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The first time Chloe caught Lucifer masturbating, it was three months after his return from Hell.

Chloe had been absent part of the morning and the entire afternoon, stuck in a backlogged courthouse to give her deposition in a homicide trial.   The evidence against the accused had been substantial and Chloe knew in her gut that the woman was guilty, but it had still been stressful. 

By the time she arrived at the penthouse, some of the tension had bled out of her shoulders, but not all.  Lucifer, she knew, would be happy to rid her of the rest of it.

She had walked in with all the comfortable ease the last months had given her, toed her flats off by the elevator, set her bag on the bar counter, and –

And glanced up to his bed, his name frozen on her lips from her intent to call out and let him know she was back.

Lucifer lay stretched out in all his naked glory on his dark sheets, the cover kicked down towards the foot of the bed.  It was rather unmistakable, what he was doing.

Chloe must have made some small sound, or perhaps he’d just noticed her movement beyond the edge of his laptop screen.

“Detective,” he’d said brightly, his hand stilling.  Her eyes darted down to the impressive erection he was sporting.  Whatever he’d been watching, it clearly did a thorough job of buttering his infernal biscuit.

But he closed the laptop screen.   The quiet murmur of audio fell silent.   He picked the computer up and set it aside, rising from the bed to greet her.

“How did the deposition go?” he asked, without a trace of embarrassment for being interrupted in what, with anyone else, would have been a private moment.  She couldn’t help but watch his dick bounce as he descended the stairs.

Chloe cleared her throat.  She cleared it again.   Lucifer cupped his warm hands on the side of her face and swept them back, brushing flyaway strands of hair behind her ears as he bent and started kissing at her neck.

At which point, she had her hands full of an amorous, naked, affectionate devil, and both the deposition and the masturbation took a back seat.

~*~

But, the vision of him, mouth parted and panting, eyes fixed on his laptop screen with obvious lust, cock leaking in his pumping hand – it stayed with her.

Not simply as spank-bank material, either, although it certainly was that, too.  Or it would be, if her sex life hadn’t been so mind-blowing lately that adding solo sessions on top of it would’ve been ridiculous.

Which… was sort of the thought that kept her dwelling on that image.  Lucifer.  Masturbating.

She knew he had a high sex drive.  Boy, did she know it.  She wondered, though, what it was that he watched.  What kind of porn the Devil liked.  Lucifer had such broad tastes and was such a hedonist that Chloe thought it’d be harder to find things he didn’t like to do in bed.

But what was his naughtiest desire?

The relationship between them had had a somewhat rough start (with the both of them dancing around each other and neither talking about his time spent in Hell, until Chloe had eventually snapped and dragged him into an interrogation room to yell at him until she’d started crying (which she hated) and it had devolved into a rare flash of unvarnished honesty from him, which had ended up with them making out in said interrogation room until her better sense had seized hold and put a stop to it.  She was never having sex at work again.  The way she’d behaved with Marcus still made her cringe).   After that explosive, cathartic moment, they’d gone back to his penthouse for a more private conversation.  That had turned into sex, and more sex, and quiet, semi-weepy pillow-talk, followed by additional sex.

That first week had been a roller coaster.

But things had stabilized, and the relationship she had with Lucifer now…

Chloe didn’t think she’d ever been happier. 

She loved him.  He loved her.  He’d forgiven her for the mess she’d made with Kinley, with Rome, with her reaction to learning the truth.  She’d forgiven him for his unilateral decision to leave.  They’d moved on, and the synchronicity they’d experienced at work before, both of them playing off each other’s weaknesses and strengths to achieve the best closure rate in her department, had translated surprisingly well into a domestic setting.  He’d learned to respect her boundaries with Trixie and work.  She’d learned which topics were open wounds for him. 

And the sex ran the gamut from being so filthy and vigorous it left her numb, to so tender and sweet it left her aching.  He always seemed to know what she wanted, even as he insisted that he couldn’t draw out her desires.

Chloe had thought she was meeting his desires, too.  The morning before she’d left for the deposition, they’d stayed in bed so long, making love sweetly and slowly, that she’d had to skip breakfast just to make it to court on time.

Walking in on him jerking off only hours later…

Was it just the high sex drive?  What had been on that laptop screen that had brought such a hungry expression to his face?

The idea that Lucifer wanted something more, or something else, ate at her.  She knew Lucifer’s previous sex life had been… eccentric.  The testimonials from his lovers and listening to him regale Ella with the exploits he and Eve had gotten up to had been, to put it mildly, memorable.

By comparison, she likewise knew that, even in the kindest terms, the sex life he now had with her was significantly less varied and more sane.  Was that boring to him?   He’d made no complaints at all, but she couldn’t help but consider it.

She chewed at her thumbnail as she read through witness statements, eyes moving over the words without absorbing them.

“Oh, now that’s interesting,” Lucifer said, yanking her out of her thoughts.  She looked across her desk at him, where he sat with a manila folder spread out on what he’d claimed as his portion of the work surface.

“What?”

“Didn’t Will say that Jessica was a loner?  No roommate, no significant other?”

“He did,” Chloe said.  Interviewing grieving family members was always hard.

“Which I thought was nonsense at the time.  I mean, look at her.” He waved a hand at the photo of their victim.  Prior to getting shot in the temple, the young woman had indeed been a looker, but that didn’t mean much.

“People can be single for any number of reasons, Lucifer,” she said, not for the first time.  He made a dismissive noise.

“But she also had a pantry stocked with tempeh, flaxseeds, and nutritional yeast.  This,” he tapped his page, “Is an accounting of what she had in her medicine cabinet.  B12, vitamin D, iodine…”

“Okay,” Chloe said.  “So she was vegan.”

“Right,” Lucifer said.  “But she had receipts and empty delivery containers in her bin for,” he flipped the page and read: “A tomato walnut salad and a bacon-BBQ cheeseburger.”  He lowered the file and looked at her, eyebrows raised suggestively.  “Seems a bit off.”

Chloe nodded.

“So there had to have been someone else in her life,” she said.  She tapped the desk with her fingertips.  “Let’s see if the delivery person can give us a description.”

~*~

Life had settled into a strange but comfortable pattern, post-Hell. 

The days Trixie was in Chloe’s keeping, Lucifer would join them for dinner and post-dinner entertainment, then either linger or wander back to Lux to see to his responsibilities as a host.  Those nights, Chloe would inevitably wake up some time past midnight when he slipped into bed beside her.   (Just to sleep.   After a near-miss with an involuntary moan, it had been an easy agreement that it wasn’t worth the risk of getting interrupted by an eleven-year old.)   

The days that her little monkey was with Dan, Chloe would join Lucifer at Lux after finishing up the paperwork that, even with his renewed focus in their working relationship, was still just a step too far into ‘torturous tedium,’ as he had put it, to do himself.  Sometimes, he would play a set downstairs at Lux for his adoring crowd, and Chloe would sit at the bar and watch him soak up their attention.   Sometimes, they would dance.  Often, they would spend the evening upstairs together.

Twice, he had asked her, looking at particularly beautiful or athletic people in the crowd, if Chloe would be interested in a threesome.  The first time, it had been a woman that Chloe was sure was a ballerina in her day-job.  The second time, a young man with strikingly blue eyes and broad shoulders who had been dancing with another man.

The suggestions had unfurled something between jealousy and lust in her, but the logistics of it – how awkward she would feel, inviting a stranger into their bed, letting said stranger be that intimate with him, with her – she wasn’t interested.

“No,” she’d said, and Lucifer had shrugged, letting it go as easily as that.

She wondered, now, if maybe that had been what he’d been watching on his laptop.  Threesomes or orgies; gay sex or women far younger and more flexible than Chloe was.  Jessica, the homicide victim that Lucifer had thought was so pretty, had been black.  Chloe could be a lot of things for him, but being black was a bit outside of her reach.  

Lucifer kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her, trailing his lips from her mouth to her cheek to her brow.

“You seem preoccupied, love,” he’d said.

“It’s nothing,” she’d dismissed.

She didn’t know if he believed her.  She tried to push her worries out of her head.  She tried to make the statement true.

~*~

They’d experimented with all sorts of things.  Lucifer’s collection of sex toys was ludicrously large. 

“Body-safe silicon has been such a marvelous invention.  My goodness, the things you humans used to craft dildos out of.  One has to admire the ambition, I suppose.”

Lucifer seemed to enjoy the novelty of the pain he experienced with her.   The vulnerability, that had seen him impaled with a pool cue, shot in the stomach (twice), cut and sliced and burned and battered – was now used to stimulate and excite instead of injure.  Evenings spent teasing his nipples and the head of his cock with an electric wand, or turning his pale flesh glowing pink when she spanked him.  He would shudder with pleasure when she raked her fingernails down his back, or if she tugged his hair when he went down on her.

But Chloe wasn’t a sadist. 

The teasing never went further than that.  She didn’t want to hurt hurt him.  When he’d offered her more explicit tools (whips, crops, canes, needles, cock-cages and clamps, oh my), again, she’d said “no,” and that had been the end of it.

And maybe that what he was missing - what he desired?  Chloe didn’t think she had it in her to do that.   The idea of causing him pain at a level that went beyond a light, naughty thrill… she imagined doing it, hearing him cry out in genuine pain, and it was the least sexy thing she could imagine.   But if it was what Lucifer liked… if it was what he wanted, she could try.  For him.

“You know if you…if there’s something you really want to do, we can talk about it.”

And Lucifer had perked up, hands stilling as he diced vegetables for the meal he was cooking.

“Is this about the pet shark, love?  Because I was thinking of renovating the lower floors anyway.  An aquarium of that size could easily-”

“No,” Chloe had interrupted, laughing despite herself.  “No, you’re not getting a pet shark, Lucifer.”

He sniffed in exaggerated annoyance and squinted at her.

“Could be fun,” he insisted.  “They’re unfairly maligned too, you know.”

“I know,” she said.  Her affection for him softened some of the knot of worry that had settled in her.

Lucifer moved the vegetables into a pan and turned his attention back to her.   His expression turned serious and she squirmed a little under the scrutiny. 

“Not about the shark, then.  What’s on your mind?”

Chloe tapped her fingers on the counter.

“Is there something you want to do, you know.  With me.  In bed.”

“Oh,” he purred, “I can think of all manner of things.”

His eyes trailed down her body and he licked his lips.   Without looking away from her, he turned off the stove and moved the pan to the side, then came around the island.   He kissed her, and she kissed him back, heart fluttering a little at both the passion he was pouring into it and her renewed worry about what she may have just gotten herself into.

“I didn’t mean right now!”  she laughed, protesting, but Lucifer only chuckled in reply.

Lucifer scooped her up by her ass, pulling her against his body while his hands did a thorough job of groping her.   He walked them out of his kitchen, down the hallway, and up the stairs to his bed, all without breaking the kiss or showing any strain at carrying her.  That reminder of his inhuman strength made heat coil low in her.

Lucifer laid her back on the bedspread and started kissing his way down her collar, his deft fingers unbuttoning her blouse as he went.   Chloe shivered a little as the air hit her revealed skin.

She shifted her hips to help wriggle out of her jeans.  He pulled them off easily, taking her underwear with them.   And, simple as that, she was naked, while Lucifer was still fully dressed.  It excited her, that imbalance.  From the grin he was giving her, Chloe suspected he’d figured that out.

His hands stroked long, warm paths along her sides while his mouth moved further down her body, until the wet press of his tongue was opening her up and her hands formed involuntary fists in the sheets.

Lucifer was shockingly good at oral sex.  She supposed eons of practice made perfect, but it still caught her off guard – how well he could reduce her to a quivering mess.  Her right hand let go of the sheets and grabbed his hair on a particularly sharp wave of pleasure, and he moaned, low and vulgar.  She could feel his smile.

Chloe swallowed and tried to remember the point of this.  Lucifer.  Giving Lucifer what he wanted.  She clenched her hand harder and he made another noise, a grunt somewhere in that foggy middle ground between pleasure and pain.   Was this what he wanted?  She slackened her grip and scratched at his scalp lightly with her fingernails, and there were the unambiguous happy noises again. 

Lucifer brought his fingers into the mix, then, and Chloe lost track of the experiment entirely for a time.

~*~

The sex they had was good (it was great), and Lucifer always left her satisfied.  But it was, she feared, vanilla, by his standards.  Lucifer seemed to default to positions that were face-to-face with her - more often than not, missionary, which was certainly a surprise, given the catalogue of sexual exploits the LAPD had on record thanks to the interviews with his previous partners.  But was he sticking to the less adventurous positions because he wanted to, or because he thought it was what she wanted?   She kept losing track of the question when actually engaged in the act.   Lucifer, amorous, was a rather distracting thing.

After sex, he would lie beside her while she came down from the high of it, his hands tracing patterns on her skin or trailing through her disarrayed hair, until she cooled down enough that he would cuddle her more explicitly.  There had been a learning curve on that – Lucifer trying to press up against her immediately afterwards, and their combined warmth rendering her sweaty and sticky in a less fun way. 

They basked together now, half-cooked meal mostly forgotten in the kitchen while Chloe lay with her head on his chest, his arms curled around her, their legs tangled together.  Her entire lower half ached in the best possible way.  The Kegels, she suspected, were paying off.

Under her cheek, the throb of Lucifer’s heart beat its strong, steady rhythm.  Lazily, he stroked her back. 

Lucifer’s chest rose and fell as he sighed.

Aaaaand there was that nagging thought again.   Was it a happy sigh, or a disappointed sigh? 

Chloe turned her head a little and kissed the warm pectoral under her.

“Lovely,” Lucifer said quietly, as if to himself.   He sniffed and looked down, meeting her eyes.  “Now, shall we see to dinner?”

But he didn’t move out from under her, content to stay there until she initiated it.

Chloe looked into Lucifer’s dark, dark eyes, trying to glean what he was thinking. 

“Was this,” she made a vague gesture down at herself, at the two of them together, “Was it what you wanted to do?”

“Oh, it’s nearly always what I want to do,” he said, waggling his eyebrows absurdly. 

Chloe snorted, but… she didn’t want to be uncertain about this. 

“If you want to try something more… I don’t know, more adventurous with me… we can do that.  If you want.”  She paused as the possibilities flashed before her eyes.  “If we talk about it first,” she amended.

Lucifer tilted his head quizzically. 

