Chapter 7 has been updated but the way the system works...anyway...see Chapter 7 if you want the updates.
For days and days afterward, Jaenelle pouted about not having flown with Lucviar and Marian in the mountains of California. Daemon had made love to her for days, well making love may not be the correct term for it, and all she was concerned about was missing out on the fun everyone else had while he was in rut. She certainly knew how to deflate a man's ego. But then again she'd apparently learned a thing or two during the rut that he couldn't remember because she was more…aggressive.
When they visited Azazeal and Cassie again, it was just the two of them and Jaenelle immediately announced her intention to have a flying excursion too. Azazeal, bless him, talked her out of it on this occasion since the Eyrians weren't there and Daemon couldn't fly himself.
Jaenelle settled for some girl talk with Cassie and Elizabeth while the boys situated themselves for more serious discussions…well that's what they wanted the ladies to believe, anyway.
When Daemon sat down, he looked at Lucifer to try to gauge his mood. Just because he wasn't going to take revenge on him, didn't mean that he had necessarily forgiven Daemon.
"I didn't mean to insult you or Elizabeth," Daemon said first, not wanting to start a conversation with this still hanging over them.
"Nevermind," Lucifer laughed softly and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, "I'm sensitive, or so Cassie tells me."
"And what does Elizabeth say," Daemon said smiling back at him.
Lucifer grinned, "She says I get too caught up in surrendering everything that I forget how the little things appear differently to mortals."
"Little things?"
"You felt it! The little devotions that you had seen were nothing when what I really offer is that kind of power at her disposal," Lucifer said seriously and then a smile touched his lips, "But there is something fantastically arousing about trembling like a supplicant at her feet or in remembering that in one delightful way or another that woman has laid claim to every inch of my flesh. I guess it's just the twisted angel in me still."
Lucifer's eyes glittered with his familiar naughtily amusement and Daemon just shook his head at him and smiled.
"You don't have flesh," Azazeal said grinning.
"I have as much as you, Cassanova, and I use mine better," Lucifer retorted, "Did you know, dear boy," he turned to Daemon, "that this angel here is solely responsible for most of the sexual positions and perversions in this world, but his little women doesn't use half of them!?!"
"Don't start that again, Lucifer," Azazeal said amused more than annoyed, "Just because I developed a few sexual variations here and there over the centuries doesn't mean that I have to use my whole repertoire on her all at once."
"Oh, if only that were the reason!"
"How can you be so certain that it's not?" Azazeal challenged
Daemon was looking back and forth between the two of them with a smile of his own.
"I'm looking for some support for my case here, Daemon. I mean a man with your seductive nature and the skills that you have, isn't it a waste not to…" Lucifer smile faded, "I...forgot about…"
"My service as a pleasure slave?" Daemon asked quietly.
"Now look who is offending whom! You see why I'm so forgiving," Lucifer said magnanimously but then he paused and said seriously, "It is a wound I can see on your soul, my friend, but it is something I could never understand."
"For good or for ill," Lucifer continued glancing at Azazeal, "there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that Elizabeth could do to me that I wouldn't love her for afterward, even in my torment, as long as she allowed it to please her. But you see, that is where the trust comes in."
Daemon looked thoughtfully at Lucifer trying to measure what cruelties she had inflicted.
"No, she is not cruel, nor does she have it in her," Lucifer admitted in response to Daemon's stare, "We only play at pain by your standards. My trust is not misplaced."
Daemon felt a bit silly for assuming, given the direction of the conversation, that Elizabeth could be as cruel as he knew some women could be. He had already seen that Lucifer's love for her went beyond that of simple blind love. And Daemon could see that for all of his gloating about being a slave, while Lucifer would not be able stop himself from seeking to please her even in suffering, Lucifer would recognize the difference if it reached the levels that Daemon had experienced. He might not have always been capable of seeing the distinction but he was now, now that she had shown him what it meant to choose in love.
Then Daemon grinned, "Well, in order to consider the case properly, I think I will need to hear exactly what kinds of things were talking about here!"
"Excellent!" Lucifer exclaimed and Azazeal rolled his eyes but cooperated with the investigation which the ladies had the benefit of later and for years to come, though they never knew the candor with which the boys had discussed their sex lives with that day.
Azazeal, as it turned out, was a master of the arts of seduction as well as having a health dose of creativity that had indeed spawned the many ways in which the people of this world chose to take their pleasure. Daemon was quite impressed and as Jaenelle had noted to herself earlier, he realized just how one sided his own bedroom training had been.
"But you see, Lucifer," Azazeal said after having given his examples of what he had and had not yet shared with Cassie, "I don't feel the need to molest my lover with random acts of lustfulness."
"Now don't you start!" Lucifer said in mock anger, "I'm not random, I'm…adventurous."
"Like a carnival ride, no doubt," Azazeal muttered and Lucifer laughed.
"Elizabeth does not complain," he retorted.
"She doesn't have enough energy to complain," Azazeal countered.
"She's more durable than your delicate witch and more uninhibited."
Azazeal scowled.
"And how is she more uninhibited than Cassie in the bedroom?" Daemon asked, having fun with the angels' little tiff over sexual matters.
Lucifer then decided to explain how his clever lover had ideas of her own while Cassie merely lounged like a Queen and waited to be pleased (this didn't need to be true for Lucifer to feel that accusing her of it was worth while, it merely needed to irritate Azazeal). This made Azazeal's brow furrow but he listened. Lucifer looked at Daemon shrewdly and for his benefit was kind enough to enumerate the reasons why one might actually want to be played with by your lover, why one might want to be tied spread-eagle for their pleasure, and why one might want to plead with ones lover for sexual release (among other acts that got progressively more kinky). Lucifer took too much delight in all things sexual for Daemon not to smile at his reasoning and behind it all Daemon could see that these things added to Lucifer's surrender so they made sense for him...and they were not purely one-sided. And while these things required trust that Daemon no longer possessed and he would never desire them, it seemed to lessen the shame of them somewhat to know that their were those who had relationships in which they could find pleasure in such things (even if they were merely playful recreations of real torture he had endured).
"Hmm," Daemon said, "I don't see why it should be one way or the other."
At this both Lucifer and Azazeal regarded him with cheerful irritation. They had wanted a judgment on the matter that he simply could not provide.
Then somehow, in a quick and witty exchange that had Daemon's head spinning and Azazeal beaming triumphantly, Lucifer was forced to grudgingly admit that, just like Azazeal and Cassie, he and Elizabeth spent more of their time as tender and ardent lovers rather than as wild deviants.
"Azazeal," Lucifer said, defeated but somehow enjoying the humbleness of being found out as a mostly gentle lover who did indeed respond to a kind hand, "have you ever slept with Cassie between your wings?"
"Often," Azazeal smiled slyly.
"Why didn't you tell me it felt so good?"
"Because I don't tell you everything!"