After their morning exercises, breakfast, and an attempt to get the Kindred to come meet their guests, the Ladies were suddenly whisked away by Jaenelle for an impromptu but serious shopping excursion, while the males were relegated to entertaining themselves. It was adorable to watch them torn between wanting to say with their Ladies and their dread of shopping with Jaenelle. By now they had all experienced the horror of afternoon preying on the local shopkeepers with Jaenelle.
Lucivar took charge of the males, much to Daemon's amusement, and indicated that they would be escaping to town as well. After the boyos had been chatting casually at the bar of the local inn for a few hours, some of them noticed Lucifer's eyes go distant for a second and he disappeared. Daemon, Lucivar and the rest of the boys naturally tensed and tried to find the source of danger, but sensed nothing.
"He does that," Azazeal remarked calmly, "Elizabeth must have called him. He doesn't feel the need to excuse himself from the room when he's responding to her."
Lucivar nodded, seeming to understand the logic, and Daemon shook his head.
They had all gotten used to the extremes in Lucifer. He could go from looking about to attack Elizabeth in a rut-induced frenzy to being lovingly soft and gentle with her. He could be trying to incite mischief with the Coven one moment and be entirely quiet and disinterested the next. He could seemingly forget Elizabeth existed (though no one but Lucivar would accuse him of that to his face) and then suddenly station himself at her left shoulder where nothing could induce him to leave. So a disappearing act was nothing too exciting in the world of Lucifer, especially when everyone knew that a word from Elizabeth was all it ever took to command him. She somehow made sense of his behavior and that had to be enough for everyone.
As they were resettling themselves fom this distraction a young Gray-jeweled Queen walked up to Azazeal. Since she hadn't seen him before so she assumed he was a new arrival from Terrelle.
"Please tell me you haven't signed a contract with a Court yet or if you have I hope it's not a long one." She said pleasantly but with underlying sexual interest. She eyed him and smiled coyly.
Azazeal, not being fully aware of what she was asking and always being really for a flirt, replied with a grin that made her flush, "No contract."
"Well, then," she said recovering herself a bit, "I could use a male who's clearly been trained in the bedroom."
And that's when Daemon and Lucivar went cold, but neither she nor Azazeal saw their faces and understood the carnage was about to ensue if she said anything further. As it happened however, she reached out and put her hand on Azazeal's arm, a playful gesture, not entirely as blatant as her recent proposition, and Azazeal felt himself recoil. His expression turned deadly, as deadly as any Warlord Prince, and he surprised himself with the fierceness of his loathing of her touch. The young Queen was startled and then after catching a glimpse of Daemon and Lucivar's expressions, she quickly made her exit.
"You'd think they would learn," Lucivar muttered.
"Yes, well, there will always be a few," Daemon commented.
"Are you alright?" Lucivar asked Azazeal, who was occupied with his own thoughts.
"That was…I wanted to hurt her for touching me."
"I know how you feel," Daemon purred.
"Women like that can make your skin crawl with one finger," Lucivar shuddered.
"But I've never felt anything like that before, of course…well…sensation has become more significant than it use to be," Azazeal said, half to himself.
Daemon and Lucivar stared at him, having found that sometimes that was the best way to get Azazeal to explain something.
"We didn't always feel you know. Well I did, the Watchers always knew something of what the sense of touch meant but it wasn't until we fell from angelic status that we truly understood it. Lucifer didn't know it at all until after his fall and then it became one of his sick fasciations. When he couldn't quite understand what it was for and what it meant to him, he took to inflicting it on others, pleasure and pain, but mostly pain eventually, and then he discovered how to inflict emotion pain to distract him from his own and the rest is history. I fell in love with pleasure and have explored anyway I could find to experience it."
Daemon nodded encouragingly, no longer annoyed that he liked to hear Azazeal tell stories, any story really.
"But these women, our women, they have given it meaning that it didn't have before. They touch us instinctively to communicate and they don't even realize it. They take your hand when they are happy, they touch your shoulder to get your attention, they lean on you when they are tired, they run their hands over you when they are pleased or feel possessive," Azazeal said, looking as if he were remembering a time when Cassie was doing just that, "and when they make love..."
"Males do like to be petted," Lucivar commented dryly to Daemon.
"And then," Azazeal continued, undeterred, "there comes the irresistible desire to respond, to touch them, feel them, and see their reaction, knowing that part of them understands our touch too," he paused and then became more professorial, as if he'd shown too much already, "It really is the best form of communication that we have in common. Our spoken languages are not similar, theirs all sound while ours has mental and emotional components that, though they have learned, they will not be able to fully understand until…"
"Is that why Lucifer is constantly horny?" Khary chimed in.