“Was there something you wanted to try?” he asked.

She shrugged.

“I’m happy with just this,” she said honestly.  “But this isn’t just about me.  We’re partners.  We can, you know.  Compromise.”

He smiled at her, bright and warm.

“I like ‘just this’ too,” he reassured her.  He nuzzled his nose against the crown of her head.  “Hmm.  Coconut.”

“Only the finest Sauve for this detective,” Chloe said, and he made a beleaguered noise, as if her cheap shampoo choice personally offended him.  Chloe couldn’t help but laugh.

“That’s it,” Lucifer said, scooting out from under her and rising from the bed. “Clearly, your low blood sugar is deranging your thinking.  I’ll have to see to it, for both our sakes.”

Chloe watched him pick up his bathrobe and put it on as he headed back down the hallway to his kitchen, mourning only a little as the silk obstructed the view of Lucifer’s ass.  Lucifer truly had a great ass. 

She rolled over onto her back, feeling her well-used muscles flex and ache in echoes of pleasure.  She didn’t want to get up.  She didn’t need to, either.  Lucifer would take care of her, she knew.

Chloe closed her eyes and drifted in pleasant lethargy, listening to Lucifer singing as he cooked.  

~*~

Lucifer’s collection of sex toys was kept in a large wardrobe inside his walk-in closet.  Well.  Part of his collection.   Three entire floors below the penthouse were used as extra storage space.   Not all for sex toys, although certainly some of the larger bondage rigs and fucking machines were stored down there, but the storage space was also used for entirely mundane and often inexplicable things, like tricycles and chainsaws.

Chloe wandered the floor immediately below the penthouse – the one with the adjoining spiral staircase upstairs.  Presumably that access meant these were the things Lucifer used most often.  

Chloe ran curious fingers along the soft ropes in a pulley system, trying to suss out how a person could be secured within the complicated cradle of them.   The sex swing was easier to understand, and the St. Andrew’s cross with its padded cuffs, and the padded bench with embedded rings.  The pair of Sybians caught her eye.  The saddle of one of the sex machines was fitted with a modest dildo.  The space in front of said dildo had a small raised hump covered in short little nubs.  She could picture herself straddling the hemicylindrical device, sitting on it; how the nubs would line up with her clit.  And then with vibration running through it… Yes, a very good time indeed. 

The other Sybian didn’t have the nubbed pad, and the dildo was a bit larger.  She looked at the control box attached to the machine – with dials and switches for ‘vibration’ and, intriguingly, ‘rotation.’   She looked at the two devices again; at their attachments.

“His and hers?” Chloe wondered to herself, shaking her head at the strange turn her life had taken putting her here: in the Devil’s storage room, considering which of his toys to introduce into their sex life.

Downstairs, Lucifer was entertaining the guests at Lux, but she knew he’d be making his way up to the penthouse sooner rather than later.  By the jealous looks she usually received when she joined him, it hadn’t gone unnoticed by anyone how smitten Lucifer was with her.

Chloe opened a leather case that contained long metal wands that gradually increased in diameter, and frowned in confusion at them for a long minute before realizing they were urethral sounds.   She shut the case quickly.

Her eyes went back to the Sybians.  That was… she could do that.  It would be something different and probably fun.  She’d always been curious about them but could never have justified the price for buying one for herself.  And who knew - maybe it would scratch an itch for him, too. 

She tried to pick up the machine, fingers sinking into the padding a little as she lifted it up.  It was certainly hefty, but not unmanageable.   Did he have a…?  Yes, there was a cart.  Of course there was a cart.  Even with divine strength, Lucifer still had a finite number of arms and quite a greedy streak.

Chloe loaded the cart up.

~*~

By the time Lucifer arrived upstairs, Chloe had set up the benches and Sybians in three different spots in the penthouse, indecisive, and had even loaded them back up to return to storage before she changed her mind again.  Her arms had gotten sore from picking them up so many times.

She’d settled on placing them in the curtained corner of his ‘bedroom,’ in front of the solitary armchair.   Out of the way, but… there. 

Lucifer breezed into the penthouse with a nearly literal skip in his step, flushed and grinning even before he caught sight of Chloe.  At seeing her, the wattage on his smile dialed up even further.

“Bachelorette party?” Chloe guessed, judging by both his glow and the later-than-expected arrival.

“Two,” Lucifer said gleefully.  “Quite by luck, celebrating at Lux at the same time.”

He met her at the bar where she’d been sitting, nursing a glass of brandy and watching local news on her phone.  He encouraged her up out of the seat, his hands sliding around her back and guiding her through a few impromptu dance steps.  Chloe laughed, his ridiculous joie de vivre (and the brandy) doing a fantastic job of loosening her up.  He twirled her so that her back pressed flush up against his chest.  He bent his head to kiss along her neck. 

“Any favors?” she asked.

“I connected an art student with a tattoo parlor that recently lost one of their best artists.  The new girl has quite a remarkable talent for it, if the ink she had on display is any indication.”

Chloe nodded against his collar.

“What’d she give you?”

“Well, nothing, yet.  But you never know when someone’s particular skillset or sphere of influence may come in handy,” he said pragmatically.    

This close, she could feel his warmth through his dress shirt, smell his cologne – and the clashing perfumes, no doubt from the bachelorettes he’d been entertaining.  Chloe knew it hadn’t gone further than dancing and flirting – she trusted him, and he never lied.  But still, the sticky-sweet smell of other people clinging to him made something base in her squirm.

“Shower?” she asked, shifting her ass back against him to make it more of an enticement than a request.   Lucifer hummed approvingly and allowed himself quite easily to be led, letting her take him by the hand.  Chloe rubbed her thumb along his knuckles as they walked.  

Walking towards his bathroom, Chloe could tell the moment Lucifer noticed the sex machines set up beside his bed.  He stiffened, just a little, but as keyed up as she was, Chloe noticed.  She turned to face him, and there was a flicker of some emotion in his eyes.   Was it surprise?  Disappointment?  Excitement?  It was there and gone too quick for her to tell.

“I thought we could, you know.   Try something different tonight.  If you wanted to.   Do you want to?”

“I’m up for anything, darling,” Lucifer replied, his expression opening back up into a ridiculous leer.

Chloe pressed him on it, though.

“But do you want to?”

He cocked his head at her, like he wasn’t sure if there was a secret agenda behind the question.  But then he blinked, and the look passed, and his grin returned. 

“If you want to, then of course I want to.”

Lucifer stroked his fingers along her cheek, then trailed his hand down, down, down, to cup her sex through her jeans.  Chloe shivered a little, heart expanding in an odd way at the earned confidence in his touch. 

“They can be quite a lot of fun,” he purred.  He leaned in and kissed her, filthy and consuming, then drew back – mouth and hand both – and proceeded past her, unbuttoning his shirt as he went.  “But first – a shower,” he said, and the playfulness in it was unmistakable.

Chloe let out a shaky exhale and followed him.

In the bathroom, Lucifer had already started the water.  It never took long for it to heat up – Lucifer, a hedonist through and through, would never abide by a slow water-heater – but even for him, it wasn’t instantaneous.  Chloe watched him strip off his socks and pants and underwear, appreciating the long, long lines of his legs, the tone of his muscles.  He’d lost some of his muscle in Hell.   Chloe hadn’t asked why.  She hadn’t asked… a lot of things, about his time down there.  How long it had been for him, with the way time moved differently below.  What he’d had to do to get back.  What Hell had demanded of him.  Lucifer shied away from the questions whenever she started to pry at the edges, and she’d let it drop, trusting that Linda was helping him in the ways that Chloe couldn’t.

Lucifer stepped into the shower, smirking as he caught her staring at him.

“Were you planning to join me?” he asked, tilting his head back to let the water soak his hair.  It slicked down against his scalp, making his face look longer. 

Chloe undressed, stepped in, and closed the glass door behind her.  Lucifer added body wash to a loofah and squished it into a bubbly froth.  He gathered her hair to the side; ran the loofah along her shoulders and down her back.

“Your little miscreant keeps pestering me for piano lessons,” Lucifer said.

Chloe chuckled and leaned back into his touch.

“She has a birthday coming up, you know,” she said.

Lucifer sighed.

“Can’t I simply give her cash?  She seems quite content with cash.  Canny little thing.  The bargains she’s struck with your ex are respectable indeed.”

“What’s she done to Dan?” Chloe asked, perking up.

“Ah, now, I shan’t tell.   They were told to me in confidence.”

“She’s my daughter, Lucifer.”

“Yes, you should be very proud.   She’s already quite business savvy, given that she’s barely hit double-digits,” he said.  His sudsy hands slid around her hips, and his right hand slipped low, fingers curling to tease her.  And …it was … weird.  It was weird to transition from talking about Trixie to this, and Chloe coughed, and swallowed, and leaned back against him.  But she let him distract her, knowing full well it was his intent.

Lucifer nuzzled against the wet crown of her head.   He was so tactilely affectionate – so sweet with her in these moments – pressing his skin to hers like he couldn’t get enough of the contact.   Chloe wondered if the touch-starvation was a holdover from Hell, or if this had always been a part of him, previously sated in his endless stream of one-night stands.

It made her a little sad to think about.  Neither answer was entirely kind.  He curled his fingers with more intent, firm fingertips circling her clit perfectly, and her breath punched out of her, the unhappy line of thought discarded.

She rocked back against him and found him hard.   He was too tall (he was wonderfully tall), and Chloe too short (a perfectly respectable 5’7”), and his cock, which she’d’ve wanted against her ass, rubbed along the small of her back instead.   She laughed and reached back, taking him in hand.

It was an awkward angle.  Her hand kept going slack thanks to what his own digits were doing to her.  The shower water alone didn’t quite make things slick enough for a decent handjob. 

But for the sounds Lucifer made in response, it was entirely unambiguous that he was enjoying himself.  His right hand – the hand that wasn’t working her so well that her thigh muscles were already starting to twitch – cupped her breasts.  He pinched a nipple competently between thumb and knuckle and gently tugged, sending sparks of sensation through her.  He soothed her with strokes when she gasped, and then did it again.

“Oh God,” she hissed.

“Mmmmm, Penelope,” Lucifer moaned back, and Chloe jerked, horrified.  He gave her a knowing stare, then smirked.  “See?  Off-putting, isn’t it?”

She made a disgruntled, annoyingly amused sound, and he kissed her and stroked her until she’d forgotten about the comment.  His fingertips curled and pressed and flicked so competently that she trembled.  She let go of his cock and grabbed his side instead, too caught up in what he was doing to her to properly reciprocate. 

Her orgasm crept up on her, pouncing as Lucifer groaned, carnal and deep.  Chloe clutched at his hip, at his wrist, everything tensing up and shaking for a long, blissed-out moment.  When she started to come down, Lucifer tried to start stroking her again, working her to another peak.   Chloe pushed his wrist away, laughing.

“I need a minute,” she panted.

“Nonsense,” Lucifer denied, but she could hear him grinning.  He relented easily, and she turned in his arms.  The hard length of his cock pressed up against her belly.   Chloe took the loofah from its little shower shelf and started washing his chest, his arms.  Lucifer watched her, his dark eyes full of both lust and affection as she worked.  His cock bobbed between them, hard and neglected, and she wanted its silky weight in her mouth – but not quite enough to kneel on the shower floor.  Her knees would never forgive her.

She ran the loofah up the underside of his cock, just to let him know she hadn’t forgotten it, and he hissed, hands cupping her shoulders.  She wrapped her hand around him again. When he blinked his eyes back open, the look he gave her -

He had this way of looking at her, sometimes, as if he didn’t believe she was really there – that they had actually, finally, after all the obstacles and missteps, come together in this intimate way.  

Chloe understood the feeling.  She cherished him just as much.  She still had moments where the surreality of his affection for her – her, just a human, just one person out of the billions Lucifer must have met in his unimaginably long life – it crept up on her.  Chloe still didn’t understand why she of all people had managed to unintentionally woo the actual Devil, but she had.  She didn’t question that part of it anymore.

Lucifer pushed his hips forward and back, fucking her sudsy fist, and she tightened her grip just to hear the way his breath stuttered.  He buried his face in her wet hair, arms wrapping around her in an embrace.  Chloe pumped her hand and kissed his chest.   When he got close, she bit at his collarbone, and he grunted with surprise and pleasure, that little bit of extra stimulation the tipping point, it seemed.  He spilled into her hand with a shamelessly loud moan.  She tipped back and nudged his head up, meeting his mouth to kiss him through it.  

He sucked her lower lip sloppily, and Chloe took it as a compliment.  When he was spent, she picked the loofah back up and soaped up his stomach, his legs, his already-perking-up-again cock.   She snorted at the latter.  His refractory period was insane. 

Eventually, he gently plucked the loofah from her hands and set it back on its shelf.  He pulled her forward with him, fully under the warm shower spray, and washed them both clean of lingering soap bubbles.   He kissed her, warm and wet and messy, water cascading around them.  Chloe reached past him to turn the tap off.

“Not even a proper shampoo?” he teased.

“Like we’re not going to be back here later,” she answered.

“Planning to get filthy, are we?”

Chloe drummed her fingers against his bicep.

“If you want to,” she said.  “Yeah.”

“Always, dear Detective.”  He kissed her again, quick and precise, and then opened the shower door to step out. 

“Now then,” he said, offering her a towel and reaching for one himself.  “Have you ever had a go on a Sybian before?”

She shook her head.

“They can be intense,” he said.  “I mean, not as intense as yours truly,” he added, licking his teeth as he smirked.  She rolled her eyes at him.  “But still quite a lot.”  His gaze trailed down to her crotch and his leer intensified.  She wrapped the towel a little tighter around herself in retaliation.

He pulled her towel open.  Gently, inexorably, and Chloe could fight him – could protest, or snatch the towel back – but she didn’t.   She let him look at her.  He brought the towel up behind her and sopped at her wet hair, scruffing it dry in a way that would be hell to untangle, if there weren’t plans to come back and actually shampoo and condition later.

“Shall we?” he said, and she nodded.  Lucifer grabbed a couple more towels and took them with him.

In his … not-bedroom.  His bedarea, with its gauzy curtains and California king bed, the pair of Sybians remained where Chloe had placed them.  

“Which one did you want to use?” he asked, and the question made her hesitate.  She’d thought it was obvious, but she pointed at the one with the little nubbled section.

