Chapter 1: Late Night Coffee Call
The only sound in the study was the scratch of Lucifer’s pen and the low crackle of fire in the hearth. I shifted in the plush armchair facing his monstrous dark oak desk, a teetering stack of requisition forms for the upcoming exchange program waiting for my seal. My eyes kept drifting from the dry text to his hands, to the severe line of his jaw illuminated by the single pool of lamplight.
I couldn’t stand the silence anymore.
“I heard Diavolo is considering adding a scroll-reading seminar next term,” I said, tapping my own pen against the desktop. “Sounds… dusty.”
Lucifer didn’t look up. “He mentioned it. The proposal is in the third pile on your left. Please review it before you initial it.”
A cold knot tightened in my stomach. This was our third night this week like this. The distance between us wasn’t measured in the stretch of carpet separating our chairs, but in lightyears. The man who’d pinned me to this very desk months ago, his mouth a feverish claim against my throat, was gone. Replaced by a stone Sentinel of Duty.
“Right. The third pile.” I stood up, the legs of my chair scraping loudly. “I’m going to get coffee. You want any?”
“If you’re having some,” he murmured, finally glancing up. His crimson eyes were like polished gemstones, beautiful and utterly impenetrable. “Black. Thank you, Nicole.”
Nicole. Not Nikki. The knot pulled taut.
I fled, pushing through the hidden bookshelf door into the main library and then out into the shadowy grand hall. The House of Lamentation was never truly silent, but the late-night sounds were different—the groan of ancient pipes, the distant skitter of a hell-rat in the walls. My footsteps echoed on the marble as I made for the kitchen, seeking the warmth of the oven light, the normality of the fridge’s hum.
The light was already on.
Beelzebub was there, his massive frame hunched over the open silver mouth of the refrigerator. He straightened, turning with a whole roasted chicken in his hands. He’d clearly just ripped a drumstick off. A smear of grease glistened on his chin.
“Nikki,” he said, his deep voice a quiet rumble in the sleeping house. “Can’t sleep?”
“Paperwork with Lucifer,” I said, the words tasting bitter. I went to the counter, busying myself with the expensive coffee machine Mammon had ‘acquired.’
“Oh.” Beel was silent a moment. The sound of him chewing, of bones quietly cracking, filled the space. “He’s … been like that.”
“Yeah.” I focused on grinding the beans, their rich, sharp scent a comfort. “A wall. A very handsome, very polished wall.”
“You smell sad,” Beel stated matter-of-factly, moving to lean against the counter opposite me. He’d demolish the chicken. His purple eyes, usually sharp with hunger, softened with a different kind of concern. “And tense.”
A laugh escaped me, hollow and thin. “Is that a new facet of your Gluttony? Emotional scenting?”
“Just you,” he said, simply. “I know your smells. You're happy smell. Your excited smell. Your… arousal-smell.” He said it without a hint of lechery, just stating a fact, which made heat bloom up my neck anyway. “This is different. It’s sour.”
The honesty of it undid me. The careful composure I’d maintained in front of Lucifer’s cold desk crumbled. My shoulders slumped. “He won’t even look at me, Beel. It’s like I’m another piece of furniture. Something to delegate to.”
Beel put the remains of the chicken down. He wiped his hands on a towel, his movements slow and deliberate. Then he was in front of me, his sheer size blocking out the rest of the kitchen. The heat coming off his body was immense, a furnace stoked by constant consumption.
“He’s an idiot,” Beel murmured, his calloused thumb brushing a tear from my cheek I hadn’t even felt fall. “But thinking about him hurts you. Your scent is all pain.”
“I don’t want to think about him,” I whispered, the truth of it solidifying inside me.
“Good.” His hand cupped my jaw, tilting my face up. “Think about this instead.”
He kissed me. It wasn’t like Lucifer’s calculated, dominating kisses, or Asmo’s artistic flourishes. It was hungry, profoundly and simply hungry. It tasted like roasted meat and solace. A low groan vibrated from his chest into mine as his tongue pushed past my lips, claiming my mouth with a relentless, consuming intensity. My hands came up, fingers digging into the hard, wire-tight cords of his forearms.
He broke the kiss, his breathing already ragged. “I want to eat you up, Nikki. Let me.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a declaration of need that mirrored the void opening inside me. I nodded, a frantic, desperate little motion. “Yes. Please.”
