The ‘How’ was a bit more understandable after the investigation he was doing as a favour for Zee had led him to a rowdy biker bar where he’d been obliged to question the bottom of a bottle of spiced rum and he soon found himself stumbling out on the arm of a rather fetching gent in leathers. The next few hours were a bit of a disappointing blur, and the result was his current predicament.  

A little old crone had rattled bones over him, painted sigils on his skin with pig’s blood that was starting to dry in his chest hair and get itchy, and anointed him with various sweet scented oils and honey that made his stomach growl. Her followers had chanted, low and droning as they lit candles in a ring around him and shook sheaves of wheat and corn dollies at him. 

Ah. Harvest sacrifice it was. 

The crone had patted his shoulder almost sympathetically before raising her dagger. 

It barely pricked his skin when the air exploded into blazing light. There was a clap of thunder that sounded like the baying of hounds, a brief waft of stench like someone had cracked into a dodgy boiled egg in an overheated bus, and the panicked shrieks of the locals. 

John peeled an eyelid against the light to just make out a figure floating in the air near the rafters. It was bathed in almost white flames that throbbed like a heartbeat as the figure drifted slowly to the straw covered floor. 

The First Fallen Angel walked on air, embers falling around him as he approached and flared his great inky black wings in an obvious display. 

The locals took it for a threat and beat a hasty retreat, carrying their weaker members to safety. 

John took it for the dramatic show that it was, and rolled his eyes. 

Using his tongue to push the gag out of his mouth, he scowled. “Wanna tone down the lights, Sunshine? I’m gonna be seeing spots for days.” 

Flames withdrew, and the bright white light dimmed, leaving Lucifer glowing faintly. Probably from annoyance. 

He had arrived in full regalia; red silken raiments twisted around his waist and draped over his shoulder, a ring of black stones that housed silently screaming souls sat around his long, slender throat, and floating above his crimson horns, a burning crown that dripped ichor completed the look of supremely powerful demonic royalty. 

Aww, he wanted to make an impression. 

“There are easier ways to lay your claim on someone, you know.” John crooned and squirmed on the cross beams, rolling his hips. “More fun, too.” 

“You’re insane.”

The human body wasn’t always the best at being able to tell when an adrenaline rush was coming from a place of genuine fear, or if it was just a sign to get ready to play. And John’s body had spent so long housing the mind of a magician who sometimes paid good money to be trussed up like an offering in a dark dungeon while strangers did unspeakable things to his holes while bad German death metal pounded out of speakers around him. 

Which was to say that he was more than a little worked up. And the arrival of his infernal … lover? Boyfriend? Complication? in a blaze of strength and unholy vengeance? Well, that just ticked at least three different things off his kinky bucket list. 

“Got the certificate and everything.” 

John waggled his eyebrows and pulled at his ankle restraints to try to shift his hips up. 

“A complete madman.” 

Lucifer flicked his wrist, his fingertips igniting, and he ran them over the ropes that held John’s legs down. The bitter scent of burning hemp filled the barn as the strands singed away. 

Evil incarnate paced around his beloved laughing magician and stroked his sweaty hair from his face and wiped the blood off his cheeks before he leaned down to kiss his bitten red lips. 

“You gonna…?” John tugged at ropes holding his arms stretched to their limit, his chest already heaving with giddy thrill. 

“Now why would I do that?” Lucifer dragged his fingers through the slick anointing oil that marked John as a sacrificial beast. “You’re my offering, after all.” 

Stepping up between the beams where John was bracing his feet, his knees in the air and spread wide for him, the devil slipped his oiled fingers between his arse cheeks. John’s cock had been waving eagerly from the moment Lucifer arrived to rescue him, and now it bobbed in excitement, hard and blushing. 

“Fuck yes,” John growled low and lust drunk when two fingers plunged deep into his hole, angling expertly to find his sweet spot. 

He never used to have a hair trigger before, but the Fallen Angel had utterly ruined him. All it took now was a strong hand gripping the base of his cock, thumb caging his bollocks up while another hand artfully pressed and tickled against his prostate and soon enough John was howling and bucking and painting his skin with his own come. 

The spots he was seeing now had nothing to do with blazing light, and he sagged limp against the altar. 

“Wanna get out of here?” he mumbled muzzily and tried to wipe his face on his shoulder. 

The wood under him creaked and John lifted his head to see Lucifer kneeling on the cross where his legs had been bound. He lifted John’s knees to his chest and leaned over him, hands perched lightly over his ribs. 

“These people put in a lot of effort to ensure they got a good harvest this year, John. It would be a shame not to provide them with the fertile offerings for it.” 

John opened his mouth to point out that the farmers had poised to kill him just moments ago, and that he didn’t exactly approve of rewarding people for that sort of behaviour. 

But then he saw the glass bottle of anointing oil glinting in the otherworldly light and a drizzle of it spill out and down the smooth planes of Lucifer’s belly to pool at the base of his thick prick, and the only words that came to him were