“Excellent choice,” Lucifer said.   He laid his towels out on the end of the bed, fussing with them slightly, and then plucked the device off its stand and set it on those towels instead.   He readjusted the power cord, settling it on the other side of his armchair, and then scooted that armchair closer to the end of the bed, facing the machine.   Lucifer moved the other Sybian and the apparently surplus stand out of the way entirely. 

“Did you… Were you not going to…?” Chloe asked, watching him make these changes.

He cocked his head at her, then regarded the other Sybian again, and understanding lit in his gaze.

“Oh.  Well, while I can get off on one, I don’t really have the right equipment to ride.   It’s an absolute travesty that I haven’t a clitoris.”   He glanced down at her crotch.  “It really is quite a beautiful design.  You know, the first version had vagina dentata.  But, then, well, Lilith was Lilith, and that idea got scrapped on the rewrite.”

“… What?”

Lucifer bared his teeth and clicked them playfully in a mock bite.   He waved at the Sybian, continuing the previous conversation as if he hadn’t just dropped an appalling dollop of lore onto the rug between them.

“No, darling, trust me – you’ll want me right there,” he said, patting the chair.  He fished a bottle of lube out from his bedside box.  Chloe, struggling to push aside the images he’d put into her head regarding teeth, watched him work.   Lucifer popped the lid, squeezed out a bit onto the phallus and smeared the slick down.  He wiped his fingers off on the towel around his waist and stored the bottle of lube away again.

And, then, he looked at her expectantly.

Chloe took in the new arrangement, adjusting to the idea that Lucifer was going to sit and watch her masturbate with a machine.  She flushed, but wasn’t sure if it was with embarrassment or excitement.

She shook her head, though, trying to jar loose the smutty thoughts and focus on her actual goal.  The point of this was to try and do something nice for Lucifer.  Try to give him something that he wanted.   Instead, she’d somehow made it all about her again.

“Was there something you wanted to try instead?  This feels a little… um, selfish.”  She gestured at the set-up.   Lucifer, meanwhile, unwrapped the towel he wore and laid it out on the chair, presumably to sit on.   He gave her a quizzical glance, and then pointedly looked down at himself.

“Surely I don’t seem disinterested?” 

And – no.  No he didn’t.   It was an impressive erection, even by his standards.

Chloe swallowed.

“This is something you want to do, though, right?”

“Love, is something wrong?  You’re asking that question quite a lot.”

“And you haven’t really answered it,” Chloe said.  She blew out a slightly frustrated breath.

Warm hands cupped her shoulders.  He stood close enough that she could feel the heat of his skin.

“Chloe,” he said, “The idea of watching you come apart while you brace yourself against me –”  He took one of her hands and guided it to wrap around his cock, squeezing their fingers against its length for emphasis, “– it is something I very sincerely want to do.”

And – really, how could she argue with that?   She nodded and tilted her head up to him, inviting a kiss that he gave without hesitation.  She gave his cock a few long strokes, and he smiled into the kiss.  He drew back, giving her an expectant look, and raised challenging eyebrows at the sex machine on the bed.

“So,” she said.  She released him and gestured at the little padded riser he’d set aside.  “The stand isn’t what it sits on?”

“It can be, but - not really, no.  Typically it’s what you’d brace your elbows or torso on if you were riding it solo.  But you’ll have me instead.”

She eyed the Sybian.  It seemed more intimidating and less sexy, now that the moment was imminent.  In particular, she eyeballed the towels he’d knowingly put down under it, like he expected this turn into an indoor slip-n-slide.  Honestly, she thought.  Squirt with a guy one time…

“And I just… hop on?” she asked, aware that she was stalling.

He offered her his hand, palm up, and Chloe had the weirdest mental image of him doing the same thing to help a lady onto a horse.  A countess or courtier or queen – something in that time period with stockings and the hats with all the feathers.  She tried to imagine him in such a costume.  The image wouldn’t form, even though she knew he must have worn some truly silly things over the centuries.

“Have you ever had a mustache?” she asked, taking his hand and climbing up on the bed.  She positioned herself above the machine, knees on either side.  He blinked at her question.

“Occasionally,” he said.  Something fond twinkled in his eyes.  “Would you prefer a mustache ride?”

“No,” Chloe laughed.  “No, not even a little bit.  Dan had a mustache, briefly.  Never ever again.  He looked ridiculous, and the chafing was awful.”

She took a breath and gripped the slick phallus below her with one hand.  Carefully, she guided it into herself as she settled down onto the saddle.  Lucifer made a small, strangled sound, watching the silicon disappear inside her.  His cock twitched, and the light caught the smear of precum beading from him.

Chloe’s body was still warm and sensitive from Lucifer’s ministrations in the shower; still aroused.  The toy inside her was smaller than Lucifer but the naughtiness of him watching her do this – of thinking about the engine between her knees - about the towels and their implication – she shivered with anticipation.  She settled all the way down, lining her body up in full contact with the device.  The little silicon nubs pressed lightly at her clit, promising quite a lot more once the machine turned on.

She reached for the control box, but Lucifer scooped it up first.

“I’ll drive, shall I?” he said.  He sat in the armchair, scooting it close enough that his legs touched the bed.  He was eye-level with her breasts and seemed delighted by that fact.  His gaze drifted cheerfully back and forth between the left and right before Chloe cleared her throat.  He looked up at her and grinned unapologetically.

“Put your hands on my shoulders,” he told her.   She did, spreading her knees a little wider apart to compensate for the lean forward.  Lucifer turned a dial on the control box, and Chloe felt the toy inside her slowly start to turn.  Gentle, small motions – barely noticeable, really, except for the intimacy of its location.

Lucifer watched her intently, mouth parting open a little as his breath turned heavy.  He licked his lips.

“It’s… um… you can go higher?” she said.

“Trust me,” Lucifer said, his voice deep and hushed.  “Close your eyes.  Relax down into it.”

She gave him a skeptical look but he tilted his head at her, an ‘I know whereof I speak’ sort of look, and so she obliged.  Closing her eyes was easy enough. 

“Focus on your pelvis,” he said.  Her thumbs, grazing the sides of his neck, could feel the rumble of his voice as he talked.  She kneaded her fingers into the muscles of his shoulders a little and he hummed approvingly.  “Let yourself open up around it.”

One of his hands – the one not on the control box – caressed a warm path along her ribs.  Up and down.  Up and down.

Chloe didn’t hear him turn the dial, but the rotation inside her slightly sped up.  She rocked her hips a little.  It felt nice, but it was hardly mind-blowing.  With the reputation the device had, she’d expected…more.

She inhaled to say as much but Lucifer spoke first.

“Let it build up,” he said, anticipating her comment.

She huffed a small laugh and cracked open an eye to glare at him.  He raised his eyebrows back at her and lightly pinched her hip in playful reprimand.

“No peeking,” he said.  She closed her eyes again.  His hand went back to stroking her side.

A few more moments passed and then, again, the rotation sped up a little.  Still slow, still gentle, but… she was more aware of it.  Lucifer’s hand swept up her ribs, and down to her hip.  Up, and down.

The vibration between her legs started so very gently, but it made her gasp.  With her eyes closed, it was impossible to anticipate when Lucifer turned the dials.   The vibration ran along the entire saddle, up through the phallus still turning slowing inside her, but the sensation was centered in the nubbed pad pressed against her clit.  Chloe ground down into it. 

Her little rabbit vibrator at home put out quite a bit more of a kick than this.  Chloe doubted she could get off on such a low setting.   It felt good, though.  Gently arousing.   She rocked her hips a little more, feeling the toy move inside her, feeling the tingle of vibration against her sensitive flesh.

For several long seconds, nothing changed.  The longer it went on, the less awkward she felt about this.  Under her palms, she could feel the heat of Lucifer’s skin.   She could feel him breathing.  With his hand stroking her and his solid presence in front of her, her mind had started tricking her into thinking it was him inside her rather than the toy.  Chloe squeezed her eyes more tightly shut, pressing down and rocking her hips, recentering herself.  With the way she was bent forward to lean against Lucifer, she suspected she’d fall off the bed if he left.

Lucifer turned the dials and the rotation and vibration both increased.

“Oooooooooh,” Chloe hissed through clenched teeth.  She tightened her grip on his shoulders, her elbows going a little weak, and he moved closer, letting her bend her arms and lay her forearms against his chest.   That was better.  The additional contact with him, the closeness – the extra support.   She could feel his heart beating and the motion of his heavy breathing. 

The eroticism of what they were doing – what he was watching her do – hit her anew, and she could feel herself getting wetter. 

“That’s it,” he encouraged.  He turned the dials up again and – her hips settled into a tight little rhythm, rocking back and forth in a way that was nearly involuntary.  She braced her knees wide apart and clutched at Lucifer.   “That’s it, Chloe,” he said.  He stroked her hair; her back.  

For several minutes, both of Lucifer’s hands came into play as he set the control box down.  She leaned into his hands, still bracing her arms on his chest.  He touched her reverently, fingers leaving warmth in their wake.  He thumbed her nipples and, impossibly, she felt the vibration between her legs increase again.

“That’s cheating,” she panted, and he chuckled, low and filthy.

She felt the pressure of a kiss placed on the crown of her head and realized she was bent nearly parallel to the mattress.  When had that happened?

“Lucif- Lucifer,” she panted, stumbling on the syllables.   She started to say ‘oh God’ and bit it back, clenching her teeth and groaning instead.

She felt one of his shoulders moving.  One of his hands had disappeared from her breasts.  Chloe pressed her head into his neck and cracked open her eyes.  The sight of him pumping his cock just below her made her mouth water.  The pace he’d set for himself matched the turn of the phallus inside her, and she experience another of those strange, disorienting moments of thinking it was Lucifer rather than the toy she was feeling within herself, even though her eyes were telling her plainly that that wasn’t the case.  She closed her eyes again.

“Good,” Lucifer murmured, and she had no idea how he’d known she’d looked.  Or perhaps he was just praising her in general.

Pressure built in her lower body.  She shivered, clutching at – his hair?  When had she moved her hand to his hair? – clutching at Lucifer, trying to brace for when he turned the machine up even further.

He didn’t, though.  His hand moved with its swift, steady rhythm on his cock.  The machine hummed and fucked her, and she realized it didn’t need to be dialed higher – it was perfect right here.  Chloe felt how slick her thighs were becoming as the pleasure coaxed more and more from her.  She panted against Lucifer’s neck, her muscles twitching in little precursor shocks.

“Yes,” Lucifer said.  “That’s it – that’s it.”

The noises that tumbled from Chloe’s mouth couldn’t properly be called speech.  Incoherent pieces of words.  Speaking in tongues.  Tributes to someone deity-adjacent. 

Lucifer started nibbling at the shell of her ear.  His hand left her side, slid down her belly, and pressed her sex firmly against the vibrating pad.   Chloe bucked, shouting - the added pressure jarring something loose inside her.  Her thighs clamped tightly to the sides of the device; her fingers in his hair surely turning cruel for how hard she was gripping him, and she fell apart. 

The orgasm wracked through her for long, blissed-out seconds.   Distantly, she was a little annoyed when she did indeed feel the hot clench and sudden pulse of wetness between her legs.   The towels, she admitted, had been a good idea.

Chloe rocked her hips, humping the device - drawing the peak out; everything in her lower body tightening in a sweet rush of pleasure. 

Eventually, the wave crested, and when she started to slump, spent, Lucifer turned the dials down.   Chloe shivered, muscles twitching as she caught her breath.  Lucifer stood, moving her to let her press her face against his chest, and she snuggled against his skin gratefully.  She was warm and he was warm, and she was already covered in sweat, but still.  The contact was nice.  She was jostled a little as he worked himself with his other hand, but it didn’t take him long to come. 

Gasping out a breathless version of her name, he pointed his cock at her breasts and –

And there were times when Lucifer was such a guy that it was easy to forget he was also an angel.  Chloe huffed a small, exhausted laugh at feeling the hot splash of divine ejaculate landing on her tits.  She leaned back a little to give him more surface to target and watched him work himself through pulse after pulse.  It’d be a mess to clean up, but judging by how wet her thighs felt, she didn’t have room to complain there.

He sighed, squeezing his cock in a last, long pull, and collapsed back into the armchair with a satisfied groan.  They met each other’s eyes, and she knew the grin she was wearing matched his.  She waved at him for the towel he was sitting on, and he shifted, handing it to her.   She wiped off her sticky chest, aware that she had Lucifer’s undivided attention as she did so.

Chloe started to climb off the Sybian and he made a protesting noise. 

“Surely, you’ve another one in you?   I promise; it’s even better the second time.”

Chloe let loose a shaky laugh.

“I want to be able to walk tomorrow,” she said. 

And yet, for some damn reason, she caved to the hopeful look he gave her, and settled back down onto the machine. 

Lucifer’s cock, which had barely started to return to a flaccid state, perked right back up.  The equivalent of a drowsy dog being told ‘squirrel!’

Chloe buried her face in her hands to smother her smile at the ridiculous mental image.

She brought her hands back down on a drawn-out moan as the gentle rotation began inside her again. 

He scooted closer, and Chloe braced her hands on Lucifer’s shoulders again.  She bent down far enough to kiss him.

And he was right.

It was even better the second time.

~*~

Afterwards – after a third round, which had left her so shaky-legged that Lucifer had had to help her off of the machine, he laid her on the bed.   Lucifer had fucked her, then, and his cock – pressing her wider, hitting her deeper than the toy could - had felt so right and intimate that their orgasms had almost been an afterthought.

After all of that, when Chloe felt so wrung out she wasn’t even sure her limbs were still attached to her body, much less how to use them, he took care of her.  He washed her clean with a tenderness that made her heart ache.  Chloe relaxed and let herself be tended to, already half-asleep by the time he rinsed her hair.

She sat in the armchair where he’d placed her; his armchair, bundled in towels and dozing while he put the machine away and changed the sheets.  Part of her wanted to protest when he picked her up again and carried her to bed, but it was just so much easier to let him.

They settled together, naked, her head pillowed on his chest.  Between the cool, clean sheets and her come-down from her high, her body temperature had dropped a little.  It felt so good to press against Lucifer’s warm skin, to have Lucifer stroking her back, that it left her feeling emotional; everything close to the surface and just a little too much.