In one smooth, powerful motion, he hooked his hands under my thighs and hoisted me onto the cold granite of the kitchen island. The paperwork, the silence, the polished stone of Lucifer’s gaze—all of it was shoved violently out of my head. There was only Beel, stepping between my spread knees, pushing my skirt up around my hips. The cool air kissed my skin a second before his large, hot hands did, gripping my bare thighs hard enough to leave marks.
“You’re already wet for me,” he grunted, his fingers pushing aside the lace of my panties, sliding through my folds. “Thinking about this instead of him?”
“Only you,” I gasped, arching into his touch. “Only this.”
He ripped the panties clean off, the sound of tearing lace obscenely loud. He didn’t bother with preamble or finesse. He fumbled with the fly of his sweats, freeing his cock. It was thick, heavy, the swollen head already leaking. He nudged it against me, a blunt, insistent pressure.
“Look at me,” he commanded, and I did, drowning in the focused, consuming fire in his green eyes. He shoved forward, burying himself inside me in one long, brutal, stretching thrust.
“Fuck!” I cried out, my head falling back. It was a burn, a delicious, filling burn that chased away every shadow. He didn’t wait for me to adjust. He set a punishing, deep rhythm, each drive of his hips slamming me back against the cold stone. The countertop rattled, glass jars tinkling in the cupboards.
His hands gripped my hips, holding me in place as he fucked me, his abs coiling and releasing with each piston-like stroke. The sounds were filthy, wet, and meaty—the slap of our skin, his ragged grunts, my progressively breathless cries.
“That’s it,” he panted, his forehead dropping to mine. “Take it. Let me have it all.”
He was everywhere, his scent of musk and gym sweat, the taste of him still in my mouth, the overwhelming sensation of being utterly filled, used for his hunger. And I was hungry too—for feeling, for connection, for being wanted so viscerally it left no room for thought.
I clawed at his back, my legs locking around his waist, pulling him deeper. The coil in my belly wound tighter and tighter, sparked by the relentless friction and the raw need on his face. “Beel… I’m gonna…”
“Come,” he growled, his pace becoming frantic, brutal. “Come on my cock. Let me feel you.”
It shattered me. Pleasure, hot and blinding, ripped through my core, my body clamping down around him in violent waves. I choked on his name, my back bowing off the counter.
His control snapped. With a raw, guttural shout that was more beast than man, he hammered into me three more times and stilled, plunging as deep as I could take him. I felt the hot, urgent pulse of his release flooding me, marking that empty, aching place inside.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of our ragged breaths mingling in the silent kitchen. He leaned into me, his weight heavy and comforting, his face buried in the crook of my neck.
Slowly, carefully, he pulled out. A shiver wracked me at the sudden emptiness, the cool air on sensitized skin. He snagged a dish towel, running it under the warm tap before gently cleaning between my thighs. The domestic tenderness of the act after the animalistic frenzy made my throat tight.
He helped me down from the counter, my legs shaky. I leaned into him, my ear pressed against the steady, strong drum of his heart.
“Your scent is better now,” he murmured into my hair, his arms a solid band around me. “Warm. Happy. Mine.”
For now, it was enough. It had to be.
I finished making the two coffees on autopilot, my body humming, aches already forming in delicious places. Beel quietly ate a family-sized package of cold cuts beside me, his presence a steady, grounding heat.
“You okay?” he asked around a mouthful of ham.
“Yeah,” I said, and almost meant it. I picked up Lucifer’s black coffee. “I should take this back.”
Beel nodded, his eyes knowing. “Don’t let him make you sad again.”
I walked back through the quiet halls, the ghost of Beel’s hands still on my skin, the memory of his possession a shield against the chill awaiting me. I pushed open the bookshelf door.
Lucifer was standing at the window, his back to the room, staring out at the hellish moon. He turned as I entered. His gaze swept over me—my likely disheveled hair, the fresh bloom of a bruise on my collarbone peeking above my shirt, the two mugs in my hand. His eyes, those cold crimson stones, seemed to drink in every detail. A flicker of something profound and dangerous passed through them, gone so fast I might have imagined it.
He said nothing.
I placed his coffee, black and steaming, on the edge of his desk.
“Here,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. “It’s getting cold.”
The silence in the study was no longer just an absence of sound. It was a thick, charged thing, vibrating with everything he had seen and everything he hadn’t said. He didn’t move toward the coffee. He moved toward me. Each step was measured, precise, the click of his polished boots on the parquet floor a death knell for the fragile peace I’d just forged.
