Chapter Text
It starts like this.
It’s gone 3am and Chloe’s staring at the centuries old Assyrian stone, at the hole Dan’s drill left behind.
She feels a fleeting moment of guilt before her eyes drag to the safe, the blue lights behind the number pad flaring softly in the darkness. She blinks, a dull throbbing in her temples.
It’s late—or early—and she can feel the beginnings of a hangover forming.
That, or she’s still drunk.
It’s been a while since she let her inhibitions go the way she did yesterday. More than that, she’s just turned thirty-six, not twenty-six, and she can’t hold her liquor quite like she used to.
She’s also painfully aware that she’s not alone in the bed. It’s owner lies behind her, his chest rising and falling with every soft breath. She can’t see him, but she can feel him—his heat, his presence, like a heady cloud of whiskey and smoke.
She’s lying with her back to him, her cheeks hot, because she can’t possibly turn around and why did she think this would be a good idea?
“I’m too tired to go home,” she had huffed, snuggling into the bed and pulling the covers over her, “and too drunk. I’ll just stay here.”
“In this too-hot, five-star hell hole?” Lucifer replied from where he stood at the foot of the bed, his tone low and amused.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t that hot and she sniffed, “did you get better air-con?”
“I did,” he replied, “just for you, Detective.”
The drink buzzing through her veins had made her bold but now, hours later, the nerves are creeping back in.
She stares harder at the safe, as though she can burn a hole in it. With her mind and senses sharper now, she thinks back to the numbers she’d watched him punch in.
“Hello,” he’d purred suspiciously as she pretended to be asleep. She could practically see his brow quirking as he noticed the damage to his wall, and she’d stretched out to watch, feigning a yawn.
She listened to five beeps as he pushed not 666 or 8008 into the pad, but—
61181.
She hadn’t thought much of it at the time, distracted as she was by the small gift box in his hand, but now, the significance of the combination suddenly hits her square in the chest. The date, the morning of 7 November, flashes on the bedside clock like an ominous confirmation.
6 November 1981.
Her date of birth.
Her chest suddenly feels very tight, her throat dry. Of course, it could mean something else, but it seems unlikely to just be a coincidence, and everything she’s been denying for so long burns too hot and too bright inside her.
She releases the breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding. It’s a shaky, tremulous exhale, and the subsequent inhale is like breathing in shards of glass.
She’s still wrapped up in his white shirt, her fingers gently twisting the bullet around her neck, and Dan and Linda are gone and she is so sick of pretending.
She’s sick of pretending they’re just friends. She’s sick of pretending every new notch on his bedpost doesn’t hurt, that each one doesn’t chip away at her just that little bit more. She’s sick of ignoring this heat between them, this connection that burns under the skin.
At the same time, she knows it can’t be. Not in any serious way. They’d tried that once before and it hadn’t exactly stuck.
They’re too different, opposites in all the ways that count. She’s responsible; he’s the definition of irresponsible. She’s serious; he doesn’t know the meaning of the word. His idea of a good time is a drug fuelled orgy; hers is reading a story to Trixie before bed. Trying to be anything else had just led to her walking in on furniture covered in white sheets, and him into the bullpen with a stripper on his arm.
She never wants to feel that sting again, that hollow ache in her chest.
She needs to protect her heart so a relationship is out of the question—but so, too, is continuing to ignore this tension between them. They can't stay stuck in this painful grey area forever. That combination means something. This necklace, like a millstone around her neck, means something.
Maybe if she just gives in, lets it all boil over, she’ll get it out of her system. Get him out of her system. And there’ll be no more sexual tension, no more painful memories dragged up by trips to Vegas, no more Candy’s, no more heartfelt gifts.
They’ll go back to being partners, work colleagues, friends—and nothing more. He’ll stop trying to sleep with her, and she’ll stop feeling like a pressure cooker about to explode.
He’ll never be the type of man to commit. She’s been burned once already. He values his independence and really, so does she.
Yes, she thinks. She’s quite sure she could have this and not have it mean more.
