by Leigh Kelsey
“Are you feeling up to speaking to him tomorrow?” Lucifer asked Lili, drawing her nearer to the bath at the far end of the room. Steam began to curl off the surface, making the water opaque and inviting, lily of the valley fragrance wafting from the tendrils to join Lucifer’s spicy-sweet scent and Cerny’s pleasant sandalwood.
Lili didn’t let the panic of seeing Gabriel again pierce her heart, ignoring it as serenity and calm enveloped her. “Maybe,” she said. “If I can trick him into looking for you—and me—somewhere else.” Lili’s eyes snagged on a glance passing between the two demons. “What?”
“We could set a trap,” Cerny admitted, looking her in the eye.
“We’d know where he’ll be,” Lucifer added. “It would be easy.”
Lili looked between them, her clothes starting to cling to her body as the steam thinned them. “Could you beat him in a fight?”
“Possibly,” Lucifer said after consideration. “It would be a close battle.”
“Then … then don’t. Don’t trap him, ambush him, whatever you’re planning. Leave him alone.”
Lucifer smiled, a dimple appearing in his cheek. “Worried for me?”
“Yes.” Lili rolled her lips together but it was too late to catch the word. She was worried—she didn’t know what Lucifer was to her, if she could call him a friend when she still wasn’t a hundred percent sure about him, but she didn’t want him hurt. Or dead. But heat scalded her cheeks at the long look he gave her and she turned to the bath to hide her embarrassment. “I’m going to bathe now.”
“Alright, Liliana.”
“There are towels on that shelf,” Cerny said, pointing out a row of shelves built into the lapis walls. “Bubbles and cremes and gels, soap for your hair, lotions for when you’re finished, sponges, cloths—”
Lili smiled as she glanced at him from the corner of her eye, his expression utterly focussed on the task of her bathing, as dedicated as he would be to any devil-given mission. “Cerny, are you fussing?”
“No,” he retorted, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze, running a hand through his sandy hair.
Lucifer snorted. “Call if you need help, Liliana. Come on, Cerny, I’m sure our Lili knows how to wash herself.”
Lili’s mouth fell open at the splash of pink across Cerny’s cheeks. He folded his arms over his chest, his biceps made larger by the movement and his damp hair clinging to them, but he still looked … flustered. A warmth spread through Lili’s belly at the thought. And Lucifer had said that she had the four of them. Not just him, but Cerny too, and Russ, and Bernard… It was unheard of among angels for such a relationship, and maybe she’d misunderstood, but she didn’t think so. Maybe this was common among demons.
She was sick of being scared and hurt and flinching from the mere thought of Gabriel. She wanted something good, wanted to obliterate the memory of him.
“What if I do?” she whispered, her heart slamming against her ribcage at her boldness. If her wings were still attached, they’d be ruffling, preening as she dared glances at Cerny and Lucifer.
Lucifer halted, turning with a questioning glance. “What, Liliana?”
Her face flaming, eyes on the colourful tiles, Lili clarified, “What if I do need help bathing?”
A little laugh of delight was Lucifer’s first response, but then he said, “Did I not promise to wait to kiss you until you’d healed?”
Lili shrugged, daring a glance up. Lucifer was halfway across the room, watching her with a smile, but Cerny … he stared at her like he needed her, like it physically pained him to not touch her.
“I’m only asking you to help me wash,” Lili said, halfway between false innocence and truth. “I just want to feel good for a while. I’m tired of feeling bad.”
“You can wait, and make promises, Luc,” Cerny said, his voice scratchy. “I don’t have your willpower.”
Lili’s heart raced as Cerny closed the few steps separating them, stopping in front of her to skim her shoulder with a knuckle. “I will give you what you need,” he said, his clear blue eyes meeting hers with earnest affection. “Whatever you need.”
Lili’s heart melted. “I just need this,” she whispered, slowly reaching to touch his shoulder, mirroring his own movements and sliding her hand down his arm. The simple touch was a comfort beyond words.
Long, elegant fingers came from behind to work on the buttons on her dress, pushing the damp fabric off her shoulders when it was unfastened and laying searing kisses to her bare skin. Slow, careful hands unwound the bandages around her back, warm air sliding over the aching skin like even more kisses to match those Lucifer dropped on her shoulders.