He stopped close enough for me to feel the unnatural coolness that always emanated from him. His eyes traced the bruise Beel had left, a possessive brand on my skin. His nostrils flared, almost imperceptibly.
“You reek of him,” Lucifer said, his voice a low vibration that bypassed my ears and went straight to my spine. “Of sweat, and gluttony, and conquest.”
I lifted my chin, defiance warring with a tremor deep in my gut. “I needed to feel something. You’ve been fucking frost.”
A dangerous smile touched his lips, devoid of any warmth. “So you ran to the one whose hunger is so simple, so easily satisfied. To the brother who would take any scrap offered.” He reached out, his gloved fingers not touching my skin but hovering near the bruise. “Did it work? Did his… vigorous simplicity chase me away?”
“Yes.” The lie was brittle.
His hand snapped up, his fingers tangling in my hair, not to kiss me, but to angle my head back, exposing my throat. His gaze was merciless. “You are a poor liar, Nicole. I can still feel the ache in you. It’s a hollow he couldn’t fill.” He leaned in, his lips a breath away from mine. “He only made you hungry for what you’re really missing.”
Then his mouth crashed down on mine. This was nothing like Beel’ kiss. There was no solace here, no simple hunger. This was vengeance. This was punishment. It was cold fury and scorching possession, a clash of teeth and tongue that stripped away the scent of the kitchen and replaced it with the crisp, dark aroma of old books and hellfire. He kissed me like he was trying to rewrite what Beel had written, to brand me with a fiercer, deeper mark.
He broke the kiss as abruptly as he’d started it, shoving me backward. I stumbled, my calves hitting the edge of his massive desk. Parchment scattered. An inkwell teetered and fell, a black splash blooming like a bruise on the rug.
“You want to feel something?” he snarled, his composure cracking to reveal the raw, furious demon beneath. His hands went to the fastening of his trousers. “I’ll give you a feeling you won’t forget so easily. You want to be distracted? I’ll ruin you for anyone else’s touch.”
He pushed me flat onto the desk, the hard, unyielding oak biting into my back. My heart was a frantic bird against my ribs. This wasn’t desire. This was a storm.
He didn’t bother undressing me. He hiked my skirt up around my waist, ripped the remnants of my torn underwear aside, and drove into me in one brutal, unforgiving thrust.
I cried out, a sharp sound swallowed by the cavernous room. It hurt. It was too much, too fast, a claim staked with violence. He didn’t pause, didn’t check if I was ready. He set a ruthless, punishing rhythm, each snap of his hips jolting me against the hard wood. The desk groaned in protest.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice guttural.
Tears blurred my vision, but I forced my eyes open. His face was a mask of angelic beauty twisted by a demonic rage. His pupils were blown wide, but there was no warmth in them, only a focused, chaotic fire.
“This is what you wanted,” he panted, his grip vise-like on my hips. “You wanted my attention. You have it. Every. Last. Ounce. Of it.”
He fucked me with a precision designed to dismantle. Where Beel had been a consuming fire, Lucifer was a scalpel, cutting away at the edges of my sanity, finding every raw, neglected nerve.
I whimpered out the long-lost word he'd given me. A command he branded himself with if I ever needed to stop. "Repentance," my voice long broken and spirit shattered along with it. It was my only protection against him, our safe word I've never needed to use until now.
The word hung in the air between us, a fragile, fracturing barrier.
"Repentance."
Lucifer froze.
His entire body went rigid, a statue of coiled fury paused mid-strike. The brutal, driving rhythm halted, leaving only the strained sound of our breathing and the distant hiss of the fire. The pressure inside me was a throbbing, painful echo of his presence.
For a long, terrifying second, nothing happened. His face was inches from mine, his crimson eyes wide, the chaos in them receding like a violent tide pulling back from a shore it had just ravaged. He was still buried deep within me, a part of him I could no longer distinguish from the violation.
Then, a shudder ran through him. It started in the hands that were gripping my hips hard enough to bruise bone, traveled up his arms, and finally contorted his features. The rage didn't vanish; it collapsed in on itself, replaced by a dawning horror so profound it made my own fear feel trivial.
He withdrew, a slow, deliberate slide that felt more agonizing than his entry. The cold air of the study rushed in where his heat had been. He stumbled back a step, staring down at me splayed across his desk, my skirt rucked up, my body marked by his hands and his anger.