“I really, really love you, you know,” she said, eyes unexpectedly prickling with tears.  His hand momentarily stilled, and then resumed – long, tender strokes that Chloe basked in.

“Oh?” he rumbled, his voice low with sleepy contentment.  “Really really, is it?  Well then.  I suppose I shall have to keep you.”

He tucked his chin against the top of her head.

Chloe fell asleep smiling.

~*~

She awoke sometime much later – just before dawn, judging by the light – needing to pee so badly that she more or less waddled to his bathroom.

Seeing to it, she sighed in drawn-out relief, and took stock of things.  Her lower body ached in the way of well-used muscles.  A deep sort of awareness of them – not unpleasant, per se, but certainly a reminder that doing more at the moment would be ill-advised.

She finished her task and stood back up on slightly wobbly legs.   In the low light, she regarded herself in the mirror while she belatedly brushed her teeth.

Today was Sunday.  Lux would be open tonight, but that left her the entire day free with Lucifer.  They’d passed plenty weekends and weeknights simply cuddling on the couch, watching tv, talking through case work, or sitting near each other while Chloe worked on her computer and Lucifer re-ordered liquor and reviewed his employee payrolls.  Sometimes, they’d retreat to one of his other houses to play and lounge in the infinity pools that overlooked the city, or go to the beach, or to ridiculous avant guarde restaurants that were often less about eating the food as experiencing it – or at least experiencing Lucifer’s creative and frequently scathing critiques of it. 

Sometimes - in what were quickly becoming some of her favorite moments – Chloe would simply lie on the couch, reading, while Lucifer played the piano.

Beautiful moments of domestic co-existence, of a kind that she’d never imagined she could have with Lucifer.  He had always seemed to be moving, always doing something, always knee-deep into some sort of trouble, and aside from the massive disparity of sexual experience, that had been one of her biggest fears in committing to this relationship – that she simply wouldn’t be able to keep up with him.  That he would grow bored of her boring life, once he got to see all the intimate mundanities of it.   That he would wake up one day and realize she was only human after all.

But that hadn’t happened. 

Yet.

Chloe spat her mouthful of toothpaste into the sink and turned the taps to wash the foam away.  She rinsed her mouth, put her brush back, and drummed her fingers on the countertop.

She hated it that she still felt insecure with him.   Lucifer couldn’t possibly be more physically demonstrative about how much he cared about her.  No – how much he loved her.  He looked at her sometimes like she had hung the stars in the sky instead of him.  It was stupid to doubt him.

The thought drifted through her mind as she made her way back to bed with him – that image of him, staring, enraptured, at his laptop screen, while he jerked himself off.  She pushed the thought away, scowling.

It was still early, but Chloe was awake.  The workout the night before had exhausted her and she’d slept deeply.

But the idea of crawling back into bed with him was too tempting to pass up.  It was Sunday, after all.  She could be lazy.  She wanted to be.

When she climbed the stairs to his bed, Lucifer was still asleep.  He’d turned, his arm stretching into the space she’d left unoccupied.  She paused, hearing him mumble something.  Talking in his sleep?

Chloe smiled.

His fingers twitched on the sheets.  More little mumbly sounds.  Chloe leaned against the doorframe and watched him, heart expanding with affection for her nonsense Devil.

His brow wrinkled, and she abruptly realized that his twitching fingers were twitching claws.  That the mumbling wasn’t in a happy tone.

A few… words?... escaped his lips – guttural, harsh syllables that weren’t English. 

Chloe carefully slid into bed – not in her spot, but circling around to get in behind him, away from his claws.   She gently pressed herself against his back.   She stroked his hair, fingers sinking into the emerging curls.

“I’m here,” she said, sotto voce.  Chloe smoothed her fingers over his shoulders, down his biceps.  Just past his elbow, she could feel the change in texture, from soft, human-like skin, to the tougher leather where his other form had started bleeding up his arms.

Chloe stroked him, uttering soft, steady reassurances, until his muscles stopped twitching; until he fell silent again.

Lucifer’s chest rose and fell in a deep, deep breath.  He was awake, now.  She could feel the change.  She kept up her stroking, feeling with each pass of her fingers that the leather was fading further away.  Eventually, the range within her reach was entirely soft, familiar skin.

She didn’t stop stroking him.  Her right hand kept making its trails along his arm; her left, bracing her weight on his pillow, kept busy petting and teasing at his hair.

“I’m here,” she repeated.

“Thank you,” he said.  He swallowed and, slowly, turned in the bed to face her.  She moved her hands, resettling one on his hip, letting the other fall to the pillow behind his head.

In the dim light, with his dark eyes, it was hard to catch all of the emotions on display.  She tilted towards him, laid a kiss on his wrinkled brow.

“Go back to sleep,” she said, and felt his little exhale of a laugh against her collarbone.

“But I’m already up,” he said.  The words were delivered with a leer, but she didn’t think he was, actually.  Up.  The unhappy furrow to his brow wasn’t fading as quickly as his reddened skin had.  He touched her, cupping her face and sweeping his thumb along her cheek.  A reassuring touch, rather than an arousing one.

Chloe trailed a suggestive fingertip down the middle of his chest.

“Well then,” she said.  “If you’re up… then would you do me a favor?”

“Oh, a favor with the Devil is it?”  He leaned closer.  “What is it you desire?”

It took effort to keep a straight face.  It was such a cheesy line. 

“It’s a little bit… naughty,” she said.   His eyebrows crept higher.  His gaze slipped down her body, to her breasts. 

“Do go on,” he coaxed.

“Could you…” she bit her lip, giving him the coyest look she could manage.  “Make those cinnamon rolls again?”

Lucifer blinked.  He met her gaze and blinked again, like he was checking that he’d heard her correctly.

“The ones with the sugary orange glaze?” she added.

He exhaled a short laugh, a smile finally washing away the last of his nightmare. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

~*~

Over breakfast (the promised cinnamon rolls - and eggs, and sausage, and fried tomatoes, which Chloe had thought over-the-top until she’d started eating and realized exactly how hungry she was), a thought from the night before reemerged.

She squinted at Lucifer and he, seeing her scrutiny, lowered his Irish coffee and gave her an expectant look.

“So… Lilith is Maze’s mother,” Chloe said.

Lucifer sipped his coffee, nodding.

“She is,” he said.

“And Lilith has…teeth.”

“A couple of sets, yes,” Lucifer said.  He shook his head.  “Just about the only time I’ve ever felt sorry for Adam.  Sad, boring wanker that he is.”

“Okay.”  Chloe tapped her glass of juice with her fingers.  “Does that mean that… Maze…has…?”

His eyes twinkled.

“That dear Mazikeen also has a rather effective method of making it clear when she’s in a grouchy mood?  Yes indeed.”

Chloe stared down at the orange juice, willing her brain not to picture it. 

Shit.  Ah, damnit, she was going to have such a hard time meeting Maze’s eyes the next time Chloe saw the demon.

Chloe’s expression must have reflected her regret, given the way Lucifer laughed at her.

“Shut up,” she groused.

“You asked,” he chortled.

~*~

After breakfast, she helped him tidy.  He washed the dishes and passed them to her to dry, smiling each time their fingers touched.  It was small and sweet, and she wondered if anyone had ever done something this simple with him before. 

“How would you feel about heading to Malibu?” he asked her.  “I’ve a house there with a rather good home theatre.”

“Why do you have so many houses?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“Some were gifts.  And I did go on a bit of a… well, a splurge, if you will, right after I decided I was done with Hell.  The first time.”  His mouth quirked to the side.  He moved on quickly.  They didn’t talk about it.  “And the restaurants and nightlife are very different in different parts of this city.  Never knew what I’d be in the mood for, so it was convenient to have spots accommodating to a wide variety of tastes.”

The look he gave her made it plain those tastes weren’t about the restaurants. 

She smiled back at him, but the little reminder – that there was maybe something more that Lucifer wanted, more than she was capable of giving him – it sat with her.

They went to his Malibu home.  It boggled Chloe, sometimes, when she made herself think about how wealthy Lucifer actually was.  Seeing firsthand the multimillion dollar properties he casually owned was probably never going to stop being insane.   

His home theatre was absurd.  There was seating for a least sixty people; leather sectionals with recliners and couples couches.  She rolled her eyes and took a deep breath, wondering how often any of it had even been used.

Lucifer giddily queued up the movie, cheerfully babbling on about charming his way into getting a pre-release copy.  Chloe could tell from the explosion-laden intro sequence that it was going to be on par with the Body Bags franchise that he and Dan inexplicably loved so much.

But, it was fine.  She curled up beside him in the stupidly comfortable couch, enjoying his enjoyment if nothing else.

The movie was… bad.   The plot was barely extant.  The shower scene was so gratuitously unnecessary that Chloe couldn’t stop from laughing, which had made Lucifer mock-scowl at her, which had only made her laugh harder.

“It’s artistic!” he’d insisted, and she’d shoved his shoulder in dismissal.  He’d laughed and scooted back closer, burying his beak of a nose into her hair, grinning like a child.  Absolutely irrepressible.  She shoved him again, and then settled into his side, letting his arm fall around her shoulders.

They nominally watched the movie.   A car chase followed by a gunfight followed by more sex.  She turned to him again, ready to tease him about the flimsy excuse being used to justify the smut, but found him regarding the movie with sudden seriousness.  It caught her words in her throat, and she turned back to the screen, wondering what had affected him.

The soundtrack swelled as the actors started going at it, and Chloe cocked her head, vaguely recognizing the singer’s voice.   Was it something Trixie listened to?  Chloe tried to place it.  Where had she heard - ?

Lucifer’s arm tensed a little around her, and - Delilah, Chloe realized abruptly, startling a little as it came to her.   It was one of Delilah’s songs.

“Our first case,” Lucifer said, looking down to meet her eyes, acknowledging the changed atmosphere. 

Chloe hummed, trying to read his expression. 

“You were so annoying,” she said, smiling to let him know she didn’t mean it.   Mostly.

“Hmm.  Yes.  I repulsed you at a chemical level, I believe it was.”

She sniffed a small laugh.  He took her hand in his, thumb stroking over her knuckles.

Delilah sang while the obnoxiously attractive movie stars writhed against each other in a movie-magic simulacrum of sex.  From the angle of the lead actor’s body, it looked more like he was trying to penetrate her belly button, but it was hardly the most ridiculous thing the movie had offered so far.

“Do you miss her?” Chloe asked.

Lucifer looked back at the screen, tilting his head in a contemplative way.

“Yes,” he said simply.  “I had wanted years and years of more music from her.  She…” he trailed off.  Lucifer licked his lips and seemed to gather his thoughts.  “The night she was killed, she’d come to Lux to ask if she’d sold me her soul.”  He sighed.  “As if I dealt in the bloody things.”  He turned back to Chloe.  “I had helped her achieve everything she’d wanted, you see, and she knew she owed me.”

“She knew you were… you?”

Lucifer pursed his lips.

“Perhaps.  She used to sing with me at Lux, once upon a time.  Back when she was no-one famous.  And, especially in those first few years of relocating to LA, I made very little effort to obscure my true nature.  But,” he shrugged, “It could have just been that she knew things that good tend to come with quite a price tag.  Maybe she was simply wanting the other shoe to drop.  I suppose we’ll never know.”

On screen, the sex scene concluded.  The movie moved on.  The soundtrack changed.

“I went to see Jimmy Barnes,” Chloe found herself confessing.  “After I got out of the hospital.”

“Repugnant little wanker,” Lucifer said angrily.  He was looking at the screen but wasn’t really watching the movie, his attention wholly on her.  His thumb kept sweeping over her knuckles.

“Yeah,” Chloe agreed.  The details of that case still angered her, even aside from getting shot.  “Yeah, he was.”

“And how was prison treating dear Jimmy?” Lucifer asked.

“He got put in a psychiatric hospital, actually.”

Lucifer’s thumb paused in its next sweep.

“Ah,” he said.  “I suppose I was rather… angry.”

“He’s the Devil!  He’s the Devil!” 

Splatters of blood on the plexiglass where Jimmy bashed his head, over and over.  Chloe remembered how unsettling it had been to watch.   She had seen people try to escape punishment with insanity pleas before. 

What Jimmy had been doing wasn’t an act.  She had known it in her gut, and when she’d left, cradling the arm she had in a sling, she’d been too shaken to talk to anyone for hours.

On-screen, the lead hero was shot in the ‘good guy’ spot – high on his chest, like such wounds weren’t often fatal.  It made her own shoulder twinge in remembered pain. 

The villain monologued while the hero panted and sweated theatrically.

Chloe turned a little on the couch, facing Lucifer.   She gently pulled her hand from his and slid it along his chest instead, feeling the soft fabric of his shirt, the warm, firm body beneath it.

“No bulletproof vest,” Lucifer murmured, glancing knowingly at her from the corner of his eye.

“I don’t see how one would fit,” she said, finishing the thought.   She rubbed her hand over his chest, enjoying the feel of him.   She patted his pectoral.

“Why didn’t Jimmy’s shots… make you dead?”

“Working theory?” he asked.  She hummed an encouraging sound.  He continued.  “I think if Jimmy had waited just a few more minutes, he’d’ve had rather different results.  Or perhaps it was watching you heal in that hospital bed afterwards that made me realize how much I … well.  How much Earth was improved by your presence.”

She thought about that glimpsed reflection of him – in the mirror before she lost consciousness, and then more clearly when he’d run ahead to confront a supposed kidnapper.  She thought about the way he’d goaded her into shooting him, then, and the frightened madness that had actually had her squeezing the trigger.

“If I hadn’t made you vulnerable… that time that I shot you… what would you have done, then?  If I’d had proof then that you were…”  She patted his chest again, trying and failing to summarize everything Lucifer was.

His eyes searched her face.

“I imagine it would have depended on what you’d done.”

“I…” she trailed off and made herself really think about it.   What would she have done, if he’d shown her proof in those early days?  Before Lucifer had so completely wormed his way into her life and her heart, before her trust in him had been tried and tested and validated, again and again?  If she had known he was the Devil before he was anything more meaningful to her than an annoyingly charming work partner?

Chloe thought that most of the reason she’d fled to Rome when she did hadn’t just been because she’d learned the Devil was real.   That had been upsetting and immense, but that hadn’t been what drove her away.  That had been because it was Lucifer.   Someone she trusted more deeply than she’d ever trusted anyone before.  She had thought she’d known him, and to have been so thoroughly wrong…

It hadn’t just been the rules of her universe that had been yanked out from under her.  It had been the bedrock of him, too, that she thought she’d lost.

