They had all really needed the break and the get away to Elizabeth's beach because Azazeal had been running them all, especially Cassie, ragged with work, Daemon had rutted, Lucifer had nearly killed someone, and Elizabeth had been watching Surreal and Bilarel like a hawk.

At a ball in Little Terreille, the main group was stalking a couple of Queen's they had identified as needing "help" getting past their recently developed violent tendencies. Elizabeth was off keeping an eye on Bilarel, with Cassie tagging along to complain that they weren't dancing or something, and trying to convince herself that Cassie's determination was correct that Bilarel was not falling in love with Surreal. Surreal tolerated him and was even, almost, slightly friendly at times, but though he was doing her some good, Bilarel was not becoming attached to her. It was Elizabeth that needed to let her fears go.

"Uhm, Elizabeth?" Cassie said tapping her shoulder for effect, "I don't mean to tell you your business but whatever it is that Lucifer's doing over there with Daemon and Lucivar, it doesn't look good!"

Elizabeth turned around to smile at Cassie and then towards Lucifer to share in the joke, but then to her horror saw that he was actually choking one of the target Queens. Not with his hand, as he sometimes forgot to act bodily, but with his mind.

"Good Evening." Daemon had crooned to the red-jeweled Queen who immediately gave him a once over and an arrogantly entitled grin that assumed that his attention was due to some wonderful quality that she exhibited unknowingly.

"Good Evening, Prince," she had replied condescendingly and he tried not to cringe.

"Have you met my brother, Lucivar, and a friend of mine from Terreille, Lucifer?"

"Why no, I don't believe I've had the pleasure," she had gushed and lifted a limp hand for it to be kissed but none of them moved. The look on her face was priceless and while Daemon knew they shouldn't be doing this, it was supremely satisfying to play with a representation of all of those Queen's who had played with him. He thought only in passing that this was possibly a residual effect of the strong rut he'd just been through, having so recently been in an instinctual mode that had no concern for the feelings of others.

The now uncomfortable Queen turned her attention to Lucifer. The one from Terreille, she thought, would have more understanding of how a Queen should be treated, rather than these ones that Jaenelle let run wild.

"How are you liking Kaaleer and your new Queen? I hope that there aren't any diversions that you are missing," she had said provocatively, assuming, of course, that he was under contract to a Queen from Kaaleer as required by law.

"Oh, my Queen keeps me extremely diverted," Lucifer had replied.

"Ah, that's good to hear," she had said and then put her hand on his arm and leaned in to whisper in his ear, "But I could make sex with her seem tedious."

"Could you?" Lucifer had asked through now gritted teeth, which she mistook for desire.

"Definitely," she had murmured and then found her breathing restricted by a phantom hand. She clawed at her throat but it did her no good and Daemon and Lucivar looked on in satisfaction. For them the bitch deserved it, as such women always did, and Lucifer was only doing, in his own special style, what they would have done.

Elizabeth slipped next to Lucifer and said in an even tone, "Let her go," which Lucifer did and the Queen collapsed to the floor. The crowd was vaguely aware that someone had collapsed so Daemon squatted down next to the woman and pretended to help her as Jaenelle now drifted over.

"What the hell happened?" Elizabeth shouted in a low voice, "Wait I don't even need to know, you two," she glared at the bewildered Daemon and Lucivar who had not expect to get into trouble, "Don't encourage him!"

She stopped at that as if that explained everything but they were confused.

Jaenelle chuckled to herself because Cassie and Elizabeth had taken up the role of sisters to Lucivar and Daemon and felt authorized to scold them as such in a very different way than she herself or Surreal did. It was made more amusing by the fact that Cassie and Elizabeth had no notion of being far less powerful and therefore less entitled to scold because they were so used to dealing with beings with far more power than themselves.

"We were just…uhm…playing with her, you know, intimidating her and then she said something to him and…," Lucivar began on his and his brothers behalf, but by now they had both noticed the wild look in Lucifer's eyes. He was scanning the whole room including them over and over again seeming to be calculating possibilities. They also noticed that the feeling of him being in constant rut had morphed into an undirected and violent sexuality that seemed ready to unleash itself at random.

"I'm sorry," Elizabeth said but it didn't sound like an apology but more like a way to inturrupt him.

Elizabeth was annoyed with them but she knew that she couldn't expect them to know that the essence behind this particular act had been one of Lucifer's favorite things to do and that they had encouraged it. He wouldn't have killed the Queen, not without her permission, but among his obsessions while being evil had been one that involved watching a person come to realize that they were going to die as it was happening and that there was nothing they could do to stop it. This also had eventually encompassed a more complex version where he would lead a person to destroy their life, their family, and their souls knowing all the while that what they were losing and doing it anyway. He had taken pleasure in their anguish to alleviate his own and was a familiar rush.

"When he's out on his own, so to speak," she continued, "he has a tendency to use people's reactions to his behavior as a guide to the appropriateness of his actions. You…you both enjoyed it so…anyway, it's over now," she finished and took Lucifer's arm who followed her to near by bench. She sat him down and then sat astride his lap facing him, her knees on either side of his legs.