"Essentially, yes," Azazeal said secretly pleased that no one had noticed the times when he himself and nearly acted like an adolescent boy, wanting so badly to feel Cassie against him, "The sex, pleasure we give them and the pleasure we accept, has given them context with which to understand the mental and emotional things we share with them. Of course with Lucifer, it's not just pleasure."
Lucivar snorted and Daemon looked slightly uncomfortable.
"Oh, he just plays with pain now, to let her know he would give her that too, but it's nothing like it was in the beginning. She gave the levels of pleasure and pain meaning and purpose. Pain is for anger or for dominance. He learned, relatively quickly, that pain is to be avoided when she is angry because her displeasure will make it sting. He won't stop her but he does feel shame now. He initially didn't notice that the whip was not enjoyable, because he was so fascinated by the fact that she could get him to surrender at all, but now he doesn't confuse sensations anymore and knows when what she is doing is not for her pleasure...Ah, for her pleasure…that's a different thing altogether and it's his own damn fault she's developed a occasional craving for it, so he's not above playing the bad boy to prick at that desire in her. Besides he wants to feel her forceful side. He was used to spending his time in awe of a power greater than himself, so whatever she does to assert her mastery of him, he will enjoy...it's just his nature. And then there's the ecstasy...well, when you love like we do, sharing pleasure with our...ladies, takes things to a place I can't describe to you."
Just then Lucifer popped back in to thoughtful stares.
"I leave for one minute and you all get dreary on me. What's the problem?"
"Um, nothing," Daemon offered, but Azazeal told Lucifer about the girl who had touched him, ending with a disgusted shudder.
"Fascinating, isn't it?" Lucifer said, excited, "Each person feels different, why didn't we notice before, well you've been touched more, but you obviously didn't like something about that woman, never had someone daring enough to want to use you before, but here the women are wilder, and I know I don't have to tell you, but do NOT let anyone touch your wings, my boy, they're painfully aware of who is touching them, and no offense to your Lady, Daemon, but that was extremely unpleasant (to put it mildly), they're for lovers only, it seems, which is fine by me because I don't want anyone but her to touch them and…"
"Lucifer, what did Elizabeth want?" Azazeal asked to distract him from his tirade.
Lucifer calmed and then smirked at Daemon.
"Jaenelle's a devious shopper. Elizabeth asked me to evaluate the purity of some jewelry they were looking at. The shopkeeper was overcharging and now the Ladies have some information to haggle with."
Daemon smiled back in acknowledgement of Jaenelle's shopping strategy. He was also secretly amused by how it must have galled her to have to ask Elizabeth but that her desire for a good deal overwhelmed that. She was used to all decent Blood males being at least a little bit drawn to her, while Lucifer and Azazeal were completely unsusceptible to her charms as a Queen and as Witch. It had taken her a little while to realize it but he seen her fighting her frustration with it when situations arose where she would normally be in control. There was nothing quite so scary as having two powerful males loose in your world and not being able to have the slightest influence over them. Azazeal was easier, he might listen to reason, but Lucifer ignored the requests of everyone but Elizabeth.
Later that evening when only the eight of them were left in the drawing room, the males all followed Lucifer's shameless example and each found their own way to get the physical attention that they wanted.
Lucifer was seated at Elizabeth's feet, the side of his head leaning on her knee, and she had taken to stroking him immediately. Of course, she knew what he wanted and was quite familiar with his obsession with touching her and being touched by her. Only her informing him that she thought it would be impolite for him to change into a cat and crawl in her lap had kept him from doing so.
Daemon was laying with his head in Jaenelle's lap and her hand had now moved from messing up his hair (not that he cared about his hair at this point) to slip along his chest under his silk shirt. It was all he could do not to give an encouraging moan or rock his hips upward. He'd certainly opened up a can of worms listening to Lucifer's suggestion about learning to accept pleasure.
Lucivar had Marian tucked against his shoulder but her free hand was absently rubbing his thick arm and occasionally ventured furtively to his thigh before realizing where it had gotten to and making a careful retreat back to his arm. If he had been willing to move, he would have grabbed her hand and put it back on his thigh but he didn't want her to stop.
Azazeal was laying on the couch with Cassie curled up against him. He held one of her hands, which she tucked against her chest. She quite purposefully shifted and stretched to press herself against his entire body thinking to tease him. But he was not to proud to shift his hips forward, meeting her body's caress, letting her feel his body's reaction to her own. So she freed her hand and slipped it behind her and while appearing innocently in conversation, drove him to distraction, though he did have control enough not to moan and rub himself against her like he wanted to. Eventually she let him go to caress his thigh.
The males were completely oblivious to whatever the girls were talking about, which the Ladies eventually realized once the saw that their eyes were closed and recognized the slow breath of male content at being petted. They gave each other knowing looks and playful smiles but did not disturb them until it was time to go to bed.