder at her, his hard features softening for a moment, a sliver of a second that she might have missed had she not been looking for it.
But she saw it and it was as if she had looked into a mirror.
She knew why he looked so grim. She knew because she wore that same look, felt the same as he did, whenever she did something that threatened to destroy the guards she had in place around her heart.
Her episode wasn’t the reason he was cold and distant again, his emotions switched off and his barriers in place.
She was the reason.
He had taken hold of her hand and he was regretting it.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to release her either.
“It is not much further,” he said in a low voice thick with tension and she relented, allowing him to keep hold of her hand as she wondered what had happened to him.
What had he lived through to make him so fiercely protective of himself?
Was it anything like the hell she had survived?
What she had gone through had shaped her even when she had tried not to let it affect her. It had made her cold towards others, forever keeping her distance from them and sometimes lashing out with cruel words to ensure they wouldn’t get too close to her. She hated it whenever she hurt someone in order to protect herself, but she couldn’t stop herself from doing it. The need to shield herself and stop herself from being hurt again was too strong.
Her gaze roamed Lucifer’s face and her heart whispered that he was the same.
That was the reason she felt drawn to him so strongly. It was because they were the same.
She wanted to ask him about it, but the look on his face warned her not to push him right now, when he was already feeling vulnerable and was liable to lash out in order to force her to keep her distance from him. She knew the signals from her own behaviour. She had to give him time. Time that she needed too.
She needed the space he had mentioned, the break from the dreariness of the apartment and the fear that her ex-husband would find her.
Or send another man to come and take her from Lucifer.
Her fingers flexed against his hand, clutching it a little tighter, her need to feel his strength too powerful to deny. He responded by glancing down at their joined hands and, for a moment, she thought he would pull his away, but he tightened his hold instead, squeezing her hand in a way that felt both gentle and protective, as if he was being extremely careful with her.
She tore her gaze away from his face when he glanced back at her again, fixing her eyes on the glowing orb suspended above his right palm.
It was the only explanation her mind could conjure.
Somehow, Lucifer was capable of magic. Not parlour tricks like the men on the television employed, but real magic.
She had spent her teen and early adult years lost in fantasy novels about incredible lands, powerful mages, and extraordinary creatures. She had dreamed about living in such a world to see what it would be like for herself. She had never actually believed it was all possible though.
The part of her mind that clung to logic said that it wasn’t possible. She was merely seeing what she wanted to see, because she was caught up in a fantasy herself, brought about by whatever drug the man had given her to knock her out and the mysterious man holding her hand.
He was mysterious too.
He had secrets, ones that warned her to keep her distance from him in order to protect herself and her heart.
Ones that drew her to him at the same time, making her want to peel back the layers and learn more about him.
She wanted to know his deepest, darkest secrets and in return, she would share hers.
The light grew and she peered ahead of them. The glow from the orb bounced off a door at the end of the tunnel.
That orb suddenly disappeared, dropping them into darkness. Her hand jerked against Lucifer’s, squeezing it so tightly that she feared she would hurt him, but she couldn’t bring herself to loosen her grip.
“Bear the darkness but for a moment, Nina.” Lucifer’s voice curled around her in the pitch-black and she felt hazy from head to toe as her name fell from his lips.
If he could perform real magic, he was using it right now in his voice, luring her back under his spell until her fear of the darkness began to fade and she felt safe again, no longer vulnerable without her sight.
His hand slipping free of hers brought that fear right back though and she wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold to the bone as she waited, listening hard for a sign of him.
Metal ground against metal.
A clack echoed along the corridor.
A moment of silence.
Then the creak of rusty hinges scraped in her ears and bright light flooded the tunnel, blinding her. She flinched away from it, shielding her eyes with her right hand at the same time to protect them from the onslaught.
The scent of flowers and nature hit her hard, rushing past her on a warm breeze.
Lucifer made a low growling noise and bumped her as he backed away, leaving her in front of him. Nina squinted against the light and stepped forwards, drawn towards it and the world beyond the half-open door. She gripped the handle and pulled, eager to see what awaited her.
She was aware of Lucifer backing further
into the tunnel as the door opened fully, but the vista that greeted her on the other side stole that awareness away from him.
“Go on ahead,” Lucifer gruffly said and she didn’t hesitate.
She stepped over the threshold of the tunnel, from the cold black stone and onto the soft green grass. The light washed over her and she basked in its warmth as it touched her and chased the chill from her skin. It heated her right down to her bones and she walked a few steps across the grass before stopping and tipping her head back, raising her face to the sun, her eyes closed. Bliss flowed through her and she sighed.
It was wonderful.
Nina pulled down a deep breath of crisp, fresh air into her lungs and exhaled it with a wide smile.
She stood there for what felt like minutes, stealing pleasure from the feel of the sun on her skin and the clean air in her lungs, and then slowly opened her eyes, no longer able to hold back her curiosity about the world that surrounded her.
It was beautiful.
A verdant valley right out of a fantasy novel.
Lush green hills rolled downwards from where she stood, leading to a river that twinkled as it snaked through the valley. On the other side of it, mountains rose up, covered in thick forest at their bases but capped with snow on top. The azure sky was impossibly rich, a breathtaking contrast against the rugged white peaks.
The range stretched for miles in both directions before giving way to green hills that poked out from the thick woods.
Below her on the hills, long meadow grass grew, spotted with colourful flowers, creating a beautiful barrier between her and the river.
Nina took everything in again, struggling to make herself believe it. The whole scene looked impossible. Like a dream. It didn’t seem real.
Was it even possible for the sun to feel so hot on her skin and everything around her to be so green when snow covered the higher ground?
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Complete Series Box Set Page 149