Lucifer’s the biggest man-slut in LA—nay, the world—and she doesn’t want more.
She doesn’t.
She remembers the assembly line of his lovers that had filtered into the precinct that day and inexplicable jealousy burns like wildfire inside her. Why shouldn’t she have the best night of her life? Doesn’t she deserve it, after a decidedly lacklustre sex life with Dan and the dry spell that’s followed?
She’s lonely and tired and she knows he’d be good to her. He’d make it so good for her.
With that, the careful thread of control she weaves around herself begins to unravel. She takes a breath, keeps her eyes focused on the safe—a steady reminder of her importance to him, though just like the gold and jewellery inside, he keeps it locked away—and slowly shuffles back.
She feels her confidence start to falter as the gap is still wide between them and she curses his stupid bed for being so big. No-one needs a bed this big—it’s just excessive—and what sort of freaking aerobics is he doing that he needs this much space? Her cheeks warm when she realises she might soon find out.
Eventually, in the time she swears it took Moses to cross the Red-fucking-Sea, she feels her back brush against his front.
She swallows past the dryness in her throat. Even through the barrier of her—his—shirt, his chest is firm and muscled and she knows it’s bare because he was only wearing black satin sleep trousers when he crawled in next to her and smirked “now no funny business, Detective.”
He'd only been teasing her and yet she's now wriggling her hips a little more so her behind comes into contact with his crotch. A shiver of anticipation curls in the pit of her belly, the air around her turning thin.
She arches her back and slowly undulates her hips.
Liquid heat begins to pool between her thighs as he remains asleep, his breaths quiet and slow. Something is stirring to life, however, and she rolls her bottom lip between her teeth. The heat licking between her legs blossoms into a full blown ache as she feels his cock swell and harden behind her.
She’s seen it a frankly ridiculous number of times—Lucifer likes being naked as much as he likes his 10,000 dollar suits—but never erect. A blush creeps up her neck to paint high on her cheekbones as she realises the rumours about his size were not exaggerated. Her breath begins to hitch in her throat as she grinds against it, her hips rolling a little faster.
Maybe it’s the sensation, maybe it’s the whisper of the rustling silk sheets as her body rolls and moves, or the catch to her breath, but eventually, she feels all of him stiffen behind her.
His breathing snags and then stops altogether.
He’s awake.
Stomach clenching and heat flaring low in her core, she freezes. Her heart hammers against her chest, so wild she’s irrationally worried he’ll hear it, and he’s not moving either. Her cheeks suddenly burn with mortification.
She’s about to lose her nerve and shuffle away, about to mumble a half-hearted apology, when his hand travels to her hip, bunching the material of her shirt. His sure fingers splay over her hipbone, and he begins to move her.
Chloe inhales on a gasp, mouth dry and chest tight and wetness pooling between her thighs. Lucifer dips down and she can feel the grit of his stubble against her neck, the heat of his breath dancing across her skin.
“Detective,” he croons, his tone low and silken in a way that has a shudder tracing down her spine, “what on earth are you doing?”
He sounds surprised but not perturbed, amused but not mocking. He seems intrigued, and judging by the rock hard cock pressing harder against her ass, very into it. His hips roll behind her in shallow thrusts, like he’s testing the waters.
It’s a dangerous game of push and pull—who will bend, who will break first.
It’s an extension of a game they’ve been playing right from the start.
Her fingers come to gently grip the wrist of the arm he has around her waist. Slowly, she turns her head. As she does so, her mouth brushes against his, unaware of how close they were.
She’s always thought it cliché to talk of electricity—but she can’t deny the spark that travels to the tips of her toes.
It scares her. It spurs her on.
Before she can talk herself out of it, she presses her lips to his in a soft kiss. She feels his momentary lapse, his surprise, before he melts into it and opens his mouth so her tongue can softly entwine with his.
It’s short and slow—but it’s nothing like that kiss on the beach.
It’s sensual, the air pulsing and thrumming around them like a living thing, and when they break away, he breathes her name—her real name—into her mouth.
