Work Text:
Chloe lets her eyes slip shut and her head tilt back.
Warm water pounds down like rain as she lifts her hands up and smooths her hair from her face. She breathes in the heady steam and rolls her shoulders, tired muscles aching from the stretch. If she was at home, she’d still be standing outside the shower right now, impatiently waiting for the water to turn from freezing.
If she was at home, two bottles would be nudging pathetically at her ankles; a half-empty bottle of strawberry shampoo and Trixie’s showergel, the lid shaped like a whale’s fin. She’s been using it too because she hasn’t gotten around to replacing the adult stuff and that’s just… too depressing to think about. She makes a mental note to book a day off first thing on Monday.
But for now, she’s not at home.
She’s at Lucifer’s.
More precisely, she’s in Lucifer’s lavish ensuite in his even more lavish shower.
“Thank you for the lift, Detective… though it really is the least you can do after you shot me. You can shower here before you go home if you like,” he had said, limping dramatically to the bar, “Dad knows you might enjoy a water pressure stronger than an arthritic old man dribbling on you.”
She has to admit the water pressure is nice, and the temperature is nice, and she’s never seen so many jets spraying from so many angles.
The shower is big enough to run around in. Her nose scrunches in distaste at the thought… because while she’s sure he does exercise in here, she’s also sure running has nothing to do with it. She’s suddenly assaulted by a barrage of images; open palms slapping against fogged glass, panted breaths dancing in the steam, wet, sliding bodies, Lucifer’s tongue, and hands, and mouth wrapped around a nameless blonde, or a brunette, or—
Her eyes fly open just as her brows draw into a frown. She doesn’t know why she’s thinking about that. She shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t care. She tells herself she doesn’t and plucks a bottle from a marble shelf – because of course his shower has shelves, and of course the bottle is Prada.
He’s so extra, she thinks with a mental eyeroll, but she reaps the benefits when she covers her body in the showergel and it smells like heaven. Strangely curious, she reads the ingredients on the back of the shampoo bottle she picks next - grape seed, rose water, and nettle . As she covers her hair in it, she’s unsurprised that it smells and feels amazing too.
If she’s honest with herself, Chloe knows that she stays in there longer than she needs to. She’s had a long, very stressful night and perhaps she deserves a little luxury. And if she imagines that it’s her shower… that she’s the sort of person who can afford Prada soap and fancy shampoo made out of plants… well, that’s nobody’s business.
It’s easier than imagining him in here, where he was just before her. It’s easier than picturing his naked body… because that’s so very easy to picture now. After he had exposed himself to her earlier in the day, arrogantly putting himself on display like some oversized peacock. At least before, she could bask in her comforting delusion that under those expensive three piece suits, he was covered in hideous, medieval style boils. Now, the only thing she can imagine him covered in is soap and suds, a trail begging to be licked as the water beads travelled down that sharp V to–
The shampoo bottle slips from her grasp.
She closes her eyes and tells herself to get a grip.
But then suddenly all she can see is his blood swirling down the drain, carrying her sin away. That he had asked for it doesn’t make it any easier for her. It doesn’t absolve her.
And so she keeps her eyes closed for a moment, because the fact that she had hurt him…
She can’t think about that at all.
“Okay, I can’t believe you actually talked me into that,” Chloe mumbles as she pads through Lucifer’s bedroom and down the steps to the bar, “but I can’t say I’m mad about it.”
A relaxed smile curves across her face as she lightly scratches her fingers over her scalp, damp hair curling at the ends. The towel around her feels soft and incredible and it should – a quick Google after a glance at the Versacé tag had informed her of its cost.
$500 for a towel.
Chloe thinks it reeks of a man who is so rich, he doesn’t know what to do with it. So he buys a penthouse, and fancy suits, and even fancier cars, and $500 towels. He fucks everything that moves, and he gets a pet shark because he’s got everything else, and maybe he starts working with a detective in the LAPD because he’s bored.
She hasn’t seen the pet shark in a while.
Her throat runs uncomfortably dry.
And then she kicks herself.
It’s just a towel.
She’s brought back from her musing when she notices that while she’s relaxed, Lucifer is… not.
He doesn’t look relaxed at all.
