by Rae Foxx
I wrapped my arms around him. Damn Gabriel. I hadn't even seen him. "What made you fall?"
Lucian turned around and showed me a dark spot on his pants. "Water on the floor. I think my pants absorbed it all. It was just a little."
Water. Nice try, Gabe.
"Are you hurt?" Linda asked. "How'd the water get there?"
Lucian shrugged. "I don't have a clue. I'm okay." He rubbed his butt. "Tailbone is a little sore."
I chuckled. "Come on, hammer-boy. Let's go home. You said it's slow, and now you're all wet."
He nodded. "Yeah, okay. I could use the afternoon off." He turned to his secretary. "Linda, why don't you forward calls to my cell and take the rest of the day?"
Her face brightened. "Sounds great!"
In a few minutes, we were locking the office door and heading for our cars. What was the good of having a flexible schedule if we couldn't take the rest of the day off when my lunatic angel mate decided to kill my husband?
Demons are created when an act of evil is performed on Earth by a human. The worse the act, the stronger the demon.
7
Once we got home, I convinced Lucian I needed a nap, and that I needed him beside me for it. As soon as he dozed off, I tapped into the magic coiled inside me. I couldn't use much of it in a human body, but I trickled enough into Lucian's mind to keep him asleep for several hours. It was a dirty trick, but he'd be safe enough in bed while I ran next door to talk to Adam. Michael.
Damn it!
There was a path between the properties, but it was rocky and uneven, so I walked around. Down our long driveway, about a quarter mile up the road, then up Adam's long driveway. Living out in the country had its benefits, with no close neighbors being one of them. Until you needed to go talk to a neighbor. Then it was like, damn, if I'd been in the city I would've already been back home by now. Should've driven.
Walking gave me time to contemplate my situation. What was I going to do with a baby? If it came out human, I couldn't take it out of the Earth realm. A human entering Abaddon or Elysium took an extraordinary amount of magic, and the human's earthly body died when they entered the ethereal realms. It was how we made new Angels and Fallen.
Taking off with my husband asleep felt so underhanded. I wanted to tell him everything, as well as get his advice on how to fix the problem.
Maybe we could just unlock his memories. He might have the answers we needed.
Whatever we decided, I needed more information and advice. A way to get through this until we solved it. I needed Michael on my side, to help me keep Lucian alive for the time being.
I stomped up Adam's porch steps and rapped on his door, realizing belatedly that I had no way of knowing if he was even at home.
The door swung open to reveal Michael standing in front of me in all his glory. His Light glowed from every pore. "What the hell?" I asked.
He wasn't in his Michael-as-Adam human body, he was ethereal. An Archangel once again. "What did you do?" I hissed and shoved him backward into the house. I looked around his front yard to make sure a random stranger hadn't happened into his yard and witnessed him in all his glowing glory. When I was sure nobody had seen him, I slammed the door shut. "Did you kill yourself?"
That would've been bad. One of the few rules we had was not to commit suicide. God had done some of his special magic to make sure that we wouldn't be likely to decide to do it when human. An angel could die: A direct hit to the heart with Light, suffocation by Darkness—a Fallen's weapon. Or suicide.
"Of course not." He took my hand and kissed it. "Gabriel did it while I slept."
Panic swept through me. "While you slept?"
He nodded. "Yeah, the asshole stabbed me not thirty minutes ago. I just got back from Elysium. But it's okay, I paid him back."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Tied him up and put him in a locked box at the bottom of the ocean. It'll take him a few hours to get out of that."
I sighed in relief. "Good. Then we have time to talk."
He cut me off by sweeping me off my feet and into his arms. "You could give me a proper welcome." Michael's gaze was glued to my chest. "I'd like to get to know this human body of yours."
I slapped his arm. "I'm pregnant with Lucian's baby!"
He shrugged. "So? If you have this baby and we work out the details, I'll raise it as my own, right?"
I nodded. He damn well better if he knew what was good for him.
"Then you're pregnant with my baby."
Laughing, I wrapped my arms around his neck. "A few hours? Are you sure?"
