Lucifer Reborn Dante King (books that read to you txt) 📖

had a guy make me feel that good with just his mouth—but I’m sure you want more from me, Luke. Don’t you?”

I swallowed hard. “Maddie. How many times did I just make you come?”

She looked surprised at the question. Then she grinned. “Why, you need to know how many notches to make on your bedpost?”

“It’s important,” I said.

More than anything, the seriousness of my tone got through to her. “Just once,” she said with a shrug. “Well...I guess that was maybe two, depending on how we’re counting it. I kind of came down at the end and went over the edge again when you came in my mouth.” She let out a very unladylike giggle. “Sorry to be crude, but you did ask…”

“No, it’s great,” I said, hugging her. “Believe me, it’s a total turn-on.”

Shit, I thought, holding her close. That was two already? Damn it…

Maddie must have felt my hesitation. “You have to go, don’t you?” she asked. Her eyes brimmed with the beginnings of tears. “Already?”

“I’ll come back soon,” I assured her. “Then I’ll see about getting you out of here. Maybe even get you back to the diner…”

Maddie made a face. “I don’t want to go back to the diner,” she said, laughing like it was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. “Are you kidding me? Who would want to go back to their boring old job after seeing Hogwarts?”

I could sympathize with that. “Bit small, though,” I said, looking around the tiny room. Only now did I realize that I’d designed my subspace for boning sessions first. The bed was top of the line, but the rest of the space clearly had not been constructed for long-term residence.

Maybe it’s more like my old dorm room than I thought, chuckling. That clearly hadn’t been designed for comfort, either. But maybe I could do better for Maddie. I remembered what Mareth told me: the rumor was, Hell was the original subspace. If a pocket universe could grow to those proportions, surely my power was enough to create more than a single room. I decided to try. If I could make an apartment for Maddie, that would be great —and maybe, in time, my subspace could be even better. A world of its own, designed by me…

Well. It was something to fantasize about for the future.

“I mean, I’ll be fine,” Maddie said, though she eyed the walls with concern. “Either way, anything’s better than being out there with those monsters…”

“Sure,” I told her, closing my eyes. “But why stop there?”

The last time I’d been in my subspace, I hadn’t done much more than throw a bed against the wall and go to town. I’d been far too busy. Now, knowing that only moments were passing back at the Academy while Maddie and I tarried in here, I could afford to take my time.

I pushed outward with an exertion of mental effort, reaching for the contours of the space around me. A simple square room was nice, but depressingly simple. Surely someone with the favor of Lucifer could do something a little more exciting, right?

A door appeared in the wall of the bedroom, with a hint of narrow hallway beyond it. At the same time, the wall next to the bed stretched from the wall, transforming into a long, ornate windowpane with a glass window above it. For now, the window looked out on absolutely nothing, but I was working on that.

For now, I focused on the interior of the subspace. The hallway lengthened, stretching cross-wise against the bedroom until it opened out into a larger living room. Thinking of Christina’s exquisite house, I gave the great room the same high, sloped ceilings, along with a roaring fireplace and a soft, comfortable couch facing it. The walls I transformed as well, molding flat white nothing into wood and stone as easily as thinking about it.

The longer I worked, the more power ebbed from me. I could tell that I’d gained energy from my time with Mareth, Christina, and Maddie—yet this impromptu home design sapped that strength the more I created. Thinking quickly, I added a very basic kitchen to the side of the living room—a kind of open-concept space with little more than a sink and a refrigerator. Back along the other side of the hallway I threw in a basic bathroom of the same white material as the original room—Maddie could reach it by leaving the bedroom from the left rather than the right.

Sweat broke out on my forehead. I tried the same surfaces trick I’d done in the living room, only to find I couldn’t. It was like lifting a barbell all the way off of your chest, only to discover you’d overextended so far you couldn’t get it back onto the rack. I let go of the mental construct with a gasp, slumping over. For now, the bathroom would have to remain half-finished: functional, but made out of the same blank white canvas the bedroom had originally been built from.

“Oh my gosh!” Maddie knelt next to me, cradling my head in her arms. As she was still topless, this was one hell of a nice sensation. “Are you okay, Luke?”

I lay there for a few moments, recovering, then sat up. “Yeah, I’m alright. That window’s going to be bare for a while, though.” I gestured at the hallway. “Want to go take a tour of your new place?”

It wasn’t much. Surely, compared to the grandeur of the Academy tour Xora was ready to take me on back in Hell, a quick walk around my new subspace apartment couldn’t be anything to write home about. Yet tears sprang to Maddie’s eyes as she walked around the living room, as if she’d never seen anything more beautiful. Like she didn’t even need the Academy.

“You made all this,” she purred, running a hand down the