He’s nursing a glass of whiskey by the bar, clad in a red satin dressing gown that probably cost $500 too. There’s a fresh bandage wrapped around his calf. Guilt curls through her chest.
She takes a step towards him but still, he doesn’t speak.
The atmosphere feels still and tense, something changed. It’s as though the very air shifted between them in that warehouse and now nothing is the same.
Chloe tightens the towel around her uncomfortably.
“Do you have something I could borrow to go home in?” she asks, her voice sounding loud in the eerily silent penthouse, the one he normally fills with so much life, “my shirt is… dirty.”
Bloodied, she should say.
With his blood.
Because she shot him.
God, she has no idea what she’s doing.
He turns to her, something uncharacteristically sincere shining behind his dark eyes. He finishes his whiskey in one, a satisfied hiss skating through his teeth, and places the empty glass down on the bar.
Then he walks over to her, and they’re standing in the exact same spot as when she wanted to touch his scars and he begged her not to. She hears his soft ‘don’t’, his plea, echoing in her ears.
She thinks perhaps that is the moment things changed between them.
She had never seen him like that. She had never seen his dark eyes shining with anything other than humour and flirtation. She had never seen them brimming with pain, all his trauma hurtling to the surface in a way that made him breathless. She had been a little breathless too as she whispered “okay ”, and wondered why his fingers sparked embers as they touched her skin.
Those sparks skitter across her body now, heating her skin, and she’s starkly aware again that she’s practically naked.
“Maybe one of your overnight guests left a hoodie or something?” she tries with a nervous laugh, because she is not driving home in another STD ridden red dress.
Lucifer doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t adjust his cuffs, or scoff a horrified “my lovers do not wear hoodies, Detective”, or react any of the ways she expects. His eyes merely drop to a spot on her shoulder, a slowly healing bullet wound of her own.
He stares at her, as though he’s truly seeing her for the first time.
And then, to her surprise, he lifts his hands to gently grasp her hips and he walks her backwards. Her eyes remain locked on his face, her breath caught in her throat, as her back hits the piano.
A gasp snags between her lips as he lifts her onto it, as though she weighs less than a feather. And then she’s sitting on Lucifer Morningstar’s piano in just a towel, the soft fabric riding up her thighs, and he’s standing between them.
“What are you doing?” she whispers, and if he was looking at her the way he did earlier that day, salaciously offering her tit for tat, she would roll her eyes and push him away but he’s… not.
He looks contemplative, and unsure, and a little tortured. She thought she knew him. She thought she could predict his every move because, when all was said and done, he was predictable. When he took her up on her offer to drive him home, she had braced herself for at least three attempts to get her into bed.
She didn’t expect to be surprised.
But she is when he runs a thumb gently over her bullet wound… and even more so when he leans down and presses his lips to it.
She inhales sharply; it’s half shock, half reluctant desire, shooting straight between her thighs at the feel of his lips on her skin. She feels warm all over, a tremble to her hands and her breath, her lips parted. Heat crawls between her legs as she suddenly wonders what his mouth would feel like pressed there.
When he lifts his head to look at her again, there’s a clench to his jaw. A muscle in it leaps. His hands rest on her thighs, ring snagging against a cotton thread.
“Your job is very dangerous,” he murmurs, “a life with me… even more so.”
She swallows. Her eyes drop to his lips. Somehow she thinks he’s not talking about a life of just working together, just partners. And she’s not either. Deep down, she knows this is something more.
While she has no idea exactly what, she does know—
“I’m up for it if you are.”
Finally, a spark of the old Lucifer returns. His lips quirk at the sides and tempting fingers dance a little higher.
“I’m always up when you’re around, Detective.”
She can’t help but laugh, a rush of breath that falls from her lips like relief. She bows her head, water droplets falling slowly from damp ends. She watches them drip onto his hands, glimmering off the stone in his ring.
The air shifts again.
Her heart starts to beat faster, her throat running dry.
Her hands slowly drop from where she’s holding the towel. She’s tied it under her armpits so it stays in place, but she feels more exposed nonetheless. More vulnerable. She blames the stress of the day, and the closeness of his proximity making her brain short circuit, and she moves on autopilot.
For once in her life, she doesn’t overthink it.
Her thighs tremble a little wider. Soft fabric rides higher. His fingers twitch. The bottoms of his palms touch warm skin. He keeps his penthouse hot, but she doesn’t think that’s why she’s burning.
