-Backwards_Bread-

The receptionist who had never even looked your way was now on her knees, crying for forgiveness the moment Vox’s daggered stare zipped to her. “I-I’m sorry sir! I thought she was just—just—”

“Just what?” He sliced through her tattered excuses. “If harm should come to this woman again while she is within the premises you all will pay tremendously for it. Understood?”

The two men and the receptionist nodded eagerly and made noises of agreement.

Vox scowled. “Well let her go you imbeciles!”

“Of course sir!”

They shoved you forward and towards the ceo of voxtek enterprises. You offered a weak smile but his expression remained heavily guarded, pixels continuing to form a stern expression before he gestured for you to walk with him.

“I'm sorry about them. They're idiots. Now, it's time to discuss business with you. I think you’ll find these blueprints up to standard,” Vox began as-a-matter-of-factly, and you frowned when his screen flashed an actual softcopy of a blueprint you couldn't understand. 

You both turned into the lift, and it shut quickly as electricity spiked around its surface before his face returned to his screen.

“What are you doing here?”

“What was that for? I don't work here.”

“Precisely, and if word gets around that I’m seeing someone you and I will both be harrassed more than we already are,” he warned. There was an impressive range in his business voice that you've come to recognize and learn about. Overtime, you’ve also grown to enjoy when you break it. 

“You mean, more than you already are.” You let the warning slide off you like water.

“Those guards would have thrown you out only to have you runover by oncoming traffic,” Vox chastised, still maintaining a more civil tone than what his words let on. 

“You weren’t responding to my calls.” You crossed your arms.

“I had a meeting, and I’m way behind schedule,” Vox reasoned, nail guards clicking against the tiny screen of his watch. 

“You said we’d see each other today.”

“And I also said that is unless I become busy,” he refuted. 

The elevator dinged and the doors opened to Vox’s floor. 

“And I have become busy.”

He walked out and towards his door that led to the lobby of his office with you following closely behind. 

He walked you to his couch where a tablet laid vacant on one of the cushions. He picked it up and handed it to you.

“I have another meeting soon. If you get hungry or decide you want to go home, you can order food or a ride home on this,” he instructed. “Do not come into my office.”

“What time will you finish?” You looked up at him from the couch as he stood behind it. 

“I don't know. I’m handling multiple new projects at once, and I need to make sure everything’s smoothsailing, correct and pitch ideas apart from the idiotic ones my teams make every goddamn day. You’d be surprised just how aimless these fuckers can be,” Vox grumbled. “In other words, it might take a while. A few hours, maybe.”

"Hours?” You repeated. “Vox, what the fuck.”

“I know, I’m sorry sweetheart—”

“No, you always do this. If you can cancel a whole day’s worth of meetings for Valentino, why can’t you do the same for me?”

Vox seemed taken aback before he blinked away his surprise, lips remeeting after they fell agape. 

“Because Val is a child and he doesn’t see what I am trying to do here.” There was a restrained urge in his voice, something of a beckoning for this statement to be true. He took your hand in both of his, clasping his fingers together as he squeezed it.

“But you do.”

His gaze was indecisive between your two eyes. They dipped into each one but never stayed long enough to uncover your thoughts, even if that’s exactly what it was longing to do in the first place.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, snapping both of you out of the clouds of thoughts that were so close to joining. He glanced at the screen before shoving it back in. 

“I have to go,” he muttered as he planted a chaste kiss on your knuckle then letting it go. “I will text you, okay? Let me know if you get something or if you’re going home.”

You groaned as soon as he disappeared into his pit of an office, your head hitting the loveseat's armrest as you dug your fingers into your eyes. 

. . .

Hours flew by like waiting out an extermination. The usually red sky was turning pink at the horizon of tiny buildings in the far distance and you wondered if you were losing your mind. It wouldn't be the first; that had usually been a side effect of being around Vox for any amount of time.

Deciding you'd had enough, you walked over to the circular arch which zipped open when you knocked twice. 

Before you was a long metal strip for floor, lacking railings despite the long fall into a pit of sharks. 

At the end of the path sat Vox, completely obstructed by the large backrest of his office chair. Floating monitors branched out from Vox’s desk to create a pixelated cyan cloud with red spots. You walked down the path without the care one would guard themselves with having the knowledge of what swam below. 

Vox turned over his shoulder before you even reached him. 

His sharp eyes narrowed at you but his hands remained on his mouse.

“What are you doing here?” He asked between gritted teeth.

“Missing you,” you replied nonchalantly. 

