Chapter 48
In Heaven, an angel sat at a riverbank, and he ran his fingers through his golden hair, though his skin was warmly dark.
Over a great stone, he laid on his belly, staring down at his reflection in the crystalline waters, devoid of fish.
His eyelashes cradled dual stars, and his lips were wonderfully plump, and his figure held softness and toughness in all the proper places.
From his mouth, a wordless song seeped. No clothes hid him, for he had no shame, but chains of gold and gem were strung all over his sweet throat, his limbs, his waist, hips.
In paradise, there were no laws, for all the living are kind and do not ever harm without permission.
And the angel of beauty is proud, but it isn’t pride without kindness, empathy.
“Beloved Lucifer,” called a lover, and the most beautiful angel in paradise sighed dramatically, setting his hands on the damp rock, arching his back as he lifted himself.
A tough angel of a different kind of beauty — broadness, strength — with dark curls approached, then settled beside Lucifer, strong hand coming over the beautiful one’s fingers.
“Why have you hid from me? Don't you know that I spend every second apart from you in grief?” His other hand came to rest on the lean back of the blonde to tease jewelry into chiming, but Lucifer looked away and turned up his nose with a huff. “Oh, tell me what is the matter.”
“I,” began the grievances of angel Lucifer, “don’t like how you parade me around to the others.
I'm the most beautiful angel that has ever been born of this paradise, but, Michael, I don't belong to you.” Even still, Lucifer tilted his face, then lifted a hand to plant over the chest of the angel of strength, soft in its ease and lovely. “Kiss me.”
Ever obedient, Michael leaned closer to the brilliant face of Lucifer as the younger one rearranged himself to sit with his stretched legs pressed together and to the side, toes dipping into the river current that went nowhere.
Michael found Lucifer’s soft mouth and claimed it, soft yet earnest. Their lips pressed and dragged, beginning to move in hunger.
Within the most beautiful angel’s core, he felt the familiar twist of love tangling his stomach and heart together, as if to build a knot that only this lover could reach inside to disentangle.
But Michael’s hands went for Lucifer’s waist instead, gripped him securely.
Careful, Michael set a foot down, then lifted his body and Lucifer’s.
His kisses didn’t dare falter, not even when he raised the beautiful one high enough that his feet dangled above the ground.
As if Lucifer were flying. Or as if they were falling, mouths interlocked.
Michael and Lucifer kissing, falling together, never sparing a glance away from each other to watch Heaven fade into the horizon.
‘If we could fall together, I want you to land over me. Break me, my bones. Love begs for pain. To be held too tight, to cry out as if hurting, to bruise beneath puckered lips. Love demands a grave; come lie in it with me. Angel, choose death over eternal life. Turn away from creating and kill us both.’
“Mm,” Michael said against Lucifer.
And Lucifer tilted his face away now, though not struggling in Michael’s grasp, and said, “Do you see now? You kiss me like my mouth is only yours.”
“Forgive me,” pleaded Michael. “But I can’t bring myself to let you go.
You were the one that taught me. This, this love.
Or should I call it worship? Be it either, I’d leave my Father’s house with nothing but desire for you on my back to come to know more.
I carry you already on my shoulders even when you’re not with me.
How can I offer myself to you?” His breath lapped warm against Lucifer’s mouth; their fronts pressed flush together, warm, naked.
“How can I be yours, if you will not be mine?”
At that, Lucifer’s lips twisted into a scheming smile, then he heard leaves shake and footsteps crunching.
Swiveling his gaze over Lucifer’s shoulder, Michael grunted, “Baal,” to the golden-haired one’s laughing delight.
As Baal approached, his robes dragged along the ground, and he tilted his head to peck a kiss at Lucifer’s jaw, utterly ignoring Michael.
“Lucifer, my love, you didn’t say you’d bring Michael.
” His wings were already revealed, in their great darkness — folding, unfolding anxiously.
When Baal brushed his lips toward Lucifer’s upper cheek, Michael’s grip squeezed the angel of beauty’s body in a flame of jealousy, but Lucifer smiled brighter.
“He hunted me, Baal,” said Lucifer. “And now he’s caught me. What could I do?”
Michael, delicately, set the most beautiful one down, then he murmured, “Lucifer, I’ve told you about Baal.”
“Hm, you see, you see?” Lucifer elegantly stepped away but not without tapping the angel of strength’s mouth with an index.
