When Daemon was alone with Jaenelle later that night, they looked at each other for a moment, knowing that they were going to have a serious talk.

"I hurt you," he started, stating the obvious.

"Yes," she responded matter of factly and it surprised him that she did not deny it as she had before.

"But you did not injure me," she added, making an important distinction that he felt he could now accept. He nodded.

"Could I have?" he asked with a lump in his throat.

She smiled and said, "I don't really know. Lucifer hints that I'm stronger than I think, but…I've never wanted so much power, Daemon. I'm happy with what the Twilight's Dawn lets me do and if I still have access to the Ebony, I suppose that's fine, but I'm not going to go out of my way to find out."

Daemon nodded again and then looked thoughtful for a while before saying, "It's you I love, you know, not the power. It's Witch, it's having a good Queen to serve, it's…it's you."

This time it was Jaenelle's turn to nod. She'd learned many things from her new friends, one of which was that it was possible for someone to love her and not just her power.

Daemon came close to her and took her in his arms. He kissed her gently and said, "If I get a bit shaky around you, it's love."

He kissed her again

"And if I'm over protective, it's love."

Another kiss

"And if I act like a fool, it's love."

Kiss.

"And if I…"

But Jaenelle took his mouth a bit forcefully and there were no further words spoken.

So by the time everyone gathered at Elizabeth's house to prepare for a day at an "exclusive beach" they were all in good moods. Elizabeth herself was particularly happy to have found out that Bilarel was no longer with Surreal. They were good friends and you could see the good he'd done for her but he was now off finding a new challenge.

Elizabeth and Azazeal, the organizers, were getting everything together, while Jaenelle, Marian, Cassie took the opportunity to tease Lucifer about baby oil and Lucivar and Daemon about some game called volleyball that Cassie insisted that males played on the beach for the entertainment of their Ladies. The boys didn't buy it, but it was worth a shot.

When they got to Elizabeth's beach, the girls immediately started to strip down to their bikinis, by this time Jaenelle and Marion were expert beach goers, and got ready to spread themselves out to enjoy the sun. The boys milled around a bit trying not to look like they were watching, which they obviously were, before finding a place for themselves to relax. Then Azazeal suddenly strode over to Cassie, who was arranging her towel carefully on the sand, and stood over her waiting in a strangely patient way for her to notice him.

And then she looked up at him…

Azazeal had that look in his eyes, the one that let Cassie know she was in for quite an experience and then he started humming. The humming was bad…but, you know, bad in a good way.

First, the angels had merely spoken or chanted to them in angelic during moments of pleasure and then it had become more common as the girls learned the language better.

Then had come the occasional singing in angelic, a low, melodic sound that drew out the words as in opera or Georgian chanting and made the sometimes cumbersome language very beautiful. It was obviously not meant to be a spoken language, at least not in the same way a human language was, which was why most regular communication between them was done in mortal languages. The singing, though, required contol and since worship often overtook them in the heat of passion, it was less common.

Finally, had come the humming, always the same tune and always with a certain starry-eyed look. They would never say any words to the song and would never confirm or deny that there were words to it, but it was not just another little tune. Elizabeth's theory, and she tended to be right about such things, was that it was the Gloria. The hymn that's supposedly being continuously sung to God by the angels in heaven as opposed to the songs sung for a specific purpose that the girls heard. She thought that they could sometimes hear it again and would hum along. She saw it as evidence from above that they were doing the right thing and that the angels were acknowledging that God had made their redemption possible. Even if they would not sing along, they could give a little nod to the man upstairs and then they would show their appreciation to their slightly bewildered lovers.

Cassie knew what he would do…in general. Azazeal would start at her neck or at her fingertips or maybe even at her toes and his mouth and hands would flow over her like water, first lapping against her like gentle waves and then submerging her completely. Invariably somewhere in this process, he would forget to make love to her, forget the hardness between his legs, and continue tirelessly adoring her body as if that was pleasure enough. And it was, in its way, because his angelic side didn't need sex. Cassie too experienced enough pleasure to satisfy any craving, but she needed the mortal closure to the act. So he would watch her curiously as she would guide him into her and then she would smile at the look on his face. It was always as if he'd never felt a woman before and didn't know what to do with this new sensation, so she would have to lead him through the rest and coax him to let the pleasure overtake his body and complete the act.