Her eyes drop to his chest. Her hands drop to the belt of his robe. She swallows past her nerves and her trembling fingers as she slowly unties it. Red satin parts under her touch.
Her eyes scan the cut of his body – from a bare chest, down that sharp V, to the waistband of black silk boxers. He’s beautiful. Leanly muscled, and slightly damp from his own shower, and… unblemished.
Entirely.
He’s flawless. Unmarked, sculpted perfection.
She swallows as she touches her fingertips to his chest. Perhaps her hands are cold because he shudders.
“You don’t have any scars,” she whispers.
And how is that possible? How can he have nothing - while she has not only a fresh bullet wound on her shoulder, but also a long healed one on her thigh from a shootout during her first year as an officer? And a scar from a knife on her throat, an arrest gone wrong, and even her career aside, scars from nicks while shaving and silvery ones from birthing Trixie? Lucifer’s rich, and before he met her, he probably never did a day’s work in his life, but save for the strange etchings on his back, could he really not have a mark on him?
He answers her question when he covers her hand with his. He entwines their fingers and holds them over his heart.
“They’re not visible,” he murmurs lowly, “but I have scars, I assure you.”
She holds his gaze for a significant beat before her eyes slide down again. She’s not sure why she does what she does next. She just… does it. She leans forward and presses her lips to his chest, just over his heart. She imagines that’s where his scars lay, under his skin, an ache not visible but painful all the same.
“Detective.”
She hears her name, her title, whispered on a breath. Firm abs twitch under her touch as her hands drift lower, fingertips dancing down strongly banded muscle.
When she pulls back and tips her chin to look at him, he’s wearing another expression she’s never seen before. His eyes are dark and glazed, lips slightly parted. It’s a little disbelief, a little curiosity. He can’t work her out any more than she can work him out.
Like her, he probably doesn’t know what this is. This connection between them, burning under the skin. She doesn’t understand why they keep gravitating towards each other, why everything points to him being unhinged, and possibly even dangerous, and the fact that he’s probably going to get her killed – but she’s here anyway. She can’t walk away.
She doesn’t understand why he keeps calling himself the Devil, and why he wraps himself up in stupid metaphors, and why he was so shocked that he bled tonight. He’s broken, and maybe she’s a little broken too, but they fit. Like two misshaped puzzle pieces slotting together just right, not fitting anywhere else.
She doesn’t know what this is, but she knows it’s something.
“I’m sorry I shot you,” she whispers then, a strange heat crawling under her skin.
The corner of his mouth twitches.
“Don’t be,” he says, “it was a riot.”
She definitely doesn’t understand that. She doesn’t understand him. She wants to.
One of his hands lays flat on her thigh, sliding up, up, up. His thumb rubs slowly, tantalisingly, so close to where an insistent heat is building between her legs. She shifts a little. Her cheeks flare when she realises she’s wet.
And she thinks he knows.
There’s a glint to his eye, dark and knowing. All-seeing. The thumb of his other hand lifts to again rub the spot where Jimmy shot her, warm fingers fitting over the curve of her shoulder.
She holds her breath.
“I’m sorry he shot you,” he murmurs, “horrid little thing, isn’t he? Jimmy Barnes?”
She thinks that’s an understatement, but she nods.
“He is. And I’m sorry you lost Delilah because of him. I know you cared about her.”
His thumb snags a little. He falters. Then he recovers, a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes tugging at his lips. She suspects it’s because no-one has ever said anything like that to him before, no-one has ever cared. But she does. She cares about him, and she’s vulnerable around him, and she thinks they have something special.
“Thank you, Detective,” he murmurs.
“And besides…” she starts, glancing down to the slowly healing wound, “it’s kind of cool that we’ll always have a reminder of our first case. We can sit on matching rocking chairs when we’re grey and old, reminiscing about the good old days.”
She’s joking, but the idea of it hits her square in the chest. She wants that. In whatever confusing capacity, she wants him in her life for a long time. She’s not sure how he feels about it because his expression is unreadable. His mouth just twitches at the side again, and his thumb continues to rub absently against her.
“I would have liked that very much.”