He closed his eyes and focused. "He hasn't even woken up yet and started trying to untangle himself. I layered some good spells on the ropes. We've got time."
I gave in. I hadn't been with Michael in three decades, before my birth on Earth. We were due a quick romp. "Okay, but we have to figure out what to do. He keeps trying to kill Lucian, and it can't happen yet."
He pressed his lips to mine, cutting off my words. "In a minute."
His body moved as he held me, but my focus was all on his lips and how soft they were. Michael, Lucian, and Gabriel had always been vastly different lovers. Michael was the gentlest lover of my boys. He made love more than he fucked, and anyone that didn't understand the difference in the two was missing out on one or the other.
Michael settled me down onto a bed. I'd never been in this room, so it must've been the spare bedroom. I'd been in Adam's bedroom once when Lucian helped him remodel his master bath. It had looked nothing like this. But I hadn’t been in it since.
Michael swept the thoughts from my head by running his hands down my body. "I missed you, Lilith. So much."
I didn't know why he'd had his eternal memories on this Earth cycle. "It must've been hard knowing who I was and seeing me with only Lucian."
"It was torture." He moaned and buried his face in my neck. "I never thought I'd be so turned on seeing you swollen with our child."
He'd meant what he said. The four of us had shared our lives for so long it didn't matter to him that it wasn't his seed that created the life inside me. It was still his child. I wished Gabriel could've seen it that way.
I gasped as he slipped his hands under my shirt and upward. "Help me out of this," I whispered.
Getting dressed or undressed was far easier with help these days. He pulled me upright and lifted my shirt over my head, then reached around to unclasp my bra. My heavy breasts fell and rested on my stomach.
A rare moment of insecurity plagued me. My big belly had a few stretch marks on it, and I'd never had breasts that weren't perfectly perky. As a human, I always died before they had time to sag at all, and I'd never dealt with the repercussions a pregnancy put on a woman's body.
Having Michael look at my changed body was stressful.
"You're gorgeous." He rocked back and stepped off the bed, then quickly removed his clothes.
I pictured his body in detail. He had lean muscles, chiseled all over, and his dick was made for me, the perfect size for my body. I'd always thought that, but never would've mentioned it to Lucifer or Gabriel.
I cocked my head at him. "I've never made love to any of you as a human. Well, only Lucian."
Michael froze. "I guess not. I hadn't thought about it."
Arching an eyebrow and holding my arms open, I fell back on his pillows. "Let's see how it feels."
With a devious grin, he fell on me, holding himself carefully so he didn't squish my belly. I threaded my fingers in his hair, now curly again. The soft tresses fell to his ears. I always loved putting my hands in them.
His mouth fell onto one of my nipples, and I lost all sense of thought. He twisted his tongue around my puckered breast, sucking and licking his way from one side to the other. After giving each a little nip, pleasure shooting down my body, he moved down, rolling my stretchy pants down to my hips. I shifted, lifting them the best I could so he could slip my pants off.
"I haven't had much energy or flexib
ility for maintenance down there," I said, remembering that I hadn't trimmed in weeks.
"You know I don't care about that." He kissed my belly, then continued moving down until his mouth landed on my core. I gasped as he spread my legs to give him the best access to my clit.
He licked my clit, eliciting whimpers from me as he sucked it into his mouth. I moaned and tried not to wiggle as he pulled an orgasm out of me almost as if by command.
Michael plunged his tongue inside me as far as it would go. "I love your taste," he murmured, vibrating my sex with each syllable, but I barely heard him over my moans.
After sucking on each lip and giving my clit one more rousing lick, he moved up my body again. "I need to be inside you," he whispered, but then didn't move. He looked down at me expectantly.
"Well by all means," I said. "Help yourself." I knew he was making sure I was ready for him, that I'd gotten a good orgasm. I had a sneaking suspicion he didn't think he'd last long fresh back in his angelic body.
He was wrong. Michael sank into me, filling me perfectly. My human body molded itself around him as I sighed. "You feel like home," I whispered. "I missed you, even though I didn't realize it."