She and Elizabeth had compared notes, of course, and Lucifer did it too sometimes when he was feeling particularly celestial and the girls thought that perhaps this reaction was the only way their lover's had to convey their amazement at the experience when they were in that state of mind (because their boys could never forget how to make love to a woman considering the things they pulled out of their repertoires and the strangest times).

Azazeal lead her away, out of sight from the others.

From her vantage point on her towel between Jaenelle and Marian, Elizabeth's eyes twinkled at the sight of Azazeal ushering Cassie way from the group and then had her suntan lotion snatched from her hand by Lucifer. He then proceeded to engage in an R-rated version of how to apply said suntan lotion, leaving her purring and thoroughly protected from a burn. Perhaps he as hoping to receive the same treatment later, although when Elizabeth mumbled, "Now you," he laughed at her and said, "I don't burn."

After planting a kiss on one of her shoulders he added, "I'll be back," and then quickly left them.

It immediately occurred to Lucivar and then Daemon, that Elizabeth was now alone with them, with Azazeal nowhere in sight, and Lucifer hadn't even given them so much as a glance to warn them off of her or ask them to look after her.

"Do you think he's forgotten about us?" Daemon asked.

"No," Lucivar said with certainty, "He's not the neglectful male he was before. In the past, he would never have defended her against us like he did the other day. He would have assumed that she could handle it. He must trust us."

Lucifer came back several hours later when everyone was in the water and laughing about some funny thing that had happened during their adventures. Cassie and Azazeal had managed to re-join the rest of the group without seeming to have returned from a romantic tryst and for the most part everyone had forgotten their quick exit earlier on.

Lucifer actually appeared tired and he stood at the edge of the water with a similar quiet patience to Azazeal's and waited for Elizabeth to come to him. When she did, he took one of her hands and spoke to her, but they couldn't hear what he said over the noise of the waves, and then she waved to them and they disappeared.

Later that night when everyone was settled at Elizabeth's ranch to enjoy a few days in the country and let Jaenelle and the rest visit with their children a little more, Cassie tried to ask Elizabeth where they had went.

Lucifer had brought Elizabeth back to them on the beach with a proud smile on his face that was even brighter then when they worked on Azazeal's projects together. He would not stop sort of preening and smiling at her like a child proud that they'd sucessfully tied their shoes for the first time.

All Elizabeth would say was that he'd made something for her, but based on the mix of pleasure and embarrassment she saw in her friend, Cassie thought that Lucifer had created something for her. Normally, Elizabeth wouldn't be afraid to have him undo something but this must have struck a cord with her. There must have been something right about it and she could not get herself to make him destroy it even if a mortal shouldn't have it.

Cassie knew from Elizabeth that, while Lucifer had fun with Azazeal on their projects, he sometimes wanted more. And it wasn't that he minded doing any small thing that Elizabeth wanted, in actuality, he was completely comfortable with her little mortal wants and that was the problem. He tired of doing things that weren't specifically for her. He was a personal angel in a way that most of the others were not.

Azazeal, for example, was different. Oh, he would have done anything that Cassie asked, but she just knew that he was meant for more structured endeavors, whereas Lucifer would be content if his greatest accomplishment was holding Elizabeth as she slept (one of his favorite duties) as long as she felt that it was so. But Elizabeth would not decide such things for him. She would give him parameters for his behavior but she did not feel she had the right to decide what fulfilled him. He had to find that for himself. It was a lot to ask of him, but no more than his asking her to control the most powerful being God had created, and so they had developed a way to work together to balance their relationship. But it did leave room for him to do some strange things.

And now there was this big thing he'd done on his own, which was rare but not impossible, but usually he got things wrong. Elizabeth had tried to explain to him for years that she was not a being of infinite possibilities, as Lucifer was and the God who created him was. Her likes and dislikes and her sense of right and wrong were much more defined than he was used to because her understanding of things was simpler. When he remembered this, it was easier for him to act as she would want when she was not around, but when he forgot it…that was when things like him strangling that Queen would happen. He would sometimes slip back into seeing the larger, much larger, picture because he wanted to give her everything he was capable of.

It seemed like he had found something that had stretched his abilities and pleased her at the same time. It was quite an accomplishment for him to combine those two things together without her help and you could tell Elizabeth was proud of him too.