But, then, on the other hand - if Lucifer had dropped that bomb earlier, would their relationship ever have evolved into what it was now?   Would she have let his otherness stand like a wall between them - never opening up, never reaching for more from him, never quite learning to trust him the way that she had when she’d thought he was human?

Chloe tried to imagine the scenario –  shooting him in the leg, him answering with “Good for you!  See?  Hardly hurts,” but him actually meaning it that time, without the shock and collapse and blood and confusion that had followed instead.   

“I probably would have assumed I’d missed,” Chloe said ruefully. 

And maybe it was true. 

She suspected it would have been quite a lot more complicated than that. 

“But I suppose we’ll never know,” she said, repeating his words from earlier.

Lucifer hummed, agreeing with her.

She settled her head against his shoulder again, watching the movie unfold in a predictable happy ending, and he curled his arm around her, pulling her even closer.

~*~

In the evening, once he’d bounced back from the contemplative mood the afternoon had given him, he became restless, reaching for things to do.  Chloe, working on her laptop, watched him tidy the Malibu house with something between hilarity and concern.

“Is the outfit necessary?” she’d asked.

“I assure you, it is,” he’d answered, not looking up from dusting his bookshelves.

She kept getting distracted by the way the edge on the maid uniform’s skirt framed his thighs.  She shook her head and made herself turn back to her screen. 

She was halfway through writing up a grocery list when Lucifer, apparently deciding the already meticulous home had reached its necessary level of spotlessness, seated himself on the couch beside her.

“Fruit rollups?” he said incredulously, frowning at her screen.

“For Trixie, for lunch,” Chloe answered.  She did not tell Lucifer that she also ate them.  There was no defense for her enjoyment of them and he was exactly enough of a snob to lord it over her.

“Speaking of eating,” Lucifer said, waggling his eyebrows ridiculously, and it took him sliding onto his knees in front of the couch for her to realize he wasn’t talking about dinner.

It was an interesting picture – Lucifer, on his knees, in the silly, cliched maid outfit.  Chloe was a little annoyed by how much it turned her on. 

He slid his hands up her legs until they cupped her hips.

“Have I mentioned,” he purred, “How sexy this getup of yours is?”

“They’re just lounge pants, Lucifer,” Chloe said, gasping as he leaned forward and simply buried his face in her lap.  Just dove right in like he belonged there.   Chloe felt the hard bridge of his nose press through the cotton of her pants and had to resist the urge to squirm.  Her insides had tightened with arousal, but twinged a little, too – a reminder of how hard they’d gone at it the night before. 

The dumb, horny part of her was dearly tempted to let him turn that ‘overdid it’ ache into a ‘dear god yes more’ ache.   But the more responsible part of her – the side that reminded her that her job had physical demands that she needed to meet, whether it was chasing down a suspect or sitting in a car for hours and hours– that side won.   By the tiniest of margins.

“Lucifer – Lucifer, wait,” she said, sinking a hand into his hair and gently pulling his head back up.  His eyes were lust-blown but the look he gave her was patient, inquisitive. 

She licked her lips.

“I’m still kinda.  You know.  Kinda sore.  Maybe not tonight?”

“Oh?  Did I go too roughly, love – I’m sorry.”

“No, no – it was great,” she hastened to reassure him.  He looked so crestfallen.  “It was really, truly fantastic.   But give me a day or two to recover?”

“Of course,” he said.  He bounced up from his crouch easily.   He was, Chloe noticed, hard – the tent creating quite an interesting effect on the skirt he was wearing - but he said nothing at all about it.   

“Well,” he said.  “How about a different sort of naughtiness?   There’s a lovely new Creole place that’s opened up not terribly far from here.  They do a bread pudding with vanilla whiskey sauce that is pure sin.  You, Miss Fruit Rollup - when’s the last time you had étouffée?”

She gave him a mock glare.   When his grin only widened, Chloe offered him her hands and let him pull her up; let him take her with him in his whirlwind joie de vivre. 

~*~

On Thursday, Chloe woke from a restless night’s sleep feeling bloated and grouchy.  Shark week, arriving more or less on schedule.   She glared at her phone for a second before silencing the alarm.

Chloe scrubbed her eyes, letting her hands flop onto the blanket afterwards with a long, tired exhale.  She forced herself up and out of bed.  She saw to her morning ablutions, slipping in a tampon with a small, grumpy sigh. 

She brushed her teeth; washed her face and gave her reflection a bleary scowl. 

When she and Dan had separated, Chloe, amidst the angst and anger of the situation, had privately reveled in having a bed to herself again. 

How surprising and… not… to realize that she missed waking up next to Lucifer on days like this, when their separate obligations simply made it easier for her to stay at her apartment for the night; for him to stay at Lux.

She stretched and dressed, feeling the ache in her belly that would inevitably progress into worse cramps as the day went on.  She popped a Midol to try and get ahead of it.

Lucifer was already at her desk chatting away with Ella when Chloe arrived at the precinct.  He handed her a cup of coffee – still hot, with the logo of the café that Lucifer liked proudly printed on the side – with barely a glance up, and the casual care of it made her smile.  She took a sip and loved him a little more.

“So!” Ella said cheerfully.  “Decker, I was just bringing Lucifer up to speed on this one.  That murder-suicide?  Totally looks like it’s a murder-murder instead.”

Ella relayed the details with far more cheer than the gruesome scene or early hour warranted.   Chloe listened and, little by little, barely noticed as she leaned a bit more towards Lucifer – or perhaps he leaned a bit more towards her.   Their shoulders brushed in a warm point of contact. 

She drank her coffee with more contentment than she could attribute merely to the sugar-free caramel or caffeine.

~*~

They collected their list of suspects, did their interviews, and followed the leads they could find. 

In the car, in a parking lot while they waited for the next person on their list to return to the autoshop where they worked, Chloe shifted in her seat, settling into a more comfortable position.

As had become a habit, she turned to Lucifer, cracked open her mental file of the eight thousand or so questions she still wanted to ask him, and asked.

“So,” she said, “What is the worst fashion choice you’ve participated in to blend in with the humans of that time period?”

Lucifer chucked.  He leaned back in his chair, eyes flicking back and forth as he considered his answer.  Chloe’s eyes fell to the little scar under his chin.  The question of its origin, too, was in the list of things to ask.

“Oh, so many choices,” Lucifer mused, tilting his head back down to meet her gaze.  “Plate armor is simply beastly, the couple of occasions I found myself wearing it.  And every wig in history has been itchy and horrible.  Hmmmm.  I think crakowes were probably the worst of it.”

“Crack… what?”

“Crakowes.  Poulaine.”

At her continued blank look, Lucifer explained, gesturing to describe the devices with obvious contempt.

“Pointy shoes that were popular…15^th?  No, it was the 14^th Century.  I spent some time in Poland and they were regrettably prevalent with the crowd that was throwing the best parties at the time.   When I say ‘pointy shoes,’ mind you, I don’t mean the toe was a bit pointy or that it tapered out practically – no, nothing nearly so reasonable.   I’m talking a shoe with a good ten inches or more of just… pointy nonsense stuck to the front.  Think ‘elf shoes on meth.’  They were sinfully ugly and a chore to walk in.   Not one of your better inventions.   And they were called ‘Devil’s Fingers,’ too!  A terrible insult.  You know what my fingers can do.”

Chloe laughed.

“On behalf of the human race, I apologize for the horrible shoes and slander to your fingers.”

“Apology accepted,” he said primly.   He grinned at her.  It was his turn.

“Have you ever broken a bone?” Lucifer asked.

“Yes,” she said.  “A few times.”

“Do go on.”

“The first time was these two fingers,” she tapped her pinky and ring finger on her left hand.  “I was ice-skating with friends from my acting class, tripped, and smooshed my hand into the rink wall when I fell.  I was eight, I think.”

Lucifer brought her hand to his lips and kissed the fingers.  He raised his eyebrows at her, encouraging her to continue.

“When I was a rookie, I had a perp throw me into a stairway bannister and it snapped my collarbone.”

He slid closer in his seat and bent over far enough to kiss her collarbone as well.   It made her breath catch a little, and when he leaned back, he looked far too smug.  She gave him a narrow-eyed squint.

“A few years ago, I broke a toe slamming it into the side of a doorframe,” she challenged.

He grinned.  He tilted his head and gave the footwell of the car – and, by extension, her feet - a considering look.  His eyes flicked up to meet hers and, briefly, glanced through the window behind her head.

“I would pretzel myself up to get down there in a cheerful heartbeat, love, but I think Mr. Wagner has just returned from lunch.”

Chloe jolted and turned.  And, sure enough – there, indeed, was their perp.  Chloe shelved the questions and flirtations – and ignored the far-too-satisfied smile that Lucifer shot her - and got back to work.

~*~

The case turned into one that Chloe knew she would, later, regard as one of the ‘fun’ ones.  She and Lucifer worked together like a well-oiled machine.  She watched him work his mojo on suspects, feeling only the tiniest bit guilty about the unfair advantage having Lucifer as a partner gave her.  The puzzle of the murder evolved with each new piece they found and figured out, and it was engaging, complex, and ultimately satisfying when they finally brought the guilty party in.

It was still a bit shy of 5 o’clock when they got back to the precinct. 

“Do you want to go on ahead to Lux?  I’ve got to do the paperwork for this case.  I’ll probably be a while.”

“You’ll meet me there tonight?” Lucifer asked her.

“Yeah.”  She considered the work to be done and how long it would take.  “If traffic’s not especially bad, I should be there around 7, I think.”

“Excellent.”  Lucifer tucked a stray strand of hair back behind Chloe’s ear, letting his hand linger on her cheek for a moment before he flashed a grin and stepped back.  Chloe could tell he’d wanted to kiss her, and she was grateful – both that the desire was there, and that Lucifer respected the work boundaries they’d discussed and didn’t act on it.

The smile she sent him was full of affection and approval, and when he turned to leave, she watched the slightly exaggerated sway of his ass the whole way out of her line of sight.  It made her snort quietly to herself – that he knew she was watching and had put on a show.  He could be such a ridiculous ham, sometimes. 

It was amazing to think about – that all of that playfulness had survived eons in Hell.  She thought about his hand on her cheek, the tender look in his eyes, and was grateful it wasn’t just the playfulness that had survived.

Chloe swallowed against an unexpected lump in her throat.  She rolled her eyes at her own hormones and settled into her office chair.   She opened the case file and clicked her pen. 

~*~

Time slipped away from her a little – she ended up needing to cross-reference a few of the witness statements, and then the LAPD server files decided to give her grief, and then a chat with Ella…  it had all added up to her leaving the precinct rather later than she’d intended.

LA being what it was, traffic was merely bad at that hour, rather than appalling.  Chloe squirmed in her seat, a wave of cramps chewing through her midsection that she would have liked to have stretched out or walked off to alleviate.  It was a bad time to be trapped in a car, and she sighed, frustrated.  Maybe a dip in the jacuzzi tonight would help.  A bit of hot water to help her relax, a quiet evening in with Lucifer, some of his expensive wine (that she was coming to appreciate more and more as she got more familiar with it), and an early night.  She was looking forward to it immensely.  

She arrived at Lux a bit after 7:30 and heard a commotion as soon as they elevator doors opened.

“Saskia, darling, I’m thrilled you’re back but I can’t – no!  No no no, oh bollocks, what was -?   Ouch!  Monkey Bottoms!  Monkey Bottoms!”

Chloe had, by this point, walked far enough into the room to see Lucifer back-peddling away from a tall, blonde woman.  He was rubbing the shirt above his nipple frantically, and from the wide-eyed way he was staring at the interloper – Saskia, apparently – it painted a fairly clear picture of what had just befallen him. 

“Chloe!” he said breathlessly.  The ‘help me’ in his look would have been funny, in other circumstances.

Saskia turned.  The overcoat she was wearing was opened in the front, revealing a very tight, strappy, black leather number, straight from the pages of a fetish magazine.  Chloe’s eyebrows rose high.

“As I was saying,” Lucifer said, turning to his guest, the hand not massaging his pinched nipple running back through his hair.  “It’s great to see you, but I’m engaged for the evening, and for the foreseeable future.  The Devil is off the menu.” He swept his hands out in a firm ‘done’ sort of motion.

Saskia pouted at Lucifer, and then turned and gave Chloe a thoroughly unimpressed look.  Saskia turned back to Lucifer, the judgement on her face obvious, and his expression darkened.

Saskia huffed and jerkily tied her overcoat back in place.  She glared at Chloe as she passed by, her heels clicking aggressively on his marble floor.

Chloe gave her a sarcastically cheerful wave goodbye as the woman stepped into Lucifer’s elevator.  The doors closed on the answering annoyed glower.

Chloe turned back to Lucifer.  He looked somewhat adorably sheepish.

“I probably should have locked the elevator.  I was expecting you, or dinner, and I’m afraid I rather let her sneak up on me.”

He rubbed his chest again, frowning in displeasure.

“You okay?” Chloe asked.

He turned to her, switching easily to a beaming smile.

“Now that you’re here?” he asked, his grin filling in the rest of the cheesy sentiment. 

“What did she want to do?” Chloe asked, her evening somewhat derailed by the unexpected drama, and there was a small, jealous part of her that couldn’t help but be curious.  Saskia was clearly one of Lucifer’s previous lovers.  What had he enjoyed doing with her?

Lucifer sighed and ran a tired hand across his brow.  “Knowing her, she probably wanted to fist me again.  Absolute minx, that one.”

Chloe blanched.  She chuckled nervously.

“Okay, I think I understand why you were climbing over the couch to get away from her then.”

“Hmm?”  Lucifer dropped his hand and looked at her.  “Oh!  No, the fisting was quite fun.  But I’m with you, now.”

He smiled, mood turning playful, dismissing the moment that had come before as easily as discarding a garment.  The lightning-fast changes had been something else that had taken getting used to.  For as much as Lucifer could brood when he was in a funk, he didn’t dwell when something new jarred him out of it.

Chloe replayed what he’d said, though – hearing the words on a loop.

But I’m with you, now.