“Chloe.”
“Don’t,” she whispers, begs, because he’ll only ruin it with his silver tongue and his ridiculous, ridiculous puns, “don’t make this into a big thing. I’m not drunk, I’m thinking clearly and I want this, okay?”
His eyes, black in the darkness, drop to her mouth.
“I don’t—”
“—you do,” she breathes because whatever excuse he's going to follow it up with… it doesn’t matter. He wants her; he’s always been shamelessly upfront about that, “I’m tired of dancing around it. We need to do this. Just sex. No romance, no dates, no commitment.”
His mouth tips at the side.
“You want a shag and run?”
She fights the urge to roll her eyes.
“I want to get it over with,” she corrects, “things are… tense between us. If we do this, we’ll get it all out of our system. You’ll get to sleep with me, like you’ve been trying to do for years, and I’ll get to relieve some tension. Then we can just go back to normal—partners. Everybody wins.”
“Quite the negotiator, aren’t we?” he hums, amused, and his accent is a little thick and husky from sleep, “you really think it’s that simple?”
“Friends with benefits,” she answers, “no strings attached. I want to have sex. You always want to have sex. Why not have sex with each other?”
A laugh rumbles from his chest, low and delighted.
“Better the devil you know, darling?”
Her lips twitch.
“And all the other dirty puns and jokes you’re just dying to say.”
He arches a smooth brow.
“I can say them in every language you’ve ever heard of and a few you haven’t, if you like.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she says dryly, primly, and then adds, “you’re stalling. Maybe you don’t want me… or maybe the rumours of your skill have been grossly exaggerated.”
She expects him to make a quip, to defend himself, to scoff in outrage. Instead, he merely smirks. His lips slowly pull over gleaming white teeth in a wolfish grin, and he rolls her onto her back.
“I’m so glad you came around, Detective,” he husks into her neck, “there are some things I’ve just been dying to show you.”
She huffs, her fingers threading through his hair as she spreads her thighs and cradles his hips between them.
She should have known better than to think he wouldn’t speak.
Lucifer is excessively chatty. He delights in it. It stands to reason he’d be the same in bed.
He drops a kiss to her neck and then bites his way up, his lips trailing the sharp edge of her jaw. Finally he kisses his way to her mouth and her stomach clenches.
“Wait—” she breathes just as he’s about to kiss her; he pulls back immediately, “no kissing.”
He throws her a flat expression.
“We just kissed.”
Yes, she thinks, and the memory still tingling on her lips is doing strange, worrying things to her chest. She needs boundaries. She needs control.
“No more kissing,” she corrects, “it’s too personal.”
“Darling, with the things I plan on doing to you…”
“Do them then,” she says, bracing herself against the wave of heat his silken purr sends licking between her thighs, “kissing will be small potatoes. Who needs it?”
He smirks at her turn of phrase, his brow arching like he’s in on a secret he’s not sharing.
“Kissing can be very sensual,” he murmurs, dropping a small, slow kiss to the corner of her mouth.
He respects her decision and doesn’t push it any further, but the way her core clenches at such a tiny gesture only proves his point. He trails his mouth to her cheek and then softly nudges her head to the side, kissing her neck before slowly moving down her body.
He sucks a bloom into the hollow of her throat and unbuttons her shirt with quick, clever fingers.
Chloe bites her bottom lip, feeling like she’s on a precipice, the point of no return. She falls over it when he gently pulls his shirt from her. She shivers in the cool night air and maybe when she was thirty-five, she would have wished she wore sexier underwear, but now she’s thirty-six and she knows Lucifer wants her regardless. Any which way.
His desire for her, blazing behind his dark eyes, is as obvious now as it’s always been. It makes her feel powerful, spreads like a blanket over her skin.
It makes her nervous too, presses too close, too serious, and she tries to hurry things along by reaching behind her and unclasping her bra. She tosses it to the side and shoves her panties down her legs and then she’s naked.