You fell onto his lap sideways, grabbing him by the neck for support as he nearly tipped out of his chair. You laughed.

“You’re lucky I muted myself the moment you walked in. You—”

“Uh sir? Are you there?”

Vox’s hand flew to his mouse before he blurted “yes! Was handling a call from Val, the usual. Sorry.”

“D-Don’t apologize, sir, um—we were just discussing the placement for the engine?”

“What was wrong with the placement I suggested previously?”

“The team just thinks that there’s a way to make the drone look more c-compact.”

Judging from the brow raise and the look Vox kept giving you, the camera wasn’t switched on for this meeting. 

Vox’s index finger clinked against the edge of his desk as his other hand supported your back as you still hung from him at an odd position.

His stare finally resumed to his cyan monitor as he brought one of his floating screens closer to it. He opened another blueprint. 

“Go on.”

His employee began his long winded explanation, and you took the opportunity to quickly straddle Vox on his chair as his hands landed on your waist. Vox pressed the mute button again.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” 

You grinned. “I think you know.”

You bucked your hips against his, your crotch rubbing against his as his eyes shot wide open and he nearly jumped right out of his seat. 

“Fuck—doll, please,” Vox begged sternly under his breath while he clutched your waist tighter. “I can’t—”

“—So we were thinking the engine could go right by here. In between—”

“The battery and the CPU? Yeah, no way. If the drone lands wrong things’ll get fucked up in there, having all of that close together is how we’re getting sued by the next rich brat that died thinking they were gonna be the next Elon Musk. Keep fucking thinking.”

Vox hit mute again and refocused on you, nearly cradling you in his arms.

“What is it you want?” He huffed.

You shot him an amused look. “Did grinding against you do nothing to hint at what I want?”

Vox’s gaze dropped down to your torso and swam in whatever view he found. His brow loosened and for a moment whatever facade he'd melded on every morning seemed to crack at his expression. 

And then he'd wielded it back again. 

“No, hold on—you come interrupt my work, and expect me to please you? Come on now, sweetheart, doesn’t that sound a little ridiculous?” 

“Vox please—”

“No. I’ve told you that I can’t get off work right now. If you’re so desperate, I’m sure you can do it yourself.”

Vox lifted you off of his lap and shifted you to one of his thighs. He always liked to sit with his legs wide apart. 

He didn’t even spare you another look as his fingers tapped away at his keyboard. He unmuted for a moment.

“Anything yet?”

“N-No sir.”

“I need that by today, alright, I have another meeting I have to get to right now but we’re all staying in this call until we find a viable solution.”

“Yes sir.”

When Vox hit mute again, you adjusted your position yet again so that your crotch was perched perfectly on his thigh. 

“I’m going to ruin your pants,” you warned. Though it was more of a promise than a warning.

Vox had leaned on the opposite side of the leg you sat on, elbow on his desk while his hand supported his chin. His fingers rippled against his own screen idly as he casted his half-mast gaze back to you again. 

“Go on,” he said nonchalantly.

Just then, yet another holographic screen popped up in front of him and he flashed that signature grin of his. “Ah, Velvette, how are you this rotten afternoon?”

You slipped off your pants quickly and sat back down on Vox’s leg once you had made sure you were completely out of view from his webcam. His eyes moved back to you in that instant—specifically at your lace underwear, prettily gathered with a tiny bow in the front. 

He couldn’t conceal the twitch of his brow at the realization.

You wanted this from the start.

“How about you, what’s that look on your face?”

“Wh—huh?”

Apparently Velvette had already finished blathering about her day. 

And you had just made your first slow strokes against his leg, squeezing it between both of yours as a shiver flared against your back and down your arms.

“Ugh nevermind you’re probably just browing your phone—did you know Valentino hasn’t come in for work today?”

Vox's leg tensed below you when you rocked your hips back and forth on him. Your lips parted but Vox covered your mouth in the same breath. 

“Quietly. I have work to do,” he hissed. He slowly let go of you when you nodded.

He laughed when he turned back to his monitor. “It's Valentino. Are we surprised at this point? He probably took one of his stars home.”

“Yeah, I thought that’d be you, considering it’s been a while and all.”

Some sort of wire in your brain crackled upon hearing this as you rubbed against him faster, having to bite your lip to keep from moaning. 

Something about the thought of Vox getting it with Valentino made your chest hollow, like you had just leaped from a building. But that also meant that your hips felt heavier now, too—not exactly from weight but from vigor, some irrational urge to remove all other possibilities from his mind that weren’t you.