As in – monogamous?  And therefore clandestine fisting was off the table?  Or ‘but I’m with you now’ as in ‘that kind of thing that I enjoy is something that’s beyond you.’

“Kaya – you might remember her, actually; she used to dance at Lux,” Lucifer continued, unaware of her internal dithering, “Has just opened up her restaurant.  Greek/Mexican fusion, which sounds like it might be amazing or might be a bit of a train crash.  I’m thinking the former, though – I know she’s a good cook.  I’ve ordered one of everything she’s offering on her menu, and that should be being delivered shortly.  A bit of a boost for her new business, eh?  And some curiosities to try.”

Lucifer rattled on about the dishes.   Chloe gnawed on her bottom lip, half-listening to him, not really thinking about dinner or Kaya or anything other than Saskia and her history with Lucifer. 

And Chloe thought about it.  Fisting him.  Would there be any conceivable way to bring it up that wouldn’t be incredibly awkward? 

She tried to imagine herself doing it.   It… could be… hot, she supposed.   It wasn’t her porn of choice by any means but, the internet being what it was, she wasn’t completely ignorant of the mechanics.  She thought about Lucifer laid out before her, uniquely vulnerable and compromised by her, and the intimacy of penetrating him.  Feeling Lucifer’s body stretch around her hand.  She thought about the sounds he might make.

And, then she thought about logistics.  Fingernails.  Digestive tracts.  Their incredible luck and the probability that something would startle them in the middle of it, and that she’d inadvertently hurt him.  Hell, that she’d inadvertently hurt him even if they weren’t interrupted. 

Chloe shook her head, dislodging the train of thought. 

No.  It wasn’t for her.

Lucifer was looking at her askance, and she realized he’d asked her something.

“What?”

His eyes softened as he smiled at her.

“You seem to be miles away, love.  What are you thinking about?”

Chloe sighed, and met his gaze.   This was silly.   She knew what she meant to Lucifer, and she was tired of doubting their relationship like this.  She inhaled, ready to confess what she’d been worried about so they could laugh about it and move on.

Naturally, the elevator opened, interrupting the moment.

“Special order for the best boss ever!” the interloper announced, hefting an astounding number of take-out delivery bags. 

“Ah, Kaya!   That smells amazing.  You remember Chloe?”  Lucifer asked, stepping up to the woman and slipping the parcels out of her hands.   Kaya was visibly relieved to not be carrying the heavy load anymore.  Lucifer, of course, handled the bags like they weighed nothing.

Kaya waved at her, grinning widely.   Chloe exhaled a soft, amused breath and waved back.  Dark and pretty and buxom, Chloe thought she did recognize the woman as one of Lux’s former dancers.  They hadn’t spoken but it was a familiar face nonetheless.

“Congratulations on your new business,” Chloe said.  

Kaya pushed her glasses back up her nose and beamed with pride.

“I need to get back, but I couldn’t not say ‘thank you.’   Lucifer, seriously, thank you.”

“Oh my, you definitely earned this one yourself.  I merely invested in it,” Lucifer said, and Chloe realized he’d already gotten into something in the bags.  He licked sauce off his fingers with casual obscenity.

Chloe and Kaya both watched him.

Kaya shook herself off first.

‘I’ve got to get back,” she repeated.  “Enjoy!” she directed at them both as she stepped back into the elevator.   Lucifer made a little pleased grunt of acknowledgment, mouth full again.

“Are you saving any for me?”  Chloe joked.  She eyed the multitude of bags.  Even for a glutton of Lucifer’s caliber, it was more food than they could eat.

“You simply must try this,” Lucifer said, offering some sort of sweet fried confectionary. 

~*~

The food was delicious and intriguing, and when the meal was done, she settled back in her chair and laid her hands on her belly.

“Ooooh, no.  No no no.  No more eating like this for a while or I’m going to get fat.”

Lucifer chuckled with quiet delight.

“There was something truly kind to be said about the days when the height of a woman’s beauty included round hips and properly grabbable thighs.  Admit it – you were just as gorgeous when you were preggers.”   He held his hands up and mimed a good squeeze, as if picturing said thighs.

She snorted, and sighed, letting her eyes drift shut.  The wine had gone pleasantly to her head, and she felt loose-limbed and relaxed.  The bed seemed to be calling her name.  She wondered if it was even nine o’clock yet.  It was early, but she hadn’t slept well the night before – too uncomfortable in her body to really settle - and was feeling the sleep deficit. 

She heard Lucifer shuffling around, cleaning up, putting the pile of leftovers away.  When he wasn’t in a depression spiral or working on a problem, he was always quick to tidy.   It was a habit that, somewhat guiltily, Chloe thought of as one of her favorite things about him.  It was nice not to be expected, as a mom or a wife, to be solely responsible for keeping things clean. 

More often than not, she still helped him.   Tonight, though, between the wine, her lingering cramps, and the weight of a full meal, she was content to simply listen to him sing to himself as he moved around the space they shared.   She heard the fridge open and close, heard the faucet turn on, the clatter of silverware, and pictured him moving around the kitchen.  Vividly, she imagined him cleaning the utensils.  He had such beautiful hands, and she loved watching the way they moved.  She found herself thinking about ugly shoes, and the Devil’s fingers, and shook her head. 

She cracked her eyes back open when she heard him walk back into the room.

“Well, something’s amused you,” he observed, and Chloe decided not to share.  She rose for the chair and came close enough to him to stretch up and kiss his jaw.  He hummed, pleased.

“I’m beat,” she said.  “I’m thinking a hot bath and then bed.”

“Would you like any company in this bath?”  The words curled with lascivious intent.   His hand smoothed down her back, landing on and cupping her ass.   Her lower body tightened in a way that mostly just reminded her that she needed to change her tampon.

“Not tonight,” she said, and he nodded, not pressing.

“I’ll just pop downstairs for a bit, then.  Give the party-goers a bit of a treat.”  He smirked, pure narcissistic glee, and it probably shouldn’t have made Chloe feel as fond as it did. 

“Sounds good,” she agreed.

~*~

She woke from a restless, uncomfortable doze when he wandered into bed.   From the view of the night sky, it was several hours later.  Around 2 o’clock, she guessed. 

He smelled faintly like cigarette smoke, but not unpleasantly so.  He had edged into bed slowly, being careful not to wake her up, and had she been sleeping more deeply, she thought he would have succeeded.  As it was, Chloe let her eyes crack open and sighed, pleased, when he turned and settled, pressing the bridge of his nose against her shoulder.

At the sound, he stilled, and quietly asked: “Did I wake you?”

“Only a little,” she said.   She wriggled backwards and he shifted, wrapping an arm around her and pressing his chest to her back.  He was so warm, and she knew it’d be too much eventually – but it felt nice, in this moment.   She liked the way she felt when he held her. 

“Did you have fun?” she asked, the words slurred with drowsiness.  She could feel herself slipping back into sleep, some stubborn part of her finally and infuriatingly relaxing with Lucifer snuggled against her back. 

“I did,” he said.   She could hear him smiling.  “Although, of course, the evening was missing a certain detective.”

“Mmmm.”

A beat of silence.  He nuzzled against her skin.   His voice, when he continued, was quiet – almost more to himself than to her.

“I made a deal with an aspiring baker in exchange for clearing her debt.  Rather depressing, really, how many desires are tied into getting rid of student loans.”

“Been saving for Trixie’s college since she was born,” Chloe murmured. 

He pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck.

“A tragedy.   Think of all the fun things you could have bought instead.”

She snorted softly. 

Chloe could feel that Lucifer was hard.   The line of his cock pressed against the back of her thigh, but not, she thought, in a way that spoke of intent.  It seemed to simply be how he had settled.  His thumb, stroking her arm, was a languid, lazy touch, and the quiet conversation was the stuff of pre-sleep mumblings. 

She let her eyes drift shut again, and fell asleep to the feel of his breath ghosting along her neck. 

~*~

Lucifer was already awake and out of bed when her alarm went off.  He didn’t seem to need as much sleep as she did, but most mornings he would linger in bed with her.   Lucifer, she had learned, appreciated soft, quiet moments as much as she did.

This morning, though, half-remembered bits of unpleasant dreams made her feel anxious and unquiet, and displaced somehow.   Something about walking in on Lucifer having sex with…she couldn’t remember.   The impression of someone young and beautiful, but the dream was fading fast, the snippets evaporating as she roused.  Chloe grunted and rubbed her face against the pillow.  She fished out a hand for her phone and thumbed the alarm off.

“Morning,” Lucifer said.   She lifted her head up enough to see him sitting in the armchair towards the foot of the bed.  He bounced his eyebrows at her as he sipped from his coffee cup.   She made a grabby hand in his direction and he laughed, rising from the chair and handing her the mug.

It was spiked, but not too heavily.   She took a swallow, hummed with pleasure, and gave the mug back to him.  She let her head fall back onto her pillow, trying to gain the motivation required to shift herself fully out of bed and commit to being awake.

Lucifer set the coffee on the bedside table and leaned down above her.  He kissed her, and she pushed at his chest to separate them.

“I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet,” she said.  He exhaled an amused sound through his nose.

“When you were using chew sticks, there weren’t exactly minty tubes of toothpaste on hand,” he pointed out, and, still waking up, it took her a moment to understand that he meant ‘you’ as in ‘humans.’   Chloe rolled her eyes, but when he nudged closer for another kiss, she relented.

She laughed when he flumped into the bed beside (and partially on top) of her.   He was playful this morning.   When he broke the kiss, he leaned back into the pillows, the lapels of his robe parted wide, and he gave her such an over-the-top smolder that she knew he was joking.

“Fancy a bit of hanky-panky before work?”

She gave him a considering look, trailing her eyes from his beautiful jawline down his freckled chest, tempted despite the hormonal low she always felt when she was menstruating.  And she sighed, knowing there really wasn’t time for it even if she had been in the mood.

“Mr. Davidson was supposed to get back from his work trip last night,” she said.  The ex-husband of their current case.  “I want to get him interviewed as soon as possible,” she said.  

Lucifer pouted and placed a hand over his heart, giving her a mournful look.

“I am cursed to find your work ethic as attractive as your legs,” he said. 

Chloe ran a hand through her sleep-disarrayed hair and yawned, shifting over the rest of the way and making herself get out of bed.  On the way to the bathroom, she took a page from his book and hiked up the hem of her sleep shirt even higher, letting the fabric fall just below her ass.   She grinned at the exaggerated way Lucifer groaned as she walked away.

~*~

Janice Belleford, previously Janice Davidson, had been murdered sometime in the early morning two days prior.   In theory, this had been while Ernie Davidson had been out of town for work.   As alibis went, it was both solid and easy to prove.  They’d be following up with the conference to confirm Ernie’s presence there as soon as the interview was done.

Ernie was a tall man, similar in build to Lucifer, and quite in shape for a man in his fifties.  Physically, he’d’ve been capable of the kind of violence that had been enacted on Janice’s person, but nothing in his demeanor rang any alarm bells for Chloe.   Her gut instinct was that the downcast expression Ernie wore was one of sincere mourning.

“You and Janice divorced two months ago,” Chloe started. 

“We did,” he agreed.  He nodded once, sharply.  And nodded again, staring at the table. 

“Would you describe the divorce as amicable?”

“It was.  No kids, an agreed-upon pre-nup, so it was,” he laughed, bitter and quick.  “It was so easy.”

Ernie looked up at her apprehensively.

“Am I a suspect?  I’d thought this was just an interview.”

“It is,” Chloe assured him.  “And you aren’t.”   Yet, she mentally added, because she’d been wrong about her first instincts before.  “We’re just trying to fill in her recent history to see if anything stands out.”

Ernie rubbed his hands over his mouth.

“We loved each other,” he said.   “We really, truly did love each other, but we just weren’t…” he laced his fingers together, looking for the word.  “We weren’t compatible.”

“What do you mean?” Lucifer asked.   From his position leaning against the wall, he perked up, cocking his head curiously at the man.

Ernie waved his hand.

“She was… she was a night owl, I’m an early bird.  I like the quiet, she likes having music on – she liked.  She liked…having music.”   Ernie swallowed. 

“But that’s nothing,” Lucifer said, frowning.  “That’s hardly a reason to separate.”

Ernie tapped his fingers on the table.

“There were a lot of little things that became... cumulative, and more than either of us could keep ignoring.   Just a lot of small differences that added up into a ‘we’re better as friends than spouses’ situation.”

He wasn’t meeting their eyes anymore, and Chloe felt a moment of realization.

“The divorce was her idea, wasn’t it?”

“We had a… fight,” Ernie admitted.  “About one of our, um, incompatibilities.  We took a couple of days away from each other after it, and we,” he gestured broadly.  “We met up and talked about it, and when she suggested a divorce, it just… it made sense.   It was her idea, yeah, but I agreed.   It was the best way forward.”

For her?  Chloe wondered.   Or for both of you?  But she set it aside.   The divorce record wasn’t sealed, and she could follow up on the specifics later if it became relevant.   She went back to the matter at hand.

“Did either of you have any friends, family members, or close acquaintances that reacted negatively to that decision?”

~*~

Near lunchtime, while Chloe was following up on the various alibis being offered by Janice’s personal connections, Lucifer ducked away to oversee a delivery at Lux and do work on his slightly ineffable network of favors.  

While munching on a salad and waiting to have a call returned, she found herself unable to shake the curiosity she’d felt listening to Ernie Davidson’s interview. 

With only a tiny bit of guilt (the alibi had checked out and she was 99% sure Ernie hadn’t done it – there was no reason other than her personal interest to be digging into this), she trawled through California’s records for the divorce proceedings.  

It was filed as a no-fault divorce, which matched with what Mr. Davidson had said.  Chloe skimmed through the record, hoping for more information, but only found a statement citing ‘irreconcilable differences in lifestyles and interests.’

She wondered if sexual incompatibilities had been part of it.   From the way Ernie avoided elaborating on the specifics, she thought it was more than likely a factor.

Chloe thought about her relationship with Lucifer.  Was he happy with her, or was he just in love? 

Chloe closed the tab, chewing thoughtfully, and looked up when Ella helped herself to the seat on the other side of her desk.

“What’s up?” Chloe asked, wanting the distraction.

“I’ve been able to narrow down the time of death on the Belleford case a bit more – we’re looking at a window between 2-4 a.m.”

“Good work, Ella.”

“Yep,” Ella said, and continued to just sit there smiling at Chloe.