"Do you want to play a game?" She said to him and he focused on her but his eyes were still wild from the rush of what he'd done.

"What kind of game?" He replied sounding more like his naughty self.

"You'll find out!" she said and they disappeared.

Later that night, as they all snuck out of the party early, Daemon was walking down the upstairs hall way and decided to check in on Lucifer who he knew was alone because he'd just seen Elizabeth down stairs. He knocked at the door and received no reply but considering the occupant, this did not surprise him. He figured that Lucifer was sulking after having a blistering talking to by Elizabeth which he assumed would cause at least as much shame as when Jaenelle did it to him.

Daemon opened the door slightly and called, "Lucifer," quietly into the room. Still no reply. He opened the door wider and then his hand dropped from the doorknob back to his side as he stared in shock and felt his rage bubbling up to the surface.

As Lucifer stood there, his wrists tied together above his head high on the tall bed post, his back criss-crossed with the marks of some kind of whip, his mind projecting a strange kind of sexual craving, Daemon could not help but see his saffamate dosed brother there instead, though his mind had significantly exaggerated the number and severity of the whip marks. He approached slowly once he controlled his rage enough to move. He went around to the side of the bed and saw that Lucifer's eyes were closed.

"Did she punish you?" Daemon asked in a low voice that might have been mistaken for concern but which characteristically signaled his rage.

Lucifer's eyes flew open, regarding Daemon darkly and he assumed he had his answer. He reached up to untie Lucifer's wrists and was startled by a voice at the open door.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

He turned to see Azazeal standing in the doorway.

"She…" Daemon started.

"If she left him there, that's where she wants him. He will not let you move him."

Daemon open his mouth as if to respond and then, after confirming that the look in Lucifer's eyes was anger directed at him, he drifted passed Azazeal and down stairs with Azazeal following him close enough to feel the chilling cold coming off of him. They passed Elizabeth on her way up the stairs but Daemon managed to ignore her.

The next day, Elizabeth and Lucifer skipped breackfast and a worried tension that felt distinctly male overtook the room when Elizabeth and Lucifer finally joined the group. That was until Lucifer joined the boy's little side group and flopped down in a chair dramatically. All eyes were on him and then he leaned towards Azazeal and said with a lazy grin loudly enough for all of the boys to hear, "That woman does the most wonderfully horrible things to me and, let me tell you, it's not mercy I beg for!"

Azazeal just smiled at him, knowing that no response was required, but said anyway, "No, I expect not."

"What do you beg for?" Daemon said through clenched teeth.

Lucifer seemingly avoided the question and said naughtily, "Submission is my highest purpose," at which Daemon snarled in response.

"Easy, Tiger," Lucifer responded with typical amusement but then continued more seriously, "She had to assert control again, she had to be sure," then changing back to his sexy rumble, "And I, of course, held out for as long as I could, you've got to play the game, you know, make her really work for it, but damn she knows what makes me melt like butter."

This was obviously the opposite of what had happened because the truth was as he had said, submission was indeed what he had begged for, from almost the beginning, because when his head cleared he had known that he had disappointed her. All he wanted was to be back where he had been: under her control.

Elizabeth quickly satisfied herself that he had not acted truly maliciously, but had simply reacted and then continued based on Daemon and Lucivar's complacence. She pushed him on the bed and he let her but watched her with calculating eyes that meant that he might turn the tables on her at any time. She was used to this but it hadn't happened in quite some time. She straddled him and gave him a passionate kiss aimed at reminding him who she was, then continued to tease him a bit with her mouth to ensure his undivided attention.

When she asked him, "Do you want to please me?" the immediate and resounding eagerness of the affirmative that came from him was overwhelming and underlying it was a familar sense of fear that he had gone too far this time. She reassured him that he was still hers, but his punishment, that wasn't really a punishment but rather an opportunity for him to make amends, was to wait…wanting to proclaim his surrender, wanting to yield everything, and sing to her of his unending love, but giving only his body and waiting for her allow him to give more. And it was a tactic that he appreciated because he had wanted to prove his obedience again and would not have been satisfied with simple forgiveness, but he had no desire to feel her real anger ever again.

He'd appreciated it so much that he used the only things he could (his lips, his hands, his tongue, his hips, everything) to try to worship her, but his eagerness made him incapable of succeeding in this effort which normally came easily to him. It had always had amazed Elizabeth those times when he could make a simple touch a benediction but this time it was his turn to by amazed yet again at how she could fluster him so completely. Despite failing to create a more profound experience, he pleasured her numerous times and added more than one thundering climax of his own to the accounting of things given to her.

As he lay in the aftermath of one such experience, she stroked his back for a while and then rose from the bed. She reached out a hand to him, which he gave to her, and she lead him off of the bed. She guided him over to one of the bed posted at the end of the bed and he watched her as she took his hands and stretched them up high on the post. She disappeared from his view and then she returned quickly with something to secure his hands. That done, she ran a hand down his back again and over his buttocks slowly and softly. He shuddered and let out a quiet moan.