He groaned and moved, sliding in and out of me with his face pressed against my shoulder. "I love you, Lilith."
"Oh," I gasped. Every slow stroke antagonized my g-spot and built a slow, intense orgasm. "I love you, too."
As it crested over me, Gabriel appeared behind Michael, a deeply irritated look on his face.
"Damn you," he said as he dripped water all over the floor.
I ignored him and called out Michael's name as I came. Michael's release followed immediately behind mine, and he flexed his hips and held me tighter.
We continued to ignore Gabriel as we stared into each other's eyes. When my orgasm waned and disappeared, only then did I look over Michael's shoulder. "Hello, Gabe."
"How come he gets sex?" He launched himself onto the bed beside us and pressed a kiss to my temple. By the time he touched me, he was bone dry.
Michael reached for the tissues on the bedside table and helped me clean up before putting my undies and pants back on my ankles, then shifting them up my legs until I could grab them myself. Gabriel helped me sit up so I could finish dressing. "Because he considers it his baby. It icks me out to have sex with a man that doesn't see this as his child in my belly."
Gabriel blinked at me. "Well, of course, it's my baby."
My jaw dropped. "That's not how you've been acting!"
He shrugged. "I'm not as emotionally invested as you are, of course. When you have the baby, if anything is wrong, we can heal it and deal with it."
"Gabe, you're too analytical. This isn't a math problem to solve." Michael bent over and picked up his pants. "You can't just figure this out on a whiteboard and then get a gold star."
I raised my eyebrows at Gabe. That was exactly how he'd been acting.
He shrugged. "I'm sorry, it's how I am. You know that. I see a problem. The Gates of Abaddon are crumbling. The solution is to get Lucifer back in Abaddon. Everything else can be figured out because demons being loose in the world is the worst-case scenario."
"Okay." I understood the gravity of the situation. "I get it. Can we put a pin in killing Lucian until the last possible second? It only takes him minutes to shore up the gates."
"Well, now that we're being rational, I killed you, Mike, so that you'd go figure out what's wrong with Luc."
Realization dawned on Michael's face. I hated when Gabe called him Mike. I liked Gabriel's and Lucifer's names shortened, but disliked the name, Mike. They used it anyway, despite my protests. "Of course."
"He's asleep in our bed," I supplied. "Go check him out. Gabriel can walk me over there."
We started the long walk back to my and Lucian's home. It was still hard to think of him as Lucifer. Constance had known Lucian all her life, having grown up not far from him. They'd played together as children and fallen in love as teenagers. A truly idyllic life.
Lilith wanted to cling to that life instead of possibly giving Lucifer his memories and him returning to the man he'd turned into.
"Gabe, the baby isn't the only reason I'm hesitant." We'd touched on it before, but it didn't hurt to drive home how much he'd changed. "Lucifer used to be loving and attentive. A true partner with running Abaddon, and a wonderful husband."
"When did he change?" He reached out and took my hand. I considered pulling away —what if someone Connie knew drove by? But I didn't. It felt too nice having my Gabe back with me and not trying to kill our partner.
"A couple hundred years ago. Life on Earth has always had its share of evil. We've never had a shortage of souls to punish and reform, there's never been a lag in demons created by humans' evil deeds."
Gabriel nodded. "Humans are flawed, that's part of their beauty."
"I agree. But as technology advanced, so did treachery. More demons than ever appear in Abaddon. More souls are sent from the Pearly Gates to the Obsidian Gates. As the numbers grew, so did Lucifer's darker traits."
"He's always been a bit of an asshole, even as an Arch." Gabriel watched me as we walked, and I appreciated that he matched my speed. I was a slowpoke. And sore, after the sex. My hips wanted my recliner.
"Yes, but not to me. Lately, he's snapped at me. Taken his stress out on me by being condescending. And you know me. I'm no shrinking violet."
"You're different this life cycle, though. I'm not sure it's not the pregnancy though," he mused.
