Lux is loud, and Chloe is sure that the heavy footfalls of drunken passers-by and the steady blare of the speakers pulsing through the club are enough to keep them shrouded in obscurity. But if one were to lean a lazy shoulder against the door to the coat closet they might hear the sounds of frantic shuffling and tattered, broken breaths as Lucifer tangles a hand in her hair and pulls with a low groan against a makeshift ponytail.

She didn't kneel to him at the Coliseum; even when a slew of angelic siblings had bent the knee with eyes poised in reverence to the ground. She had remained standing: the only one, exhausted and bleeding and lightheaded but standing with him on equal ground all the same. Now, though, in the confines of a coat room in a crowded club, pressed against him and drinking in his labored sigh and the scent of his cologne, she drops to her knees before him for the first time.

There's a gasp of surprise from him; a sharp inhale that's quickly swallowed on the heels of a low murmur as she fumbles for his zipper in the dark. He had never wanted her to kneel to him that day at the Coliseum; if anything, it was him who worshipped her, and he feels the sudden need to tell her — but here, now, standing against the door with one hand in her hair and the other braced against the handle, his mind is foggy and he can't summon up the words and the slew of thoughts that had raced through his mind at the sight of her vanish as deft hands tug at his belt and at his waistband.

"Detective, I—" the words are clipped between a trembling gasp; it's all he can manage as she undoes his buckle with a metallic clink and as the hand that isn't busy trailing along his waist snakes above his knee and lingers with excruciating slowness on his thigh. The words in his throat catch and snag along a low growl and his head thumps against the door as she nudges black silk pants down and pulls at the elastic band of his boxers, lowering them with quiet authority and with an unswerving gaze as she meets dark eyes with light blue and he struggles to maintain her stare through shuddering breaths.

"You don't have to," he whispers, as she pauses with hands gripping his hips and with lips slightly parted. It's all he can think to say in the haze of his mind; he can't find the right words to tell her, to express to her that she doesn't have to kneel for him, that he only wants her, that if he only buried himself between her legs for the next thousand years he would be content — but she's smiling at him with strands of hair masking her eyes and with her head tilted against the hand he holds on the back of her neck.

"I know I don't have to," she murmurs, and his hand loses its grip in her hair as she leans forward and breathes the next words, soft and low and cool against his skin, "I choose to."

They're his words; the words he had spoken to her not three days past, when he had knelt before her and loosened the ring on his finger with a wistful smile on the horizon of his fading expression.

They're his words and he recognizes them, letting them drown on her lips and seep into the cramped space between them. The hand that had gone limp at the back of her head jerks to life at the feeling of her mouth hot against him, and his fingers bunch in her hair and cling like a lifeline as her tongue traces a tentative path for her lips to follow.

He rolls his hips against her with a gentle moan, begging her to stop teasing him, to circle her lips around him and slide him into her until her lips are wrapped around his base and her nails are digging into the skin on his back to brace herself against him. But she doesn't; not yet, anyway, pulling back ever so slightly and dragging soft kisses across the dip in his hips, against the smooth skin on the inside of his thigh, anywhere, anywhere, that isn't where he so desperately wants her to be.

Finally, when he's panting and his thumb is stroking against the nape of her neck and his fingers are bristling, wrapped around her roots, and he can no longer meet her stare because his own eyes are squeezed shut against the power of her lips against his bare skin, she relents, and she slips him fully inside her mouth.

She's glad for the pulsing heartbeat of the club outside the door, for the music that masks the sound of his moan and for the mysterious strength of the flimsy wooden entrance that holds them in as the hand that Lucifer had held against the handle pounds against the door with an involuntary gasp. The whole room seems to shudder, reverberating with the devilish strength of his fist against the door before settling back into quiet darkness.

She moves faster, humming softly against him as fire burns and licks at her core. One hand wraps about his waist and forces him closer while the other follows in a tight circle where her lips had just been, her hand now working against him in tandem with her mouth and urging him closer to the edge.

He's tense against her, thrusting gently in response to her rhythm and breathing the ghost of her name into the blackness. When she finally relinquishes the hand wrapped about him, allowing her lips room to curve around his base and for her eyes to smile up at him, he grabs for her wrists with a broad hand slick with sweat and traps both of her palms in one of his own. She pauses, staring up at him with wide eyes and with both arms now pinned against his chest, tugging her forwards and pulling her deeper against him. His eyes are on fire, sparked by the heat in her belly that's radiating off her and searing into the tight darkness, and the hand that doesn't cling to her wrists is gathered firmly in her hair, guiding her gently and with ragged insistence as she nods against him, giving him permission, and he falls apart with hands tightening about her own and with a strangled whimper on his lips.

Outside, the roving spotlights flicker and fade, and the upbeat synth music that had marked the start of the contest dissipates into Lux's usual clamor. Inside the closet, Chloe takes the hand that Lucifer offers her, his fingers still trembling with the aftershocks of his coming apart, and he lifts her from the ground, smoothing the wrinkles that had appeared across her dress with an absent, wandering hand.

He doesn't speak. There's nothing to say. Instead he smooths a stray strand of hair from her face and tucks it behind her ear, leaning to kiss her as his palm encircles her throat and draws her close. Where he had shuddered and come undone at the beckoning of her tongue and her lips against him he now stands tall above her, drawing her against desperate lips and shielding her in the crook of his arms as her heart settles against his chest.

When she finally pulls back, fixing him with a wan smile and full eyes, he can only manage a tired, catlike grin.

"I was never half the Devil you just were, Detective," he says wryly, replacing the flimsy devil horn headband on her head where it had fallen haphazardly against the valley of coats.

Her heart is still pounding, eyes still blazing from the sight of him bucking under the heat of her lips, but the lights have dimmed under the crack in the door and the traffic of footfalls in the corridor has picked up once more and they had promised to only absent themselves for the contest — and so she only flashes him a knowing smile and brushes a kiss against his jaw as she slinks past him and out the door, leaving him blinking softly in the empty closet.

A moment later he follows suit, and appears on the second floor of his club with vest buttons askew and with coiffed hair tangled against his brow. His gaze finds Amenadiel, now standing in the middle of the club flanked by Maze and Eve, and flits to Chloe, halfway down the stairs and leaving a trail of eyes glued to her back in her wake. Down on the dance floor, his brother motions frantically for him.

He sighs.

The sting resumes.