She no longer bothered to wonder anymore how he could want this too. He knew what she was going to do to him and he wanted it, not just didn't mind, he wanted it. Pleasure brought worship and pain brought surrender and he needed both, so he sought both. Oh, he knew that pain was the opposite of pleasure (pleasure is a slow aching burn and pain is a sharp searing brand) but it didn't really hurt him, not in the way it would hurt a mortal or even Azazeal, who was much closer to human. It could sting though...if it needed to.

Elizabeth knew that he had was a being that could feel the intention and purpose behind an act which was how he had shifted so easily from it only being used as punishment, when he had used to need some sense knocked into his wildly out of control self, to it being a game that they sometimes played. He had never stopped wanting the experience, the surrender that the pain brought, and the opportunity to prove his love so explicitly, but he knew the difference between her acting out of anger and her doing what she liked with him out of love and out of trust in his love for her. If the pain for discipline, as when she'd let Azazael lash him to shreds, he would understand and he would feel it in every stripe. He vaguely remembered now how much it had hurt him in the beginning, but he had been too unruly and used to his agony that he had not really noticed this new torment, especially since it brought a temporary cessation of his angelic pain with the sweetness of yielding to her. Once she had decided to take him on, it had been her that introduced the device of a punitive act to give direction to her anger and disappointment and her desire that he return to obedience. She had taken his favorable reaction to letting Azazeal punish him and used it as her last resort when being a seductress did not work and it took more than sex and an forceful demands to get him under some semblance of control. She had been expressing her displeasure but Lucifer had only felt that strong and irresistible desire in her to do something to his body that came from a very dark and private place in her mind. He, of course, wanted to give it to her and when he did a more all-encompassing submission came with it.

They had been communicating very different things to each other and eventually they understood one another. She learned what it mean to have an angel devoted to her and that not allowing him to serve her was its own form of punishment. Lucifer learned what forgiveness felt like once he had paid the price for his transgression. Both punishment and forgiveness had been a foreign concepts to him since he had never been meant to disobey. Once he had, he was rejected, but but in his mind never had never really been disciplined because the key ingredient of forgiveness afterwards had never been bestowed. It had taken Lucifer a while to stop acting out and seeking the pain for the surrender and forgiveness that followed. Eventually, he as he loved her more and more he realized that she would never stop forgiving him and that she deserved the absolute submission that she now had from him.

This, of course, created its own set of problems because it meant that if she felt like inflicting pain, he wanted to experience it. Pleasure Elizabeth had always understood the value of but she sort of turned a blind eye to the fact that she was excited by his acceptance of pain merely for her pleasure. She would only go so far as to accept that it was a kinky sex thing, but deep down there was part of her that felt what it represented between them: the outrageousness of a man willing to endure torture for her. That was how deep his submission was, how absolute his love was, and she now scratched the surface to the point where she was comfortable, but in the end their games made his meaning perfectly clear to the part of her that needed to accept it.

So now that pain was just for her enjoyment...well...it came with its own special sensations and emotions. Ultimately, though, his intention was still same as when he had freaked out in the past and done evil to get her attention. When he now toyed with her jealousy to get a rise out of her, he wanted to do something deeply intimate and meaningful for her. At least now Elizabeth knew where the strange imagery he sent her and the bizarre things he wanted to do for her came from.

Elizabeth stood there a moment contemplating this and wondering what the whip did feel like if it didn't hurt him...but she knew, she realized because his response told her. She gave him several good cracks, which he answered with familiar cries that became increasingly ragged but did not lose the passionate sigh that let her know there was pleasure too. Those where the sounds that thrilled the part of her he so loved to touch. His body shuddered exquisitely with each strike as if she had plucked a delicate cord in him that resonated a thrill through his entire being. It was pleasure, there was no doubting that, but a pleasure that only a perfectly devoted creature could experience.

Despite the twisted gratification that Elizabeth felt in doing this, her heart wasn't in it to really torment him, so she left him there a while to yearn for his reward a little longer.

When she had come back, she was unaware that Lucifer had had a visitor and in fact never found out that Daemon had seen him like that. She had untied his wrists, turned him around, and watched him tremble as he held back…everything.

When she had given him the mental permission to finally submit himself, she had expected…well…a tumble of words, a shivering mass at her feet, but the trembling had stopped and he remained standing silently in front of her. He had yield everything so willingly that he gone to a place where there were no words or corresponding bodily acts for the depth of his love and submission. His eyes blazed with feeling and when she touched him their fire deepened. She could feel his essence expand around her, touch her softly at the same time his hand did, and in that touch he conveyed what he could not in mortal terms. She knew that it wasn't her body that felt these things and it was no longer his body that she was touching, but she could only perceive it as it would have appeared to a person watching him. Two lovers caressing each other.

Eventually she led him to the bed and arraigned their forms to that she held him and before long some words did come in the form of her favorite angelic song. She had never admitted to having a favorite but he knew, of course, and used it accordingly.

Next chapter: Daemon's rut