Lili expelled a long sigh, her head falling back against Lucifer’s chest. “You don’t have to,” she managed to murmur, a single bolt of clarity in the haze of comfort and relief. It felt so good to be touched again, and even better that these hands were being considerate.
It was hard not to compare, bruising grip to soft caresses, demanding pushes to the slow hands steadily peeling her steam-damp clothes from her, laying kisses wherever new skin was bared.
“I want to,” Lucifer said quietly, his lips at the very top of her spine sending shivers down the full arc of her back. “I only wanted to be sure you desired my touch too.”
“I do,” Lili breathed, her eyes mostly closed but open enough to see Cerny remove his form-fitting shirt and jeans, his lithe body beautiful and scar-flecked all over. Muscle corded his arms and shoulders, and strength was evident in the subtle lines of his abs, his thighs, and his forearms.
Lili pried her eyes open a little wider to stare at him, her eyes trailing over his hip bones until she was desperate to touch them. Unable to resist, Lili glided her fingertips down his chest to feel the hard ridges of them against her skin. He shivered hard at the touch, his own hands diving into her damp hair to bring her into a scorching kiss.
“Steady,” Lucifer warned as Cerny kissed her harder, his lips desperate against hers but his touch as gentle as ever. Alarm and discomfort never rose, not like it had with him, and no second of their kiss hurt, only exhilarated. Lili moaned as his tongue teased her lower lip, feeling her chest prickle with a flush as Lucifer’s hands covered her breasts, squeezing them. A shock of sensation shot from her nipples as he rolled them and Lili gasped, breaking away from Cerny. “How … how are you doing that? How does it feel like that…?”
Lucifer’s chuckle had her writhing against him, her backside against a hard length that was … longer than she’d expected. Lili’s eyes flew open, reality crashing down around her. Lucifer released her nipples, removing that delicious pinching sensation that felt too good, his hands settling on her waist instead.
“Apologies,” he murmured, his voice thick. “I got carried away.”
“So did I,” she admitted.
“And me,” Cerny finished, his pupils blown as he watched her.
“We should … we should bathe now,” Lili murmured, flushing an even darker shade. She stepped out of the warm press of their bodies with great effort, about to strip the rest of her clothes when she realised she was fully naked. Her body on fire with embarrassment, among other things, she sat on the edge of the bath and slid into the hot, blessed water with a moan.
“That,” said Cerny as he slipped in beside her, still in his underwear, “was an indecent sound.”
Lili ducked her head, a pleased smile on her face. She liked affecting them, these strong, powerful men. She liked driving them a little mad and still not feeling that warning in the back of her mind—the one she’d ignored one time too many with him. She had to trust her instincts. That was a promise she swore to herself now: trust your instincts. If it felt wrong, it was. If it didn’t, it wasn’t. Melissa … maybe Lili just hadn’t read the signs.
“Luc?” Lili asked, tilting her head back to look at him hovering at the edge of the bath, tall and slim and—furious. Alarm twisted Lili’s stomach, and judging by the way Lucifer knelt, extending his fingers to gently st
roke her cheek, that alarm showed on her face.
Lili didn’t know whether to relax into the touch or draw back, and caught between the two, she did neither, just froze.
“It didn’t hit me until now,” Lucifer said quietly, his other hand whispering over the very top of her shoulder blades, “how angry I was at that scum for scaring you. For conquering your dreams.” His gentle brushes were at odds with the anger distorting his soft voice. “If he comes near you again, without your permission, I will kill him.”
He said it so softly, so simply, that Lili didn’t process the threat for a long second. She jolted as his meaning sunk in, and she didn’t know what to say so she just averted her eyes.
“And now I’ve frightened you,” Lucifer sighed, taking his hands off her.
“No.” Lili caught his hand with slippery fingers.
He searched her eyes. “No?”
“No.”
She didn’t know what she felt, but the violence in his voice didn’t frighten her. It just made her … uncomfortable to have him so angry on her behalf. Lili remembered her own anger in the dream of Wisteria. She didn’t know why, but she confessed, “I shouted at him in my dream. I told him what he did was unforgivable, and he took advantage of me.”
