Sinners' Kingdom #1: The Book of Lust (Complete)

18

Thank God I was still coordinated enough to drive... maybe. My body needed sleep, but after everything that happened, the adrenaline blasted the fatigue right out of me and had me on wire-thin tension. Yeah, I could drive. Maybe at least for a few hours, far enough that I could at least make good headway in leaving the state.

There was nothing I needed to go back to the apartment for. All my life — ever since the disaster, anyway — I'd prepared for this, knowing the past could uproot my present at any time. I had everything I needed in my car and knapsack, all my papers, a good amount of cash, and an emergency food and water stash in the trunk. The only thing left to do was withdraw everything I could from the nearest ATM, but I couldn't linger long. Juliet had to have taken the witch hunters to safety somewhere to treat them, and by now, they could have called in my disappearance. There would be dozens more hunters crawling all over this side of the country before long, all of them itching to take me in.

If that happened, no one would ever see me again. I was certain of it.

Though, with a supposed demon prince riding shotgun in my car, maybe that was a fair consequence. I wouldn't trust anyone who tangled with demons either, especially ones that went on the run right after resisting arrest and attacking Council enforcers.

Yeah. It didn't look good. My hands tightened on the steering wheel as I rumbled the car over the uneven, snow-filled road, heart racing and brain full.

And that damn demon wouldn't stop staring at me.

"Can you look away for at least one minute," I snapped. "Look out the window. Admire the scenery. It's not like I'm going anywhere you aren't going."

"There's nothing else I'm interested in seeing. You're all I need, Sable."

I wished I could rip off this steering wheel and bean him over the head with it. "Just leave me alone for one minute, please."

"Didn't you say you wanted me to answer questions while we travel?" he asked, teasing. To make it worse, he leaned in, large body curving over the middle console that I'd discreetly slid forward earlier to improvise a divider between us. His arm rested on the surface as he propped his weight upon it and pressed in, lips dipping close to my shoulder. "Whatever you ask, I will answer. There's nothing I would keep from my queen."

"Yes, for starters, don't call me your queen. Please. Secondly, I have plenty of questions, but I need to think first."

"You have all the time in the world to do so." He pressed a kiss to my shoulder but didn't stop there. With a quiet groan, he trailed his lips up to my neck, angling his head so his white curls invaded my vision. I gritted my teeth and pushed him away with my forehead, though that only seemed to encourage him more as he kissed under my jaw. "Ah... Sable..."

That he knew my name spooked me so much I couldn't even mention it. He had been watching me for so long from another realm that he knew these things about me — and too late, I realized everything that had ever happened between us in my dreams had been real all along. He wasn't some inanimate curse born out of my imagination. He had been a living being, a demon seeking to cross over, the entire time.

"Why did you come to me?" I asked finally. "Or is there no special reason? Was I just the one you latched onto because of some bad luck?"

"Bad luck? No, no... Everything has always been intended. You for the throne, both bloodlines united as they should have been. But what you are is only part of it. I've watched you for years, Sable. You think you don't know me, but you'll soon realize I've been there all along. Meeting like this in the human realm was simply long overdue."

"We'll agree to disagree. Let's get some actual answers now, then. What do you mean, bloodlines? This is about me being a — uck." I ran the car over a hardened section of ice, sending the car into a small but loud hissy fit until it rolled back onto the softer snow. "... About me being a Solaria?"

He chuckled. "That would be only the half of it, my love."

"Half?"

"The Solaria line is unbroken, a line of mothers and daughters stretching back to the beginning of humanity. You're the true scion of your bloodline. Your mother's daughter. But your father... Let me guess. You never knew him?"

Was he trying to rile me up? Sure, most witches brought their husbands home, but the Solaria family was known for its absent men. Some killed, tragically, by the danger that always surrounded our bloodline every generation until we became so few, but there were some men who simply fathered Solaria children according to written agreement, and then left. No sentimental attachments. My father could have been either. I'd never asked after the first few times my mother and grandmother taught me that those questions were inappropriate.

In short, I didn't give a damn.

"Asmodeus, please get to the point. I'm on the run, and I'm also bound to you, and when they find out, it's a death sentence for me. I'm not in the mood for riddles and flirting."

"But I love both." He kissed my jaw again, the tip of his tongue gliding ever so gently toward my ear, then the shell of it. I restrained a shiver. His touch was intoxicating, but that was just demonic influence, that was all... And the contract. The symbol on my wrist tingled harder and harder.

Seriously. It had been my only option at the time, but now the true weight of what I had done slammed down on my shoulders. The agreement we had made, the contract wagering both our souls — I might have only been delaying the inevitable. I wasn't guaranteed safety. It was a tabula rasa, a blank check contract — and an evolving one, constantly shifting little by little. And a Prince was far more powerful than me. The sheer force of his soul would erode my equal-for-now power over the contract, and then he would become the dominant party...

These seductive touches were only the beginning.

"Asmodeus. Focus, please."

"Call me Lust," he whispered. "I prefer it. It reminds me of what I want to do to you."

"Which gives me all the more reason not to. Why did you bring up my father, and what does this have to do with the Solaria line? And why not my cousins? They're more powerful than I am. I'm only a witch in name. I don't have any bloodline magic in me."

"Oh, far from it, my love. But it's the essence of your soul, not your power that draws me. You could have been anyone, and I would still have found you in the end. Mm..." He hummed in my ear, sending goosebumps cascading across my body. "This vessel, your body, was created exclusively for you. After so many millennia, you've finally claimed it. It only took the fated union of your mother and your father to finally combine both halves of their incomplete lineages... Your mother, the line of Lilith, and your father, the line of Adam and Eve."