She’s naked in-front of Lucifer Morningstar and it’s not a dream.
His expression is dark as he rests on his knees between her legs. His eyes drag the length of her body, curious and totally unapologetic, and then he leans down to capture a dusty rose nipple between his teeth.
A moan falls from her lips, her back arching and her fingers carding through his hair, as he gives it a little tug and then flicks it with his tongue. His hand squeezes her other breast, feeling the weight of it in his palm, before he switches to give it the same attention. He pinches one nipple between his thumb and forefinger while his tongue rolls over the other, before something seems to catch his attention.
He sits up and there’s a flare of something she can’t read behind his eyes when he reaches down and picks up the bullet laying between her breasts.
She swallows as he idly runs it along the chain.
“You have no idea what it does to me…” he starts lowly, “…to see you wearing only this.”
A shiver crawls over her skin, heat blossoming in her cheeks, and her eyes flicker to the prominent tent in his sleeping pants.
“Don’t I?”
He glances down and huffs a laugh, a little chuckle that rolls from the back of his throat.
Time seems to stand still as he slowly spreads her thighs. She’s not embarrassed by her body—she’s pretty damn confident, in-fact—but the way he looks at her cunt, at the soft patch of blonde curls and the wetness shimmering on the insides of her thighs, makes her cheeks burst into heat.
His pupils are blown to black, his lips slightly parted, and when he dips down and noses along the seam of her groin, she darts up.
She bends at the waist and grabs his head, her fingers threading through black curls.
He hisses slightly at the tug, a sharp inhale of breath over his teeth.
She blurts out, “what are you doing?”
His eyes are dark but calm.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
She’s vaguely aware of how ridiculous she must look, bent at the waist with Lucifer Morningstar’s head between her legs. She’s also aware it may be even more ridiculous to turn down such a sight—his oral skills are probably what his conquests crowed about the most that day—but…
“I don’t—” she clears her throat, the words lodging there, “—the guys I’ve been with… they don’t really… do that.”
He arches a brow, thoroughly unimpressed, and gently pushes her back onto the sheets with a hand on her chest. She lays on the bed and he circles her clit teasingly with one fingertip. She gives a sharp exhale, her hips undulating towards him, despite her weak protestations.
“You need to keep better company, darling."
Under his breath, he mutters some more words and phrases. She catches Daniel and Douche and a sighed amateurs, before he leans down and covers her with his body.
She helps him get his sleep trousers off and then he’s as naked as she is. She swallows past the lump in her throat at his size and thinks it’s literally unfair that he has a beautiful cock too.
No-one has a beautiful cock, they are not beautiful things, but his is.
God, she hates him.
He smirks at her reaction, the vain prick, and then he’s resting on his elbows next to her head.
His thick length nudges hard and insistent against her inner thigh.
“I’m sorry—” she blurts out before she even realises she’s saying it, “about—” her eyes flicker downwards and his own eyes follow, “—you know.”
He blinks and then his eyes flicker with recognition.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he soothes, “it’s your useless partners who should be apologising. It’s a crime they had you and didn’t spend every night with their face between your pretty thighs. Surely worthy of their own circle in hell.”
She rolls her eyes at his silly metaphors.
“You really like…” she swallows and then reminds herself this is about her, it’s about sex and nothing else, she doesn’t need to dance around anything, “…to do that?”
“It’s only one of my favourite pastimes,” he purrs.
“During sex?”
He tips his head to the side and shrugs, “sure.”
She laughs and shakes her head because he’s ridiculous and she wants him. She wants him so much, it suddenly hits her like a freight train.
“Lucifer…” she starts, her throat moving heavily.
Something flickers over his face too, a dark shadow.
“I know,” he says simply—and then lines himself up with her dripping entrance.
It’s shocking—ridiculous, really—how she’s so wet with practically no build up at all.
They’ve hardly even kissed.
But then, she supposes the build-up has been over a year long, tension thrumming under the surface of every case, and she doesn’t want to wait anymore.
