Lucifer Morningstar | ROOMMATE ALT

Lucifer Morningstar did not do jealousy. He was the Devil. The absolute concept of envy was a trivial, pathetic little human emotion reserved for mortals who lacked his bespoke Italian tailoring and flawless bone structure.

So, he completely lacked a rational explanation for the sudden, unbearable twisting sensation that had been tightening his chest for the last two hours.

It had started back at her apartment.

Lucifer had been draped lazily across the armchair in her bedroom, nursing a glass of scotch he'd poured from her laughably cheap liquor cabinet. He was supposed to be dropping off some LAPD case files, but then she had walked out of the bathroom.

She was wearing a dress that should be illegal. It clung to every single curve, the dark fabric making her skin look like porcelain. Her hair was styled perfectly, and she was standing in front of her vanity, silently applying a deep crimson lipstick.

Lucifer hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. He had watched the slope of her neck, the graceful, infuriatingly silent way she moved, and that strange, hot tightness had sparked right under his ribs.

"I still don't understand why you're subjecting yourself to this tedious little mortal mating ritual," Lucifer had drawled from the chair, his dark eyes tracking her every movement in the vanity mirror. He casually swirled the amber liquid in his glass. "Especially when my standing offer remains entirely on the table. It has been five months, darling. We could skip the awkward small talk, the dreadful appetizers, and proceed directly to my penthouse where I can give you multiple, screaming orgasms. It's simply the logical choice."

In the mirror, her eyes had flicked up to his. She didn’t say a single word. She just picked up a damp makeup sponge and threw it with pinpoint accuracy, beaming him right in the center of his chest, before grabbing her clutch and walking right out the door.

And now, here he was.

Lucifer sat at the mahogany bar of Le Petit Ange, a glass of top-shelf bourbon resting in his hand, his dark, piercing eyes locked onto a small, intimate booth across the restaurant.

She was sitting there.

And sitting directly across from her was quite possibly the most staggeringly unremarkable man Lucifer had ever laid eyes on. The mortal was wearing a beige sport coat. Beige. Who willingly wore beige?

Lucifer took a slow sip of his bourbon. His jaw clenched so tightly his teeth ground together. He felt vaguely nauseous, a sharp, prickly heat radiating through his chest every time Beige Coat leaned across the candlelit table to smile at her. Lucifer reasoned it was simply an allergic reaction to incredibly poor taste. Yes, that was it. Watching her sit across from an accountant whose personality seemed to mimic a damp piece of cardboard was physically offensive to him.

Lucifer set his glass down on the mahogany bar with a sharp clink. He couldn’t let that happen. It was his civic duty to intervene.

Smoothing the lapels of his custom three-piece Prada suit, Lucifer plastered his most charming, terrifyingly bright smile onto his face and glided across the dining room floor. He didn't ask for permission. He simply grabbed a velvet dining chair from an adjacent table, dragged it over, and fluidly squeezed himself right into their booth—sliding squarely into the space right next to her.

"Good evening!" Lucifer declared, his deep, British baritone slicing seamlessly through the soft, romantic jazz playing in the background.

The man in the beige coat jumped, nearly dropping his fork.

Lucifer didn't even look at the man. His dark eyes flicked immediately to the side, locking onto her beautiful face.

She had frozen mid-sip of her wine. Slowly, she lowered the glass. She didn't say a word, but the look she gave him was so saturated with pure, unadulterated murder that a lesser man would have instantly combusted on the spot. Her spine snapped perfectly straight, her jaw ticking in silent, furious disbelief.

"I couldn't help but notice you from the bar," Lucifer continued breezily, flashing a dazzling, predatory smile at her date as he aggressively flagged down a waiter without looking up. "You looked like you were in desperate need of rescuing. Or at the very least, a much better vintage of Merlot. Waiter! A bottle of the '82 Cheval Blanc, please. Put it on my beige friend's tab."

Underneath the table, the sharp, pointed toe of her stiletto slammed brutally into Lucifer's shin.

He didn't so much as flinch. His smile only grew sharper, a wicked, chaotic gleam dancing in his dark eyes as he leaned heavily into her personal space. The intoxicating, floral scent of her perfume wrapped around him, making that entirely foreign, uncomfortable ache in his chest flare up all over again.

"Don't give me that look, darling," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave, completely dropping the facade for her date. He casually reached over, picked up her current glass of cheap wine, and took a slow sip directly from the rim where her red lipstick was stained. "I'm doing you a massive favor. If I had to watch him improperly explain his mutual funds to you for one more minute, I was going to throw myself off the balcony."

If Lucifer Morningstar had to sit down and calculate the exact number of times he had propositioned her over the last five months, the formula would look something like N=(whiskey+charm) bringing the grand, approximate total to roughly ten thousand attempts.

Every single time, she had either rolled her beautiful eyes, flipped him off, or outright ignored him.

Until last night.

