About a year later, Sara and Luke finished Mendham together and insisted that they have a proper wedding, since no one else in the family seemed interested in tradition. They had never ended up getting back at Azazeal and Lucifer for pretending to forbid their relationship, but the wedding idea annoyed their fathers enough that it satisfied this goal.
Out of fatherly over protectiveness, Azazeal hated the idea of Luke taking possession of Sara so officially, which was, of course, a complete overreaction.
"It's such an archaic ritual!" He told Cassie after gritting his teeth through Luke and Sara's pronouncement that they were getting married, "It's all about property exchange, money, and social status."
"Yes, I'm well aware of the history of marriage, but what they want to do is declare in front of our friends and family that they are in love and will remain together forever."
"Couldn't they just send out a letter then?" he spat.
Cassie laughed, "You're funny."
"I'm not trying to be," he started with irritation, but then softened a bit, "Why couldn't we just have a celebration of some kind as an announcement of their relationship? Why does there have to be this…ceremony?"
"Wow, you really don't like this idea."
"Malachi isn't married," he interjected still making his point.
"Yes, yes, I get it. But, Azazeal how is this any different than our rings. It's just a statement of our relationship."
He took this information in and began considering it so she just let him mull it over. He eventually gave in a few days later once he allowed himself to hear what Luke and Sara actually had planned…not that Cassie's affectionate coaxing didn't help. He realized that it couldn't do any harm and Sara was so excited about the prospect of having her own big day that he knew he couldn't bring himself to really put his foot down.
Lucifer was just jealous because he couldn't truly understand it. Everyone already knew that Luke and Sara were together and he didn't see the point in promising to stay together. Either you loved or you didn't and if you did, you would never betray that. It sort of offended his sense of loyalty that humans deemed this stupid ceremony necessary, but he didn't like the feeling that he was missing something. For change, however, he trusted that if Elizabeth thought this marriage thing was okay then it was.
The ceremony itself was conducted in Azazeal and Cassie defunct church as was not exactly traditional but generally followed the same format we would all recognize. An actual priest would have been far too conventional so they had Haniel preside over the event, which primarily consisted of her announcing the reason for their gathering and asking Luke and Sara to proclaim their vows for everyone to hear. It was beautiful and touching and both Cassie and Elizabeth cried, while Azazeal and Lucifer watched proudly despite themselves. The party afterwards was the best part, as they generally were, with all the usual angelic antics and fun.
At the reception, Luke and Sara watched as Elizabeth extracted Lucifer from a flirty little group of female angels and brought him over to them. She clearly knew what he was up to and was playing her part. You could see it in her eyes.
"Why don't you spend some time with the bride and groom?" Elizabeth suggested suppressing a smile, "I've still got some things to help Cassie with."
"They won't be nearly as tantalizing as ladies you took me from," he replied.
"Behave yourself!" She did her best to sound angry but a hint of amusement still peaked through.
"Yes, dear," he said patronizingly.
After Elizabeth left them, Sara asked, "Why do you do that? You've been perfect for over a year now and yet you regularly do things to irritate her. And I know what kind of thing happens when you do, she was very easy to read just now."
"Sara, this body is merely a toy and sometimes…I give it to her to play with," he said in his sexist voice.
"Dad! Don't give her any ideas," Luke interjected.
"Ah, I see I've taught you well, my pupil."
"I suspected as much," Luke said, "Whose side are you on anyway?"
"I did you a favor, son, you'll thank me later." Luke rolled his eyes. As unprepared for the emotional connection between them as Sara had been, Luke had been just an unprepared for the physical one. He'd always been in charge of all his previous sexual experiences but Sara had showed quite a talent for taking him completely by surprise.
"To answer your question, Sara," Lucifer continued still with a naughty glint in his eyes, "What the divine experience was for me, not even your father can comprehend. There are things I am meant to feel, things I am meant to give, that are hers now. And since my lovely Elizabeth is a human, I must express them in a way she can understand. It was originally your father's discovery and I have perfected it for myself, through extensive research," Lucifer grinned.
"But why the games?" she asked.
"My dear, in the figurative stark light of day the true extent of my devotion and the way I would express it would unsettle her. But she appreciates all of my…deviant desires and has always known how to satisfy them. And now they have begun to create the most heavenly experiences," he lazily closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again the naughty glint had changed to hunger.