“You always tell me what I can or cannot do. Why should I listen? I like you better when you’re the one listening, and when you win me new jewels to wear.
Won’t you win me some more? Don’t I deserve it?
” Michael made yet another noise of disapproval just as Baal wrapped both arms around Lucifer’s hips from behind then brought his face to Lucifer’s neck, kissing and nuzzling. “Baal seems to think so.”
“Leave, Michael,” Baal said, trailing up his mouth and nibbling on Lucifer’s ear to spur out a sharp breath.
“Now, now,” Lucifer chided, “Michael doesn’t have to leave.
” He took one of Baal’s hands, then guided it to trail down his body, to the area between his legs.
“He likes to watch. Don’t you, Michael?” A soft cry slipped from his mouth as Baal began to work his fingers — slow, then firmer.
Warming with each flick of Baal’s wrist, Lucifer body bloomed with arousal.
And he shivered as Michael’s gaze trailed up and down his body.
“You can touch too, Michael.” When the angel of strength glowered, Lucifer chuckled. “Come. Kiss me again.”
Michael hesitated but not long; he stepped forward and, though Baal tensed, he leaned in to take Lucifer’s mouth again. One of Michael’s hands, too, touched the beautiful angel’s stomach, lightly ran his fingers up to his chest, then gripped the back of Lucifer’s throat.
The angel of beauty’s voice broke with a cry into Michael’s rough, scraping kiss as Baal adjusted to press two fingers into Lucifer’s heat.
Crushed between the two, Lucifer couldn’t be happier, and he teased, “You see, Michael, I’m meant to be shared.
” And when Michael’s irritation pressed further into his mouth, Lucifer moaned, languid and high, again for them, the both of them.
“Lay me down,” he breathed between his pleasure.
“On the flowers.” Nearby, a crowd of them formed a petal bed of blues, whites, yellows, pinks. “Lay me there.”
Soon, he thrashed against the larger angels, and so they relented.
Michael and Baal brought Lucifer to his bed of flowers, watched as his hair sprawled over the leaves, and he hummed, calling them down to devour him in kisses, in bites.
Encouragingly, Lucifer ran his hand through their curls and stroked their bodies, and when he shivered, he realized the pit of his stomach was terribly empty.
“Let me drink,” Lucifer ordered. “Fill my mouth with you.” Offering his face, he allowed Baal to slide hardened love past his lips, into his very throat, and begin to rock forward.
Michael’s hands, meanwhile, found Lucifer’s rear, his thighs.
Taking a second of eternity to coat his own fingers in the wet of his mouth, Michael then prodded.
The angel of beauty’s perfect entrance welcomed him, and it was as if digging into the body of a fruit.
Like Baal, Michael thrust, coaxing an opening that was already eager and impatient.
Choking on sweetness, Lucifer moaned, and he arched his back once more, rolling his hips back against Michael.
Not deep enough, he was saying. Not cruel enough.
Twist it, like a knife. Love demands blood.
When Michael returned his hand to his own body, he used his other to grip Lucifer’s hip.
He guided the pretty angel onto his side, held him there, then guided his weeping arousal to push past the tight gate into paradise.
Slow, he pressed on, feeling how he widened him, how a flower unfurled, how a burrow shut around a seed.
Lucifer shook in bliss, and he twitched and groaned with his mouth full.
The first rut forward made him twitch, and when the ruts continued, rolling into him like tides — he shook.
His core burned, and the coiled tightness tore open from his belly to where the strongest prince offered himself.
Michael asking to be owned by someone, having left his Father’s house, looking to be wanted and commanded.
A low, guttural noise rumbled from Baal’s throat, and Lucifer felt the angel of flight comb back his hair, then hold his face tenderly as he continued.
The salt of the Earth — procuring from him, a gift to feed the most beautiful angel.
Nothing but jewels, salt, and honey are to bother Lucifer; he must be spoiled.
Spoiled until he rot, but it would be a beautiful rot.
‘Love me,’ he wanted to say to them. ‘Love me until I can’t walk, and I must be carried everywhere we go.
Hold me between your bodies, and love me until I forget if I’ve ever felt anything else.
’ This body of his wasn’t made to be empty; it was made to be shaped.
Delight — shuddering Lucifer’s body, ‘Beg for me, every time. Pray to me.’ He tried to stop those thoughts.
‘Worship me.’ But he couldn’t. And Michael and Baal murmured prayers as they drove into him like swords into a victim.