"Yeah, I've noticed a change in my attitude since being pregnant. I feel more vulnerable, but also softer. It's neat to experience the changes firsthand that I've seen women go through for so many centuries."
I had yearned for children, though my husbands had no idea. My curse, my punishment for my part of the Fall was to never have children. I'd tried, Gods knew I'd tried. I'd manipulated demons with my blood, thinking maybe if I couldn't birth a child, I could create one.
That had made me the mother of all demons. Ugh. Rumors were a bitch.
We walked into the house to find Michael coming down the stairs. He sighed. "It's not good."
"Come in here." I made a beeline for my recliner and sank gratefully into its squishy embrace. "Tell me."
Michael plopped on the couch, Gabe right behind him. "Well, he's got a damn powerful spell on him."
I sat up, alarmed. "What?"
"I don't know if we'll be able to kill him at all."
Gabriel gave us both an alarmed look as the late afternoon sunlight streamed through the window behind him. "What are you talking about?"
Michael could sense magic and spells. It was part of his healing powers. "There is some sort of longevity spell on him. That's why he hasn't died of natural causes yet. If we don't interfere, he'll live over a hundred years, easy. " Angels always had short lives on Earth. Always. "And, he's blocked somehow. I can't sense his magic and there's a gaping hole in his aura. Someone fucked with his personality."
"Well, at least that explains the fact that he's been only the good parts of himself," I said. "But who would do something like this?"
Gabriel shook his head. "I don't know. I'm going to find out, though."
"I'm going to go see what I can do about the gates," Michael said. "Oh, and before I forget, the baby is human, she's completely healthy and as perfect as she can be."
He had no clue what a bombshell he'd dropped in my lap as he stood and bent over to kiss me goodbye. "I'll stop back in when I know something more."
I nodded, freaking out inside that we were having a girl, and disappointed beyond words that she was human. If she'd been magical, we could've taken her to Abaddon with us.
We could visit Earth as angels, for days at a time. But we couldn't stay. There would be no other option but to find her an adoptive human family.
To do anything else would be selfish to the sweet girl. She couldn't very well grow up with parents that were only around every few days.
Gabe kissed me after Michael disappeared and said something about finding a way to kill Lucifer, but I didn't absorb his words as joy and sorrow raced through me.
I was going to give birth to a baby girl, then I'd have to give her up.
8
Gabriel tried to kill Lucian so many times over the next week I'd stopped trying to prevent it. His attempts grew more and more desperate—and comical—as the week progressed.
Wednesday, two days after he disappeared to try to find out who put a spell on Lucifer, he appeared as I woke up.
Pressing a finger to his lips, he grabbed a pillow from the foot of the bed, then tiptoed to the head. Lucian slept on his back with his mouth open as he snored lightly. I let Gabriel get close enough that he thought I'd let him get away with it, then flicked my finger while giving Gabe a flat look. The pillow disappeared from Gabe's hand. At the same time, I stuffed a bunch of the goose feathers it contained into his mouth.
He glared at me and disappeared.
Later the same day, I stopped Lucian before he walked out in front of a semi-truck. "What in the world is a truck that big doing on our street?" he exclaimed as he watched it drive past us. We were out for a walk before making dinner, enjoying the air before it turned colder.
"I have my guesses," I muttered.
The next day, I went to work with Lucian again, but things were quiet. Gabe must've been busy looking for who had cursed Lucifer. The day passed uneventfully, except for Lucian mentioning he'd been unable to get a hold of his good friend Adam.
Shit. We'd forgotten to take care of Adam now that he was dead, and Michael was back. I tried not to react. "I'm sure he'll call you soon," I muttered and hid my face behind my laptop.
Had Michael and Gabriel even taken care of Adam's body?
I made a mental note to ask them later, then buried myself in my editing. Gabe made an appearance in the form of a printer malfunction. It caught fire right behind Lucian with a small explosion. I looked up just in time to see the fire flash, then squashed the explosion to something smaller. We had fire extinguishers in the office, of course, so Lucian grabbed one and put the printer out in a flash.