Her eyes narrow contemplatively. Like the Detective she is, she tries to decipher the intention behind the words. Would have. In another life, he seems to say.
She smiles; a gentle, melancholy thing. His mouth twitches back. And then he leans down and kisses the spot again. Chloe inhales slowly, a deep, calming breath. She tilts her head back a little, her hair damp and cool as it tips across her back.
She expects him to pull back again. She expects the moment to snap and break, and she’ll slide down from the piano and say goodbye. She’ll leave with this gnawing ache between her thighs, one her favourite toy will do nothing to satiate, and he’ll probably call a model to warm his bed. It’s a pattern by now, the way they run every time they get too close.
But this time…
He breaks the pattern by skimming his mouth across her collarbone.
He plants a devastatingly slow kiss just to the left of where the bullet hit. Then a little above. And then his lips are on her neck and her core is clenching around thin air.
Her lips part. Her fingers twitch uselessly at her side, nails scratching lightly at the piano’s surface. Her other hand moves on autopilot, sliding up his strong back until her fingers are in his hair. She anchors him to her, as though giving permission, telling him not to stop. Judging by the way his breath hitches against her, he appreciates the signal.
His hair is soft and still a little damp from his own shower. It makes the moment seem even softer, with his curls teased out and free of the expensive suit he wears like armour. He’s stripped back, vulnerable.
The air burns and thrums like a living thing around them as he moves his mouth to her throat. He lays a kiss there, no doubt feeling her breath hitch against his lips. Her stomach clenches in anticipation as he angles his face up and skims his mouth across the underside of her jaw.
He’s closer now. Close enough that she can smell that Prada soap, and the cologne he must have spritzed on after. He smells like sandalwood, and whiskey, and man, and she’s dizzy with it.
Finally, finally, he reaches her mouth… and he lays a slow kiss on the corner of it.
She shivers, drawing in a breath. His mouth hovers over hers, parted lips lightly brushing. They stay suspended there for a moment, moonlight streaming in from the balcony, the air perfectly still.
The point of no return.
Whenever Chloe has imagined kissing him – only once or twice, of course, in her weakest moments – she's always imagined he would take the driver’s seat. With all his skill and experience, she imagined him dominant and teasing, an air of arrogant pride as he took her apart with his hands and mouth and put her back together again.
What she never imagined, not in a million years, was the slight shake to his hands. The hitch to his breath. The tremor in his shoulders, making tight muscles even tighter, and the pupils blown to black.
She always imagined him cocky and seductive, not wrecked and desperate.
And she never imagined kissing him first.
But that’s what she does.
She closes the small gap between them and presses her lips to his.
For a moment, his surprise makes him still. It’s just a short press of mouths, soft yet firm. Then their lips are hovering over each other again, breaths quickening in the small gap between them.
She kisses him again. Once, twice, and the third time lasts. They breathe through their noses as they hold the kiss, and then his mouth starts to move against hers. One of her hands stays wrapped up in his curls while the other lifts to cup his face. She feels the rasp of stubble under her palm, the strong cut to his jaw.
She doesn’t overthink it because she’s so tired of thinking. She’s tired of fighting, and the pain of Palmetto still stings deep, and he’d make it good for her. He’s so good to her. She trusts him implicitly, and even if whatever this is is just a distraction, it’s good enough for now.
Her face is burning, the wetness between her legs building. As they kiss languidly, their bodies moving through instinct, she suddenly registers the fact that under his stupidly expensive towel, she’s naked.
One tug, just there, and he’ll expose her to him.
Her nipples pebble at the thought, every atom in her body firing. His hands slide from her thighs to her lower back. Thumbs hook around her hips and she gasps as he urges her forward. A shaky exhale falls from her lips as he pulls her flush against him.
Her thighs tremble around his hips. As his tongue slides into her mouth, connecting hot and slick with hers, she feels the towel bunch even higher. She can’t look down, her face on fire, but she feels cool air brush across her burning pussy.
One of his hands snakes up behind her to gently gather her hair in his fist. A short tug exposes the length of her neck to him and he kisses her there, hot open mouthed kisses that trail to the bullet wound which started this whole thing.
“I could kiss you all night,” he husks into her neck, his low voice winding around her and making her shiver.
She could too, but she wants more than that, so she hooks her hands under the robe at his shoulders and pushes it off. It flutters to the floor in a cloud of red satin.