"You get all that from kinky sex?"
"Sara, Sara, Sara, sometimes the most unexpected things produce just the sensation you're looking for and I need her to take me there."
Just then Sara notice Elizabeth coming back over to them. Elizabeth put her hand on his shoulder and he turned to her. When their eyes met, she smiled with understanding at the need in them, and said, "Let's go home."
Lucifer's unflinching sexuality had continued to ensure that he constantly amazed Elizabeth with what he was willing to do, what he wanted to do, and what he was capable of doing to satisfy her most intimate desires and, as she discovered a bit later, to satisfy his deepening angelic needs as well. Absolutely nothing was off limits. For him, sex itself, in all of its forms, was a sublime act of devotion (His favorite one!) and so he approached it with an ardent abandon which had the ability to bring her to the limits of human experience and throw his mind and body into blazingly rapture and unrestrained adoration. It was, of course, sensuously exciting for Elizabeth that he so completely committed his mind and body to their love making, turning her on further, which was one way to temporarily quiet Lucifer's seemingly insatiable craving to please her.
When she ask him why he did this and why he had always had such a strong reaction to sex with her, he smiled at her as if he had thought she already understood. "Your love," he had said and at this word he had smiled fondly, "and the pleasure of our bodies together are the rewards you give to me for my love and obedience. It has always been so. It would be unthinkable not to accept them and experience them as deeply as I am able. Besides," he had added lowering his voice to a sexy rumble, "everything belongs to you, doesn't it naneel, even my orgasm." Elizabeth had smiled to herself and it made sense to her that he would think of sex this way given that she had indeed established it as something he had had to earn. She had initally seen it as a control tacit, however she had quickly found that she actually wanted him to surrender so that she could give herself to him out of love, not just so that she could get her way. She had also always enjoyed and encouraged his reaction to the pleasure she gave him because she had always seen the intensity of sexual climax as a surrender of its own. He must have sensed these things from the beginning. He had eventually gone on to explain how their love making sometimes built to such fevered levels of passion. Regardless of who initiated the act, when she radiated love as they were in each other arms, when she burned with pleasure at his touch, and when she gave him pleasure, he received it all with as much love as she gave it and, naturally, responded with worship and adoration increasing her pleasure and his own. It was in his nature to receive and reflect great depths of feeling and, for her benefit, he did this not only in whispered angelic and wordless emanations of profound emotions, but physically as well.
Lucifer and Elizabeth had continued to work with Cassie and Azazeal to try to make a difference in this world and hopefully earn Lucifer's way back in to God's good graces. Lucifer was still a challenge but no longer in terms of his capacity for malevolence. He was as playful and adventurous as ever, but he would not have disappointed Elizabeth by being evil for the entire world. He did sometime act like an over-excited puppy when he could focus on nothing but pleasing her, their more general work with Cassie and Azazeal apparently did not satisfy this, and she would often need to take time out to spend with him alone. He didn't seem to care that her desires were small (she liked good food, wine, nature, horses, art and him) but he simply could not relax without providing little personal things for her.
Through out their relationship, just when Elizabeth had thought that she knew him completely, Lucifer had always showed her and given her more of himself. He was a complex being but she had never expected all that had happened between them. She was absolutely delighted that he had found the peace that he was looking for because, if she was honest with herself, in the beginning she had thought that they would always struggle with each other over the evil things that he did. He was the devil after all. It still took sometime, however, for her to figure him out completely and to determine why he was still a little out of control with some of his actions, but she was so happy with him that she barely noticed.
It was Cassie, actually, who discovered the human flaw that made life with them imperfect for their angelic lovers. In planning the wedding celebration with Sara, she had left Azazeal pretty much on his own for entertainment. This had not initially been a problem and they did ask him to do a few things for them but after two weeks, he was picking little fights, at least in Cassie estimation.
"This thing is getting a bit involved isn't it? How much time is it going to take to get this planned?"
"Well, the day had been picked so up until then, we'll be busy," Cassie replied evenly, not wanting to get into it again.
"You want to do this don't you?" He said irritably.
"Do what?"
"This wedding thing, you're putting all of your energy into this because it's really what you want for yourself."
"Hey, where is this coming from?"