He entwines one of his hands with hers, resting their joined fingers on the pillow by her head in a surprisingly intimate gesture.
Then, with mutters of the pill and clean and safe—he’s a slut, but she trusts him—he slowly pushes inside and fills her, inch by inch.
She gasps, her back arching and her head rolling back as he buries himself to the hilt.
He doesn’t speak anymore, doesn’t let any quips or jokes or seductions roll off his tongue. In-fact, his jaw looks wired shut, clenching in a strong line. She watches a muscle near his ear tick as he pulls out and pushes in again.
She squeezes his fingers while the other hand goes to his shoulder blade, her nails digging moon-shaped crescents into the strong, banded muscle. His breathing hitches, a sign he’s as affected as she is, as he controls his thrusts and sets a steady pace.
Shocks of pleasure spark from her head to her toes, her core growing increasingly slick. He bites a groan into her hair, his hips snapping faster. Her breath feels shallow in her chest as her fingers tangle in his curls, anchoring him to her neck.
She’s stunned at how good this feels, how right, like every part of her was made to fit and surround him just like this, like every nook and cranny has always had his name on it. She pushes the sensations down, strange and troubling. Such things surely don't exist.
She bites her lip to stop from moaning his name or dousing his arousal by moaning God (still a weird fixation she does not understand) and her eyes roll back inside her head.
His hands travel to her hips, making her own hand mourn the loss of his grip. He angles her so he can slide even deeper, his arm hooking under her knee, and she wants to look down at their joined skin, but she can’t break away from his eyes. His pupils have dilated and she swears there are flecks of red burning in his irises, and it feels like there’s a vice clamped around her heart, squeezing tight.
Half bathed in moonlight from the window, he’s so beautiful it makes her want to cry.
“Harder,” she demands through gritted teeth, wanting to feel nothing rather than everything, “fuck me harder.”
He snarls his approval, slamming into her with new force. She doesn’t bother hiding her cry; this is what she needs. She screws her eyes shut, letting her mind fall blank and her body take control.
In-turn, he keeps his gaze fixed on her, like he’s committing every expression, every movement and all the little sounds she makes, to memory.
His mouth brushes against hers, sliding hotly but not quite connecting. Their breaths dance in harsh pants in the gap between them. They’re toeing the imaginary line, the arbitrary boundary she’s set for them, and she tries not to think about how that might be a metaphor.
His hand slides up her sternum to her neck, the metal of his ring a pleasant balm against her burning skin. It digs into her a little as he gently grips her throat, and then slips two fingers into her mouth. She moans around them, her tongue swirling the digits, and then he’s slipping those fingers between her legs.
She shakes, her wet channel clenching around him, as his fingers start to rub circles on her clit. He might not be able to read her desires, but he can read her body, and he knows just how to touch her. He knows how much pressure to use, the exact give and take, and with one more angled thrust and a flick of her clit, she flies into her orgasm.
She comes in blinding waves that crash over her and make her feel like she’s falling apart. Volcanic pleasure blasts through her, taking her breath away and eclipsing anything she ever thought was pleasure in the past.
She wants him to feel it too.
“Come for me, Lucifer,” she breathes into his ear and with a shudder, he does. She feels him fracture, pulsing and spilling hot inside her.
When he slips out of her, his cock half-hard and wet, she tries not to mourn the loss.
She also tries not to overthink it when he presses a painfully gentle kiss to her forehead and wraps her up in his arms—because even though he’s so psychologically damaged that he flinches at a hug, post-coital Lucifer Morningstar happens to be a cuddler.
She supposes he knows the rules for sex, he’s comfortable with sex, and that’s all this is. As silence falls over them—the easy sort of silence that comes from years of knowing and trusting someone—she thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to try that again. He did say he had a lot to show her, after-all.
For research purposes, of course.
Maybe she’ll even let him do that thing he likes, put that unbearably smart mouth to better use.
Maybe she’ll tell him she wants this to continue. She wants to make a deal, she wants a favour.
But she’ll never tell him she knows the combination to his safe.