She pulls back, eyes locked on his as she rests back on her forearms. Her elbows find purchase on the piano, her body alight with anticipation. She wants him to play her like he plays the instrument beneath her, talented fingers drawing melodies of a very different kind.
“Oh?” he quips, his brow arching as he gathers her intent, “you want me to kiss you there?”
She rolls her bottom lip between her teeth. It makes desire flare even wilder behind his eyes. Warm fingertips trace her ankles, taking his time. He dances them higher, up her calves, the backs of her knees, and finally to her thighs. He keeps his eyes on his hands as he pushes the hem higher, higher, higher… until her wet pussy is exposed.
He practically groans.
He parts his lips to allow a drop of saliva to fall with perfect aim. Chloe gasps, both at the lewdness of it and the sensation directly on her pulsing clit. Then he dips down like a man starved.
Her eyelids flutter and head falls back as he licks a hot stripe from her opening to her clit.
“Fuck,” she hisses, her hips bucking in surprise, “yes.”
She arches her back, her elbows trembling against the piano. She’s vaguely aware of the scrape of the stool against the floor as he hooks his foot around it and takes a seat. He wastes no time in hiking her legs over his shoulders, diving straight back in. He spreads her thighs wider, his tongue wringing out her pleasure, and when she glances down, she flushes at the flash of black between her legs.
Breathy gasps catch in her throat as she tries to stay quiet but god, he’s good at this. It’s quite annoying how good he is, how all his bravado has very much been for a reason. He’s vindicated. The towel rides up until it’s bunched around her waist and then, like a rubber band pulled too tight, his patience snaps and he rips it away with a growl.
Chloe shivers as the expensive fabric hits the piano either side of her. Her body flushes warm and fully exposed. He keeps his mouth buried in her cunt as one of his hands snakes up her sternum to cover her breast. Talented fingers pinch one of her nipples, grasping it with just the right amount of pressure as his other hand joins his mouth between her thighs.
He presses a thumb to her clit, rubbing it in tight circles as his tongue dips inside her. She feels a familiar pressure coil tight in the pit of her stomach, the fingers of her left hand curling into the piano and the other flying to tangle in his curls.
He growls into her cunt, the sounds wet and lewd. Hearing how much he enjoys this, how much he wants her… it only stokes her desire. A moan falls from her lips as he pushes two fingers inside her, sucking at her clit while he lets her get used to the stretch. She grinds her cunt against his mouth, letting out a choked sound, somewhere between a moan and a strangled version of his name.
“Mmm,” he hums, delighted, “say it again.”
“Lucifer.”
He growls thickly, working his mouth and fingers harder. Chloe’s breath quickens, a sob caught in her throat, white hot pleasure blinding her. At the back of her mind, she thinks he’s ruined her for all other men, but then again, perhaps that happened a long time ago. Pretty much the day they met.
It was going to be difficult, impossible, to go back to a normal man after him.
“Stop thinking,” he demands, reading her like a book as he turns his wet mouth to her thigh and thumbs at her clit again, “just come, Detective. Come for me.”
And maybe it’s because she’s so tired of giving orders, but she comes so easily it’s as though he’s clicked his fingers. Hot pleasure rushes through her as she spirals into an orgasm so intense, she swears she sees stars.
He nuzzles calmly at the seam of her groin as she comes back down to earth. Once her body has stopped shaking, she leans down and pulls him up, faintly aware of the stool tipping and hitting the floor.
She crashes her mouth to his, heat flaring between her legs again as she tastes herself on his mouth. His lips and beard are wet with her, his mouth shining swollen and pretty.
He kisses her harder, mouth slanting over hers, and she whimpers at the onslaught. She’s stunned at the passion flowing from his fingertips, but she doesn’t know why. He’s always been intense, probably the most honest person she’s ever met, and he deeply feels every emotion that rockets through his body.
He tugs her closer again, flush against his body. She gasps against his lips when she feels the hard line of his erection, pushing insistently against her soaking pussy. She can’t believe how hard he’s gotten just from eating her out.
With a lopsided grin, he reads her mind.
“You taste divine,” he purrs.
She slips a hand into his boxers in response.