“Was… there something else?”  Chloe prompted.

“Have I mentioned how glad I am that you and Lucifer finally got together?” she said.   She put her elbows on Chloe’s desk and rested her chin in her hands.

“It’s…” Chloe started.   She bit her lip and leaned a little closer to Ella.  “It’s been so good,” Chloe confessed.

“Awww, I knew it,” Ella said triumphantly.  “I mean, he’s on record as being great in the sack, but the dude also has such a romantic streak, you know?”

“I know,” Chloe agreed. 

“And he’s clearly been pining for you for years.  I bet he’s a cuddler.  Is he a cuddler?”

Chloe laughed.

“I’m not sure Lucifer would want me confirming or denying.”

Ella shot her a mock-pout. 

“Seriously, Decker.  I’m so happy you two got together.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “Me too.”

The thought flitted up through her – Lucifer, mouth parted, hand working his cock while he stared intently at his laptop screen.   She thought about the knee-jerk way she’d felt about seeing him like that.   The arousal – but also the doubts and curiosity and feelings of inadequacy that had nipped at her since then.   Their incompatibilities. 

“Have you ever…?”  Chloe cleared her throat.  She leaned closer still, and Ella bent towards her, her expression making it clear she understood Chloe was imparting something personal.

“Have you ever caught a boyfriend… you know,” Chloe made a gesture which wholly failed to describe jerking off.  At the blank look she received, Chloe made herself elaborate.  “Masturbating.”

“Oh!”  Ella said.  She sat back in her seat a little.  “Once, in collage, before I figured out I didn’t really want a boyfriend.”   Ella spread her hands with a little apologetic gesture.  “I like the idea of romance more than, well, more than romance as it’s applied to me.  I think I’m demi.  Or, well,” she waved her hand, “Somewhere in that gray area at any rate.   The sparks happen but they're few and far between, you know?”

“What?”

Ella squinted at her. 

“Regarding the time I walked in on a dude,” Ella said slowly, returning to the topic.  “I had popped by after my biochemistry class and - bam, there he was.  Ugh, it was one of those creepy hentai, too, that he was watching – the ones where the women are drawn like pre-teen girls but it’s somehow okay to put them in a bukkake scene because in the story they’re 400 years old?  Ick.”  Ella shuddered.   “We split up not long after that.”

“Because of that, or…?”

“I mean it was a big factor,” Ella said.  She shook her head.  “But there were a lot of other things, too.  I was in the relationship more because I thought I was supposed to want to be in a relationship, rather than because it was what I deep-down actually wanted.”   Ella glanced at the ceiling.  “And he also stole money from me to buy Bud Light of all things.”  She gave Chloe a serious look.  “It was one sin too many.”

Chloe laughed, but inwardly, the concern she couldn’t quite shake… darkened.  What if the porn Lucifer was really into wasn’t just outside her comfort zone – what if it was gross?  She thought, again, about him saying ‘but I’m with you, now.’

She bit her thumbnail.

Ella gave her a considering look.

“With Lucifer,” Ella said, “And I know we can pretend you’re not talking about Lucifer, but, girl.  With Lucifer, I really don’t think you have to worry about it.”   She shrugged.  “He’s a horny guy.  Him having a little ‘him time’ – I mean, unless he was being really cagy and weird about it – I don’t think it’d be anything to stress about.”   She grinned and leaned a little closer.  “What kind of porn was he watching?”

“I don’t know,” Chloe exhaled in a huff.  “It’s a thing I keep thinking about.  I’m not that kinky.”  She spread her hands.  “I’m just not.  But Lucifer has this whole arsenal of sex toys at his disposal, and there are the testimonials, and everything he did with Eve… a lot of it’s outside my comfort zone.  Threesomes and orgies and bondage rigs - I just… I don’t..”  She scrubbed her face with her hands, frustrated and worried, and frustrated about being worried.  “This is stupid.  It’s stupid.  But I keep thinking – what if what Lucifer really wants is something I’m not capable of giving him?   What if, as the relationship starts to lose its shiny novelty, he realizes I’m boring.   The way he used to live – the parties, the debauchery – what if he misses it?”

Ella frowned.  She inhaled.

“Lucifer and I..” Ella paused, and then seemed to reconsider what she’d been about to say.  She started over.  “Lucifer and I are bros.  He’s one of my best friends.   We gossip.”  Ella shrugged again.  “I don’t think he’s had a lot of friends before.  He kinda overshares.”  Ella hastily raised her hands in defense.  “Not about your sex life!  I’ve had a few la-la-la moments of putting my fingers in my ears on that one, but, like, he gets it.  A kibosh has been put on your sex stories.  I just don’t need to know you that well.  But here’s the thing, Decker.”  

Ella reached across the desk and squeezed Chloe hand.

“He is completely smitten with you.  It’s adorable.  I’m pretty sure it’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him.  I mean, when he was with Eve, he’d talk about ridiculous sexcapades, but with you?   Do you know the last thing he said to me about you?”

Chloe shook her head. 

“He told me you have the cutest snore when you’ve been drinking.”

“Oh god,” Chloe said, embarrassed.   But Ella shook her head and gave Chloe’s hand another squeeze.

“Nope.  That is not a bad thing.  It’s a great thing.  When he was dating Eve, literally all of his stories were about sex.  All the freaky monkey sex, and do you know what he never talked about?”

Chloe silently waited for Ella to answer.

“He never talked about the little ways he loved her.  All of those mundane, boring bits that you think he’s not into?  He is so very into them.”   She released Chloe’s hands and leaned back.  “Trust me, Decker.   You’re overthinking it.”

Chloe blew air through her bangs.   She shook her head.

“You’re right.  I know you’re right.  Consciously, I know it’s ridiculous to feel insecure with him, but there’s this ugly little part of me that doubts.  I just wish I could -”  - she ground the pad of her thumb against her desk – “I wish I could smoosh it away.”

“It’d be so convenient if we could pick and choose what we felt,” Ella said.  She gave Chloe a small, rueful smile.

“It really would,” Chloe agreed, sighing heavily.

~*~

In the evening, she pressed through the crowd at Lux. 

Chloe could tell the moment Lucifer noticed her; his eyes crinkling with his smile, mouth grinning around the words he sang.   He hadn’t looked at her yet, but his body leaned toward her.   The tilt of his head, the extra bit of charm he put on the lyrics – not just singing, now, but singing to her. 

When she slipped onto the piano bench beside him, far enough away to not interfere with his playing, the smile intensified.

“You know that it would be untrue; you know that I would be a liar, if I was to say to you, girl, we couldn’t get much higher,” he sang, cheerful and vibrant when he got to the chorus.  “Come on baby, light my fire!”

She watched his hands dance competently across the keys.  She reached over him and plucked his glass of whiskey off the piano top, grinning unrepentantly at the sly look he gave her for it.  She took a long sip, enjoying the warm burn of the alcohol.

When he glanced at her again, she mouthed the words along with him – not singing, but sharing the moment with him nonetheless.  By degrees, she relaxed, happy to set aside the stress of the day to bask in his bubble instead.

With a few more chords, he brought the song to an end.  He turned on the bench, nudging her thigh with his more than perhaps the shift necessarily called for, and kissed her. 

He tasted a bit like cigarette smoke, which was unpleasant, and like the whiskey, and like himself, which were both… quite pleasant indeed.

She could ignore the smoke.

His hand cupped her jaw and stroked down her shoulder, down her arm, and while she was distracted by what his tongue was doing in her mouth, he stole the tumbler back from her hand.

She broke the kiss with a laugh and he winked at her, taking a victory swig of his re-pilfered drink.

“Dance?” he asked, shifting his shoulders to the beat of the club music that had resumed aural dominance.  

“Yeah,” she said, letting his mood infect her.  And, besides, she hadn’t found time to get down to the precinct gym today; dancing with Lucifer was certainly more enjoyable cardio than an elliptical.

Their height differences meant that Lucifer needed to stoop a little to get his arms around her waist – an inconvenience that he seemed positively gleeful about.  They melted into the press of people on the dance floor.  Partygoers watched them – Lucifer, with his magnetism, and Chloe, still in her office clothes, stood out.

But it stopped mattering quickly enough.  Lucifer only had eyes for her.

~*~

Later, in the elevator up to the penthouse, sweaty and buzzed from the exertion, he had picked her up with his inhuman strength and kissed her against the cabin wall.

She could feel how hard he was, settled as she was with her legs wrapped around his waist.  

The problem, or part of a multi-faceted problem, was that Chloe really wasn’t in the mood for sex.  As much as she was enjoying the kissing, and the feel of him, and his attention...  As much as she had enjoyed the dancing, the thought of sex – even sex with Lucifer – just wasn’t all that appealing right now.    The arousal was there in her, but it was banked beneath bloated, grouchy, bodily discomfort.  She didn’t feel sexy.  She was in the middle of a heavy flow and thinking about the logistics, the embarrassment of blood, the cramps and achiness that she really couldn’t see sex improving…

She wasn’t interested.

Lucifer kissed a warm path down her neck.  Chloe tangled her fingers in his hair and stared at the far wall of the cabin, thinking.

The hand not cupping her ass drifted up to palm her breasts, his thumb teasing her nipple, and when the elevator door opened, he walked them into the penthouse without breaking the seal his lips had on her collarbone.  The one she’d told him she’d broken, once upon a time, she realized.

Chloe lightly scratched her nails along his scalp, and he made a low, pleased sound that vibrated through her chest.  In short order, he had them across the floor.  He stripped off her shirt and dropped her onto his bed with playful force.   She exaggerated her ‘ooof!’ of landing, still smiling despite her apprehension.

She loved him.   She really, really did love him, and when his hands slipped lower, undoing the button of her pants and whisking them down her legs, she only pushed herself back up when he went back in for her panties.

He blinked when she grabbed him around the waist and tugged, turning him, encouraging him to fall beside her on the bed.   He obliged, his eyes warm and amused at the move, and outright lustful when she climbed on top of him.

Chloe worked her way down his dress shirt, following every unbuttoned button with a kiss to the skin exposed.

Lucifer stroked her hair, tucking the strands behind her ear.   When she got to his belt, she met his eyes again, and it was nearly overwhelming, how much he wanted her.  He hissed and sighed when she undid his zipper, clearly glad to have his cock free of the confines.

She kissed his stomach and worked her way down, until his erection pressed against the underside of her chin.

“Chloe,” he moaned.

And it did things to her – hearing him say her name like that.  There was pleasure in this, even if it wasn’t of the immediate, physical kind.

She slid further down and held his gaze while she took him into her mouth.  The silky weight of him pressed her tongue down, and she sucked, hollowing her cheeks to press tightly around him.   She saw his hands curl into fists in the sheets; could feel the way his thighs twitched and tensed where she rested her forearms against him.

Lucifer was vocal in bed.  Very vocal, and his hedonistic gasps and groans as she worked him made her feel ambitious.

She pushed herself, taking him as deep into her mouth as she could… before her gag reflex kicked in and she coughed unsexily. 

How did some people make deep-throating look so effortless? 

 “Easy, darling,” he said, one of his hands releasing the sheets to slip into her hair, cradling her head. 

Maybe she could practice and surprise him with it, she thought.   There were Youtube tutorials for everything these days.

She pressed against that  touch along her scalp.   He twined his fingers – not pulling her hair, but letting her feel the pressure. 

Chloe dipped lower again, taking him as deeply as she could.   She sucked at him with intentional messiness, letting the slickness slide down the length of his cock.   When she wrapped her fingers around him, pumping what she couldn’t fit in her mouth, his hips trembled for how hard he was working not to buck them upwards.  

Lucifer lay on the bed, letting her be in control.  He was generous with his feedback; whines and stuttered breaths and affectionate syllables.

Chloe found a rhythm that suited her, and suited him, and kept at it.   She relaxed into the task, the arousal she felt a low and un-urgent thing, coiling pleasantly in her.

When she let her hand slip to the base of his cock, he spread his legs even further, bending one knee to press his foot against the top of the bed.   An invitation?   Or simply a response?

She bypassed his balls and ran the heel of her hand along his perineum, enjoying the way that flushed erectile tissue felt.   He did buck a little at that, pressing his cock a little deeper into her mouth than she was ready for, but she managed not to cough that time. 

Chloe cupped that warm swell of flesh between his legs, pressing just enough to make him groan, and then turned her hand to play with his balls.  As meticulously shaved as they were, the skin felt velvety smooth.  She rolled them with her fingers, stroked the skin lightly with her fingernails – teased him until they drew up tight to his body and his cock hardened even further in her mouth.   The salty taste of precum intensified. 

“Detective,” he pleaded.  His toes curled into the blanket, foot arching on the bed. 

She drew off his cock with a lewdly wet sound.

“Yes?” she asked innocently.   He was panting, open-mouthed, and his lips stretch in a smile.

“You wicked, wicked thing,” he declared proudly, and started to rise.  “I’m going to- ”

Chloe put her hand on his chest and pushed him back down.

“I wasn’t done,” Chloe said and, if possible, his lust-blown eyes darkened even further.

“Far be it from me to stop you,” he said with a breathless sort of delight.  He settled back, spreading his legs even wider.  He re-positioned his foot on the bed, opening and exposing himself with such a complete absence of shame or self-consciousness that Chloe felt an odd pang of envy.

His cock was so hard it must be uncomfortable; shiny with saliva.  Teasingly, she kissed up his length.  She slipped her tongue against the oh-so-sensitive spots where his foreskin connected, and dragged her tongue upwards in a curl.  The sound he made left her feeling thrilled.

Lucifer was a rather significant mouthful.  She bobbed on his cock, letting the weight of him slide along her tongue while she worked the rest of him with her hand.  When her jaw started to ache from being held so open, she switched to kissing and licking.   It was fun to see what places would make him respond the most.  The hand he had in her hair occasionally tightened to just the edge of pain when something was particularly good, but he was being careful. 

Chloe had the King of Hell sprawled out before her, absolutely at her mercy.  It was as surreal as it was lovely.

She worked him as well as she knew how, swallowing and sucking and doing her best to make him fall apart.  It wasn't too much longer before Lucifer's balls drew up tightly, and he started babbling.

“Chlo – Chloe, Detec -”

And the hand in her hair encouraged her up and off.

