Chapter 8: Afterglow
The heat between their bodies was a country of its own. Lucifer, with a tenderness that felt violent after the frenzy, eased himself out. Robert made a small, hurt sound—a protest, a loss. Lucifer watched, his golden eyes dark in the low light, as his own spend, white and opaque, welled from Robert’s used hole and traced a slow path down the curve of his ass.
“Messy,” Robert murmured, his voice sleep-thick and satisfied. He didn’t move to clean it. Instead, he pulled Lucifer down by the back of his neck, kissing him with a languid, open-mouthed depth that tasted like shared salt and exhaustion. When he broke for air, his words were a warm puff against Lucifer’s lips. “Stay. I want to wake up with you still inside me.”
It was an impossible, debauched wish. Lucifer’s spent cock twitched against Robert’s thigh, a weak echo of the demand. “I’ll crush you.”
“Promise?” Robert grinned, a flash of white in the gloom. He shifted, wincing slightly, and rolled onto his side, presenting his back. He pulled Lucifer’s heavy arm around his waist, guiding it until Lucifer was curled around him, chest to spine, a fortress of flesh. “See? Fits.”
And it did. Lucifer, who had never spent a whole night holding anyone, found the architecture of it—the notch of his chin over Robert’s shoulder, the alignment of their hips, the way his larger feet cradled Robert’s smaller ones. The room slowly came back into focus: the faint green glow of a VCR clock, the skeletal outline of a hanging plant, the billow of the curtain from an open window letting in the canyon’s chill.
Robert’s breathing evened out. Lucifer stayed awake, memorizing the landscape of this moment. The delicate vertebrae of Robert’s neck. The sour-sweet scent of sex and patchouli clinging to the sheets. The profound, terrifying rightness of it.
He must have slept. He woke to gray dawn light and movement. Robert was pressing back against him, a slow, sinuous grind. Lucifer was hard, a thick, aching line trapped between Robert’s ass cheeks. Robert reached behind, his hand fumbling, and guided him, not inside, but through the slick cleft, rocking him back and forth in the hot channel.
“Fuck,” Lucifer rasped, his voice wrecked with sleep.
“That’s the idea.” Robert’s words were slurred, half-dreaming. He pushed Lucifer’s cockhead against his entrance, still loose and soft from the night before. He bore down, taking just the tip with a soft, wet sound. “Just there. Just stay right there and move.”
It was a lazy, decadent rhythm. Lucifer rocked his hips, shallow thrusts that pushed in only an inch or two before retreating. The sensation was maddening—the tight, reluctant stretch of the rim, the searing heat within. Robert pushed back onto him, forcing another inch, then another, with a low, continuous moan.
“More,” Robert breathed. “Come on, give me more.”
Lucifer’s control, always a thin veneer around this man, evaporated. He slid a hand under Robert’s hip, lifting him, and sank the rest of the way in one deep, fluid stroke. Robert cried out, his back arching, his hand scrabbling for purchase on the headboard.
“Yes! God, yes, just like that.” Robert was fully awake now, pushing back to meet each thrust. “Harder. Make me feel it all day.”
Lucifer obeyed. The pace was different now—not the frantic race to the cliff, but a deep, punishing possession. Each drive was a claim. He fucked into him with long, steady strokes that shook the bedframe. He could feel the internal shape of him, the clench and give, the way Robert’s body swallowed him whole. He bent and bit the juncture of Robert’s shoulder, not hard enough to break skin, but to brand.
“Whose are you?” Lucifer growled, the question torn from somewhere primal.
“Yours,” Robert gasped, messy and immediate. “Fuck, right now, I’m yours. Now make me come.”
Lucifer’s hand snaked around, finding Robert’s cock hard and leaking. He jerked him in time with his thrusts, his grip firm, his thumb smearing pre-come over the head. Robert’s noises were beyond words—guttural, animalistic grunts punched out with every inward drive.
“I’m close, I’m so close,” Robert chanted. “Don’t stop. Don’t you fucking stop.”
Lucifer felt the orgasm build in his own spine, a rising tide of heat and pressure. He pistoned into Robert, the slap of skin echoing in the quiet room. Robert came first, with a sharp, broken shout, his release striping Lucifer’s fist and the rumpled sheets, his body clamping down in vicious, rhythmic pulses. The intense squeeze was too much. Lucifer buried himself to the hilt, his face pressed into Robert’s sweaty hair, and roared as he emptied himself, wave after hot, endless wave.
They collapsed, a heap of overloaded nerve endings. Lucifer withdrew, and this time, Robert didn’t protest. He just flopped onto his back, staring at the water-stained ceiling, a wrecked smile on his face.
The shower after was a slow, shared ritual. They washed each other under water almost too hot to bear, scrubbing away the night’s evidence with a rough washcloth. Robert soaped Lucifer’s broad back, tracing the scratches he’d left. “I marked up the prophet,” he said, almost to himself.
In the kitchen, brewing coffee in a chipped Chemex, Robert moved with a loose-limbed ease. He wore only boxers. Lucifer, dressed in his jeans from the day before, leaned against the counter, watching. The domesticity was more intimate than the sex.
“You have a job today?” Lucifer asked.
“A read-through. Some indie thing. The script’s not bad.” Robert poured the coffee, black, into two mugs. “You? Gonna go fix a time machine or something?”
“Auto shop in Burbank. Starts at eight.” Saying it made it real. A life, here.
Robert handed him a mug, their fingers brushing. “Luciano Rossi, mechanic.” He tested the name. “It suits you. Solid.” He took a sip, his eyes sharpening over the rim. “The guy who set you up… he’s good?”
“He’s thorough.”
“But you’re not from here. You slip up. You don’t know who the President is, or you quote a movie that hasn’t come out yet.” Robert’s gaze was piercing, no longer playful. “You need a buffer. A guide.”
“I have a guide.”
“You have a distraction.” Robert set his mug down. “I’m serious. You stick with me. At parties, premiers, stupid industry shit. You’re my… friend from back east. A quiet giant who fixes cars. It’s a perfect cover. No one looks too hard at the person standing next to me. They’re too busy looking at me.”
It was a savvy, cynical offer, wrapped in self-deprecation. It was also a lifeline. “And what do you get out of it?” Lucifer asked.
Robert stepped into his space, his hands flat on Lucifer’s chest. “I get you. In my bed. In my kitchen. Standing between me and the cliffs.” He said it like a simple fact. “I’m a selfish bastard, Lucifer. You’re the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m not letting you vanish into Burbank.”
The phone on the wall rang, shrill and sudden. Robert ignored it. It rang again, insistent.
“Aren’t you going to get that?”
“It’s probably my agent. Or a dealer.” Robert’s expression closed off, a shutter coming down. “They can wait.”
The ringing stopped. The silence it left was heavy. Lucifer saw it then—the first hairline fracture in the morning’s bliss. The world outside, with its demands and its poisons, was pressing in. The phone was a summons back to a path Lucifer knew was mined with disaster.
Robert saw him see it. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against Lucifer’s sternum. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t look at me like you’re already reading my obituary.”
Lucifer wrapped his arms around him, holding him tight, as if he could physically stop the tide. He said nothing. The coffee steamed between them, forgotten, growing cold.