Vox seemed to notice too—the tips of his nail guards threatened to tarnish his desk again when he’d felt your heat smother his clothed thigh. A dark, sopping patch had formed underneath you and his eyes seemed to trace the shape, commit it to memory along with the way your body quivered while he did absolutely nothing.

“Oh please, it was never serious. He was always just a pain in my ass, I might as well try to make that pain pleasurable somehow, ri—”

“Oh fuck off Vox—”

“Yeah, hahaha! That’s what I thought!”

Velvette flashed Vox a middle finger before the call abruptly ended, closing the bright monitor completely.

“S-Some work that was,” you managed to grit out somehow, keeping your moans at bay. 

“Oh? You’re still able to talk? Now that just won't do.” He cocked a brow as he eyed you up and down. His hand remained on his mouse while the other was back on his chin with his elbow on the table. 

“Take it off.”

“What?”

“Scratch that, take everything off,” he commanded. 

It almost ailed you to get off his leg but you did as you were told, starting with your underwear.

“Fuck, doll,” he smirked, giving you nothing more than a side glance. “Should have seen the string from your pussy to your underwear.”

You sat back down on his leg, a small unexpected squeak escaping you at the new texture on your clit.

“Yeah? Feels good, doesn’t it?” Vox coaxed, his stare constantly switching between you and his screens. “Be a dear for me and give me a show.”

You raised your shirt above your head slowly while dragging your hips forward, whimpering from how much more friction your clit received. 

You moved faster with your bra, letting it drop haphazardly so you could ride him properly. You leaned forward with both your hands in front to support yourself.

“Lean back for me princess,” Vox requested breathily this time. “Rest your elbows on my desk.”

“Vox …” you moaned as you did just that, only to realize you were now completely revealed to him. 

“Atta girl, riding me so well,” Vox praised with a rougher voice. He took one of your breasts in his hand, kneeding it steadily as he grew hypnotized to your movements. “Wow, you really wanted me this bad, hm?” 

You sped up your rocking when he praised you, but his attention was short lived as one of his employees had come back.

“Sir, we got it!”

Vox’s hand moved back to his mouse as he squinted at the screen. 

“Ah, yes. This could work. Have a prototype ready by next week so we can begin testing as soon as possible.”

“Will do, sir. Now I believe you also wanted to discuss the other project? The house cleaning device?”

“Yes, give me a detailed report on what we have so far.”

Your head began to swirl as you were approaching that familiar cliff of release. When you let your head roll down, you noticed something that wasn't there previously. 

There was a painfully obvious tent in Vox’s pants. 

This roiled consciousness back into your eyes as you leaned forward, still chasing your high before your hand landed on his crotch.

“Take that to the—hah—fuck—ssshit,” he hissed, his eyes reddening far more than they usually were when they flashed at you. 

“Are you okay sir?”

“Yes, just—agh—spilled coffee on my—h-hand.”

Fuck, even the way his voice still managed to sound so put together despite the stammering had sent you soaring quicker to your nirvana. You continued to massage and rub his clothed erection as your strokes grew sloppy, sweat dropping from your brow as your jaw hung loose and you nearly cried out.

“Do you need me to send someone—”

“NO! No, no just—give me a second fuck—”

And with that, Vox hung up the exact moment you came and spilled all over his pants, still riding out your release as you cried his name.

“Fucking hell, princess.” Vox gritted his teeth. 

You winced as you dragged yourself up from his leg, not missing the perplexed look he shot you when you got up.

“What, what is it?”

“You said you couldn’t cancel your meetings,” you answered lightly, bending down to pick up your underwear. 

That gave Vox a VIP view of exactly what he’d been missing.

“I got what I wanted. I’ll be out of—”

“Oh no no no no no, haha … after that little stunt you pulled? You’re not going anywhere, sugar.”

You smiled to yourself while straightening out your underwear in front of him to hide it.

“No, I mean it. I won’t bother you anymore.”

Vox grabbed your underwear and chucked it to the side of his desk before grabbing your hips and pulling you down on his lap. 

“If you’re gonna mess with me, finish the job.”

“Vox—”

“I’m not letting you go until you say the safeword, got it?”

That betrayer smile creeped back onto your lips, causing him to grin too. His gazed locked on yours as red streaks ran down the size of his lips.