"Why don't you just ask me or just tell me that this is what you want?"
"I don't need this, it's for Sara and Luke."
"It's not! You're all worked up over this."
"You're just bored," she said and he stormed off at this accusation. She regretted it the second she said it but he was acting like a miniature Lucifer. She wasn't ignoring him but she wasn't paying enough attention to him.
Later that day however he was far from angry and when she was content after accomplishing a lot that day, he gave her a curious look as if inspecting her for some sign of…something, but then smiled at her and gave her a kiss.
The next morning after Cassie had had a shower and had gone over her list of things to do that day, she was confronted with an unhappy Azazeal again. She shook her head at his strangeness, but after talking to Elizabeth about Lucifer and his patterns, it finally struck her.
"Elizabeth," she said grabbing her arm, "I think I know what it is!"
"Good because I'm stumped."
"When I'm content, not just happy mind you, really satisfied, he's fine, but when I get agitated and I don't ask him to help, it bothers him."
After a few more "scientific experiments," they determined that the problem was the constant human state of wanting, needing, and worrying about things that made Azazeal and Lucifer uneasy if they weren't otherwise occupied. The girls didn't even notice this human tendency but discovered that for the boys to truly do nothing, the girls had to be completely content and whenever they were the boys were more than happy to remain still. But depending on the level of the girls wants and needs, their angels would want more and more to do their job. If there was something to be done, they wanted to do it. Since they didn't know what was lacking, they relied on the girls tell them and didn't understand when they weren't asked to fulfill an obvious (to them anyway) need or desire.
The abnormal stress of the wedding planning on Cassie was what brought the problem out in to the light. Azazeal didn't really understand what he was feeling but he knew that it had to do with whatever Cassie was feeling about this wedding. She was worrying (really just the way we worry about anything we're responsible for) and he needed to respond to that, but he knew nothing about what she really wanted or needed and she wasn't asking him for anything. It was like she was keeping something from him and all he wanted to do was what he always did: help her. After the revelation with Elizabeth, Cassie found a way to include him in her endeavors, which worked as predicted, and Elizabeth and she jokingly determined that they needed to be more Zen.
They further discovered later that now that Azazeal and Lucifer were so connected to them, the girls moods could also be part of the problem, although much less so than their wants and needs. In particular, Azazeal and Lucifer admitted that they could actually feel the loosening of emotions that regularly occurred each month as a result of their female cycle. Cassie and Elizabeth, having lived with it for so long, hardly noticed these "alleged" changes in mood but apparently they were being subtlety responded to, which explained certain misunderstandings that occurred when the emotions behind the girls requests distracted from the goal and also a few cute emotional displays.
Lucifer, more than Azazeal of course, could be dramatically effected by any changes in mood. There was one day where all Lucifer would do was follow Elizabeth and whenever she stopped, he wrapped himself around her and kissed her neck, shoulders, arms, hands and whatever else she'd let him get his lips on. Cassie had happened to visit them that day and shook her head at him.
"Just ignore him," Elizabeth had said pleasantly, after having put up with it all morning, "He's an accessory today, like a necklace," at which Lucifer had chuckled but did not stop. The next day he was perfectly normal and made no reference to the strangeness of the previous day as if whatever had inspired it was gone. As it had turned out, Elizabeth had been in uncharacteristically low sprits and dwelling on, as humans do, old worries and regrets that were no longer actively part of her life. Lucifer had chosen to respond with quiet, if slightly bothersome assurance, partially because he enjoyed being as ridiculous as possible since it always made her smile and partially to distract her all day because he seen this before and Elizabeth, once lost in these thoughts, was not easily coaxed back.
Azazeal generally kept his reactions much more subdued and was simply prone to wanting to keep her all to himself on occasion, particularly when she was very happy. He adored spending time alone together when she was that happy because she was so full of life. And when she was a bit down his longstanding protectiveness showed itself. Cassie eventually found that, in typical womanly fashion, she was usually quite flattered by his protective nature, except when it kept her from doing what she wanted. Who says we can't have the best of both worlds?
It made a lot of sense the more they thought about it and after talking about it with Azazeal and Lucifer, they determined that they just weren't used to a constant barrage of desires and emotions. Either God wanted something or He didn't and He certainly didn't get all worked up like these silly women.
The end is near! Just not quite yet.