"Nicole," he breathed. The word was shattered.
I couldn't move. I was pinned by the weight of what had just happened, by the raw ache between my legs, by the shame washing over his aristocratic features. He looked at the spilled ink, the scattered documents, at me.
He turned away, one hand raking through his perfect black hair, gripping the back of his neck. His shoulders hunched. I’d never seen him look small before. He looked broken.
I pushed myself up, my arms trembling violently. I clumsily pulled my skirt down, the fabric whispering against my sensitive skin. The silence was a living thing, choking us.
“I…” His voice was ragged. “I didn’t… I lost…”
He didn’t finish. He couldn’t.
A cold, clean fury began to seep into my veins, numbing the physical pain, cauterizing the emotional one. I slid off the desk, my legs holding. I straightened my blouse with fingers that wouldn’t stop shaking.
“You lost control,” I said, my voice flat, alien to my own ears. “You saw Beel’s mark and you lost your fucking mind.”
He flinched as if I’d struck him. “It’s not an excuse.”
“Damn right it isn’t.” I took a step toward the secret door, my movements jerky. The need to get out, to be anywhere he wasn’t, was a primal scream in my skull.
“Wait.” He turned, his face ashen. The Avatar of Pride was begging. “Please. Nikki. I… I will make this right. I don’t know how, but…”
I stopped at the bookshelf, my hand on the hidden latch. I didn’t look back. “You don’t get to call me that.Not anymore. ‘Nicole’ will do just fine. From now on, ‘Nicole’ will do for everything.”
I pushed the door open and stepped through into the dark library.
The cool, quiet darkness of the hall was a balm. I walked, not knowing where I was going, just away. My body was a map of fresh pain, a ledger of his failure. I didn’t go to my room. I couldn’t lie in that bed.
I found myself in the dim, sterile light of the main bathroom. I locked the door and turned on the shower, as hot as I could stand it. Steam filled the room, fogging the mirror, hiding my reflection. I didn’t want to see.
Under the scalding spray, I scrubbed. I used soap that smelled of lemons and pumice, scouring my skin until it was pink and raw, trying to erase the feel of him, the smell of his study on me. The water stung the tender flesh between my thighs. I leaned my forehead against the cool tile and let the heat pour over me, silent tears mixing with the shower stream.
I didn’t hear the door open over the roar of the water. I only sensed a shift in the air, a new presence in the steam-filled room.
A large, warm hand reached past the curtain and turned the water off. The sudden silence was jarring.
Beel stood there, a towel in his hands. He must have heard. He always knew. His gaze took in my reddened skin, the tremor in my hands, the hollow look in my eyes I could feel even though I couldn’t see it.
He didn’t ask. He just opened the towel, holding it up like a shield.
I stepped out, and he enveloped me in the thick, soft cotton. He started drying me, his movements gentle, methodical. He dried my hair, my arms, my back. He knelt on the bathmat and carefully patted my legs dry. His touch was clinical, caring, devoid of the hunger from before.
When he was done, he wrapped the towel around me and pulled me into a crushing hug. My face pressed against his bare chest. He was wearing only sweatpants. He must have come straight from bed.
“I heard,” he said quietly, his voice a rumble in his chest. “I felt… the House shook.”
“He stopped,” I whispered into his skin. “When I used the word. He just… stopped.”
“He better have.” The menace in Beel’s tone was quiet and absolute. He pulled back, cupping my face. “You’re staying with me tonight. In my room. He won’t come there.”
I didn’t have the strength to argue. He led me through the silent corridors to his room. It smelled of protein powder, clean linen, and him. He pulled back the covers on his massive bed and I climbed in. He slid in beside me, on top of the covers, and pulled me against him, my back to his front. His arm was a heavy, secure weight around my waist.
“Sleep,” he murmured into my hair. “I’m here.”
Exhaustion, a deep, soul-deep weariness, finally pulled me under. But just before sleep claimed me, a cold, clear thought crystallized in the darkness behind my eyelids.
This changed everything. The careful balance, the tense harmony of the House of Lamentation, had just been shattered. Lucifer had crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed. And the quiet, hungry brother holding me… his loyalty had just been split down the middle.
The game was no longer about love or attention. It was about survival. And I had just learned a brutal lesson about the true nature of demons.
Some lines, once crossed, only lead deeper into the dark.