Chloe met his eyes and kept right on with what she was doing.  Lucifer gasped, loudly moaning.  His body tightened with realization and excitement, and he spilled into her mouth with a hoarse yell.

Chloe swallowed what she could, but had to back off or risk coughing and getting divinity up her nose on the subsequent spurts.   It was flattering, how hard he came - but a mess as well.

With a last full-body shiver and twitch, he relaxed.   She gave him a few more lazy strokes; kissed the softening flesh with wet lips, until Lucifer rose from his sprawl.   He licked his way along her chin and into her mouth – partially cleaning but mostly just spreading the mess.  He chased the taste of himself along her tongue, and Chloe had to repress a laugh.   Narcissist, she thought, with a heart-expanding sort of fondness.

His hands slid around her shoulders to her back, and in short order, he'd stripped off her bra.  The low simmer of arousal she'd been feeling was still pleasant, still un-urgent, and when he moved down to her panties she told him: “Just your fingers.”

He gave her a surprised look.

“You don't want...?   Love, let me taste you, please,” he said, and the words were so earnest that she wavered.

Lucifer cocked his head at her, seeing her hesitation.

“Is it because you're on the rag?  It doesn't bother me.”

Chloe blushed, and sort of hated it that she blushed.

Consciously, she knew there was nothing to be ashamed about, but it didn't stop the knee-jerk, culturally-embedded reaction.

“It... bothers me,” she said. 

“Would you rather do something else?”   He slid his hands back to cup her ass, fingers trailing low and curving up – a suggestion echoed by his raised eyebrows.

And.  No.  No, getting buttfucked by Satan was pretty low on her list of 'things to do' at the moment. 

She shook her head.

Lucifer didn't press her, but there was a look in his eye that made her think the conversation was merely tabled for now.  She wasn't sure how to feel about that.

He kissed a warm path down her neck to her breasts and nuzzled there, gently scratching the sensitive skin with his stubble.  His hands, meanwhile, had worked they way down her sides and under the waist of her panties.  She shifted, lifting herself enough for him to slide them off.

His mouth left her nipple briefly while he sucked his fingers, getting them wet, and when those fingers parted the lips of her sex, the glide of them made her sigh with pleasure.

Lucifer kissed her and teased her, his fingertips sometimes stroking firmly around her clit, sometimes fluttering lightly with direct contact, sometimes pressing her labia apart and sending sparks through that network of nerves.  He knew how to make her melt, and he couldn't be more obvious about his love for doing it. 

And through all of it, the only time he came close to acknowledging her circumstances was when he moved the string of her tampon out of the way.  It had made her tense, and she'd known he'd known it, but nothing else had come of it.  His attention remained largely on her clit.  Her legs spread by degrees and it wasn't long at all before her hips were rocking in little thrusts to meet his fingers.

He nibbled at her breasts; teeth pinching and pulling at her nipples, her areola, and then soothing the sting with his tongue. 

Her orgasm was a warm, trembling pulse that tightened and receded, tightened and receded, and Lucifer coaxed her through it, extending the pleasure until she gripped his forearm, gasping, and he let his encouraging motions smooth to stillness.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, and kissed her neck tenderly while she caught her breath.

“You're really good at that,” Chloe said.

He waggled his fingers at her, grinning with pure cat-with-canary pride.

~*~

Later, getting into bed when the evening had sprawled to a comfortable end, she had snuggled against Lucifer, her back to his chest.  He had settled into a quiet, contemplative mood after they'd showered.  She had listened to him play the piano while she'd worked and browsed on her laptop – formless melodies that teased just at the edge of being familiar, before he'd drift into something else.  He had seemed thoughtful, not really paying attention to what he was playing, and he still seemed more in his head than usual as he wrapped his arms around her now.

“Is everything okay?” she lobbied into the quiet.

“I… think so?” he answered, and the questioning uptick at the end seemed to be directed at her.

Chloe pressed more firmly against his chest.   The steady throb of his heart made her drowsy.

“What’s on your mind?” she managed around a yawn.

“Oh, all manner of things,” he said.   A way of not lying while not really saying anything.   She made an inquisitive sound.

The silence stretched for long enough that she thought Lucifer wouldn’t say anything further on the matter, and had nearly slipped into sleep when he spoke again.

“Are you… happy?”  A pause.  “With me?”

Chloe blinked, rousing and replaying the question in her head to make sure she’d heard him correctly.   She turned so that she could face him.   He smiled at her in the low light, but it was a sad and hopeful sort of smile.

“Yes,” she said emphatically.  She cupped his jaw, wracking her brain to try and figure out where the question had come from. 

She thought about their case, and her own doubts – and she thought about Lucifer with his habit of over-identifying with their suspects.

“Yes,” she told him again.  “I’m happy.”

“Oh,” he said quietly.  “Good.” 

He exhaled little laugh like it had been a joke, which she didn’t believe, and knew he didn’t believe either.

She pressed her face into that gentle place where his neck sloped into his shoulders.  She kissed his freckles and stroked her hand through his hair, over his ears, down his cheek.  He sighed, his body relaxing ever-so-slightly as she repeated the motion, again, and again.  

She let her eyes drift shut again, and let her hand come to rest on his bicep. 

It was a while, though, before either of them managed to sleep.

~*~

It took a couple of days to chase down the perpetrator in the Belleford case.   It had turned out to be wholly unrelated to her recent divorce; instead, a disgruntled coworker who had snapped due to Janice's apparent habit of micromanaging.

“You stabbed her seventeen times because she asked for updates on your projects?” Chloe had asked incredulously.

“Projects that weren’t due for months, that we were already submitting weekly reports about,” their handcuffed, yet verbally liberated, killer spat.   “We had to ask permission before sending emails to our clients.  She constantly complained about how we could have phrased things better – I have a goddamn degree in Communications, I know how to write a fucking email!”

The man was panting with frustration, and Chloe shot a look at Lucifer, eyebrows high with a ‘get a load of this guy’ sort of expression.

But Lucifer was nodding, as if the explanation made total sense to him.

At seeing her stare, he stopped nodding, cleared his throat, and made a quick glance upwards.

“Yes.  Well.  I can understand how oppressive it can be, having someone above you constantly nit-picking and trying to control you.”

Chloe shook her head, deciding to leave that can of worms alone.

They returned to the precinct for processing, and when it came time to fill out the case’s paperwork, she gave him an out.

“I’ll be done with this by 5, for sure, but I have Trixie after work today.  Do you want to catch up with us for dinner?”

He looked confused.

“Oh, I thought today was..?   No, yes, of course,” he smiled at her.  “I’ll meet you there this evening.  Shall I bring anything?”

“Just yourself,” she answered.

“An excellent selection,” he teased.  “Madam has very fine taste.”

Chloe snorted, and he turned, pleased with himself, and left the precinct.

She clicked her pen and got back to work, feeling satisfied with a job well done.

Around 4 o’clock, Dan popped by her desk.

“Hey,” he greeted.   He chewed his lip and waggled the manila folder he was carrying.   “You had a case with acidic burns as a COD last year, didn’t you?”

Chloe grimaced.

“Yeah.  Ugh.   Why?”

“I’m trying to track down the specialist our department used for tracking down the component purchases, but their record is missing.  Do you remember who it was?”

“The record is missing?   I definitely filed it.”

Dan shrugged. 

“It’s not there.”

“But who would…?   Oh.”   She looked down at her desk, feeling a freshly unearthed wave of stymied anger.  “Pierce assigned that case.”

She and Dan exchanged a look – an unspoken understanding at how impotently furious they both were that Charlotte’s work in documenting his criminal network had been brushed under the rug with his death.   The newspaper reporting of a ‘hero lieutenant’ killed in the line of duty had been a bitter, bitter pill to swallow.

“In retrospect, I don’t think that contact is one you want to use,” Chloe said.

Dan’s jaw tightened. 

“Probably not,” he agreed.  “I’ll check with Ella.”   He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.  “What are you and Lucifer getting up to tonight?” he asked, clearly trying to change the topic. 

“Dinner and games with Trixie, probably.  Pixar and popcorn.”  She shrugged.

Dan cocked his head at her.

“Trixie’s staying over at Melissa’s tonight,” he said.

“She’s…?   Oh, wow, today’s Wednesday, isn’t it.”

Dan laughed at her.  Chloe rolled her eyes, and realized, with an odd depth of affection, that Lucifer must have known her own daughter’s schedule better than she had, judging from his confusion earlier.

“Yeah, an evening in at Lux, then,” Chloe said, grinning.   “Oh, which reminds me – Lucifer’s been on a bit of a culinary kick lately, and he’s found a place that makes enmoladas that I swear taste just like the ones your aunt made.”  Dan visibly perked up at that.  “Hang on, I’ve got the name written down here somewhere…”

~*~

At 4:40, Chloe deemed it close enough to the end of the day that no one would notice if she snuck out.   One of the other nice things about the new lieutenant, aside from him not being a manipulative psychopath with thousands of years of dirty dealings under his belt, was that he rarely kept a close eye on the comings and goings of his detectives.

Chloe didn’t take advantage of it nearly as much as some of her coworkers, and slipped out the door with only the tiniest pang of guilt.

In an added bit of luck, traffic was kind, and it wasn’t long at all before she was pulling into the private garage under Lux.

Chloe was grinning when she tapped in her code and got into the elevator.  She loved Trixie so much, but being given an unexpected extra evening with Lucifer felt like a treat.  

A naughty treat, at that.  She let the evening unfold in her mind, imagining with happy anticipation the weight of him between her legs.  She had missed him.  She had missed the intimacy of that carnal connection, now that her body was done with its aches and cramps.

“Lucifer, I’m –” she called as the doors open.

And stopped.

And stared.

Lucifer was sprawled in one of his library armchairs; a leg draped over one armrest, his laptop propped on the other armrest, his thighs spread obscenely wide and his erect cock catching the light where it glistened in his fist.  His pants were gone; jacket gone; white dress shirt unbuttoned and framing his tanned skin.

If he’d been trying to provide a show for whoever walked in, she doubted he could have done a better job of it.

She swallowed, mouth dry, as he looked up from the screen.   His hand stilled.

“Detective,” he greeted cheerfully.   “The urchin’s at Melissa’s, isn’t she?  I’d thought that was today.”

The rhythmic grunts of pleasure issuing from his laptop speakers seemed loud in the quiet room.  Curiosity ate at her, and this time – this time, it superseded the embarrassment (that clearly she was alone in feeling in this situation), and her worry that whatever it was he was watching would be more than she could handle.

Chloe closed the distance to him, and when he moved to shut his laptop lid, she stopped him.

“Don’t,” she requested, and he let his less-sticky hand hover over the lid instead of pressing it shut.

She braced herself and turned the screen so she could see.

“Would you like to watch it with me?” Lucifer asked. 

Chloe processed what she was looking at.   The first bit of relief was that the scene had only two people in it – that it wasn’t some sort of wild orgy. 

And bit by bit, the rest of the details pressed in.

It was a man and a woman – the man tall and lithe, with dark hair, and the woman a blue-eyed-blonde – in a softly lit bedroom scene.  It was missionary-position sex.   The male star was fucking her enthusiastically, but the strokes were unhurried, and there was quite a lot more eye contact than Chloe typically saw in porn.

The female star was stroking the man’s arms, and as she watched, he bent down to kiss her breasts, her neck, working his way up to passionately kiss her mouth.

Chloe started laughing.

It trickled out as a giggle, but quickly evolved into full-blown guffaws as relief made her feel silly.

Lucifer smiled at her, sharing her enjoyment while, from the look on his face, clearly having no idea of the source.

“Detective?”

“They look like us,” she managed, still laughing in starts and stops.  Not just the physical similarities, either – there was a tender intimacy there.   This was what Lucifer masturbated to.   What turned him on, apparently, was what he already had.

Lucifer sniffed.  “Nowhere near as handsome,” he denied.  And hastily added: “Or as beautiful,” shooting her a look.

It set off her giggles again, and when Lucifer moved to close the laptop a second time, she didn’t stop him.  The sounds of – staged, but affectionate – sex stopped, and it was just them in the room.  

It felt like it had always been just them, and she was only now really understanding that.

His expression was so bemused, watching her spill over with relieved mirth.  So in love.

“What’s gotten into you?” he asked.   

Chloe wiped her eyes, laughter having made them tear up slightly.  She took a long inhale and let it out, trying to smother the humor still making her diaphragm tremble.

Lucifer, still hard and befuddled and wearing nothing but his open dress shirt, looked at her with such affection that she couldn’t speak.

But she didn’t need to.

She kissed him, pouring all of the giddy, grateful love she could into that connection.

For quite a while after that, they were both too occupied to talk.

~*~

Still coming down from the highs he had brought her to, tucked against his arm with her face pressed to his chest, it was easier, somehow, to tell him.

“I’ve been worried,” she said, letting a hand trace the muscles and softness of his abdomen. 

“About?” he coaxed.    It was early evening but Lucifer could enjoy an afterglow as much as the next person.

Chloe shook her head, knowing he could feel the motion.  His hand, around her shoulder, tightened encouragingly.

“About whether or not you were really satisfied.  With me, with what we do together.”   She gestured at the two of them, at the bed; an encompassing gesture for what they’d just done.  She lifted her head enough to meet his eyes and resettled her chin on her arm where it lay across his chest.  His brow was crinkled with confusion, and so she made herself elaborate.

“I’m hardly offering you wild orgies or aquarium shenanigans,” she pointed out.

Lucifer stroked her hair behind her ear.

“But that’s nonsense,” he said softly.   “Chloe, I’ve never had before what I have with you.  Not ever.”

“I know,” she said.  “It took me a bit of time to understand that, but you really don’t miss all of… that… do you,” she said, mostly not a question.

He shook his head, not breaking eye-contact.

“You ask me if I miss eating crumbs while I sit at a banquet table.”

Chloe pressed her face back to his chest, overwhelmed by the depth of what she felt for him.

“Mind you,” he continued, and his voice rumbled pleasantly through her.  “I think you’d have a fantastic time if we did a ‘Shape of Water, part 2’ sort of endeavor.”

“And get arrested for trespassing, public indecency,” she started, and could feel the laugh bubble out of him when she added; “Or get weird infections from whatever they use to treat the water.”

He kissed the crown of her head.

“Well then, I suppose we shouldn’t risk it.”

He gathered her tightly to him and, together, they basked.

~End~