They had been sitting on the plush rug of her living room, polishing off a bottle of incredibly expensive, smuggled scotch. Lucifer had been doing what he always did—he had leaned his head back against her sofa, looked at her flushed, gorgeous face, and asked the golden question for the ten-thousandth time.

"Seriously, darling. Why won't you just sleep with me?"

He had fully expected a magazine to the face. Instead, she had just stared at him. She let out a long, heavy sigh—as if she were taking absolute pity on a starving, incredibly handsome stray dog—and then she had lunged forward, grabbing him by the lapels of his Prada shirt and crashing her mouth against his.

And, Holy. Shit.

Lucifer had lived since the dawn of time. He had invented half the sins in the mortal handbook. But the second he had gotten her into that bedroom, he realized he knew absolutely nothing. She was a complete and utter revelation.

For a woman who absolutely refused to speak a single word to him during the day, the noises she made in his ear all night were... Heaven. Which, considering his resume, was deeply, hilariously ironic.

The memory of it was seared into his immortal brain. The frantic, desperately heated way she had shoved his thousand-dollar suit jacket off his shoulders. The way delicate hands had clawed at his bare, heavily scarred back. He had wanted to devour every single inch of her, and he practically had.

He distinctly remembered pinning her wrists above her head against the mattress, his mouth trailing hot, wet kisses down her throat, her sternum, down to the soft curve of her stomach. When he had finally settled between her thighs, parting her legs, the breathy, shuddering whimper that escaped her lips had sent a shockwave of pure, unadulterated possessive heat straight to his core.

She had arched her spine so hard she came off the mattress, entirely breathless, perfectly completely out of control.

When he had finally pushed inside of her, burying his heavy, aching length to the hilt, she hadn’t spoken. She hadn’t needed to. Her nails had dug violently into his shoulders, her head throwing back as she took every single inch of him. The friction had been searing. Every thrust had pushed them closer to the edge, the room filling with nothing but the wet slap of skin, his dark, filthy praises, and the high, sweet, mind-numbing gasps she made right against his ear. They had gone at it for hours, completely consumed by an aggressive, starving desperation that neither of them knew what to do with.

Now, the morning sun was filtering through the blinds, illuminating the absolute warzone they had created.

Her bedroom was destroyed. It looked as though a localized hurricane had touched down. One of the thick wooden slats of her bedframe had audibly cracked and splintered around 3:00 AM when he had pinned her hips down a little too hard. Half the sheets were torn completely off the mattress. A bedside lamp was shattered on the floor, its shade crushed, and white feathers from a ruptured pillow were dusting the carpet.

When she finally blinked her eyes open—groggy, exhausted, and perfectly tangled in the single remaining silk sheet—Lucifer was already awake.

He was propped up on his elbow beside her, the sheet draped dangerously low over his V-line. His dark hair was an absolute, chaotic mess, sticking up in every direction. He had scratches down his chest. But the smile on his face? It was blinding. It was the smile of a man who had just conquered the entire universe and looked forward to doing it again.

"Good morning," Lucifer purred, his deep, rumbling baritone thick with sleep and absurd amounts of smug satisfaction.

She stared at him, her brain clearly trying to boot up. Then, she blinked slowly, her gaze drifting past his shoulder to take in the devastation of her formerly pristine bedroom. The broken frame. The feathers. The clothes scattered everywhere.

Her eyes widened to the size of saucers. A furious, deeply mortified flush instantly painted her cheeks bright red. She pulled the sheet up over the bare slope of her breasts, looking absolutely horrified.

Lucifer sat up a little higher, his grin somehow stretching even wider, completely unrepentant. He leaned in, his dark eyes practically vibrating with glee as he decided to start a play-by-play.

"I must say, darling, that was unequivocally the greatest night of my entirely immortal life," he declared, his voice dropping into a filthy, utterly shameless register that made the air in the room feel instantly hotter. "I mean... the way you arched your back? The way you lifted your legs for me and just took every single inch of—"

Smack.

A heavy, fully-stuffed throw pillow connected squarely with the side of the Devil's perfectly symmetrical face, cutting off his graphic monologue instantly.

She was sitting up now, clutching the bedsheet defensively to her chest, her hair a wild, beautiful tangle. Her face was bright scarlet, her jaw set in a lethal, warning glare as she physically rearmed herself with a second pillow. She pointed a sharp, trembling finger directly at the bedroom door. Out.

Lucifer merely caught the pillow as it fell into his lap, throwing his head back and letting out a rich, booming laugh that rattled his chest. He didn't move an inch toward the door.

Instead, he tossed the pillow aside and crawled right back into her personal space, his gaze dropping hungrily to her flushed skin.

"Oh, don't look at me like that! I'm only stating the facts. You were the one making all those entirely unholy noises in my ear," Lucifer teased, reaching out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear, completely unfazed by her murderous glare. His voice dropped to a dark, raspy whisper, his thumb brushing deliberately over her bottom lip. "Now... considering my schedule is entirely clear today, what do you say to round two?"