“It was,” Cerny agreed, his soft voice pitched low as he slid closer through the water.
“And he did take advantage of you,” Lucifer added, peeling off his jumper and the shirt beneath to expose sparse muscle and a tapered waist. A swimmer’s frame. Lili’s heart thumped, but when he stripped to his underwear, Lucifer caught her up against him in a chaste embrace, his lips fitting to the top of her head as always. “You were very brave to stand up to him. It couldn’t have been easy.”
It wasn’t, and every word had hurt almost as badly as what Gabriel had done. But Lili couldn’t live the rest of her life with this hurt—couldn’t let it be all she felt, all she thought about. It had only been a few days since he’d broken her heart but … she was done. Like she’d told Lucifer and Cerny, she was fed up with feeling miserable. It might have made her fickle but she was ready to focus on something good. On someone good.
Or, she supposed someones. Her mind still reeled at what Lucifer had suggested, that she could be close to more than him, to both of them. But it wasn’t an unpleasant idea. Not even a little bit.
A soft cloth brushed a path over her shoulder and very carefully down the curve of her spine, warm water trickling over her skin. Cerny. Lili sighed, the heat of the water and his gentle ministrations coaxing a calm from deep inside her. Lucifer’s clove and vanilla scent filled her lungs, intensified by all the steam, and it was a scent she’d begun to associate with safety.
Tension long held in her muscles released as Cerny curved the cloth’s path around to her stomach, her breasts—a gasp catching Lili’s throat even though it felt less sexual and more … taking care of her—and then back over her shoulders down her arms.
When Lucifer reached for a bottle of lilac lotion and massaged a good amount of it into her hair, a long groan slipped from her. Lili blushed at the obscene noise but it felt so good; she couldn’t stay quiet. His long fingers carved through her hair, tugging at the ends and sending frissons of pleasure across her scalp, and yet more moans tumbled from her.
“Keep making sounds like that,” Lucifer warned huskily, “and I won’t be able to keep my hands to your hair, Little Lilith.”
Lili shuddered, a combination of his dark, delicious words and the rasp of Cerny’s cloth over a sensitive nipple. She needed … more. But didn’t know how to ask, didn’t know if she could ask it of them. This was all so new.
Lili whimpered, blinking blearily up at Lucifer’s sharply beautiful face, his heavy-lidded eyes and smirking mouth. Oh, he loved the effect he was having on her. That was fair; Lili loved the erection she felt pressed against her belly through his soaked underwear, loved the one she felt against her backside through Cerny’s boxers, too.
“You don’t want me to keep my hands to myself, do you?” Lucifer murmured, carding his fingers through her hair one last time before he urged her to duck under the water and rinse. It put her on a level with the bulge between Lucifer’s legs and Lili was tempted to graze her fingers over it, just to feel how hard he was. Only self-consciousness and insecurity held her back.
Cerny caught her around the middle as she broke through the surface, brushing water off her face, and before Lili had fully straightened again, Lucifer’s hands were on either side of her face, his mouth slanting over hers.
A soft sound of relief escaped as Lili kissed him back, grabbing onto his shoulders to pull him even closer, his facial hair rasping over her skin. The heat of his lips on hers warmed her body from the inside out, goosebumps sweeping her arms as Cerny’s fingertips danced down them. The slow-moving heat of demon magic awoke in her blood but this time passion and need brought it to life, not anger. Lili didn’t care; all she knew was her body was aflame and a need was building in her, so great it was blinding.
She gasped for air when Lucifer broke the kiss, a cocky grin on his face that lit his eyes and made him even more handsome. Lili loved that self-satisfied look on his face, loved that it was all for her. He traced the back of a hand down her collarbone, the slope of her breast, and lightly over her swollen nipple. “If you want more, Liliana,” he said, looking her in the eye with a slow, seductive grin, “we can give you more.”
Lili nodded desperately, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she rose onto her tiptoes, greedy for more kisses. Lucifer laughed in the back of his throat, the sound passing to hers when she kissed him faster, hotter. The sound dissolved into a throaty groan and his featherlight touch on her breast became more insistent, squeezing hard enough for sparks to shoot from her nipple to her pussy.