He hisses through his teeth, hips pumping into her fist. He’s hot and silky smooth in her grip, and he makes the prettiest sounds when she twists her wrist just right. She swipes her thumb over the head of his cock, gathering the precum beading there. She uses it to lubricate her pumps as she jerks him.
He covers her mouth with his again, kissing her urgently. She doesn’t disconnect from his lips as she hooks her fingers around the waistband of his boxers and shoves them down. They pool around his ankles before he kicks them off and then he’s naked, and she’s naked, and they’re really doing this.
It’s been less than 24 hours since she looked him in the eye and told him she would never, ever sleep with him… and now here she is, begging for just that.
Because he’s shown her he’s more.
He’s shown her that he’s kind, and loyal, and willing to be vulnerable around her. To be cut open and laid bare. So she’s tired of fighting their connection. She gives into it; mind, body and soul.
When she arches her hips into him and tries to draw him inside her, he stops.
His hair is a mess, and his mouth is kiss swollen, and he’s panting a little. But still he stops, and still he asks–
“Are you sure?”
An ache curls through her chest.
“I’m sure.”
A smirk crawls slowly across his face.
“Well then, Detective,” he croons, all bright eyed confidence, “I’m very glad you finally came around.”
“Please don’t make me regret it,” she groans, and then the sound turns into something else entirely as he lines the head of his cock with her dripping entrance and pushes slowly inside.
She loops her arms around his neck, her ass half hanging off the piano, holding on tight as he begins to thrust. He moves inside her in shallow pumps of his hips, each one pushing him further and further inside until he’s fully seated.
Pleasure rises again, that liquid heat bubbling in the pit of her stomach. His hand slaps down onto the piano next to her, his other curling around her, angling her for his thrusts. He pulls out almost entirely, before plunging in again to the hilt.
He must notice her biting into her bottom lip because his thumb lifts to remove it from her teeth’s grasp.
“I haven’t waited all this time to fuck you just for you to be silent,” he breathes lowly, “let go.”
She does.
His words pull a moan from her like magic. She stops containing herself and lets her body feel. It must turn him on, the little sounds she makes, because he becomes louder too. Grunts and growls rumble from his chest as he fucks her harder, the piano creaking underneath them.
“Harder,” she whimpers, her thighs trembling around his hips, “fuck me harder.”
He growls his assent, hips snapping faster. She clenches around his length, feeling deliciously full. He’s big, the biggest she’s ever had, but she takes him easily, as though her body was made for it. As though they were made for each other. It’s almost too much to comprehend.
She rears up to kiss him again, mouths colliding messily. She licks inside his mouth, tasting herself again, her orgasm settled in his throat. He tears his lips away to mouth at her jaw, at her neck, sucking a bloom over her collarbone. She wants to be marked by him, she realises. She wants to force herself not to forget. If this never happens again, she wants a reminder.
And she wants him to come.
She wants to give him the pleasure he’s given her, wants to watch him fall apart for her.
“You’re gonna make me come,” she brings his face back to hers and pants into his mouth.
He groans.
“Yeah? You want to come for me?”
“Yeah. Yes,” she sobs, fire licking through her veins, a coil pulled tight, “please. Please, Lucifer.”
He releases the orgasm inside her with a flick of her clit. She comes shuddering, her head tipped back, her breasts heaving. When he follows her over the edge, giving himself permission to finish now she’s come twice, she feels it. In the tremor running through his body, in the half grunt, half growl falling from his lips, in the rush of warmth and wet between her thighs as he pumps his release into her.
She kisses him as they both recover. Her mouth opens and she feels him slip his tongue inside. It slides against hers, rough and hot silk, and when it retreats, she whines and seeks it out again.
He changes the angle of the kiss, slanting his mouth over hers, and she feels the sharp scrape of his teeth on her lips.
He gently takes the bottom one and gives it a tug.
“Perfect,” he murmurs breathlessly, “you’re so bloody perfect.”
She smirks against his mouth.
“That’s just the orgasm talking.”
He hums in amusement, a low, dangerous sound.
“Let’s find out, shall we?” he offers.
A highly undignified squeak falls from her lips as he winds an arm around her waist and hauls her effortlessly off the piano.
She clings to him, legs wrapped around his waist and face tucked into his neck as he heads to his ensuite in long strides and suggests, “how about another shower?”