“That’s my girl.”

i have a fic based off of this, but because humans started calling gambling and the games related to gambling ‘the devil’s game’ (though the original game is roulette, people have come to generalize gambling as a whole to be the devil’s game) he never loses when gambling or playing a game related to gambling, even for fun or when there are no stakes involved. never loses in blackjack, poker, roulette, tables games—any game related to gambling, he’ll always win.

i can’t entirely say if lucifer has had sinner friends, but i do believe that he acquired the hyperfixation of the carnival/circus aesthetic from sinners or humans. this is because his outfit was intended to look like AND inspired by a ringmaster’s, and carnivals and circuses was an elaborate concept made by humans. it could also be possible that lucifer was the one that planted that influence in humans, however it was stated that lucifer’s punishment was that he was never to see the good of humanity, only the bad. so i’d like to think a ringmaster or an acrobat or a circus performer in general died, ended up in hell, met lucifer and told lucifer about the circus, and then he got the idea of building luluworld in hell.

alternatively, if it was the other way around, i think that he occasionally gets to experience the world through being summoned. i mean, we’ve all heard of rituals to summon the devil and whatnot, right? i think those do summon him into earth and then instead of showing up he actually just leaves to go explore what’s been happening until he has to go/he feels he’s getting weaker/the people that summoned him ‘close the portal’ etc. and then that’s where he very sneakily, in his own way, introduces the circus concept to humans.

because of his personality, i don’t believe his ring is an indicator of his current marital status. i think lucifer is a sentimental person, and he doesn’t let go of things easily. it’s entirely possible that him and lilith are through, but he just doesn’t want to remove the ring. something we fail to consider is that lucifer isn’t like any other person; if he marries someone, divorce isn’t the same for him and lilith as it is for humans. hell, when they first got together, they were literally the first beings to be genuinely in love with each other. back when the garden of eden was still being inhabited with lilith and adam, the only beings in heaven would have been god and the angels. if lilith didn’t love adam but married and had a kid with luci, that means they were the first ever beings to have ever been in love and the first ones to have had sex (unless for some reason, lilith and adam did it which i highly doubt.) now, all this to say that we may live in a world where people break up or get divorced all the time, but this is reasonably a foreign concept to lucifer because he’s only ever been in heaven, then hell, and even if he observed it in hell it would have been very briefly and from a far, 3rd person perspective. if lilith and him were basically the first people to have felt such intense feelings and closeness to one another, it would make sense that divorce or not, he would keep the ring because it serves as a reminder of a time when he felt the happiest/alive/most himself/free.

Lucifer didn’t waver. You weren’t even sure if he had even bothered to look down at your cards, and if you hadn’t known any better you might have said he was almost hypnotized by you, the way his gaze clung to you even after the supposed end of the road.

“Oh, me? It’s nothing—just …” 

With the bow of his wrist, Lucifer revealed his cards to you, and you leaned forward so fast your chair screeched.

“A hand fit for a king, wouldn’t you say?”

“agh!”

Two red diamonds threatened to puncture thumb with the angle he held his cards at. The center cards were all red diamonds too, with an ace, joker and a ten. Lucifer’s cards were a king and queen. 

A royal flush. 

“Lucifer, I know you’re cheating,” you accused him, and his eyes blew wide immediately. “It’s impossible that you’ve won five times in a row!”

“My heart, I warned you fair and square! I’m telling you I’m not pulling your leg when I say I never lose a game of poker!”

“When was the first time you played before this?”

Lucifer coughed, fist to his lips as he tried to stifle it. His eyes zipped between you and the floor countless times before he’d finally spoke up again.

“I uh—when I was teaching—ahem—Charlie how to play.”

“That’s your first time?” You crossed your arms.

“Yes! I saw how the humans had done it once, and I never bothered to play until Charlie had asked me to teach her.”

“Huh …”

“She got frustrated too. I don’t know why I don’t lose.”

Your frown had no longer been one of vexation but one of puzzlement. You were at the cusp of a theory, the light of knowledge ever so close before a hand slithered down your shoulder.

“But hey, you know … I think it’s funny I got both a king and a queen. I haven’t had the other in so, very long …”

Lucifer’s hot breath caressed your cheek before a pillowed kiss was planted.

You looked to him, and those eyes returned again.

But this time, of course, his brows melted, bringing his gaze to a softer edge as he smiled the way the sun would at the horizon, presenting you the colors it held dearest in its burning core.

“Someday, when you’re ready, you wouldn’t just be my queen; if Charlie’s my little Morningstar, you’ll be the star I kneel to amongst all the other ones in the vast night, wishing for just a moment more with you. For even when you give me all your waking days, I find it is not enough.

“It is not enough for how much I burn to always be with you.”

bonus : Lucifer never loses because gambling is the devil’s game 🤭