Lili gasped, tearing away and staring at him, heaving for breath. It felt incredible and Lili had felt nothing like it before. “You promised to teach me how good it can feel—really feel,” Lili reminded him breathlessly.
“Not yet, Liliana,” Lucifer breathed, softening his words with a kiss. “I stand by what I said—I won’t take you until you have no reservations about us. However…”
His fingers dipped a tantalising path from her breast, down the curve of her stomach, around her belly button, and just over her mound. Lili whimpered, the sound utterly beyond her, and when Cerny’s hands covered her aching breasts, a body-wide shudder took her. She was gasping, barely able to draw enough breath, her head swimming as Lucifer teased her hips, the inside of her thighs, the thatch of hair between her legs, denying her what he knew she wanted.
Impatient, Lili whined, rocking her hips to try and move his hand, melting as Cerny squeezed her nipples with perfect pressure, pressing fully against her from behind. Both of them … it was a little slice of bliss, and Lili intended to grab on with both hands and never let them go.
“Please,” she whimpered. “Please, Lucifer.”
“Hmm.” He glided a fingertip closer to where she needed but still denied her that electric contact. “Call me Luc, and ask very nicely.”
Lili was dripping at the command, her breaths coming quicker. “Please, Luc. Please, please, pl—” Her words became a breathy sigh as he finally slid a finger through her wetness and up, up, until—
“Oh stars,” Lili cried out.
Warm lips pressed to her shoulder, scalding a line to her shoulder blades and fluttering the softest touches to her wounds. That careful touch, coupled with Lucifer’s fingertip circling her bundle of nerves, had her emotions in flux. She didn’t know what to feel, to think, to be. She was so close to collapsing in the best of ways. She felt, inexplicably, like an explosion would obliterate her old self, sending her hurtling into a new one. A star destroyed to create new life.
“Luc,” Lili breathed, “Cerny.”
Luc dropped his head, claiming her mouth in a kiss that curled her toes against the tiles of the bath, and Cerny responded by sketching a single fingertip down the groove of h
er spine. His finger followed the curve of her backside until he was cupping her sex as Lucifer increased pressure and speed on her clit. Lili’s head spun as she tried to process all the different feelings—Lucifer’s tongue on hers, the stimulation on her most sensitive place, and Cerny, sliding a finger through her wetness to thrust inside her pussy.
“Oh,” Lili gasped, severing the kiss. She could find no more words. She was caught between the two of them, barely room for their talented fingers to work their magic, their steam-slippery bodies sliding against hers and igniting a fire in her lower belly to fuel that impending collapse.
Her hips had a mind of their own, grinding against Cerny’s finger until he added a second and oh, that was perfect. “Faster,” she pleaded, commanded, curling her fingers into the silk of Lucifer’s dark hair and gripping tight.
They obeyed, faster, harder, and her entire body tensed as release slammed into her, stronger and bigger than anything she’d felt before. Whether it was because she was with both of them, or because it was pleasure without pain, Lili didn’t know. But the orgasm gripped her body so hard the world went dim, her body jerking and arching as bliss rushed her in waves. Her mouth opened on a silent cry, her pussy throbbing wildly around Cerny’s fingers as Lucifer worked her through it.
Her whole body went limp as the climax released its grip on her and Lili’s legs went out from under her. Luc and Cerny caught her up between them, running gentle, soothing touches down her arms, her back, her stomach. Boneless and beyond words, Lili slumped against Lucifer’s chest with a breathy, “Wow.”
Cerny’s strong arms wrapped around her from behind, and as Lucifer laid a kiss on her wet hair, Lili expelled a dreamy moan, her weak arms attempting to hold onto both of them. She felt like she was floating, barely present in her own body, her own mind. “That was…”
“Yes, Liliana?” Lucifer prompted, sweeping her legs out from under her and catching her against his chest. Lili didn’t have the words to answer, just another dreamy sigh as her head fell against his chest, her fumbling hand demanding Cerny’s fingers wrap around hers.
